AFACT: AUSTRALIAN FEDERATION AGAINST COPYRIGHT THEFT. Let's break it down shall we?
AUSTRALIAN: Bullshit! That research was conducted by firms in the UK. Thank you for taking research jobs from Australia and giving it to the British. And your ad has voice-overs with English accents. That again is jobs taken out of the Australian economy by a company that is so worried about money and jobs being lost in Australia. Hypocrites.
FEDERATION: What, is this "Star Trek"? A federation of who, anyway? OK, there's not much I can say here really. Though just to pad it out, I will add that they used to be called "The Australasian Film And Video Securities Office" which sounded much more serious than AFACT.
AGAINST: Who are you guys against? You used to say "Have YOU ever bought or rented a video tape that wasn't quite right? It may have been a pirate copy, an illegal and inferior copy for which you paid good money." Yep. The consumer was as much the victim of piracy as the studios were in the old ad. Now you, in your English accents, tell us that piracy supports terrorism and that copyright is cool and that "if you buy a pirate DVD then you are a pirate"? That's funny, in the 1990's you said we were the victims of piracy as well as you but now we're criminals if we buy a pirate product? It's not always clear if a DVD is a pirated copy. Heck, you had a whole campaign trying to explain it to consumers, thus pointing out that many consumers didn't know what a pirated product was but we're still criminals if we accidentally buy a pirate DVD?
COPYRIGHT THEFT: Well nobody is stealing your copyright. You still have your copyright. People are downloading movies and television, AFACT, not downloading your copyright.
In case you haven't worked it out yet, by the way, I'm an Australian living in Australia.
At this point I would now like to take issue with what you guys get the DVD companies to print on the back covers. From the copyright warning on the back of a DVD released by Roadshow Entertainment, it reads "Any unauthorised copying, editing, exhibition, renting, exchanging, hiring, lending, public performances, diffusion, and/or broadcasts of this digital video disc or any part thereof is strictly prohibited." Unauthorised EXCHANGING? Unauthorised LENDING? Why not? Seriously, if I wanna lend my friend a DVD then I bloody well will and you can't stop me! And if I wanna take a couple of DVD's down to the pawn shop and swap them for a CD or two, I'm bloody well gonna do that too!
Seriously, I am certain that there have been plenty of times when people have lent their DVD's to their friends for them to watch. I know I borrow DVD's from my Dad and he borrows mine. And before anybody says that's probably OK because he's family, we live about 2,200 miles apart and we lend them to each other via post. Would I have bought those DVD's myself? More than likely not as he lends me stuff I've never seen before. Would I buy them after I've borrowed them? That depends on if I like it or not. Same with my Dad.
But what exactly is piracy anyway? According to Australian law, it is illegal to record a program off TV and watch that recording more than once. You must delete or erase it after you have watched it one time. It is illegal to rip a DVD and convert the video to a format which will work on your iPod or iPhone or any other device. Music you can but video you can not. So you could say that many people in Australia pirate a lot just to watch their favourite DVD's while on the move.
One last thing: I bought all six volumes of the cartoon "Fairly Odd Parents" on DVD from Magna Pacific, a DVD company in Australia. I took them home, started watching them, then half way through disc 1 I took them to my computer and ripped them. Why? Each disc had a three and a half minute commercial for Nickelodeon's section at the Dreamworld amusement park that you could not skip or fast forward through (after the un-shippable copyright warning and company logos) which if I accidentally hit the "back" button to try to find the menu, it was back to the start of the disc! Four episodes on one disc and I had to sit through that commercial three times just to get through two episodes! I couldn't care less about what's legal and what's illegal when I am forced to watch a commercial for a place that is at one ONE amusement park in a HUGE country like Australia that I can't go to, just to watch the TV show that I paid to own a legitimate copy of!
At the outset, I would like to point out that I am in Australia and I can't access Hulu so I am basing anything I say about Hulu on hearsay and assumptions.
