ASCAP collects money on behalf of all artists, and normally only distributes it to the top 200 groups (or am I thinking of a different extortion racket? it's so hard to keep the track of the mafia without a program), many of those they can't even seem to locate.
Now there's apparently a big pot of 'leftover' money that really belongs to all those little 'up and coming' artists that weren't in the top 200 list, but instead of giving it to them (you know the ones they collected it on behalf of), they turn around and 'AWARD' it to "writers whose works have a unique prestige value for which adequate compensation would not otherwise be received and to compensate those writers whose works are performed substantially in media not surveyed by ASCAP".
So they collect on behalf of many, but only distribute to the top few, then they take the rest and award it to people who weren't even in their 'media survey'? Why do I get the feeling that the list of Award recipients (I couldn't find one on the site, but didn't waste too much time) would have a very close affiliation with the list of family, friends, and related associates of the ASCAP administration?
Today's tinfoil hat brought to you by Reynolds Wrap, when you're concerned enough to use the very best...
So this means that the students can now sue their schools for 'inducing copyright infringement' when the professors ask them to answer the questions in the textbook, right?
What if some of the questions are so basic to the subject matter, that they can be found in any of several textbooks? What is the atomic structure of water? How do you increase revenue in a basic dual entry accounting system? We need a team of scholars to scour textbooks for similar questions and then sue them all for 'derivative copyright infringement' and see how they like it.
Obviously the tin-foil just isn't enough today....
For a minute I thought this was a reasonable explanation about how kicking people off the internet might get them to buy more product, but then I realized that it was really just staire about the Mob mentality of the music industry cleverly disguised to appear to be in support of the music industry.
It was really the 3rd paragraph that gave it away:
a) People believing they have some divine right - check, that's the MPAA/RIAA and the rest of the industry middle men described to a T. They feel they have a divine right to the same profit they have always received, even though the market and technology are constantly changing.
b) People believing that nobody will catch them - check, that's the greedy politicians who flip sides after having a meal with the industry (and being fed their line of drivel) and think that nobody will catch them while they cash their fat bribe checks.
So just report the bank CEO/Manager as being suspected of being in possession of child pornography and possible sexual misconduct in the workplace and let the police deal with it..
What? The charges weren't validated after the police hauled him out of the bank in handcuffs, confiscated his personal and work computers, and conducted extensive interviews with all of his business associates.
Oops, must have been a mistake, good thing there are no repercussions for reporting a 'suspected crime'. Too bad it may have ruined someone's life, but at least we are following the rules, right?
On another note Reynolds Wrap brand foil makes the best tinfoil hats ever. Disclosure: I once received a free box of Reynolds Warp foil from the company, so my views may be a little biased.
Every blogger out there needs to start making outrageous claims about products that they have received to 'review', once the companies start getting hit with the bigger end of this stick (via them getting fined over the bloggers unsubstantiated endorsements), something might get changed....
I just received a new Palm-Pre (or iTouchMyself, or GoogleDroid, take your pick) to review, and I can't believe how amazing this thing is... It cured my cancer, gave my dog's coat a nice shiny glow, and solved my ED problems once and for all... Everyone should have one of these things...
Choosing between the 'lesser' of 2 evils, is still choosing EVIL. Our system of government is horribly broken and since it is self governing, it just keeps getting worse. Things won't get better until there is serious change in this country, and I don't just mean a 'better' candidate throws his hat into the ring.
Anyone out there have a 'regular' job where you only have to 'work' a 2-4 year term and then you get a guaranteed salary for the rest of your life (equal to what you made while working, with guaranteed increases)? When we let the 'elected' officials govern themselves (by passing laws that impact only their select group), does anyone really have to ask why things are messed up?
I don't have a solution at this time, but I personally feel that anyone WILLING to be in politics, shouldn't be allowed to be in politics, because they are probably there for the wrong reason. I'm not saying that we would get better results with a 'political draft' of qualified candidates who served a limited term and then went back to their regular life, but at least we wouldn't have the dregs of society (ie. those who's only ambition is power and money) running the country.
"but we need to also understand that today the disclosure policy of patents is more possible than ever before because of the internet."
BUT those damn patent attorneys are also hellbent on getting 'willful infringement' claims (gotta love those 3x fines for doing nothing), so most companies that do R&D specifically FORBID their employees from reviewing similar or related patents to avoid being sued for what is probably an obvious idea in the first place.
"You think it's bad when Amazon takes an e-book offline, wait till a company arbitrarily costs you 4 hours of wasted time, and all that time leaves you wondering if your going to get your data back..."
