Another Reason to Get Upset at Big Music

So.. I bought this CD nearly a week ago. I do not own a bonafide cd player, except in my car. When I listen to CD’s I either listen to them in my car or on my PC.

This particular CD, Phantom Planet’s self-titled album, would not play on my PC, and my laptop isn’t a slouch in terms of computer equipment. I’m running all the latest bits and baubles. My husband is an upgrade fanatic, so whatever I don’t upgrade, he does when he’s allowed to drive.

This CD launches a little application called “CD Extra” that gives you a list of options. When you click on “Play CD” it launches Windows Media Player, which promptly does nothing. I tried to see if there was a way to get this application to launch another cd player program like RealPlayer or VLC media player, no go. So I tried to launch the CD through RealPlayer and VLC… no go.

My response to this?

I’m ripping it.

This does not mean that I am going to pass it out to my friends, I won’t. What it does mean though, is that I can’t listen to the music on a CD I legitimately purchased on the equipment I own, with the software that I run.

This is, in essence, what the whole big debate about digital music is about. I should be able to listen to this CD on my computer with any CD playing software that I run. Is that wrong? Is it illegal for me to want to listen to this CD on my computer? Should it be?

All very good questions, which the RIAA seems to believe the answer to should be “Not only should you not put that CD in a computer, but hell no.” If I had simply been able to listen to this CD on my computer in the first place.. I never would have ripped it. Sad thought, and one that the record companies should pay attention to.

My Deal with iTunes, Rhapsody and SonyConnect

These guys think they have a good idea.

I disagree.

The problem for me is actually the entire online subscription service business model. I am not a CD slut. I don’t own a wall full of music, just a handful of carefully chosen tunes (many of which are simply not in English). Subscribing to a service to be able to download music is silly when I have only ever bought maybe a max of four CDs per year. I don’t want to pay 10-20$ a month for a service I will only rarely use. I’d rather pay 20$ a year for the one or two CDs I will buy and get it over with. The digial peddlers don’t have me in mind yet. I’m unconcerned, when they do then I’ll do business with them. Until then, paying any amount of money for music that isn’t on a physical disc isn’t worth it to me, but when I am buying digital music, I don’t see much point in paying more than a buck a song. A buck a song should be the maximum anyone pays IMO.

Now to go track down a person in the cafe that will brew me a pot of coffee and not charge me for the cups I won’t use!

Sony’s Payola

Ouch…

And as a result of this, I will always have respect for Sony.

Dell and Napster Hold Hands to Entice College Kids

Isn’t that a heck of a thing?

I never thought I’d see the day Napster became a legitimate business, but the more I hear about Napster’s business model, the more I think I have finally found a music service that might just work for me. It’s 10 bucks a month, and I can download all the music I want to listen to on a Napster compatible device (meaning it works with any MP3 player or PC, or stereo system components that support the WMA format.), without having to pay a 99 cents a song fee, for as long as I am a Napster member. If I drop the membership, the music I didn’t pay the 99 cent fee for goes away. The stuff I did pay the fee for, stays on my hard drive.

Napster also has several internet radio stations, and you can create your own Napster radio station in case you get bored with your current playlists. It’s just too nice for words.

IMO, the best part is Napster gift certificates, what other music service actually lets you buy gift certificates for your friends at the local gas station?

If you’re interested in a new music service, you should give Napster a look. If you use Napster, post in the comments and tell me more!

Intel and Clickstar Join Forces to Sell Movie Downloads

How cool is this?

What’s even cooler is that this company, owned by Morgan Freeman, plans to offer movie downloads the day a film is released in theaters. No more limited runs of cool stuff like Ghost In the Shell 2, or the director’s cut of Blade Runner folks! Now the possibility exists to use Clickstar to download it and watch it on our own televisions, computers, or home theaters.

This rocks! Sign me up!

Your Rights.

The last week has seen a torrent of invasions on the rights of Americans, all handed down by SCOTUS. Tsykoduk made a wonderful comment to that end on Justus For All” “It’s been a bad week for freedoms.”

And boy is he right. Here’s a brief round-up.

The rights of homeowners have just become moot. Rather than being able to be safe and secure in our homes, our local governments now have the right to take our homes and give them to private corporations.

The Sony betamax ruling which held that devices that had the potential to be used for piracy could be legally manufactured, providing there were legitimate uses for the device, has been overturned by SCOTUS.

That’s right ladies and gentlemen, your VCRs, and DVDRs have just become illegal, unless you can clearly prove an abundance of legitimate uses for your device and show that you had no idea that the device in question could be used for piracy. Hell, we may as well sue Al Gore for inventing the Information Super-Highway, because he had to have known that it could be used for piracy.

While we’re at it, let’s sue Apple, because the ipod supports the mp3 format and any Tom, Dick or Jane can put something into the mp3 format.

Best of all on this, is what Glenn Reynolds has to say over at Instapundit.

“Forget piracy. I think that Big Entertainment will try to use this to shut down anything that looks as if it might become an alternative distribution system.”