As far as I am aware, Hulu was set up to compete with YouTube by offering people a legal alternative. For these stations to turn around and criticize them for doing what they were supposed to do is sheer stupidity. Your's obviously, Captain Obvious!
I'm going to talk about video on demand. I may put forward some ideas, which should be obvious ideas. But sometimes these entertainment industry bigwigs turn a blind eye to Captain Obvious.
People want TV shows and movies on demand. If YouTube is any indication, they don't necessarily want to pay for it. So give them video on demand with commercial breaks. But cut the crap and do it properly: Make it available worldwide, especially if a show is over five years old as there's little chance of a major network picking up a show for "first run" five years after it originally aired. Preferably, however, a TV series would be produced in advance and premiere world wide. Movies can stay at the cinema and then be available on a VOD service on the same day as the DVD release. People who like the movie will still go out and buy the DVD. People who download the movie never would have bought it in the first place.
Now, nobody likes commercial breaks. So let's give people an option to have a commercial free package. They would have to pay for it, of course. But people are willing to pay for something they want if the price is right and the service is good. See Netflix for a perfect example. And with the available technology there is no excuse for such a service to be bad.
If I had the money to license the TV shows, I'd do it myself! And although it would take me about a year to get a good catalogue uploaded, I could start it up without needing to buy any additional hardware up front (just down the line) - I could do it with almost any home computer. But, seeing as I am a nobody, I would never hear from them unless I splashed cash in their faces.
Basically, there are no acceptable excuses left. And the studios have no choice, really. It's give people a good service at a reasonable price or people will seek out alternatives, regardless of whether or not it is legal.
In Australia the situation is crazy as well. Every ISP counts usage and most of them now count uploads as well as downloads (a few years ago it was mostly downloads only counted) so what does the government do? It invests a few truckloads of money into improving the infrastructure with their "National Broadband Network" - which offers speeds of 'up to' 100Mb and is going to count all data usage, both uploads and downloads and slow you down or charge you extra if you go over that limit.
Have you ever heard about Townsville? No, not the city that the Powerpuff Girls live in. This is a city where people can live, go to work, socialize, make friends, etc, etc. Sound like a Zynga game yet?
At what point do law enforcement folks realize that the entertainment industry is a biased party and that you can't just accept everything they say as fact?
Probably around the same time that these industries stop calling themselves FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft)
That joke in my post title is not mine: It was from the album "Bad News" by a heavy metal band called Bad News (made up of comedians from the UK and Brian May of Queen) which was released on ENI in 1987. But I digress...
Ah, EMI. What are we going to do with you? You were my favourite record label as a kid because you had The Beatles and Paul McCartney and Queen. Now you are almost at the same level as my most despised labels, Sony and Warner.
So, EMI, your UK record plant made great records in the last few years. Then I bought Lily Alen's album "Smile" and got the same horrible distorted mess that was on the CD. What happened to quality control?
You have an artist on your roster, Amos Lee, who is so good that I pre-ordered his latest album, something I have never done in my life! I have his first two albums on record from audiophile label Classic Records. They sounded horrible on your dynamically limited CD's yet Classic brought out the soul in this singer and his music. But just as his third album is due, I hear from a very reliable source that you, EMI, have pulled out of contracts with audiophile labels who produce your albums on record. Why? Your CD's sound horrible and you expect me to trust you to cut a record with as much care as an audiophile label? You lost many audiophile fans that month, I am certain.
Ah, but your plight continues. One of your major acts, Queen, has moved to Universal and taken their back catalogue with them. Another, Paul McCartney, has taken his back catalogue to independent label Concord. Rumours persist that Pink Floyd, Deep Purple and David Bowie all plan to do the same. What went wrong?
I think that, like the other three major labels, you let a combination of greed and fear get in your way. You mastered and remastered and dynamically compressed the life out of your CD's to be louder like Sony did. You charged through the roof for many back-catalogue titles like all the labels did until a consumer backlash forced the prices down. You, like the others, profit from recordings made 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and even 60 years ago which have already more than recouped their costs.
