WINMX Assorted Textfiles/Ebooks.tar/Text - Society - Anarchy - Consumers Against the RIAA.txt

Text File | 2003-07-06 | 14KB | 178 lines

Join us in saying "NO" to the music nazis

                        What is the RIAA and what does it stand for?

     The Recording Industry Association Association of America is an oligopoly of the five biggest record
  companies in the world. These companies are Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, EMI Music, and
 BMG Music. If you've ever purchased a pre-recorded cassette tape or CD, chances are 99 to 1 it was released
               by one of these five companies under one of their hundreds of record labels.

 The RIAA is similar to a killer octopus whose tentacles are always reaching out for prey. The prey would be us,
     the music fans, and even the recording artistes themselves. The RIAA is committed to preventing any
 independent label from gaining a foothold in the industry. This is how they can team up with music retailers to fix
   the artificially high price of CDs. It also allows them to maintain a chokehold on the songs that get on radio
  stations' playlists. They pretty much decide which CDs are heavily promoted in retail stores and which music
  videos go in heavy rotation on the video music TV channels. In other words, these bozos have taken it upon
                      themselves to decide what type of music we listen to and buy.



                 How are artistes and consumers victimized by the RIAA?

The RIAA is similar to any other business in that its main objective is to make a profit, and there's nothing wrong
  with that. But, something went really wrong with the music retail business, especially after the vinyl format was
 abandoned and replaced by compact discs. CDs are more durable than vinyl and they cost significantly less to
 produce, so why then has the price of record albums almost doubled since the switch to CDs was made? The
     RIAA has always been unwilling to answer this question truthfully. They come up with some of the most
  ridiculous excuses to justify the high prices. They claim operations costs such as production, marketing and
                        shipping add significantly to the cost of the end product.

  We know this is bullshit because record companies do not pay much in out of pocket expenses at all. If you're
 an unknown artiste you usually get a pretty bad recording contract, one that earns you about 35 cents for each
 CD sold. A big-name act can use their name and former sales record as leverage to negotiate a better deal for
about $1.00 to maybe $2.00 per CD sold. Retailers tag on their inventory/overhead costs which is maybe $2.00
  to $3.00 per CD. A mass manufactured CD costs only about 30 to 40 cents. What then happens to the rest of
                               the money you pay when you buy a CD?

              Just about all of it goes into the record companies' pockets as profit!

   A big chunk of it pays the obscene salaries of record company executives. These people are well-known in
  New York and LA for their bleached-teeth smiles and $100,000 cars even though they contribute zero to the
 creative process. And they don't care much about promoting the careers of the artistes because as soon as the
              CD sales drop off they dump the artiste and start searching for the next big act.

 Nearly all the promotions costs are deducted from the artiste's royalty checks. These include the cost of touring,
   the cost of costumes and makeup, the cost of studio time, the cost of the studio engineers, the musicians'
 salaries, the cost of making music videos, the cost of background dancers, the cost of the stage crew, the cost
 of the sound techs, the cost of the clean-up crew... The artistes collect only what's left over after everybody else
  gets paid. That's how the music business works. Many new artistes don't fully understand this and that's how
        some of them end up near broke even after selling hundreds of thousands or millions of CDs.

  Music buyers also get screwed in that most CDs cost between $17.00 and $20.00 although they contain only
               one or two good songs and a bunch of filler songs. Where is the value in that?



                              The RIAA's obscene copyright policy

   No one rips off the artistes more than these greedy record companies. The RIAA has a strict policy on the
   ownership of copyright music. This means once they release an artiste's music on one of their labels, they
 automatically become the copyright owners of the recorded masters. Years from the date of the original release
 they can re-release the tracks or license them for use in advertisements or for other purposes, and although the
  composers receive chump change royalties the original musicians and vocalists never see another penny. In
                   other words, again, nearly all the profit goes to the record company.



                           The advent of peer-to-peer file sharing

 Technology is truly a wonderful thing, because it brought us a new way to get the music we want without taking
    out a second mortgage on the house. It caught the RIAA's attention because, for the first time in history,
 technology threatened to make the RIAA a redundant organization. Music fans can upload and download MP3
     files without any interferance or control from the RIAA, and this really pisses off the record companies.

  Napster was the biggest and most successful place to do this on the Internet, but naturally, they are getting a
  nasty legal fight from the RIAA. The really good thing about Napster is it proves the recording industry to be a
 real dinosaur. The RIAA has been so busy ripping us all off they paid no attention to the fact that technology was
   about to make them obsolete. It took, Napster, the brilliant brainchild of a college dropout to wake up these
   giant monsters. Now they're barking up Shawn Fanning's ass because they claim Napster has encouraged
 copyright violations that have cost them billions of dollars in losses. We seriously doubt this so-called copyright
   violation has hurt the music industry in any significant way. When was the last time you heard of a recording
  artiste out on the street begging for money to pay his rent? The very RIAA admitted they're selling more CDs
 than ever before so this is obviously not about money but about control. Unfortunately, the RIAA missed the bus.
   Peer-to-peer music filesharing had already spread all across the Internet to the point where even if Napster
                            shuts down there are many other ways to do it.

