In the Jazz idiom this is called a quote, and it is considered a compliment, a tip of the hat, to anyone except a lawyer or an accountant! There are only twelve notes in several octaves, and we are bound to run into the same combinations now and then. If your intent is to compliment rather than copy, and you are within the law (less than eight measures) there is nothing to worry about. If you need more than that, make it funny and call it a parody! (LOL)
Way back in the day, when the TV corps (Ironic how that sounds) used to gnash their teeth and wail over the fact that we were actually recording our favorite shows on VCRs, we used to leave the commercials in all the time. It was kind of like a time capsule of bad taste and we could always fast forward them if they were too stupid. Why would anyone object to anyone doing the same thing that they used to fight tooth and nail against, if only to get their viewer base back? Silly silly tv companies!
What really bites the big booger is when the RIAA, in their infinitesimal wisdom,decides to protect me from myself and forces a song sharing service to remove my work from their website on the grounds that I have an inherent copyright whether I applied for one or not! I know I am an acquired taste. I know that my little songs are the square pegs that will never fit into the round hole of popular contemporary music. (and I beg you to prove me wrong) Finally, I know that my songs are never going to get to go out and play outside my metaphorical backyard unless I turn them loose and set them free. As an educator, I would also be horrified to learn that any teacher was reticent about using one of my little songs to share with his or her students! Children are our future - and they are also our future consumers. If you are stingy with them when they are little, they will remember when they are adults! Fortunately, Soundclick.com has been braver than most song sharing sites and the RIAA has not been able to kick sand in my face on their beach. Michael Daly also allows me to share my sheet music with other teachers and students all over the world on http://www.sheetmusicdigital.com (just look for my picture on the front page and there is an active link below it or click here http://www.sheetmusicdigital.com/charlesconsaul.asp )
So be brave and persevere, fellow sharers of life's spiritual children. the RIAA can kick sand in our face, talk about us behind our backs, and bully the faint of heart, but we still have a few champions out there. Chivalry is not dead, and it is not entirely subscription based yet. You can also find my little songs on Kiddidles by the way. Nice people, and very good to our future generations!
When Jib Jab created their funny little parody of "This Land Is Your Land" they were sued by the Guthrie Estate. Now the last thing the Guthrie Estate needed was more money. Arlo does quite well on his own and Woodie's songs are chunking up revenue like popsickles in the Amazon, thanks to Wilco and all of the Guthrie revivals going on. I guess it was the principal of the thing, right? Jib Jab won their case however, and they didn't do it by proving that the parody fell under the fair use clause. They simply found a songbook with Woodie's song published on a date that was older than the copyright date that it was grandfathered under. At that moment, educators like myself could use this song in our classrooms without all of the usual gobbletygook we always go through when we want to use anything that isn't already in the outdated or nonexistent textbooks we keep cobbled together from year to year. (I buy my own, but that is another story) I will go so far to say that extending the copyright out further than the artist's own lifetime, or that of the immediate spouse, is actually detrimental to the well being of the next generations that benefit (along with the publishing and distribution companies and which is why this was really enacted in the first place)
Education is under an unfair yoke when it comes to copyright and considering the fact that we are grooming the next generation of consumers, the publishers and distributors are really shooting themselves in the foot by holding us to this onerous standard. Literary content, and especially songs should be considered fair use for educational purposes; period! I know that this would mean a revision of the whole textbook industry, but the textbook industry is doomed anyway, unless they get up off of their bloated carcasses and produce affordable content for schools. Universities and Colleges across the country are adapting digital textbooks, and in many cases are writing their own because the existing product is too expensive, has a hidden ideological, political, or cultural agenda, and has to be replaced entirely too often to keep up with current trends.
Anyone should have a right to be paid for their labor if they want that pay, I wholeheartedly agree. How about the small fish in this very large ocean who are content to share our content with other teachers. I was actually removed from a site because the RIAA determined that I had to be protected against myself whether I wanted to be or not. I currently share over four hundred piece of sheet music on http://www.sheetmusicdigital.com/charlesconsaul.asp and over a hundred original MP3 files (and one parody) on Songclick.com (just look under Charles Consaul) and no one charges anyone a cent for any of this content because I could not sell it to save my life! It is also more important for me to get this material out where it can be used, just as I look for every scrap of material I can get to supplement my student's supply of useful material to use in my classroom. I spend two hundred dollars a month to get published content and that is not enough. By extending copyright, we are extending the amount of time a publishing and distribution company has to use the same content over and over again with a minimal to zero amount of innovation. We are also stifling the genes of creativity for the poor sons and daughters of the composers, lyricists, and authors who created this content in the first place. So, how does that help us to be more creative and keep up with the rest of the world?