When did this thread turn into a Microsoft bashing session????
Border Agent: Welcome to the US, we don't have time to actually search your laptop, but since we can, we are now using 'Super Snooper Bot V3.0427-beta', we'll just drop it on your laptop, and it will do the searching for us and send us anything it thinks we might be interested in seeing (your bank accounts, personal info, risky photos, personal pictures, etc). If you have any questions just check our website.
I'm not saying that it's going to happen, but when it does don't be too surprised. Power Corrupts, Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely (there is a reason the saying exists).
Lets simplify things a little for those who don't get it.
Joe says I like Cake and I like to share it.
Mike says I like Cake and I like to share it also.
Lily says I like Cake, but Joe wanting to share his Cake is just WRONG, he isn't thinking about how sharing Cake is going to end up destroying the whole world. While she's saying this she is sitting there eating a piece of cake that she took (borrowed, shared, whatever term you want to use) from Mike without asking or even acknowledging the fact (which he's fine with).
If you can't see the hyprocracy, then I'm sure the MPAA/RIAA have a great job waiting for you in their PR department.
After seeing the huge success in the financial market (for those running the market, not the millions of suckers who got shafted in the recent recession), the patent market is looking ripe for a similar plundering.
Lets take lots of little 'patent objects' and we can collateralize them into large marketable objects (CPO's - Collateralized Patent Objects), we can then get one of the ratings agencies to slap a AAA rating on them (I mean they are patents, they have to be valuable right?) by threatening them with a patent infringement lawsuit (someone's got a patent that's close enough to their rating algorithms that we can threaten to tie them up in court for ages). Once we have the objects and the ratings, then we can start selling the worthless pieces of crap to unsuspecting 'investors' who think they actually have a chance of getting paid.....
It's sad, but right now some patent troll out there is thinking, "Why the hell didn't I come up with that idea?" and trying to figure out how they could do it (Intellectual Ventures anyone???)... Obligatory 'my tinfoil hat is a little tight today' for those who don't realize that this is intended as sarcasm... or is it now?
Looks like time for a patent on a method of safely ingesting dihydrogen monoxide, along with a patent of testing for the presence of dihydrogen monoxide.
Or how about a patent on the method of obstructing standard scientific progress with unnecessary and irrelevant patent licensing standards.
At least we don't have 'database' patents yet, or one of these greedy companies would dump all the current drug info into a single database, patent it, then sue any other company who tried to even USE the name of an existing drug. And don't even think about it, I'm patenting this method so that when database patents are allowed in the US, I can sue all those greedy companies and make my fortune....
Who cares if they are lying to themselves, what they are saying is that they don't have any problem operating online... SO LET THEM....
Let them put up paywalls and monetize all their online traffic (which is apparently 10x larger than their print editions). Here we were thinking newspapers were failing and in need of a new business model, when really they just need to monetize their existing traffic.
Someone needs to get this info to Obama quick.... Newspapers are FINE, their online readership is on average 10 times their printed edition, so there is no need for government intervention to save 'reporting'.
The reason tickets are often on sale before the event is that many ticket scalpers are becoming ticket speculators. As an example, I heard about a comedian coming to our area and wanted to get tickets, I went direct to the venue and followed their links to find tickets, but the only tickets I found were high priced and the seat/rows didn't really match up with the venue seating chart. This was something my wife and friends really wanted to go to, so I went ahead and purchased the lowest priced tickets (4 tickets at $89 each + $16 fee) that said they were in section C row 14. The next week the venue actually released the tickets for sale (they weren't officially on sale when I purchased them from the scalper... not knowing it was a scalper), so I received 3 $41.50 face value tickets (in section 6 row 13 or something, but not the tickets I had purchased online), and the receipt showing they had purchased 4 tickets for $208 (total with fees). Yes they mistakenly sent me the receipt rather then the 4th ticket... Word of warning to all you ticket scalpers out there, if you expect to make a %100 profit, you better at least deliver what your customer orders, or you give them easy legal means to void the sale.
So not only did this 'scalper' expect to make over a %100 markup, they didn't even bother to provide the tickets that they had agreed to sell me (and there was NO communication until I told them to void the sale and refund my money, one automated 3-mail, then the 3 tickets and receipt in a fed ex envelope with no other material). I canceled the order and got my tickets directly from the venue, but this is just one example of how worthless these 'middlemen' are. They can't even put 4 tickets in an envelope when they are expecting to get paid over $200 for it..... (the original order cost me $426 for $208 worth of tickets...)
