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Do You Own the Music, or Does the RIAA?


Chris | Live Tech Support | Video Help | Add to iTunes

http://live.pirillo.com/ – The lead attorney for Sony BMG announced publically that copying music you legally purchased for your own use is illegal. The round table had a field day with this one.

Four of my friends joined me for this discussion: Kat, SC_Thor, Wirelesspacket, and last but certainly not least… Datalore.

Song BMG has gone on record, stating that “When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song. Making “a copy” of a purchased song is just a nice way of saying ’steals just one copy’.”

WHAT?! If I buy a CD, she’s saying I cannot save it to my own computer, and then listen to the CD in my car? Or… I can’t listen to it on my iPod? All of these items were purchased legally, including the CD. So why in the name of everything I hold precious can I NOT listen to MY OWN MUSIC?

The music industry has gone too far. They are hurting financially so much due to file sharing, that they are now making it nearly impossible for people to legally listen to their own music. Album sales have decreased dramatically. Yes, that’s true. However, telling me I cannot listen to the music I BUY from you in any way I want is not going to help your bottom line, Sony. All that is going to do is ensure I don’t purchase ANY music from you ever again.

Stop the insanity.

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13 Comments

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universities, ISPs, and individuals. They stifle innovation – they’ve killed Napster and Oink, for example, and they’ve come close to killing ThePirateBay and AllOfMp3. They want you to believe that youdon’t ownthe music you’ve paid for, and that fair use doesn’t exist when it comes to music. They’re also big fans of DRM that cripples the long term value of music (just so you’ll need to buy it twice or more). What about the Sony root kit debacle?

“only one of those songs is maybe dissent” – so true! Most of the time it’s the one they make a music video for.

well, its just like war on drugs, or prostitution, its pointless. this kinda approach only motivates people to avoid legal purchases and copy in the first place, since any copying is illegal anyway…
do they actually think one would buy the same song for stereo, computer, ipod and a car??
well, do they think at all? lol

What about cd players that save 30 seconds of your song so the cd doesn’t skip? is that an illegal copy?

I don’t think its fair to say the music industry has gone to far. Rather, the record industry is to blame; the term music industry incorporates far more than the companies who put out records. Major labels are tanking because they refuse to accept the business model for the industry that is inevitable going to come to be.

Sony is way the heck out there in left field with their lastest assertion. When a person purchases a CD or a track download, they have purchased a license for their individual use. That music, as long as it is not distributed to others or used for a public performance, is fair to be used by that individual on any one device at any particular moment that the individual desires. I doubt that even the RIAA would espouse Sony’s radical anti-consumer statement regarding the fair use of legally licensed music.

In the matter of the original question, “Do You Own the Music, or Does the RIAA?”, the RIAA, a recording industry trade assosciation, does not own the music for which it is persuing lawsuits against music pirates, it is acting as an advocate for the recording industry as a whole. This makes sense since the average music pirate does not just steal music from one label or publisher, but instead steals music from across a large spectrum of publishers and labels. It would be highly inefficient for a single publisher to try to sue a single pirate for illegally distributing three tracks of their music, while that pirate also illegally distributed a dozen entire CDs from another label, a hundred tracks from another publisher, etcetera.

Maybe, just maybe, if the slackers, who think there’s no legitimate reason to ever pay for the music they listen to, would buy the music they are now stealing, the price of CDs might just drop back down to the $10 per CD that they ought to cost, instead of $30 each like they do now.

MY question to the RIAA, et al is: Just how many da*n times do I have to “pay” for the same album?! For example, suppose I own Dark Side of the Moon on vinyl (which I do) and I bought the cassette (which I did) AND I bought the CD (ditto), now I’ve PAID these money-grubbing so-and-so’s THREE TIMES FOR THE SAME MUSIC!!! How about that? I’d much rather only have to pay the buck or so for the CD media rather than the TWENTY for the “album” – again.

I think if research was done, it would be proven that they owe US money; so maybe the so-called “illegal” music swapping is just leveling the playing field a little, or at least making up for the “double-dipping”???

I have music that I originally purchased as albums, then (God forbid!) 8-tracks, then cassettes, and now CDs. So far I haven’t bought them again as mp3s. In most cases, these were the identical performances transferred to a different medium. And many of these were great performances, but in fact I received little added value with each “upgrade” to the new technology. Altogether, I may have paid more than $100 for just one performance of something like Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Street Survivors.” So I’ve paid and paid and paid, and many people like me think we may have paid quite enough for one lifetime.

I’m sympathetic to the RIAA in some ways because retaining copyrights requires due diligence in enforcing the copyrights. But the revolution is upon us, and they’ve had plenty of time to come up with a better stance than this.

If I own a licensed copy and I maintain control of any derivative copies, I should be able to do as I please with them.

The lead attorney for Sony BMG announced publically that copying music you legally purchased for your own use is illegal. What a crock of s**t!
If I actually purchase a licence for *anything* then I will do with it as I please, thankyou Mr. Sony BMG.
No wonder people have stopped buying music legally when you can’t do anything with it but listen to it on one device only. Get with the times Sony!
Your company produces many of the “other” devices on which you can play music/video, so why don’t they come up with a licencing model that easily copes with evolving technology and the fickle public?
I agree with Mike too – this is just levelling the playing field a bit which up till now has been tipped enormously toward the RIAA and record companies.
Geez this makes me mad!!!! I wish I had the words…..

These folks are just upset because people like Michael Jackson can’t continue to rake in cash off of copies of “The White Album”.

So you mean to tell me that 50 years from now, some company or individual that owns the rights to Elvis’ “Love Me Tender” won’t be able to live high off of royalties from his recording? Boo-freakin’-hoo!!!

Drug companies have to give up exclusive patent rights after “X” number of years (hence generics). Why not record companies??

If I put a dollar in a candy machine and make my selection and it comes
out, who does the candy bar then belong to, me or the machine owner.

Here is my issue! I purchase entire albums from Napster, have about 30 different ones in my Napster library. These I can listen to on my computer but I am not allowed to download onto my MP3 player nor does Napster allow me to burn the tracks to a CD. So, I went out and purchased around 12 of the CD’s that I have previously purchased and while I can rip them onto my computer, I am denied the ability to sync them to my MP3 player. Now if anyone is being screwed, I’d definitely say it is the consumer who actually purchases their music.

What Do You Think?