The recording industry has traditionally put a lot of filler in their product, and even the most principled artists who insist on nothing but pure content, find it hard to compete with the fact that their CD often costs up to twice as much as a DVD movie, and often six to seven dollars less than the concert DVD with most (if not all) of the same songs on it, plus encores!
I can still get used CDs for a reasonable price, and I can always support local artists who don't have porcine distributors inserting themselves noisily between my wallet and their feeding trough. I would be quite happy to support a business model where I pay the artist's royalty directly. Goodness knows the distributor never bothers to. What artists get percentage wise for downloads as compared to CD sales is shameful and that's not even addressing the fact that the legitimate download is usually recorded at a much lower rate than the average fan mp3 / ogg / ect.
Honestly, people have been driving while performing other tasks ever since the wheel. The most blatant examples I can think of is the radio, both AM/FM and Citizen's Band, still beloved by long haul truckers who breaker breaker all over the USA! You've also got shortwave, sideband, skip tracing, bird watchers complete with binoculars, and even () Tourists!
There are even those who can text without looking at the screen! There are also those who can't drive safely at fifteen miles an hour with blinders on! For unsafe drivers there are already laws on the books, for safe drivers who are offended by the trampling of their first amendment rights by those who just want to take the easy way out, (they may not want to pay to put in new "No Cell Phones In School Zones" signs) there are class action lawsuits similar to the ones that were brought against communities that tried to ban CB's when they first became popular. A few people will get very very rich and the rest of us will get one more lesson in why we should never pass one extra law, simply because every law diminishes the effect of all other laws and makes people question why they follow laws at all!
Jib Jab posted clever little flash animation on You Tube, using a parody of "This Land Is Your Land" by Woodrow Wilson Guthrie. Now Woodie would probably have laughed himself silly over the thing, but his estate decided to sue instead. The outcome was rather unsatisfying though, since Jib Jab found a published version of the song that was written early enough in Mr. Guthrie's career that it literally took the song out of copyright altogether! This is good for Jib Jab since it meant that the Guthrie estate didn't have a leg to stand on. It's even better for educators since we now have carte blanche to use the song for educational purposes without being harrased by the RIAA, the Musician's Union, or apparently now by the AFL-CIO (Ouch, that one hurts, my dad belonged to that Union and it is the Union that I currently belong to as a certified teacher!)
So there is another danger here. Not only does all of this spurious litigation dilute the so called protections of copyright (protect the distributors and retailers and the heck with the poor schmuck who wrote it!) the litigants might actually find out that their precious creative work is no longer under copyright at all. You might even say that Jib Jab proved once and for all time that "This song was made for you and me!"
Was a great high wall there
That tried to stop my
A great big sign said
"Private Property"
But on the other side
It didn't say nuthin'
Except, This land is made for you and me!
Woodie Guthrie
They never put this verse in the text books. I wonder why?"
During World War II, at the behest of the Knights of Columbus, Congress decided to coopt an oath written by a Methodist Minister who was defrocked for being a Christian Socialist. They added the words "Under GOD" to the oath, and decided to use it without attribution, probably because parents who found out it's origins would be mildly horrified! It has been used that way ever since, without the permission of the Author's Estate, and our students stand up and invoke this oath every single day. If Congress doesn't have to follow Copyright law or give proper attribution (display the Author's name) when it isn't convenient, what good is the law in the first place?
So, who is the author, what is the oath, and since this is the second time it was changed without the Author's or the Authors estate's permission, what was the first time? Incidentally, the author objected the first time and the Estate also filed a complaint, to no avail! So much for Democracy in action, so much for the separation of Church and State, and so much for the Federal Government following the same copyright law they put on the books in the first place!