    Should we, the music fans, feel guilty about not paying for downloaded music? NOT AT ALL! The record
 companies have been screwing us in the ass without vaseline for years, and there's nothing at all wrong with us
  getting something back from them in exchange. They feel no guilt about taking $19.00 for a cheap plastic CD
     from teenagers who've been buying millions of copies of Eminem, N'Sync, Brittney, Christina, and the
  Backstreet Boys, so why should we feel guilty about taking something back from from them? Some of these
 kids who buy these overpriced CDs can hardly afford the money but they like the music and so what choice do
                                       they have but to pay.

 Also think about this, you don't get to sample the songs on a music CD before you buy it. And, if after you buy it
  and take it home you find that most of the songs are garbage good luck to you trying to get your money back.
 Retailers have an RIAA-backed policy that they will exchange opened CDs only if they are physically defective,
 and they will only exchange the title you bought for another CD of the exact same title. The reason they claim is
  that once the package is opened they can't guarantee that you didn't make a copy of it so its a protection for
 them. What this really means is that once you hand over your money for a CD, if you open it and play it and find
  that you don't like the songs you're stuck with it anyway. Once the RIAA collects your money they ain't giving it
                          back, and there's not one thing you can do about it.



                             Why they are fighting against Napster

   The music industry is 99% hype and 1% art. The fight against Napster is not about money or copyright. It is
   really a fight for the survival of the RIAA. Imagine what would happen to all these overpaid executives if the
 electronic distribution of music cut out all of them and their middlemen retailers. What other industry could they
                     turn to and earn the salaries they now make for doing nothing?

 Napster created in only a couple years what the music industry never will accomplish for itself - an efficient and
  user-friendly client that allows people to get the songs they want without paying a ridiculous price for it. Many
 Napster users say they wouldn't mind paying a monthly fee as long as they can get the songs they want without
  all the filler stuff. This was an excellent opportunity for the music industry to jump into the 21st century and do
       something really good for themselves and their artistes. Instead, they're trying to wreck Napster.

 The music industry will never be successful at getting millions of users to pay a subscription to use any on-line
service they come up with. Why? Because, as always, they are more concerned about profit than they are about
   what music fans really want, and they would make any on-line subscription service so expensive that many
people wouldn't give it a second thought. If these people really knew anything about marketing they'd realize that
     when you offer consumers what they really want they'll be more than willing to pay for it and the profits
                                       automatically follow.

Profits aside, Napster has also been good for the music industry in that it allows new and unsigned bands to get
  a lot of needed exposure. All it took was for the scumbag members of that fading group, Metallica to cry wolf
  and all of a sudden the RIAA brought out the big guns. If Metallica could only read some of the things many of
              their former fans have posted on the Internet about them they would be shocked.

                               By the way, please boycott Metallica.

 The type of deal Shawn Fanning and his crew are trying to get the record companies to agree to is the only way
on-line music subscription can work successfully. If all the record companies put their entire catalog into a single
   on-line database music fans would have access to all the songs, even the ones that the record companies
stopped marketing years ago, and they could all make a lot of money from this. How do we know this? Because
 Napster has been around for a while, and even though 50+ million Napster users are downloading music off the
  Internet the sales of CDs are stronger than ever. This means that if they cooperated with Napster the record
  companies could be making the money from both ends. But, they are too stupid to see that. Instead, they are
  planning to start their individual subscription services, and the reason they will all fail is because individually,
  each record company would offer the songs that are in its current catalog and. many of the much older songs
                 would not be included, and that's not the type of service music fans want.

   Do they really expect anybody to pay monthly subscription fees to each of the five companies to download
   music. I don't think so. Obviously people will not pay all that if they can do peer-to-peer filesharing through
  underground servers and continue to get the songs for free. This has yet to be figured out by that bitch, Hilary
                                       Rosen, at the RIAA.

 Years ago, the motion picture industry tried to sue VCR manufacturers because they felt VCRs would rob them
 of all their profits. But look at how it all played out, most people use VCRs only to tape TV shows they're not at
 home to watch. Movies made during the last 20 years continue to break box office records because, VCR or no
 VCR, people are spending more than ever on going to movie theaters, paying for pay-per-view cable channels,
and on renting videos. Likewise, we doubt any Napster user is sitting at his or her computer downloading songs
           and burning them on to CDs that will be mass copied and sold at the local flea market.



                                The future of the music industry

   Our crystal ball doesn't show anything good for the RIAA. Unfortunately for them, if they kill off the concept
Napster wants to create they're pretty much screwed. Peer-to-peer filesharing technology is here to stay, and as
  more people begin to use it it will only continue to improve and spread. Their attempt to shut down Napster is
   only the beginning, the technology is already out there and there's nothing to stop music fans from using it.

   Keep downloading and sharing those MP3 files and let us all keep the on-line anti-RIAA movement strong!

                                             say

                                        "NO"

                                  to overpriced CDs.

 Stand up for your rights as a consumer and join us in our boycott
   of the RIAA. Don't by any more CDs for the rest of the year. Use
                  your money to support your local artistes.


http://www.geocities.com/riaasucks/index.html