I'll give you credit, EMI, as you were the first major label to allow iTunes to sell your songs without DRM. But to your discredit, you charged a higher price for the privallige, even charging customers extra per song to convert existing purchases to DRM-free copies.
I'll give you credit, EMI, as you have released many albums on LP as well as CD, thus giving the consumer some choice in the format they desired. But to your discredit, you did pull the plug on letting audiophile labels offer your product on LP, whilst allowing audiophile labels to still produce your product on CD. This, at least to me, suggests that you KNOW your CD's are inferior. So, I ask again, how can I trust you to do a great quality LP?
EMI, have you really made Every Mistake Imaginable? Maybe you have. But there is a chance to redeem yourself. Many chances, in fact. Improve the quality of your product, which is recorded music. It is not hard to release audiophile standard CD's. And it is no more expensive than running a master tape into a computer's soundcard. Any mastering engineer worth their salary shoud be able to do a great job.
Give download purchasing customers the option to download audiophile standard files as well as the edition that is optimised for MP3 players.
Plunder your vaults and discover the genuine treasure that is the EMI catalogue. Give it the care and love it deserves. And give the creators of that catalogue their dues too. Customers may want to pay less for a CD than you'd like to charge them but that should not stop you form producing high quality releases. High quality audio does not cost any more to put onto a CD than the low quality distorted garbage all the major lables have been releasing lately.
Let your artists record and release an album or EP or single when they are good and ready to. Yes, studio time may cost money, but without studio time there would have been no "Pet Souds", no "Sgt Pepper" or no "Dark Side Of The Moon".
And for God's sake, please attempt to make a "Best of the 1980's" compilation that does NOT feature Culture Club's "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me" or "Karma Chameleon". I think that they are great songs but I already have five copies of each because you keep on putting out "Best of the 1980's" CD's with 3 or 4 different songs and the other 15-16 are repeats from the last release!
(Of course, I am under no illusion that anybody from EMI will actually read this post, but I thank you all here at TechDirt for letting me get all that off my chest!)
I just had a look at Bell's plans and it seems the most they offer is a 75GB per month plan for CA$53 with uploads and downloads counted. Here in Australia the ISP's who count uploads are often (though not always) offering plans with hundreds of GB's of data.
These are three of Australia's biggest ISP's and even smaller ones also offer large plans like thse. The phone lines are controlled by Telstra or Optus and both of those companies count uploads (and have done from the get go) and even limit the upload speed to 1MB as a maximum (works out to 120k maximum on average)
*Internode has many plans that do not count uploads as well
Here in Australia almost every ISP has had metered broadband internet since "day one" - quite a few ISP's were also metering it back in the days of dial-up. A few years ago most ISP's only counted downloads. Now almost all ISP's count uploads as well as downloads. This co-incided with the "Web 2.0 Explosion" - more user generated content equals more uploads which equals more money for ISP's. There have also been many articles as to why there will never be unmetered internet.
OK, in Australia we aparrently only have two "internet pipes" connecting us to the rest of the world. Does this mean it would only take two phone calls to disconnect us from the internet? Oh, wait, that's another topic.... Ah, yes, I remember what I was gonna say now: They say it costs money to shift data around, hence why they say we will always have metered internet in Australia. They also say it's why sooner or later the whole world will be on metered internet.
You know, when I heard that NBC was looking to megre with Comcast, the first thing I thought was "Oh, so THAT'S how they're going to try and stop illegal downloads". It seems a bit drastic, but, hey, if it works, they'll be happy.
News just at hand, it is revealed that there is a city in Australia called TOWNSVILLE! Now, really, doesn't that just sound like the name of a Zynga game? (And, no, it is not named after the city that the PowerPuff Girls live in)
"Counterfiet goods" - or, as we call them in Australia, cheap knock-offs - won't cost America jobs any more than the same item would cost Australia jobs. Why? Because everything is made in China anyway! (or other parts of south east Asia or Mexico)
Optus Mobile Broadband (the USB dongle for your laptop type mobile broadband) now has a similar condition whereby if you go over your limit you can either check "specific unmetered sites and Optus email" or you can buy additional data blocks. Mind you, their limit is I think 3GB per month still.