I guess they've forgotten that we can, have and will continue to keep writing our own music. If they are that miserly and mean spirited, they aren't really Irish anyway! They are just another version of the RIAA in leprechaun suits. Just remember, we are not above throwing a pair of overhauls in their chowder and starting our very own pot of nail soup! I've got the nail if you've got the errr ummm, cauldron! Didn't want any unfortunate double entandres sticking out there. Honestly, don't they know that the Unicorn was written by a Bald Jewish Guy (his own words) anyway? (Shel Silverstein) Unfortunately the only thing they truly have a monopoly on is Blarney, and this is one more example!
The RIAA bullied Audiogalaxy into taking my original material off of it's website because it claimed that I had a right to protection whether I wanted it or not. I found a new home at Soundclick.com and so far they have stood up to those reprobates. If the AFL-CIO are representing the RIAA, I am going to have to change Unions however. I do not want to be any part of a goon squad. I used to think it was pretty cool to be a certified teacher and still be a member of the same Union my father belonged to, but if they are going to be part of the organization that trampled my First Amendment Rights, I don't need to be a part of it!
What do you call what the recording industry does to composers? What do the distributors pay artists for digital downloads compared to the pittance that they get paid for the standard CDs and such. Why isn't that considered Piracy as well? The distribution companies decide to pay these artists less regardless of the fact that they actually make MORE profit due to reduced storage, material, and transportation costs. Consumers could actually benefit greatly from being provided a way to pay full royalties to the authors and composers when they make their horribly treasonous copies (that's Pirate talk, I just can't halep myself) but oddly enough, there is no such provision for this! Could we file this under the heading "Finding no way to follow the spirit of the law, Consumers are eventually forced to break it out of sheer exhaustion"?
There have been Pirates and Robin Hoods all throughout history. When it suits their purpose, Government even hires Pirates to vex other Governments, and give them a slightly more legitimate title like "Privateers!" Do you suppose the author of the Pledge of Allegiance might be resting less than peacefully since the U.S. Congress declared eminent domain on what he considered to be a Socialist Manifesto for young boys, and turned it into the Pledge of Allegiance? (Complete with the addition of "In GOD we trust" which the author strenuously objected to!) Is that author ever mentioned when the Pledge is printed up? I guess decency and fair play only work one way in this Republic?
I have been a consumer of 78RPM records, 45s, 33s, Reel to Reel Tapes, Cassettes, 8-tracks, CDs, DVDs, VHS, Super VHS, Minidisks, Laserdisks, and once even owned a copy of a James Taylor Concert on a Beta! How many times does one consumer have to purchase the same media in different formats before the industry will actually give him or her a break? If I buy an album on a CD and want to listen to it at the cabin where there is only a cassette player, I would rather be considered a pirate than have the word "SUCKER" tstooed across my forehead for buying into the industry's philosophy of pay and pay and pay some more. On the other hand, if I see a vendor at a flea market selling knock off copies of "A Boy And His Dog" with black and white labels, I am likely to call in the Tommy Knockers myself. I guess what I'm saying is that unlike Multi-National Corporations, Pirates have limits. Pirates have their own code of ethics, but it's better than no ethics at all! Besides, if your main office is in the Caymen Islands, you pay little or no taxes, and your booty is sitting in a numbered account in Switzerland, who is the real pirate after all! So buy me a parrot and rate this little rant ARRRRRRRRRRGH! I wonder what would happen if we all got servers in the Caymens, stored our data outside the U.S. and accessed it through private accounts. Would we still be pirates or just Multi-National Consumers? Ahh well, Pass me a flagon of Rum, make sure my eye patch is on straight, and meet me down in Davey Jone's Locker. After the landlubbers get done with us, it'll be the only peace on Earth!
Our local paper went smaller, started using thinner paper so the words bleed into each other from one side to the other, raised the prices at places like Walgreens (75 cents) but left it the same at most locations. (50 cents except Sundays)
I used to love to use it as a proofreading tool for my students. It has more than enough mistakes on any given day, to keep a student busy and fulfilled. Our local paper also tends to get the news a day to three later than the internet, the local news, and even our local PBS stations! I used to read the news for depth and perspective, but we really have to go out of town for that anymore. There are three basic truths. 1. When a paper buys it's competition out, it is usually next. 2. You cannot convince a monopoly it has to try harder. If you want to stay in business, the least effective model is to alienate your customer base and go cheap! Going cheap is like waving the white flag of surrender.