"One more evidence that "We the Consumers of the United States" need bigger and stronger consumer rights lobby in the Congress!"
Since lobbying is all about the money, we should stand up and make ourselves heard by creating an actual Consumer Lobbying group and buying our own laws. If consumers united and each donated a dollar a year, we would have some significant 'seed' money to start bribing, er, lobbying our government officials.
There are a lot more of us (consumers) than there are of them (RIAA, MPAA, etc), even though they appear to have deeper pockets, that's only due to us buying their products in the first place. Imagine being able to 'donate' .05 for each iTunes purchase and have it go to 'fighting the power', something at checkout, "Would you like to help fund consumer rights organization in an attempt to 'buy back' our culture from the evil MAFIA overlords by contributing .05 per song purchased?" (but worded a little better).
I think I need to patent this idea (collecting money from consumers and buying laws that favor consumers over existing industry monopolies), then I can start suing when someone actually takes the idea and runs with it (this is the new American way, right? Idea, do nothing, Sue, Profit.
The problems is that it's not the ARTISTS who believe that they should be getting paid, it's the collection societies (who don't pay all the artists anyway) who think they should be getting paid.
Nice to meet my larger anonymous mammalian counterpart....
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Re: Setting the record straight ... again. (as anymouse)
Wait a second here.....
ASCAP collects money on behalf of all artists, and normally only distributes it to the top 200 groups (or am I thinking of a different extortion racket? it's so hard to keep the track of the mafia without a program), many of those they can't even seem to locate.
Now there's apparently a big pot of 'leftover' money that really belongs to all those little 'up and coming' artists that weren't in the top 200 list, but instead of giving it to them (you know the ones they collected it on behalf of), they turn around and 'AWARD' it to "writers whose works have a unique prestige value for which adequate compensation would not otherwise be received and to compensate those writers whose works are performed substantially in media not surveyed by ASCAP".
So they collect on behalf of many, but only distribute to the top few, then they take the rest and award it to people who weren't even in their 'media survey'? Why do I get the feeling that the list of Award recipients (I couldn't find one on the site, but didn't waste too much time) would have a very close affiliation with the list of family, friends, and related associates of the ASCAP administration?
Today's tinfoil hat brought to you by Reynolds Wrap, when you're concerned enough to use the very best...
Student Rebellion time (as anymouse)
So this means that the students can now sue their schools for 'inducing copyright infringement' when the professors ask them to answer the questions in the textbook, right?
What if some of the questions are so basic to the subject matter, that they can be found in any of several textbooks? What is the atomic structure of water? How do you increase revenue in a basic dual entry accounting system? We need a team of scholars to scour textbooks for similar questions and then sue them all for 'derivative copyright infringement' and see how they like it.
Obviously the tin-foil just isn't enough today....
Re: You almost had me there... (as anymouse)
For a minute I thought this was a reasonable explanation about how kicking people off the internet might get them to buy more product, but then I realized that it was really just staire about the Mob mentality of the music industry cleverly disguised to appear to be in support of the music industry.
It was really the 3rd paragraph that gave it away:
a) People believing they have some divine right - check, that's the MPAA/RIAA and the rest of the industry middle men described to a T. They feel they have a divine right to the same profit they have always received, even though the market and technology are constantly changing.
b) People believing that nobody will catch them - check, that's the greedy politicians who flip sides after having a meal with the industry (and being fed their line of drivel) and think that nobody will catch them while they cash their fat bribe checks.
Sounds like time for a little 'gaming the system' as payback (as anymouse)
So just report the bank CEO/Manager as being suspected of being in possession of child pornography and possible sexual misconduct in the workplace and let the police deal with it..
What? The charges weren't validated after the police hauled him out of the bank in handcuffs, confiscated his personal and work computers, and conducted extensive interviews with all of his business associates.
Oops, must have been a mistake, good thing there are no repercussions for reporting a 'suspected crime'. Too bad it may have ruined someone's life, but at least we are following the rules, right?
On another note Reynolds Wrap brand foil makes the best tinfoil hats ever. Disclosure: I once received a free box of Reynolds Warp foil from the company, so my views may be a little biased.
Re: Just a guess. (as anymouse)
That's the first step (getting other countries to adopt more draconian copyright laws).
The next step is that they run crying to congress about how the US needs to 'harmonize' US with the new draconian international laws.
Then.... Profit....
Re: Shill is a bad shill (as anymouse)
"Double the income on concerts, you can lose the same amount in "record sales" and still break even."