Mr. Reynolds and I agree on this one. That is precisely what I think the RIAA is trying to do with their heavy-handed scare tactics and ridiculous legislation in favor of their “rights”.

What scares me most right now, is that SCOTUS seems to be favoring the large corporations over the little guy, and the democrats, well they’re okay with that. So who exactly is protecting the interests of the people now?

The Tech Exec that Broke Federal Law?

Very interesting reading…

Here’s a snippet for you:

“I used a program to copy a few seconds from the DVD of the movie Rudy,” he said. “It’s the scene showing the final game of the Notre Dame season with Rudy’s family in the stands cheering wildly when he got to play. I then spliced in some snippets of pro players doing a touchdown dance from NFL Films, and I overlaid it with audio from ‘Who Let the Dogs Out?’ [...]

There was just one problem. “It turns out to do this, I violated the DMCA. I used the DeCSS program to circumvent the encryption and access the movie clips on the DVD that I own,” Whiteside told the aides. “The end product is a DVD that I don’t sell or distribute but is considered a derivative work under copyright law.”[...]

“This is precisely the kind of exciting consumer creativity that should be enabled,” he said. “I don’t claim to have all the answers. Should I have to go clear rights to use ten seconds from Rudy in my son’s video, or does it fall under fair use? Should I have to pay pennies for every second of a snippet? I don’t know. But I do know that we have to figure out a way for consumers to do something creative without breaking the law.

And, he’s got a point. At what point did we give up our right to create derivative works? As a consumer and a voter, I have to wonder what person in congress was representing me when the DMCA was passed, because I certainly know enough about video editing that I could have made the video mentioned in the article here. In fact, I’ve used popular music to make home movies that I’ve put on a DVD and given to my family. Am I going to sell these things? Or distribute them on the black market? Absolutely not.

Before the DMCA, my ability to create something like that was protected under copyright law. Now, it’s illegal. Derivative works and parody have been protected for years. It’s how movies “based on the novel by…” (no matter how loosely based, such as “The Lawnmower Man”) and the Star Wars and Dragonlance series of novels are possible.

As time goes on, the more I feel that the entertainment industry is fighting to protect a dying business model. I do think that digital rights management is important. I don’t think that I should be able to download footage from Rudy off the internet for free and use it in my derivative work (or in my case, Basement Jaxx’s remix of “Do Your Thing”), but if I own a copy of the DVD or CD, or I have paid to download the content from a legitimate digital content dealer, fair use should come into play. Under the DMCA, fair use doesn’t exist. So Ella Fitzgerald’s estate could sue Basement Jaxx for their remixes of her music and win, and in turn they can sue me for using their remix as background music on a slideshow of my children that I sent to my 80 year old grandmother. I just don’t understand what the point in suing me over that would be. It’s not like I asked my grandmother to slip me some cash for the video of the kids. I gave it to her. Big difference here.

Online access to digital content is fast becoming the way people desire to get their music and movies. Wal-mart.com, iTunes and Netflix are pulling in more money right now than your average music store in your local shopping mall. The sad fact that the music and movie industries are ignoring, is that these business models work. They work for the consumer, they work for the artist and they work for everyone except for the man that physically presses a CD. If we elminate physical media, the RIAA is out of business and they know it. That’s why they are fighting so hard. Which songs get the most airplay will no longer be determined by a record company exec sitting in a penthouse apartment in Beverly Hills. It’ll be determined by Joe Schmoe with his ipod, or Jane Lane with her PSP.

The Death of the DVD?

So dude here has a point..

But I don’t see this sort of thing becoming the norm in our existence until business catches up with technology. At the rate that industry groups, like the RIAA, are going… that is probably not going to happen before those of us reading this article are old and gray and contemplating our grandchildren cutting the grass for us.

Apple Fires off Harsh Words at Real

And Drunkenblog has some things to say about it that are incredibly interesting.

Given what this guy has to say, it makes perfect sense that Apple might accuse Real of hacking the DRM in the ipod. According to drunkenbatman, the ipod is a thing that is living on a very short time span, and sooner or later, our mp3 players, cameras, pdas and all the other gadgetry that we carry around with us, will be built into our cell phones.

As an owner of a cell phone that can play mp3′s, take pictures, e-mail, instant message, web surf, receive phone calls, hold all my appointments and sound off an alarm before the appointed appointment time to remind me.. (and it also has about 100 or so games available to play on it, including Prince of Persia. No, my cell phone is *not* an n-gage either, just your basic run of the mill high end pda phone) I totally know what this guy is saying.

The ipod’s days as a stand-alone device are numbered. It’s the DRM that Apple cares about protecting… and that, makes a hell of a lot of sense when you look at the big picture.

Record Industry Losses?

If the post comes out looking funky… let me know in the comments. This is my first trial of BlogThis!

Real losses in the record industry. Are these factually attributed to file sharing technologies or not?

According to this article, the answer is no. From the numbers he’s been able to find, this is not the case, and I’m not surprised. I feel like the RIAA is Chrysler here, asking for the federal government to bail them out of bankruptcy, even though they’ve screwed it up for themselves…

Something to think about.