We can't get the Dallas paper locally, which is a bummer because the coupons were a lot better. Most of the out of town papers that get delivered to our little slice of heaven, don't include the coupons ( a major buying factor for us ) I genuinely enjoy a good paper and took a subscription service for almost fifteen years. When I had to buy Thursday through Sunday papers papers to get an extra Sunday paper, and the delivery person never seemed to get the extra paper in the box (or got the paper in the box but without the coupons) I decided that I could go up to the corner just as easily on the rare occasion that I still wanted one.
It's all about service, reliability, quality, and respect. But like I said, you cannot convince a monopoly that it has to try harder. Just ask the Useless Postal service!
I was a victim of Time Warner Cable for over twelve years. It started with them charging to put two lines into my house because I wanted more than four televisions hooked up. Two years later I found out that they had been running me off of a splitter. Next I had to buy licenses for each computer I wanted internet on. Then I found out that there was no such requirement for their wireless customers. Between the frequent outages, slow repairs, missed service calls (one month the refunds for missed service calls literally paid my bill!) and out and out lies, I finally accepted the fact that I would have to switch to ATT&T's DSL. They advertise a 3.3 connection but I have yet to experience any slowdown in my service compared to Time-Out Warner's "Up To" 6.6 megabit connection! If Times-Up Warner ever goes to a plan where they actually charge people based on what they deliver, they will lose some serious money because based on my personal experience, Time-To Switch Warner simply does not deliver!
If the only issue is to properly collect and distribute the royalties due to an artist when their artistic property is displayed or played in a commercial manner, they can be collected, and distributed the same way that any other tax is collected. Most artists realize very quickly, that they cannot actually make money by putting out albums anyway. Most artists make the bulk of their money by touring. By the time distributors and retailers get their piece of the pie, the only thing left for the artist is a tiny bit of crust. Sometimes all they really get out of it is the advance that they got to make the album in the first place.
The artists who are actually making money these days, are the independant artists who are generally ignored by organizations like ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and the RIAA. The reason that they are getting interested now, is that someone seems to have taken their pie away from them and they are slowly coming to the realization that they are becoming irrelevant!
I am a nobody. I give away my little homemade MP3s so I can get people to listen to them. When the RIAA convinced the website that was allowing me to share them to shut me out for my own protection, I moved over to Soundclick.com
Soundclick provided me with a way to register my songs under Creative Commons and share them with the world. It may not be a way to get rich quick, but at least I am no longer being censored under the disingenuous argument that I have to be protected against myself!
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=430970
So, listen to one or two of my primitive little songs and take a bite out of ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and the RIAA at the same time. If musicians have to give it all away anyway, we might just as well get some goodwill out of it.
I can generally buy a DVD for less money than a CD might cost me. The RIAA actually bullied one of my favorite file sharing services into cutting off my MP3s (Of my own music) because there was a presumption that I owned a natural copyright and would want them "protected!"
Nobody wants to put me on their label, my music doesn't into fit into any of the nice little pigeonholes that Clearchannel thinks should be popular, and yet I cannot even give my own music away because it doesn't fit into the RIAA's business model. Thanks to Soundclick.com, I still have a place to give away my little MP3s however.
Let's hear it for Creative Commons, the friend of the educator. Honestly, I think the only way that we can possibly dig ourselves out of this mess, is to create enough content for free, to keep ourselves afloat until the RIAA and agencies like them, implode upon themselves, hopefully taking all the profit mongers with them!
I was a Time Warner Customer for almost 14 years. Their failure rate lately has been exceeded only by their poor customer service. I finally left them when AT&T promised a 6Mb DSL line. So, I switched to Dish, which we like, but then when the internet came back up it was only running at 1.5Mb. My wife called to find out what the deal was and they said that we were more than 1500 feet away from the office so that was the best they could do. I feel the term bait and switch applies here. I do enjoy the increased reliability, but really feel cheated on the significant difference in speed.