Should be...
Double the income on concerts, you can lose the same amount in "useless middlemen and inflated Performers salaries" and still break even."
Fixed that for you. Doesn't matter what you want to call 'losses', the fact is that overall the MUSIC industry is doing fine.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: can someone explain to me (as anymouse)
It was a bogus DMCA (Darkhelmet Must Comply Automatically) request, and you fell for it.....
Time for a grassroots 'letter of the law' campaign to get this repealed (as anymouse)
Every blogger out there needs to start making outrageous claims about products that they have received to 'review', once the companies start getting hit with the bigger end of this stick (via them getting fined over the bloggers unsubstantiated endorsements), something might get changed....
I just received a new Palm-Pre (or iTouchMyself, or GoogleDroid, take your pick) to review, and I can't believe how amazing this thing is... It cured my cancer, gave my dog's coat a nice shiny glow, and solved my ED problems once and for all... Everyone should have one of these things...
/sarcasm off
It's the delima of Scylla and Charybdis or a Rock and a Hard Place (as anymouse)
Choosing between the 'lesser' of 2 evils, is still choosing EVIL. Our system of government is horribly broken and since it is self governing, it just keeps getting worse. Things won't get better until there is serious change in this country, and I don't just mean a 'better' candidate throws his hat into the ring.
Anyone out there have a 'regular' job where you only have to 'work' a 2-4 year term and then you get a guaranteed salary for the rest of your life (equal to what you made while working, with guaranteed increases)? When we let the 'elected' officials govern themselves (by passing laws that impact only their select group), does anyone really have to ask why things are messed up?
I don't have a solution at this time, but I personally feel that anyone WILLING to be in politics, shouldn't be allowed to be in politics, because they are probably there for the wrong reason. I'm not saying that we would get better results with a 'political draft' of qualified candidates who served a limited term and then went back to their regular life, but at least we wouldn't have the dregs of society (ie. those who's only ambition is power and money) running the country.
The Tinfoil must be giving me a headache today...
If only this were reality... (as anymouse)
"but we need to also understand that today the disclosure policy of patents is more possible than ever before because of the internet."
BUT those damn patent attorneys are also hellbent on getting 'willful infringement' claims (gotta love those 3x fines for doing nothing), so most companies that do R&D specifically FORBID their employees from reviewing similar or related patents to avoid being sued for what is probably an obvious idea in the first place.
Re: If you want a phone that arbitrarily wipes out your data (as anymouse)
"You think it's bad when Amazon takes an e-book offline, wait till a company arbitrarily costs you 4 hours of wasted time, and all that time leaves you wondering if your going to get your data back..."
When did this thread turn into a Microsoft bashing session????
Welcome to the future..... (as anymouse)
Border Agent: Welcome to the US, we don't have time to actually search your laptop, but since we can, we are now using 'Super Snooper Bot V3.0427-beta', we'll just drop it on your laptop, and it will do the searching for us and send us anything it thinks we might be interested in seeing (your bank accounts, personal info, risky photos, personal pictures, etc). If you have any questions just check our website.
I'm not saying that it's going to happen, but when it does don't be too surprised. Power Corrupts, Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely (there is a reason the saying exists).
Re: Commentors just don't understand.. (as anymouse)
Lets simplify things a little for those who don't get it.
Joe says I like Cake and I like to share it.
Mike says I like Cake and I like to share it also.
Lily says I like Cake, but Joe wanting to share his Cake is just WRONG, he isn't thinking about how sharing Cake is going to end up destroying the whole world. While she's saying this she is sitting there eating a piece of cake that she took (borrowed, shared, whatever term you want to use) from Mike without asking or even acknowledging the fact (which he's fine with).
If you can't see the hyprocracy, then I'm sure the MPAA/RIAA have a great job waiting for you in their PR department.
Re: Commentors just don't understand.. (as anymouse)
WooHoo time to open up that CPO market and run this economy into the ground (as anymouse)
After seeing the huge success in the financial market (for those running the market, not the millions of suckers who got shafted in the recent recession), the patent market is looking ripe for a similar plundering.
Lets take lots of little 'patent objects' and we can collateralize them into large marketable objects (CPO's - Collateralized Patent Objects), we can then get one of the ratings agencies to slap a AAA rating on them (I mean they are patents, they have to be valuable right?) by threatening them with a patent infringement lawsuit (someone's got a patent that's close enough to their rating algorithms that we can threaten to tie them up in court for ages). Once we have the objects and the ratings, then we can start selling the worthless pieces of crap to unsuspecting 'investors' who think they actually have a chance of getting paid.....