OK, I've read about some crazy lawsuits on here and kept my mouth shut but I have to speak up if only to voice how ridiculous that sounds! No, I'm not doubting the story is true: I'm referring to how ridiculous that situation is! If I was to pick words to describe it, I would need a vocabulary twice the size of my current one with swear words WAY stronger! I mean, for f*ck's sake, the world is beyond f*cked up and nobody is safe from these c*nts who abuse the sh*t outta the legal systems anymore =(
I think a lot of the comment-posters here are missing the point. Yes, Universal owns the music and videos Justin has recorded for Universal whislt under contract to them. Yes, Justin has lost the right to put the videos he has performed on/in up on YouTube. But the point of the article is not whether or not he has the rights to put videos of his newest songs on YouTube - we know he doesn't - but whether or not he should be allowed to.
As much as I don't care for Justin I-Can't-Even-Pronounce-His-Last-Name-Let-Alone-SPELL-It, I do agree that a performing artist should be allowed, if not have the right, to promote themselves to their fans via whatever means they choose. Also, in Justin's case, it's not as if Universal will lose (m)any* sales over the video being on YouTube. (*they may lose some but it would be very few compared to how many they will make).
If I was Justin I'd be making a video addressing my fans explaining why my new video isn't on YouTube.
"For more than 20 years, I've written and drawn comics for a variety of major publishers: Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Image and Disney. Like many artists, I've seen my sales figures chipped away as the print market shrinks due, in no small part, to rampant online piracy." ~ Colleen Doran
"Though a speculator boom in the early 1990s temporarily increased specialty store sales — collectors 'invested' in multiple copies of a single comic to sell at a profit later — these booms ended in a collectibles glut, and comic sales declined sharply in the mid-1990s, leading to the demise of many hundreds of stores." ~ Wikipedia
Now I know Wikipedia is NOT the most reliable source of information out there, I remember hearing from my local comics store in 1998 about declining sales of comics. If sales of comic books has been decreasing since before 1998, does that mean piracy is to blame or have people just stopped buying comic books? And, seriously, how many pirated comic books would there have been in 1998? Were scanners even good enough to scan a comic books back then?
You know what? While I'm at it, considering this article is called "Don't Blame 'Piracy' For Your Own Failures To Engage", I think I'll add this quote from something I found a few weeks ago at Google Books:
"Until 1995 record store sales grew even when accounting for inflation, but in 1995 when total unit sales dropped about 1.0% (to 1,113.1m units down from 1,122.7m units of the previous year) the slight increase (2.1%) in dollar value of shipments was nullified by an approximate 3% inflation. The result was an actual decrease in retail store sales in constant dollars. The decrease of sales in constant dollars continued through the end of the twentieth century." ~ Geoffrey P. Hull from his book "The recording industry" (Routledge, 2004, p212)
This means that CD sales have been in decline since 1995. Whilst the revenue initially kept going up, the total number of CD's being sold was in decline. How many people knew about MP3's back then? How many people had the internet in 1995? How many people could afford a CD burner in 1995?
You may consider that as "off topic" but the topic is not blaming piracy for slumping sales. So I think my point on both cases is valid and I look forward to reading people's thoughts on them.
I've been reading up on this a LOT in the last year as a friend of mine wishes to run an online radio station based in Australia for Australians and he is even obtaining the legla licenses to broadcast in Australia. The license also covers numerous other countries by default but not the US.
Whilst helping him to find out what he needs to know, it transpired that a web radio staion that is available in the US - REGARDLESS OF WHERE IT IS ORIGINATING FROM OR WHO IT IS MARKETED TO - must still abide by the RIAA rules or face being sued. Even if not intended for the US market, if somebody in the US is able to tune in to it, the station must be licensed in the US or geoblocked from the US.