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That Ain't Theft
In the Jazz idiom this is called a quote, and it is considered a compliment, a tip of the hat, to anyone except a lawyer or an accountant! There are only twelve notes in several octaves, and we are bound to run into the same combinations now and then. If your intent is to compliment rather than copy, and you are within the law (less than eight measures) there is nothing to worry about. If you need more than that, make it funny and call it a parody! (LOL)
I got nothing against commercials
Way back in the day, when the TV corps (Ironic how that sounds) used to gnash their teeth and wail over the fact that we were actually recording our favorite shows on VCRs, we used to leave the commercials in all the time. It was kind of like a time capsule of bad taste and we could always fast forward them if they were too stupid. Why would anyone object to anyone doing the same thing that they used to fight tooth and nail against, if only to get their viewer base back? Silly silly tv companies!
I Don't Plan To Be Famous For At Least One Hundred Years After I Die
What really bites the big booger is when the RIAA, in their infinitesimal wisdom,decides to protect me from myself and forces a song sharing service to remove my work from their website on the grounds that I have an inherent copyright whether I applied for one or not! I know I am an acquired taste. I know that my little songs are the square pegs that will never fit into the round hole of popular contemporary music. (and I beg you to prove me wrong) Finally, I know that my songs are never going to get to go out and play outside my metaphorical backyard unless I turn them loose and set them free. As an educator, I would also be horrified to learn that any teacher was reticent about using one of my little songs to share with his or her students! Children are our future - and they are also our future consumers. If you are stingy with them when they are little, they will remember when they are adults! Fortunately, Soundclick.com has been braver than most song sharing sites and the RIAA has not been able to kick sand in my face on their beach. Michael Daly also allows me to share my sheet music with other teachers and students all over the world on http://www.sheetmusicdigital.com (just look for my picture on the front page and there is an active link below it or click here http://www.sheetmusicdigital.com/charlesconsaul.asp )
So be brave and persevere, fellow sharers of life's spiritual children. the RIAA can kick sand in our face, talk about us behind our backs, and bully the faint of heart, but we still have a few champions out there. Chivalry is not dead, and it is not entirely subscription based yet. You can also find my little songs on Kiddidles by the way. Nice people, and very good to our future generations!
Let Me Go One Step Further
When Jib Jab created their funny little parody of "This Land Is Your Land" they were sued by the Guthrie Estate. Now the last thing the Guthrie Estate needed was more money. Arlo does quite well on his own and Woodie's songs are chunking up revenue like popsickles in the Amazon, thanks to Wilco and all of the Guthrie revivals going on. I guess it was the principal of the thing, right? Jib Jab won their case however, and they didn't do it by proving that the parody fell under the fair use clause. They simply found a songbook with Woodie's song published on a date that was older than the copyright date that it was grandfathered under. At that moment, educators like myself could use this song in our classrooms without all of the usual gobbletygook we always go through when we want to use anything that isn't already in the outdated or nonexistent textbooks we keep cobbled together from year to year. (I buy my own, but that is another story) I will go so far to say that extending the copyright out further than the artist's own lifetime, or that of the immediate spouse, is actually detrimental to the well being of the next generations that benefit (along with the publishing and distribution companies and which is why this was really enacted in the first place)
Education is under an unfair yoke when it comes to copyright and considering the fact that we are grooming the next generation of consumers, the publishers and distributors are really shooting themselves in the foot by holding us to this onerous standard. Literary content, and especially songs should be considered fair use for educational purposes; period! I know that this would mean a revision of the whole textbook industry, but the textbook industry is doomed anyway, unless they get up off of their bloated carcasses and produce affordable content for schools. Universities and Colleges across the country are adapting digital textbooks, and in many cases are writing their own because the existing product is too expensive, has a hidden ideological, political, or cultural agenda, and has to be replaced entirely too often to keep up with current trends.
Anyone should have a right to be paid for their labor if they want that pay, I wholeheartedly agree. How about the small fish in this very large ocean who are content to share our content with other teachers. I was actually removed from a site because the RIAA determined that I had to be protected against myself whether I wanted to be or not. I currently share over four hundred piece of sheet music on http://www.sheetmusicdigital.com/charlesconsaul.asp and over a hundred original MP3 files (and one parody) on Songclick.com (just look under Charles Consaul) and no one charges anyone a cent for any of this content because I could not sell it to save my life! It is also more important for me to get this material out where it can be used, just as I look for every scrap of material I can get to supplement my student's supply of useful material to use in my classroom. I spend two hundred dollars a month to get published content and that is not enough. By extending copyright, we are extending the amount of time a publishing and distribution company has to use the same content over and over again with a minimal to zero amount of innovation. We are also stifling the genes of creativity for the poor sons and daughters of the composers, lyricists, and authors who created this content in the first place. So, how does that help us to be more creative and keep up with the rest of the world?