It's sad, but right now some patent troll out there is thinking, "Why the hell didn't I come up with that idea?" and trying to figure out how they could do it (Intellectual Ventures anyone???)... Obligatory 'my tinfoil hat is a little tight today' for those who don't realize that this is intended as sarcasm... or is it now?
Time to patent the method of safely ingesting dihydrogen monoxide (as anymouse)
Looks like time for a patent on a method of safely ingesting dihydrogen monoxide, along with a patent of testing for the presence of dihydrogen monoxide.
Or how about a patent on the method of obstructing standard scientific progress with unnecessary and irrelevant patent licensing standards.
At least we don't have 'database' patents yet, or one of these greedy companies would dump all the current drug info into a single database, patent it, then sue any other company who tried to even USE the name of an existing drug. And don't even think about it, I'm patenting this method so that when database patents are allowed in the US, I can sue all those greedy companies and make my fortune....
So then newspapers aren't in trouble right? And they don't need any government bailout, since their online presence is doing so well. (as anymouse)
Who cares if they are lying to themselves, what they are saying is that they don't have any problem operating online... SO LET THEM....
Let them put up paywalls and monetize all their online traffic (which is apparently 10x larger than their print editions). Here we were thinking newspapers were failing and in need of a new business model, when really they just need to monetize their existing traffic.
Someone needs to get this info to Obama quick.... Newspapers are FINE, their online readership is on average 10 times their printed edition, so there is no need for government intervention to save 'reporting'.
Ticket Scalpers have become Ticket Speculators (as anymouse)
The reason tickets are often on sale before the event is that many ticket scalpers are becoming ticket speculators. As an example, I heard about a comedian coming to our area and wanted to get tickets, I went direct to the venue and followed their links to find tickets, but the only tickets I found were high priced and the seat/rows didn't really match up with the venue seating chart. This was something my wife and friends really wanted to go to, so I went ahead and purchased the lowest priced tickets (4 tickets at $89 each + $16 fee) that said they were in section C row 14. The next week the venue actually released the tickets for sale (they weren't officially on sale when I purchased them from the scalper... not knowing it was a scalper), so I received 3 $41.50 face value tickets (in section 6 row 13 or something, but not the tickets I had purchased online), and the receipt showing they had purchased 4 tickets for $208 (total with fees). Yes they mistakenly sent me the receipt rather then the 4th ticket... Word of warning to all you ticket scalpers out there, if you expect to make a %100 profit, you better at least deliver what your customer orders, or you give them easy legal means to void the sale.
So not only did this 'scalper' expect to make over a %100 markup, they didn't even bother to provide the tickets that they had agreed to sell me (and there was NO communication until I told them to void the sale and refund my money, one automated 3-mail, then the 3 tickets and receipt in a fed ex envelope with no other material). I canceled the order and got my tickets directly from the venue, but this is just one example of how worthless these 'middlemen' are. They can't even put 4 tickets in an envelope when they are expecting to get paid over $200 for it..... (the original order cost me $426 for $208 worth of tickets...)
Consumer Lobby..... great idea..... I'm going to patent it ;) (as anymouse)
"One more evidence that "We the Consumers of the United States" need bigger and stronger consumer rights lobby in the Congress!"
Since lobbying is all about the money, we should stand up and make ourselves heard by creating an actual Consumer Lobbying group and buying our own laws. If consumers united and each donated a dollar a year, we would have some significant 'seed' money to start bribing, er, lobbying our government officials.
There are a lot more of us (consumers) than there are of them (RIAA, MPAA, etc), even though they appear to have deeper pockets, that's only due to us buying their products in the first place. Imagine being able to 'donate' .05 for each iTunes purchase and have it go to 'fighting the power', something at checkout, "Would you like to help fund consumer rights organization in an attempt to 'buy back' our culture from the evil MAFIA overlords by contributing .05 per song purchased?" (but worded a little better).
I think I need to patent this idea (collecting money from consumers and buying laws that favor consumers over existing industry monopolies), then I can start suing when someone actually takes the idea and runs with it (this is the new American way, right? Idea, do nothing, Sue, Profit.
Just kidding (or am I????)
Re: I have the solution... (as anymouse)
The problems is that it's not the ARTISTS who believe that they should be getting paid, it's the collection societies (who don't pay all the artists anyway) who think they should be getting paid.
Nice to meet my larger anonymous mammalian counterpart....