riaa essay anyone?

"do you know who the RIAA is? you should, they're the people telling you
that you are committing a crime every time you download mp3s.
perhaps you heard the spiel before: every time you download an mp3 you are
in fact stealing directly from the artist, helping to destroy music as we
know it and sending yourself straight to hell.

well, i'm writing here to present a different view.

dont worry, i will not feed you crap about how it's not
really stealing and no
damage is done. on contrary, it is definitely stealing, and there is
definitely damage is done.

that is precisely why you must do it.

1999 was the year of the corporations. they own everything. ever wonder
where this endless stream of boy bands, girl bands and soft core bad boys
comes from? it comes straight from the bowels of capitalism, my friends.

dont believe me? check out korn's "life is peachy" record. it has a little
track called "A.D.I.D.A.S.". check out the inside and you will see a long
list of companies that 'sponsors' korn. look for one which starts with an
A. ever seen jon davis without his adidas sweatshirt? didnt think so.

of course, what do all you idiots do when the videos come out? you go out
and buy adidas. thanks a lot, you herd of brainwashed sheep. feed the
cycle.

but i digress. 'so the world is run by corporations' you say, 'what the
hell can i do about it? i'm no one, and they're multi-billion dollar
powerhouses!'. exactly. these machines run on money. you strip the money
from them, and they fall apart. and now you finally have the power to do
it, without losing the music you want.

mp3s are the solution to everything. small, near impossible to lose (unlike cds) , and easily
copied. and thanks to the internet and to faster connections, easily
distributed. right now, their impact on cd sales is still very minor,
but it has nowhere to go but up.

you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by using mp3s. you gain
music, and you pay nothing. zero. you strip money away from goatshit
mongering mega-corporations and actually feed it to the artists. keep
reading if you dont believe me. you also loosen the grip of mtv
entrenched cheese and give
a fighting chance to people are actually in it for the love. and, no, you
will not be damned to hell for it.

you see, artists make next to nothing from cd sales. that is simply a fact
of life. the vast majority of this money goes to labels, managers and
miscellany fat cats. the only thing keeping most performers afloat is
touring, and thats the main reason for why they do it.

and if you grab an mp3 of a band you never heard of, then attend the show,
you are helping them a lot more then if you buy their cd. and it costs you
less too (unless of course you are going to see an mtv video fruitcake for
$75 a seat).

and if you do topple the corporations, you will level the playing fields
for other musicians. ever caught yourself wishing some good music came on
the
radio/tv? well, the good music is out there, it's just choked off because
it lacks appeal to white 12 year old girls. such is life.

so grab napster, gnutella, hotline, scour or the ucsd local Wetlink, and
start fighting the good war. every file you get is another nail through
the collective skull of britney spears, nsync, marylin manson and
every other mtv whore. you will
help the good and slay the evil, and the gods will nothing but bless you
for it."


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WolfieD - Pointing out incredible stupidity in the world since 1985.
http://wolfied.cjb.net
WolfieD's Den: Go there or die! Did I mention that its better than sex with your hand?

[s1138]

mind if i use it for school at anytime? i could modify it a little if i did.

[Mulefire]

I think people power sucks these days, Goverments and corporations have learnt too well how to deal with it.

Look at the MPAA schenanigans going on at the moment, do you like to record tv programs? How would you like your video recorder or your digital recorder to have built in copyright protection? (you can not record special copyrighted programs) That's where it is going and the legalities could be set as early as September the 16th.

Then have a little sidelong glance at ICANN and how a corporatins muscle and money can get them whatever they so desire, the little man does not stand a chance against them in this fight. Yet the goverment who gave them the power now doesen't give a sh*t about it.

Look at the absurd price Cd's and DVD's are sold for now. Why can they do that, becuase we chumps fork it out. Why do we fork it out, because we don't have any other avenue of similar functionality.