When a DVD movie is less expensive than the CD, Something's Wrong!
The recording industry has traditionally put a lot of filler in their product, and even the most principled artists who insist on nothing but pure content, find it hard to compete with the fact that their CD often costs up to twice as much as a DVD movie, and often six to seven dollars less than the concert DVD with most (if not all) of the same songs on it, plus encores!
I can still get used CDs for a reasonable price, and I can always support local artists who don't have porcine distributors inserting themselves noisily between my wallet and their feeding trough. I would be quite happy to support a business model where I pay the artist's royalty directly. Goodness knows the distributor never bothers to. What artists get percentage wise for downloads as compared to CD sales is shameful and that's not even addressing the fact that the legitimate download is usually recorded at a much lower rate than the average fan mp3 / ogg / ect.
Hasn't anybody heard of Citizen Band Radios?
Honestly, people have been driving while performing other tasks ever since the wheel. The most blatant examples I can think of is the radio, both AM/FM and Citizen's Band, still beloved by long haul truckers who breaker breaker all over the USA! You've also got shortwave, sideband, skip tracing, bird watchers complete with binoculars, and even () Tourists!
There are even those who can text without looking at the screen! There are also those who can't drive safely at fifteen miles an hour with blinders on! For unsafe drivers there are already laws on the books, for safe drivers who are offended by the trampling of their first amendment rights by those who just want to take the easy way out, (they may not want to pay to put in new "No Cell Phones In School Zones" signs) there are class action lawsuits similar to the ones that were brought against communities that tried to ban CB's when they first became popular. A few people will get very very rich and the rest of us will get one more lesson in why we should never pass one extra law, simply because every law diminishes the effect of all other laws and makes people question why they follow laws at all!
The Guthrie Estate Tried This With Jib Jab
Jib Jab posted clever little flash animation on You Tube, using a parody of "This Land Is Your Land" by Woodrow Wilson Guthrie. Now Woodie would probably have laughed himself silly over the thing, but his estate decided to sue instead. The outcome was rather unsatisfying though, since Jib Jab found a published version of the song that was written early enough in Mr. Guthrie's career that it literally took the song out of copyright altogether! This is good for Jib Jab since it meant that the Guthrie estate didn't have a leg to stand on. It's even better for educators since we now have carte blanche to use the song for educational purposes without being harrased by the RIAA, the Musician's Union, or apparently now by the AFL-CIO (Ouch, that one hurts, my dad belonged to that Union and it is the Union that I currently belong to as a certified teacher!)
So there is another danger here. Not only does all of this spurious litigation dilute the so called protections of copyright (protect the distributors and retailers and the heck with the poor schmuck who wrote it!) the litigants might actually find out that their precious creative work is no longer under copyright at all. You might even say that Jib Jab proved once and for all time that "This song was made for you and me!"
Was a great high wall there
That tried to stop my
A great big sign said
"Private Property"
But on the other side
It didn't say nuthin'
Except, This land is made for you and me!
Woodie Guthrie
They never put this verse in the text books. I wonder why?"
A Word About Congress
During World War II, at the behest of the Knights of Columbus, Congress decided to coopt an oath written by a Methodist Minister who was defrocked for being a Christian Socialist. They added the words "Under GOD" to the oath, and decided to use it without attribution, probably because parents who found out it's origins would be mildly horrified! It has been used that way ever since, without the permission of the Author's Estate, and our students stand up and invoke this oath every single day. If Congress doesn't have to follow Copyright law or give proper attribution (display the Author's name) when it isn't convenient, what good is the law in the first place?
So, who is the author, what is the oath, and since this is the second time it was changed without the Author's or the Authors estate's permission, what was the first time? Incidentally, the author objected the first time and the Estate also filed a complaint, to no avail! So much for Democracy in action, so much for the separation of Church and State, and so much for the Federal Government following the same copyright law they put on the books in the first place!
