Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Fri, 16 Jul 2010 08:32:58 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100715/17252610236.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100715/17252610236.shtml sentenced to two months of house arrest. We noted, at the time, that part of the agreement was also that he would produce propaganda for the RIAA. However, a year has passed and he never did the propaganda recording... and he's no longer required to do it. Instead, he's doing interviews where he's saying that people involved in file sharing can get "F'd in the A" by the RIAA. Not quite what the RIAA expected, I guess.

Amusingly, the RIAA's response was that it chose not to have Cogill make the propaganda tapes because of the "unnecessarily high production costs." Leave it to the RIAA -- the organization that pays its boss over $2 million and spends millions on lawsuits that bring nothing back -- to think it's too expensive to record a guy talking. But, perhaps it's telling. Maybe the folks at the RIAA really don't recognize the revolution in recording equipment that makes it rather cheap to record things these days. No wonder their strategy has been so screwed up!

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]]> well-how-about-that http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100715/17252610236 Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:48:18 PST Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100226/0344318321.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100226/0344318321.shtml get involved and arrest the guy who uploaded the files -- leading to him pleading guilty and getting two month's house arrest? Would you believe there's another approach?

Jeff Barr points us to the news that Vince Neil, the "sometimes lead vocalist for Motley Crue," has a new single out -- which first leaked to the internet. But rather than freak out about it, Neil decided to offer it up directly himself for free, and to make it more valuable to get it directly, by offering the track, the video for it and a desktop wallpaper in the official version. And with that announcement, he also reminded folks that the full album will be out later this year, and he hopes they're looking forward to it.

Which response do you think endears more fans? Which response makes a stronger bond between the musician and the fans? Which response is likely to make more people feel good about paying for stuff from an artist? Now, Vince Neil isn't as well known as Guns 'N Roses -- so it's not a direct comparison. But, it does offer a decent way to look at how different musicians handle similar situations.

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]]> fan-appreciation http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100226/0344318321 Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:59:07 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090714/1538185548.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090714/1538185548.shtml involved in trying to track down and arrest a guy who uploaded a pre-release version of Guns 'N Roses' long awaited new album before it was released. If anything, it should have been a civil matter -- and, honestly, there's little indication that the upload caused any harm whatsoever. In fact, it was the arrest, not the uploading that seemed to alert more people to the fact that the download was available in the first place. Should the FBI now investigate itself for better promoting the pre-release download?

That said, the guy who uploaded the songs, Kevin Cogill, agreed to a plea bargain. While the FBI still pushed for jailtime for Cogill, it looks like he's getting two months of house arrest (plenty of time to sit at home and listen to the new GNR, I guess) and has agreed to make a propaganda video for the RIAA. I'm not quite sure what the RIAA thinks such propaganda will accomplish, other than alerting more people to how ridiculous the RIAA's anti-piracy campaign has been.

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]]> yeah,-that'll-work http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090714/1538185548