Funny.... I thought each country had it's own laws. An Australian citizen webcasting in Australia for an Australian audience but who cannot afford geoblocking software - heck, the license fee alone is breaking his bank but he's still going for it! - but he must abide by US law because somebody in the US can listen?
On the post: Questionable 'Piracy' Study Found; Details Show It's Even More Ridiculous Than Expected
Re: Re: A FACT or two
(although I actually sorted that pesky ad out five years ago)
On the post: Questionable 'Piracy' Study Found; Details Show It's Even More Ridiculous Than Expected
A FACT or two
AUSTRALIAN: Bullshit! That research was conducted by firms in the UK. Thank you for taking research jobs from Australia and giving it to the British. And your ad has voice-overs with English accents. That again is jobs taken out of the Australian economy by a company that is so worried about money and jobs being lost in Australia. Hypocrites.
FEDERATION: What, is this "Star Trek"? A federation of who, anyway? OK, there's not much I can say here really. Though just to pad it out, I will add that they used to be called "The Australasian Film And Video Securities Office" which sounded much more serious than AFACT.
AGAINST: Who are you guys against? You used to say "Have YOU ever bought or rented a video tape that wasn't quite right? It may have been a pirate copy, an illegal and inferior copy for which you paid good money." Yep. The consumer was as much the victim of piracy as the studios were in the old ad. Now you, in your English accents, tell us that piracy supports terrorism and that copyright is cool and that "if you buy a pirate DVD then you are a pirate"? That's funny, in the 1990's you said we were the victims of piracy as well as you but now we're criminals if we buy a pirate product? It's not always clear if a DVD is a pirated copy. Heck, you had a whole campaign trying to explain it to consumers, thus pointing out that many consumers didn't know what a pirated product was but we're still criminals if we accidentally buy a pirate DVD?
1990's Advert http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FNqBZ9n-A8
Note the voice is Australian in that one.
2000's Advert http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTMIz0_Iij8
Oh, so Australia's not good enough to have our own anti-piracy ads anymore?
"Accidental Pirate" - Yes, I saw this on TV! It is a REAL ad!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJL22f5sgDE
COPYRIGHT THEFT: Well nobody is stealing your copyright. You still have your copyright. People are downloading movies and television, AFACT, not downloading your copyright.
In case you haven't worked it out yet, by the way, I'm an Australian living in Australia.
At this point I would now like to take issue with what you guys get the DVD companies to print on the back covers. From the copyright warning on the back of a DVD released by Roadshow Entertainment, it reads "Any unauthorised copying, editing, exhibition, renting, exchanging, hiring, lending, public performances, diffusion, and/or broadcasts of this digital video disc or any part thereof is strictly prohibited." Unauthorised EXCHANGING? Unauthorised LENDING? Why not? Seriously, if I wanna lend my friend a DVD then I bloody well will and you can't stop me! And if I wanna take a couple of DVD's down to the pawn shop and swap them for a CD or two, I'm bloody well gonna do that too!
Seriously, I am certain that there have been plenty of times when people have lent their DVD's to their friends for them to watch. I know I borrow DVD's from my Dad and he borrows mine. And before anybody says that's probably OK because he's family, we live about 2,200 miles apart and we lend them to each other via post. Would I have bought those DVD's myself? More than likely not as he lends me stuff I've never seen before. Would I buy them after I've borrowed them? That depends on if I like it or not. Same with my Dad.
But what exactly is piracy anyway? According to Australian law, it is illegal to record a program off TV and watch that recording more than once. You must delete or erase it after you have watched it one time. It is illegal to rip a DVD and convert the video to a format which will work on your iPod or iPhone or any other device. Music you can but video you can not. So you could say that many people in Australia pirate a lot just to watch their favourite DVD's while on the move.