So The Leprachaun wants all of the gold at the end of the rainbow
I guess they've forgotten that we can, have and will continue to keep writing our own music. If they are that miserly and mean spirited, they aren't really Irish anyway! They are just another version of the RIAA in leprechaun suits. Just remember, we are not above throwing a pair of overhauls in their chowder and starting our very own pot of nail soup! I've got the nail if you've got the errr ummm, cauldron! Didn't want any unfortunate double entandres sticking out there. Honestly, don't they know that the Unicorn was written by a Bald Jewish Guy (his own words) anyway? (Shel Silverstein) Unfortunately the only thing they truly have a monopoly on is Blarney, and this is one more example!
Re: Used to have music on Audiogalaxy
The RIAA bullied Audiogalaxy into taking my original material off of it's website because it claimed that I had a right to protection whether I wanted it or not. I found a new home at Soundclick.com and so far they have stood up to those reprobates. If the AFL-CIO are representing the RIAA, I am going to have to change Unions however. I do not want to be any part of a goon squad. I used to think it was pretty cool to be a certified teacher and still be a member of the same Union my father belonged to, but if they are going to be part of the organization that trampled my First Amendment Rights, I don't need to be a part of it!
P, S. (By the Bye)
What do you call what the recording industry does to composers? What do the distributors pay artists for digital downloads compared to the pittance that they get paid for the standard CDs and such. Why isn't that considered Piracy as well? The distribution companies decide to pay these artists less regardless of the fact that they actually make MORE profit due to reduced storage, material, and transportation costs. Consumers could actually benefit greatly from being provided a way to pay full royalties to the authors and composers when they make their horribly treasonous copies (that's Pirate talk, I just can't halep myself) but oddly enough, there is no such provision for this! Could we file this under the heading "Finding no way to follow the spirit of the law, Consumers are eventually forced to break it out of sheer exhaustion"?
Piracy Arises When Government Gets Too Greedy
There have been Pirates and Robin Hoods all throughout history. When it suits their purpose, Government even hires Pirates to vex other Governments, and give them a slightly more legitimate title like "Privateers!" Do you suppose the author of the Pledge of Allegiance might be resting less than peacefully since the U.S. Congress declared eminent domain on what he considered to be a Socialist Manifesto for young boys, and turned it into the Pledge of Allegiance? (Complete with the addition of "In GOD we trust" which the author strenuously objected to!) Is that author ever mentioned when the Pledge is printed up? I guess decency and fair play only work one way in this Republic?
I have been a consumer of 78RPM records, 45s, 33s, Reel to Reel Tapes, Cassettes, 8-tracks, CDs, DVDs, VHS, Super VHS, Minidisks, Laserdisks, and once even owned a copy of a James Taylor Concert on a Beta! How many times does one consumer have to purchase the same media in different formats before the industry will actually give him or her a break? If I buy an album on a CD and want to listen to it at the cabin where there is only a cassette player, I would rather be considered a pirate than have the word "SUCKER" tstooed across my forehead for buying into the industry's philosophy of pay and pay and pay some more. On the other hand, if I see a vendor at a flea market selling knock off copies of "A Boy And His Dog" with black and white labels, I am likely to call in the Tommy Knockers myself. I guess what I'm saying is that unlike Multi-National Corporations, Pirates have limits. Pirates have their own code of ethics, but it's better than no ethics at all! Besides, if your main office is in the Caymen Islands, you pay little or no taxes, and your booty is sitting in a numbered account in Switzerland, who is the real pirate after all! So buy me a parrot and rate this little rant ARRRRRRRRRRGH! I wonder what would happen if we all got servers in the Caymens, stored our data outside the U.S. and accessed it through private accounts. Would we still be pirates or just Multi-National Consumers? Ahh well, Pass me a flagon of Rum, make sure my eye patch is on straight, and meet me down in Davey Jone's Locker. After the landlubbers get done with us, it'll be the only peace on Earth!
I guess quality of service has nothing to do with it then?
Our local paper went smaller, started using thinner paper so the words bleed into each other from one side to the other, raised the prices at places like Walgreens (75 cents) but left it the same at most locations. (50 cents except Sundays)
I used to love to use it as a proofreading tool for my students. It has more than enough mistakes on any given day, to keep a student busy and fulfilled. Our local paper also tends to get the news a day to three later than the internet, the local news, and even our local PBS stations! I used to read the news for depth and perspective, but we really have to go out of town for that anymore. There are three basic truths. 1. When a paper buys it's competition out, it is usually next. 2. You cannot convince a monopoly it has to try harder. If you want to stay in business, the least effective model is to alienate your customer base and go cheap! Going cheap is like waving the white flag of surrender.
