The RIAA is conducting its investigations on illegal music downloads just like the Salem witch trials. Paranoia and a McCarthyist attitude are being propagated by the organization. It has come to a point that college networks are relentlessly monitored by the RIAA in order to choose which unsuspecting college students to victimize next.
It’s a little known fact that colleges are getting involved in this operation without them wanting to. They also expend resources and manpower just to make sure that the subjects of the lawsuits are truly the ones guilty.
But they’ve had enough.
More and more colleges are now refusing to help the RIAA for a job that they are not compensated on. The common consensus is that their energies are better spent on actually taking care of their students rather than helping a dinosaur organization.
Tags: RIAA, US colleges
Categories: Downloading Legally, Random Thoughts
In the never ending bummers that have plagued the move to promote and protect digital rights, the RIAA has struck again, now against a whole family that doesn’t even own a computer. The RIAA filed charges against a man who says he doesn’t own a computer and indeed did but was over a year ago (then how the hell was he supposed to have violated any copyright laws?) and that was only for two months or so. This again brings into sights of the public the ever present fight by groups to either have free access to music or give access to those who pay for it. it might sound crazy but people do have the desire to get the real stuff and one of the most inhibiting factors would be cost. not everybody can shell out the half dollar or so that is needed for one to get perfectly legal software you could use at your own leisure. Even the record labels have recognized the futility of having to invest in costly copyright protection software which is quite ineffective for people still get their hands of the tracks they want from illegal sources. In my home country, there are select malls which cater to such needs where you can find whole compilations of the latest CSI Season 5 for a meager $23.00 or better yet a collection of the whole Bond Films at the same price which sells for $60.00, some of these pirated stuff are indeed bad but some which are mastered from originals are same as the original. The lure of cheaper and more value (by getting more movies crammed into one DVD say the whole Disney collection of cartoon classics) is the main factor why people still patronize these illegal stuff.
Their motives may be for the protection of the rights of those who indeed work hard to produce music but they should be more precise in their moves for the public to treat them more seriously (most treat them as a joke). Imagine saying you’re accusing someone of hacking who’s in prep school, or an individual who has hacked the FBI who lives in a far away town up in the mountains of Papua New Guinea, be reasonable guys and go for those who really do the promotion of such activities like issuing warnings and labels to sites which promote them. If you can’t shut down these sites, why not target the community who supports them by offering cheaper alternatives to the standard issue 9like value packs which have less tracks that they can get only the ones they select burned onto audio CD’s at retail stores), now that would be acceptable as a solution. People who are getting stuff for free won’t just quit cold turkey and shift to store bought stuff overnight without a fight. Focus on the sources and promoters and there might be validity in your cause.
Tags: copyright-infringement, File Sharing, Illegal Downloads, RIAA
Categories: Music
These are the main promoters of protection for copyrighted music and movies in the United States which is moving for more control over the sharing of such material online. They might be backed by big business but they sure are making it difficult for many to get music that is not only royalty free but liability free. Many have tried and failed at this attempt but that doesn’t stop them from trying. They truly have the right to do so for the work they promote to protect are their own. We have heard about many issues regarding the matter and have been sick and tired of them ever since. There are a great deal of people who buy (really buy!!!) music for they realize the benefits of such. Added features such as free MTV’s and such give the small majority of legal owners of these music and videos value for the money they pay.
The problem started with the creation of the MP3 format for audio which revolutionized the way we keep and listen to music. Older WAV files took a lot of disk space and was kind of cumbersome to have stored on your hard drive. MP3’s allowed a full length song to have a average total size of around 3 to 4 megabytes opposed to their predecessor formats such as WAV that had them at around a couple of dozen megabytes limiting the amount of songs one can store. Other formats such as those used by proprietary software and Consumer electronics manufacturers have reduced the size even further but with some trade-offs such as sound quality and other issues. This would have been a good time to initiate control measures for as the issue was developing the internet was beginning to boom and spread to all corners of the earth. That meant, wherever you may be you can get your hands on the latest music files from a friend or a friend of your friend. P2P further muddled up the problem with people who are willing to share their songs in exchange for some they like from you formed communities and web sites that posted them as available for download straight from your computer’s hard drive. The proliferation of P2P download groups and sites (like Pirates Bay) were attacked and shut down by government people only to have them re-open in a couple of hours or days.
It might be too late to initiate control over media that is currently coming out of the market and being shared uncontrollably over the internet. The industry has suffered a great deal and those who buy original music are left without the edge ( the edge of being the first to own a copy of your favorite artist’s album). It may be too late, but we as users of the internet are left to be responsible in their use and sharing. We as parts of the greater internet community are expected to be responsible and accountable as such for without responsibility the internet would be a ruthless place to be in.
Tags: Copyright-Protection, MPAA, RIAA
Categories: Downloading Legally, Mobile Phones, Music, Podcasts, Providers, Resources, ipods
