In the context of a blog about the online music world, I thought you might be interested in an email exchange I’ve had this evening with a board member of both the IFPI and the BPI.
I’ve had an email conversation with Paul Birch of Revolver Records this evening. Rather than comment on it, I’ll just post it here for your information, in full and unedited, with his permission.
_______________________
Andrew
Looking at your site I do think allowing indiscriminate criticism of the RIAA is inappropriate for a Government funded institution.
Paul
_______________________
Hi Paul,
You might be right, but I’m not a government funded institution, and nor do I consider my criticism of the RIAA indiscriminate.
However, if you find something that’s factually incorrect, I’d be more than happy to amend it.
Thanks for checking out the site.
Cheers,
Andrew
_______________________
Let’s talk about it when we next meet-up, as I don’t intend to write a thesis on the subject.
However, I stand by my assertion.
Regards
Paul
_______________________
Fair enough. But if you do happen to stumble across something that you have a particular problem with, if you could point it out to me, that would be most helpful.
Look forward to catching up.
_______________________
Andrew, Well I am in regular contact with the RIAA and both they and the IFPI are subject to hate mail as a consequence of hubcap, our litigation against consumers for illegally downloading our copyrights.
This manifests itself into individual members of our RIAA management being singled-out for malicious statements and blogs on the internet. As an example you probably saw the case earlier in the week of a Chinese Laundry in the United States being sued for $54M for loosing a pair of trousers, belonging to a lawyer. If you take a look at the criticism on your blog of the RIAA by one of the contributors, they are engaging in a similar malicious prosecution in the US courts but go further and make a number of assertions through your blog that gives credibility to illegal downloading.
I am not concerned that people decide to take out law-suits against our organisations; we have the resources to deal with that. What does concern me however is the repeating of malicious falsehoods that occur in a number of internet blog, and are re-reported as having validity contribute widely to the assertion that right is on the side of wrong-doing.
You might argue that your professional blog is your opinion alone, however you are interwoven into the views and policy of the University of Central England and I think that puts you in an exposed positon Andrew.
It might not be nice to be sued by the RIAA and potentially put in a position of being made bankrupt; neither is issuing redundancy notices to hard working staff. People don’t have to download; they do however have to work. Consumers that enjoy music have a lot of options and enjoying it free on the radio is at least one of them, with last FM and You Tube there is near on demand service free at the point of use. But stealing isn’t clever, but presumably most people don’t really wish to steal, and only share because it is so easy and seems harmless/victimless. If people need to affirmatively hide their activities, then there is an understanding of wrongdoing. I feel that your blog underpins the misuse of our copyright and attacks our trade associations.
There are very serious allegations made in this anti-RIAA link on your blog, and I don’t think its appropriate that you link to them.
Paul
_______________________
2 questions, then please Paul:
1) Which link?
2) Would you be willing for me to post this email to the blog to present a counterbalance to the anti-RIAA position?
_______________________
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/06/06/
riaa-extortion-and-conspiracy-in-the-same-sentence
Above is the link, I am not sure how I navigated to it from your blog.
I am willing for you to publicise anything I say here, but I think that what is more desirable is to take down links from your site that promote this hatred of the recording Industry, because the assumption is that by linking to them that you support the extreme view heralded. That might be unfair to you by the way as you may or may not hold those views. I can only seek to reason with those views but my argument about biting the hand that feeds it is I feel valid. I respect everyone’s right to dissent but I am anxious that Individual managers within our trade association have the right not to be publicly hounded.
Best wishes
Paul
_______________________
I remember that article. I can see how it would be seen as undesirable PR for the RIAA, but I’m not at all convinced it either represents an extreme view or promotes the hounding of individual managers represented by the recording industry association.
In fact, from my time online reading articles about the music industry, I would say it’s about par for the course. Most independent commentators take the position that the suing of individuals by the RIAA has been a public relations disaster, and that rather than deter illegal activity, they have simply turned the record-buying public against them. If someone is taking a countersuit against the organisation, I’m afraid that’s comment-worthy. As it happens, I think I remember hearing that the case was thrown out, but I’d have to check the facts.
The way I see it is this: what I’m linking to is opinion about a news story. It’s genuine news and it’s legitimate opinion. You may not agree, but I don’t see anything there that warrants a take-down notice.
I would never endorse hate speech or the encouragement of the victimisation of any individual no matter what their job. That link doesn’t even come close to either of those things.
More importantly, as someone who comments about the industry, only linking to items that echo the official position of the major label organisations would pretty much make my site valueless to its readers.
Download Squad, the source of that article, is pretty much uniformly interesting, relevant and linkworthy. I don’t think this was an exception.