We can't get the Dallas paper locally, which is a bummer because the coupons were a lot better. Most of the out of town papers that get delivered to our little slice of heaven, don't include the coupons ( a major buying factor for us ) I genuinely enjoy a good paper and took a subscription service for almost fifteen years. When I had to buy Thursday through Sunday papers papers to get an extra Sunday paper, and the delivery person never seemed to get the extra paper in the box (or got the paper in the box but without the coupons) I decided that I could go up to the corner just as easily on the rare occasion that I still wanted one.
It's all about service, reliability, quality, and respect. But like I said, you cannot convince a monopoly that it has to try harder. Just ask the Useless Postal service!
Free At Last
I was a victim of Time Warner Cable for over twelve years. It started with them charging to put two lines into my house because I wanted more than four televisions hooked up. Two years later I found out that they had been running me off of a splitter. Next I had to buy licenses for each computer I wanted internet on. Then I found out that there was no such requirement for their wireless customers. Between the frequent outages, slow repairs, missed service calls (one month the refunds for missed service calls literally paid my bill!) and out and out lies, I finally accepted the fact that I would have to switch to ATT&T's DSL. They advertise a 3.3 connection but I have yet to experience any slowdown in my service compared to Time-Out Warner's "Up To" 6.6 megabit connection! If Times-Up Warner ever goes to a plan where they actually charge people based on what they deliver, they will lose some serious money because based on my personal experience, Time-To Switch Warner simply does not deliver!
Why are royalties more complicated than say - Sales Tax?
If the only issue is to properly collect and distribute the royalties due to an artist when their artistic property is displayed or played in a commercial manner, they can be collected, and distributed the same way that any other tax is collected. Most artists realize very quickly, that they cannot actually make money by putting out albums anyway. Most artists make the bulk of their money by touring. By the time distributors and retailers get their piece of the pie, the only thing left for the artist is a tiny bit of crust. Sometimes all they really get out of it is the advance that they got to make the album in the first place. The artists who are actually making money these days, are the independant artists who are generally ignored by organizations like ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and the RIAA. The reason that they are getting interested now, is that someone seems to have taken their pie away from them and they are slowly coming to the realization that they are becoming irrelevant! I am a nobody. I give away my little homemade MP3s so I can get people to listen to them. When the RIAA convinced the website that was allowing me to share them to shut me out for my own protection, I moved over to Soundclick.com Soundclick provided me with a way to register my songs under Creative Commons and share them with the world. It may not be a way to get rich quick, but at least I am no longer being censored under the disingenuous argument that I have to be protected against myself! http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=430970 So, listen to one or two of my primitive little songs and take a bite out of ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and the RIAA at the same time. If musicians have to give it all away anyway, we might just as well get some goodwill out of it.
Tip of the Iceburg
I can generally buy a DVD for less money than a CD might cost me. The RIAA actually bullied one of my favorite file sharing services into cutting off my MP3s (Of my own music) because there was a presumption that I owned a natural copyright and would want them "protected!"
Nobody wants to put me on their label, my music doesn't into fit into any of the nice little pigeonholes that Clearchannel thinks should be popular, and yet I cannot even give my own music away because it doesn't fit into the RIAA's business model. Thanks to Soundclick.com, I still have a place to give away my little MP3s however.
Let's hear it for Creative Commons, the friend of the educator. Honestly, I think the only way that we can possibly dig ourselves out of this mess, is to create enough content for free, to keep ourselves afloat until the RIAA and agencies like them, implode upon themselves, hopefully taking all the profit mongers with them!
First Get The Bugs Out!
I was a Time Warner Customer for almost 14 years. Their failure rate lately has been exceeded only by their poor customer service. I finally left them when AT&T promised a 6Mb DSL line. So, I switched to Dish, which we like, but then when the internet came back up it was only running at 1.5Mb. My wife called to find out what the deal was and they said that we were more than 1500 feet away from the office so that was the best they could do. I feel the term bait and switch applies here. I do enjoy the increased reliability, but really feel cheated on the significant difference in speed.