One last thing: I bought all six volumes of the cartoon "Fairly Odd Parents" on DVD from Magna Pacific, a DVD company in Australia. I took them home, started watching them, then half way through disc 1 I took them to my computer and ripped them. Why? Each disc had a three and a half minute commercial for Nickelodeon's section at the Dreamworld amusement park that you could not skip or fast forward through (after the un-shippable copyright warning and company logos) which if I accidentally hit the "back" button to try to find the menu, it was back to the start of the disc! Four episodes on one disc and I had to sit through that commercial three times just to get through two episodes! I couldn't care less about what's legal and what's illegal when I am forced to watch a commercial for a place that is at one ONE amusement park in a HUGE country like Australia that I can't go to, just to watch the TV show that I paid to own a legitimate copy of!
On the post: Hulu Realizing That Taking Orders From Every Entertainment Company Boss Isn't Effective
Enough Is Enough!
As far as I am aware, Hulu was set up to compete with YouTube by offering people a legal alternative. For these stations to turn around and criticize them for doing what they were supposed to do is sheer stupidity. Your's obviously, Captain Obvious!
I'm going to talk about video on demand. I may put forward some ideas, which should be obvious ideas. But sometimes these entertainment industry bigwigs turn a blind eye to Captain Obvious.
People want TV shows and movies on demand. If YouTube is any indication, they don't necessarily want to pay for it. So give them video on demand with commercial breaks. But cut the crap and do it properly: Make it available worldwide, especially if a show is over five years old as there's little chance of a major network picking up a show for "first run" five years after it originally aired. Preferably, however, a TV series would be produced in advance and premiere world wide. Movies can stay at the cinema and then be available on a VOD service on the same day as the DVD release. People who like the movie will still go out and buy the DVD. People who download the movie never would have bought it in the first place.
Now, nobody likes commercial breaks. So let's give people an option to have a commercial free package. They would have to pay for it, of course. But people are willing to pay for something they want if the price is right and the service is good. See Netflix for a perfect example. And with the available technology there is no excuse for such a service to be bad.
If I had the money to license the TV shows, I'd do it myself! And although it would take me about a year to get a good catalogue uploaded, I could start it up without needing to buy any additional hardware up front (just down the line) - I could do it with almost any home computer. But, seeing as I am a nobody, I would never hear from them unless I splashed cash in their faces.
Basically, there are no acceptable excuses left. And the studios have no choice, really. It's give people a good service at a reasonable price or people will seek out alternatives, regardless of whether or not it is legal.
On the post: As AT&T Introduces Caps, BT Removes Them; Says Investing In Network Is Smarter
Re:
On the post: Zynga Tries To Trademark 'Ville'
Townsville
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Townsville,+Quee nsland,+Australia&aq=0&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=29.716225,86.572266&ie=UTF8&h q=&hnear=Townsville+Queensland,+Australia&ll=-19.257998,146.818542&spn=0.138071,0.338173 &z=12
On the post: UK Court Dismisses Yet Another Bogus Criminal Lawsuit Against Torrent Tracker Admins
Face The FACT
Probably around the same time that these industries stop calling themselves FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft)
On the post: Copyright Is An Incentive... To Create Lawsuits
From the 'nuff said dpt (external division)
On the post: Multiple Lawsuits From Multiple People Who All Say They Came Up With Kung Fu Panda
Yep, it's original!
Need I say more?
On the post: Once Again, Why Homeland Security's Domain Name Seizures Are Almost Certainly Not Legal
Very well said!
On the post: Recording Industry Persecution Complex: Claiming EMI's Plight Is Due To File Sharing
EMI - Every Mistake Imaginable!
Ah, EMI. What are we going to do with you? You were my favourite record label as a kid because you had The Beatles and Paul McCartney and Queen. Now you are almost at the same level as my most despised labels, Sony and Warner.
So, EMI, your UK record plant made great records in the last few years. Then I bought Lily Alen's album "Smile" and got the same horrible distorted mess that was on the CD. What happened to quality control?
You have an artist on your roster, Amos Lee, who is so good that I pre-ordered his latest album, something I have never done in my life! I have his first two albums on record from audiophile label Classic Records. They sounded horrible on your dynamically limited CD's yet Classic brought out the soul in this singer and his music. But just as his third album is due, I hear from a very reliable source that you, EMI, have pulled out of contracts with audiophile labels who produce your albums on record. Why? Your CD's sound horrible and you expect me to trust you to cut a record with as much care as an audiophile label? You lost many audiophile fans that month, I am certain.
