Giving the RIAA the Middle Finger | Hacker News Reader

Giving the RIAA the Middle Finger

blog.earbits.com

18 pointsearbitscom22 comments

The commenters are morons who do not get it. Sadly, so is the article author.

No insights or deep thinking that you couldn't have gotten from a 4/chan thread, with better pictures.

We have plenty of more insightful posts about this topic on our blog. This was a rant. I don't need to recap everything we've already said every time we want to make a point. It's not CNN coverage of the election.

You are mistaking a tantrum for a rant.

Your post told me about your position on this subject, and showed how little you understand it.

Ah yes, my 500 words imparted to you a full understanding of all my knowledge of the music industry - you insightful sage you.

You insightful sage, you.

  > particularly the older ones whose only sources
  > of income are album sales and licensing

I don't particularly have sympathy for people that feel that should profit for the rest of their lives off of their music. Either: 1) manage your money wisely when you're making buckets of it (instead of ending up broke when the gravy train stops) or 2) get a job when you stop making music.

I seriously doubt that anyone but big name artists are making any significant amount of money from royalties on catalog albums.

It takes more than the few hours you're in the studio to hone the craft and create that art - why shouldn't you be compensated for as long as it's a product people want?

Nobody needs your sympathy. They need you to either buy the product, or refrain from using it. It's a very simple arrangement.

  > why shouldn't you be compensated for as long as
  > it's a product people want

Even 70 years after the author is dead and gone? I'm not advocating copyright abolishment, but I sure as hell think that something as short as 15 - 20 years (from creation) would be reasonable for copyright. Saying that someone is entitled to still get money into their estate for years and years after they are dead and gone is ridiculous.

I would be fine with a lifetime copyright, or 20 years, whatever is longer. If you're still alive, you ought to have rights. If you die 2 years after creating something, your family ought to get something for your "property". Obviously, though, very little of what we're talking about in this discussion is 70 years old. Led Zeppelin doesn't tour anymore. They should still be making money from their copyrighted material.

  > Led Zeppelin doesn't tour anymore. They should
  > still be making money from their copyrighted material.

Why? What's wrong with a hard 20-year cut-off? It's not like they would lose copyright on newly created merchandise, just on their older recordings. If they really wanted to, they could compensate for the lack of copyright on the older recordings by re-recording.

  > Obviously, though, very little of what we're talking
  > about in this discussion is 70 years old

The Birthday Song is a good example of something that doesn't need to be under copyright anymore.

The ability of an artist to make successful and popular music for the whole of their lives is next to impossible, as cultures change and the older generations don't necessarily adapt to what's popular. Why should they? Do you want your Grandma making Hip Hop videos? Meanwhile, some artists created a product during their professional lives that continues to generate revenue into their golden years. Why should we tell them - yeah, people still buy your albums but they're public property now. What about your ability to make money? Hmmm...See if people will buy the new version WITHOUT John Bonham. They won't buy it? Oh, then here is your Social Security check.

The Birthday Song, on the other hand, I agree with. It's like the Q-Tip/Kleenex trademarks. It should be deemed too damn popular to prevent its use in things like TV shows or restaurants. I know...I'm a contradicting hypocrite. Sue me.

I think the flaw in your reasoning here is that people should get money for their work until they die. That's a ridiculous notion. The logic:

  > As long as people continue to derive value from
  > something, the creator deserves to get revenue

Fails on a number of fronts:

* Scientists/academics contribute to the whole of human knowledge, and arguably advance us more as a race than rock stars do, yet I don't see you arguing that they should be able to license their ideas and wring revenue out of each an everyone until 70 years after they are dead. If this was the case, I would need to pay money to the estate of Albert Einstein every time I wanted to use "E = mc^2."

* If I hire a plumber to fix my pipes, I arguably derive value from having functional plumbing from that point on into the future. Should plumbers be able to collect licensing fees for that?

  > Do you want your Grandma making Hip Hop videos?

Thanks for trying to appeal to emotion rather than logic. I'm sure your arguments had merit at some point, but you've gone off the rails and are a stone's throw away from resorting to personal attacks to get your message across.

Actually, the issue here is that you're confusing the premise of the argument. The logic is:

  > As long as people continue to purchase or commercially use a product
  > the creator deserves to get their share of the revenue.

Nobody brought up scientists and I don't know enough about that to have an opinion. The obvious difference is that Einstein observed/discovered "E = mc^2", he didn't create it. But there is just no point in comparing apples to oranges.

The problem with your plumber argument is that, if he wanted to charge you less up front and a fee for each use of the faucet, that would be his and his customers' choice to make. As long as you pay the agreed upon fee to the plumber, whether it's a one time fee or a license, you and the plumber have agreed that it's a fair trade. You're arguing that, at some point, a person who previously did not purchase a person's song should suddenly have the right to own it at no cost, simply because the song has been around for over 20 years. Why should this new person have that right?

The Grandma point was just to demonstrate that popular, high-selling music is usually made by the younger generation. If someone creates something during that time that continues to produce revenue, why should we insist that they no longer make money for it and force them to learn a new trade, since it's very impractical to assume that they, at their age, can continue to make popular music for an audience they're out of touch with?

I don't begrudge artists making money off their early hits for a few decades, but the professional descendants whining about lost revenue don't exactly excite my pity.

I think the author ignores the elephant in the room: RIAA being part of the labels share > the artists share - ever! So torrenting a track/disc/anthology monetarily hurts the labels more.

However, it hurts the artists disproportionately more, but this is because artists get a paltry amount anyway. So they get less or none of their $.35, but labels get none of their $15.

My hope for all this is that artists will just empower themselves and use the newer channels of distribution the internet offers. I can't in the least bit, after all their congressional lobbying to restrict the public rights and expand their corrupt initiatives, feel bad - ever - for the RIAA or labels. Everyone knows their fat, lumbering, dinosaurs..

Nobody is saying you need to be chums with the RIAA. What I'm saying is pirating music because you think the RIAA deserves what they get is like punishing a corrupt business leader by locking the doors and burning the building with the employees stuck inside.

"...enjoy enough to steal". Piracy != Theft. Say what you will about the economics or morals of piracy, but don't say it's theft. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement

You can argue semantics all you want. To rely on the definition of theft as an argument while saying it should instead be called something that is described as an act of war that usually involves robbery seems like a pretty weak defense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy

I suppose I agree with you: piracy is an equally poor description of digital copyright infringement. Note I am not defending copyright infringement. Still, theft it is not.

Note the author's confusion of "millions of artists" and RIAA. You're not giving the middle-finger to the RIAA, you're giving it to the artits. Ha ha ha.

HA! Most people don't think about the fact that buying McDonalds' food costs money, and so does download an episode of something legally. To them though, food has value, the episode is digital and thus free. Its a weird outlook on things.

It's an understandable issue of perception because so many content owners are willing to give things away. And, many people don't even know what's legal and what's not. The problem is the attitude of entitlement that people have who clearly know the difference.

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