Okay so now we have MP3, has that stopped people buying CD's? No. Will it stop people buying CD's? Only when there is a decent distribution channel in place. Look at Napster, it is a fantastic idea but a really sh*tty program. No streaming, no resumes, pathetic sub-string searching and a darn right buggy as hell interface. Tried cancelling a search and trying a new one anyone? This program will not ruin the Music Industry.

So we have Gnutella, this is the future, the way it will work. No servers, decent programming, easy to use features (that actually work!). Of course is this distribution channel still better than your on-line CD merchant or high-street retailer. Yes and No, we are still missing the richness of the information you get on a legit web site, we are still missing that "ooh pretty case in my hand" touchy feely type thing.

Of course we notice these things becuase we have been brought up on them. The next generation will not be so, and thus MP3's will take off a little bit more. Packaged CD's given time will be an obselete concept. Artists won't release albums anymore, they will have no need. Tracks are what will matter. Individual tracks. Of course now we say, well what about all those cool B'sides? and those remix side fillers? Will we still get them? Who knows, proberly but at the artists descretion not as a result of filling empty space. Is this a good thing, you decide.

The Music industry dinosours are going to fight these changes right to the bone. They are not going to just give up, even if they lose their current cases (which they won't). Our own privacy and rights to make choices are being eroded every day. How soon before we DO have port limiting proxy firewalls in place at our ISP's. Look at BT in the UK, when they first started banding around DSL you were stuck behind a firewall and could only use the ports that they thought you would want (if you were the Waltons perhaps), Yet whatever uproar this caused was soon forgotten about, no-one cared enough, it was broadband after all...phweee..

The industry can and will use all it's muscle to inpose these sort of measures on us. They can and will force ISP's to comply with their "family fun safeguards". How long before perhaps your telephone company is forced to monitor the traffic flowing down it's lines so it can't be held liable for the info in there. How long before every computer you buy comes with a built in hardware firewall (configured by your friendly retailer to guidelines set down by the government).

Look at the censorware we have in place now, pretty lame and not particulary dangerous perhaps, but how about some anti-encryption software that blocks emails where it can't find and normal sentences. Sounds ridiculous, how about those simple messages with just an attachment, they couldn't stop me sending that right? Wrong, look at the web sites with censorware that refuse to let you log in if your name contains what it thinks is a rude work, e.g. the Babcock case. Did they back down? Nope.

Everything is conspiring against us. the freedom that we enjoy now is going to be VERY short lived. The internet is too much of a society changing medium and we know just how much goverments and corporations love changes in society. It will only continue to exist if they can bring it under their control. The individual user will not be spared a thought, only control control control.

Is there anything we can do to stop this? Proberly not. We don't see the fights for what they are, we see little stupid court cases that we don't really care about yet suddenly we find our lives changed by it. If we don't stand up and fight for the small things then we really have lost. What can we do to fight? We can stop pandering to their strategies. People who complain about the RIAA will still go out there and buy a cd, becuase they JUST have to have it. That's fine but it is not going to win any wars. People who complain about ICANN will still go out and register stupid domain names and try to flog them off, they're just playing right into their hands! People who complain about the price of DVD's will still go out there and buy them. (no other distribution channels remember).

I think we are going to have to get used to doing without a lot of things for a short period. That is the only way we are going to win this. If we all pussy foot about and cave in at the first cd or dvd we have to have then in the long term we are signing it all away.

Mule.

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The surest sign there is intellegent life in the Universe is that they havn't come to visit us yet - Calvin & Hobbes

[Xerxes]

While this isn't exactly what he was directing it toward-

"C'mon! It's we the people, not we the sheeple!"
-Ted Nugent

I love how now they market "Be your own person" types of things and then everyone
buys what was being marketed- thereby voiding the message. A lovely paradox isn't it.

Xerxes

[rm']

More like "Be your own porcine"

They feed us the same generic cultural slop from the same trough and tell us how special our "individuality" is when all they want to do is fatten us up in an orgy of sameness, just to split open our tender bellies and get all the cash inside.

Bells and whistles, but no bike. Truly a sad state of affairs for any culture. The sadder thing is, this is the culture that people chose to be global.

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