Ah, but your plight continues. One of your major acts, Queen, has moved to Universal and taken their back catalogue with them. Another, Paul McCartney, has taken his back catalogue to independent label Concord. Rumours persist that Pink Floyd, Deep Purple and David Bowie all plan to do the same. What went wrong?
I think that, like the other three major labels, you let a combination of greed and fear get in your way. You mastered and remastered and dynamically compressed the life out of your CD's to be louder like Sony did. You charged through the roof for many back-catalogue titles like all the labels did until a consumer backlash forced the prices down. You, like the others, profit from recordings made 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and even 60 years ago which have already more than recouped their costs.
I'll give you credit, EMI, as you were the first major label to allow iTunes to sell your songs without DRM. But to your discredit, you charged a higher price for the privallige, even charging customers extra per song to convert existing purchases to DRM-free copies.
I'll give you credit, EMI, as you have released many albums on LP as well as CD, thus giving the consumer some choice in the format they desired. But to your discredit, you did pull the plug on letting audiophile labels offer your product on LP, whilst allowing audiophile labels to still produce your product on CD. This, at least to me, suggests that you KNOW your CD's are inferior. So, I ask again, how can I trust you to do a great quality LP?
EMI, have you really made Every Mistake Imaginable? Maybe you have. But there is a chance to redeem yourself. Many chances, in fact. Improve the quality of your product, which is recorded music. It is not hard to release audiophile standard CD's. And it is no more expensive than running a master tape into a computer's soundcard. Any mastering engineer worth their salary shoud be able to do a great job.
Give download purchasing customers the option to download audiophile standard files as well as the edition that is optimised for MP3 players.
Plunder your vaults and discover the genuine treasure that is the EMI catalogue. Give it the care and love it deserves. And give the creators of that catalogue their dues too. Customers may want to pay less for a CD than you'd like to charge them but that should not stop you form producing high quality releases. High quality audio does not cost any more to put onto a CD than the low quality distorted garbage all the major lables have been releasing lately.
Let your artists record and release an album or EP or single when they are good and ready to. Yes, studio time may cost money, but without studio time there would have been no "Pet Souds", no "Sgt Pepper" or no "Dark Side Of The Moon".
And for God's sake, please attempt to make a "Best of the 1980's" compilation that does NOT feature Culture Club's "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me" or "Karma Chameleon". I think that they are great songs but I already have five copies of each because you keep on putting out "Best of the 1980's" CD's with 3 or 4 different songs and the other 15-16 are repeats from the last release!
(Of course, I am under no illusion that anybody from EMI will actually read this post, but I thank you all here at TechDirt for letting me get all that off my chest!)
On the post: Metered Bandwidth Isn't About Stopping The Bandwidth Hogs; It's About Preserving Old Media Business Models
Here In Australia..... (Part 2)
Internode* http://www.internode.on.net/residential/broadband/adsl/easy_broadband/
TPG http://www.tpg.com.au/products_services/adsl2plus_pricing.php?/pricing/adsl2plus
iiNet http://www.iinet.net.au/broadband/plans.html
These are three of Australia's biggest ISP's and even smaller ones also offer large plans like thse. The phone lines are controlled by Telstra or Optus and both of those companies count uploads (and have done from the get go) and even limit the upload speed to 1MB as a maximum (works out to 120k maximum on average)
*Internode has many plans that do not count uploads as well
On the post: Metered Bandwidth Isn't About Stopping The Bandwidth Hogs; It's About Preserving Old Media Business Models
Here In Australia.....
OK, in Australia we aparrently only have two "internet pipes" connecting us to the rest of the world. Does this mean it would only take two phone calls to disconnect us from the internet? Oh, wait, that's another topic.... Ah, yes, I remember what I was gonna say now: They say it costs money to shift data around, hence why they say we will always have metered internet in Australia. They also say it's why sooner or later the whole world will be on metered internet.
You know, when I heard that NBC was looking to megre with Comcast, the first thing I thought was "Oh, so THAT'S how they're going to try and stop illegal downloads". It seems a bit drastic, but, hey, if it works, they'll be happy.
On the post: Zynga Becoming A Trademark Bully: Threatens Blingville For Daring To Use 'ville'
On the post: Highly Flawed 'Piracy' Report Used To Support Positions That Are Unrelated
A Question
On the post: T-Mobile UK Decides Mobile Broadband Shouldn't Actually Be Used For Mobile Broadband
This is Australia calling
On the post: Steam Engine Society Forced To Sell Steam Engine Because 13 Photographers Might Have (But Probably Didn't) See Article
On the post: More Extremely Silly Trademark Lawsuits: Mars vs. Hershey Over Totally Different Looking Wrappers
Re: My gosh
On the post: YouTube Sensation Justin Bieber Blocked From Uploading His Own Music To YouTube By Copyright
As much as I don't care for Justin I-Can't-Even-Pronounce-His-Last-Name-Let-Alone-SPELL-It, I do agree that a performing artist should be allowed, if not have the right, to promote themselves to their fans via whatever means they choose. Also, in Justin's case, it's not as if Universal will lose (m)any* sales over the video being on YouTube. (*they may lose some but it would be very few compared to how many they will make).
If I was Justin I'd be making a video addressing my fans explaining why my new video isn't on YouTube.
On the post: Don't Blame 'Piracy' For Your Own Failures To Engage
Sales figures of comics
"Though a speculator boom in the early 1990s temporarily increased specialty store sales — collectors 'invested' in multiple copies of a single comic to sell at a profit later — these booms ended in a collectibles glut, and comic sales declined sharply in the mid-1990s, leading to the demise of many hundreds of stores." ~ Wikipedia
Now I know Wikipedia is NOT the most reliable source of information out there, I remember hearing from my local comics store in 1998 about declining sales of comics. If sales of comic books has been decreasing since before 1998, does that mean piracy is to blame or have people just stopped buying comic books? And, seriously, how many pirated comic books would there have been in 1998? Were scanners even good enough to scan a comic books back then?
You know what? While I'm at it, considering this article is called "Don't Blame 'Piracy' For Your Own Failures To Engage", I think I'll add this quote from something I found a few weeks ago at Google Books:
"Until 1995 record store sales grew even when accounting for inflation, but in 1995 when total unit sales dropped about 1.0% (to 1,113.1m units down from 1,122.7m units of the previous year) the slight increase (2.1%) in dollar value of shipments was nullified by an approximate 3% inflation. The result was an actual decrease in retail store sales in constant dollars. The decrease of sales in constant dollars continued through the end of the twentieth century." ~ Geoffrey P. Hull from his book "The recording industry" (Routledge, 2004, p212)
This means that CD sales have been in decline since 1995. Whilst the revenue initially kept going up, the total number of CD's being sold was in decline. How many people knew about MP3's back then? How many people had the internet in 1995? How many people could afford a CD burner in 1995?
You may consider that as "off topic" but the topic is not blaming piracy for slumping sales. So I think my point on both cases is valid and I look forward to reading people's thoughts on them.
On the post: How The DMCA Is Restricting Online Radio In Ridiculous Ways
Re: Re: Re:
Whilst helping him to find out what he needs to know, it transpired that a web radio staion that is available in the US - REGARDLESS OF WHERE IT IS ORIGINATING FROM OR WHO IT IS MARKETED TO - must still abide by the RIAA rules or face being sued. Even if not intended for the US market, if somebody in the US is able to tune in to it, the station must be licensed in the US or geoblocked from the US.
Funny.... I thought each country had it's own laws. An Australian citizen webcasting in Australia for an Australian audience but who cannot afford geoblocking software - heck, the license fee alone is breaking his bank but he's still going for it! - but he must abide by US law because somebody in the US can listen?
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