But I think it’s important that both sides are put, so I’ll post this email exchange up on the site. If there’s anything else you’d like to say on this, then pop it in a reply to this email, and I’ll leave it at that.
I think it’s great that you’re willing to have this discussion in public. Much appreciated.
_______________________
Andrew
It expresses opinion, it’s not factual. If you persist then I shall make a formal complaint to the University.
Your choice.
Paul
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[...] The full post and comments can be found here Saved in: Anti-Piracy Gangs | Tagged with: No Tags [...]
[...] The RIAA is getting alot of negative press lately from all of their lawsuits. But it turns out, that they think they can control what people are saying about them too. As they are currently threatening a member of the faculty of the University Of Central England. [...]
[...] I felt this dubious exchange (hat tipe) was worth highlighting, not just because it’s a prime example of how NOT to interact with your customers, but because the rest of Andrews blog is so interesting. One for ,a href=”http://www.bloglines.com/public/mrwiblog”>the feed reader, methinks. [...]
[...] This was taken from http://newmusicstrategies.com/2007/06/14/an-ifpi-bpi-board-member-writes/ by way of http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/06/15/an-open-response-to-an-ifpi-board-member/ [...]
[...] If you want to see just how confused recording industry execs are these days, go read this exchange between Andrew Dubber and Paul Birch (via Boing Boing). Dubber is a lecturer at the University of Central England who writes a great blog about the music industry focused on new strategies for the industry. Birch is the head of Revolver Records. The email conversation goes back and forth as Birch insists that Dubber’s link to a Download Squad post was somehow inappropriate. The link is about someone fighting back against yet another bad lawsuit by the RIAA. Why is it inappropriate? That’s hard to parse from Birch’s rambling emails, but it appears to have something to do with giving support to people who hate the RIAA. In the end, after Dubber explains that criticism of actual events seems valid, and Birch responds that if Dubber doesn’t take down his post, he’s going to report Dubber to his university. Reading through the exchange, you begin to realize why the recording industry is in so much trouble. They really believe that anyone criticizing them must be some crazy punk kid trying to steal from them — and can’t believe that anyone who actually knows what they’re talking about could criticize their policies, even as the situation gets worse and worse. And, if an expert actually does criticize their policies, it means they’re supporting piracy and putting RIAA execs at risk — and that can’t be allowed. [...]
[...] The highly fascinating exchange between the IFPI/BPI and Andrew Drubber over at New Music Strategies is interesting. Mostly because Paul Birch of Revolver records really does not get it. We all work our full time day jobs, and we like to do so, but what we put out here at Techwag and a pile of other blogs across the planet really does not reflect our employer’s attitude or opinions. [...]
[...] You can now read the exchange and a good number of comments on his site And in an example of rolling with what comes his way – something the labels might want to start anytime now – he also made another post to “salvage some sort of lesson for independent music business out of all this. That’s what I do”. [...]
[...] In the meantime, I’ve received a huge number of emails from people concerned about what might have happened to the site. After all, there was a lot of material for a suspicious mind to work with there. [...]
[...] Isto deve ser a concepção muito peculiar de “diálogo” a que as companhias discográficas estão habituadas… O link da troca de mails deveria estar aqui mas a UKHost4U, a empresa de alojamento do newmusicstrategies.com decidiu surpreendentemente suspender o site. Algo de muito estranho e tenebroso se passa por aqui. Podem, no entanto, ler as mensagens trocadas entre Birch e Dubber no P2Pnet.net e no TorrentFreak. [...]
[...] The full post and comments can be found here. [...]
[...] Dig from:Here [...]
[...] response to the recent New Music Strategies post An IFPI & BPI Board Member Writes, there have been a lot of insightful and interesting comments — many of which raise [...]
[...] Now they are trying to tell people what to say? That i think is going a bit far in my opinion. Link In this example this board member of IFPI is telling someone else that one can not longer voice an [...]
[...] against the RIAA (I didn’t know it was a woman at the time). Anyway, you should go to Dubbers site and read the email exchange, I won’t reprint it here, because, well, it’s not mine. [...]
[...] how the government in this country works, look no further than this flabbergasting statement by Paul Birch of Revolver Records: “I … think allowing indiscriminate criticism of the RIAA is inappropriate for a Government [...]
[...] en bestuurslid van IFPI, een internationale NVPI en BPI, soort Stichting BREIN, probeert via emails muziekweblogger Andrew Dubber onder druk te zetten. Om kort te gaan: ‘Al je hiermee doorgaat, sturen we de RIAA op je af’. Paul Birch zal [...]
[...] aware, Birmingham blogger Andrew Dubber found his site rocketing to international attention when he posted an email discussion with Paul Birch of Wolverhampton-based Revolver Records. The substance of the debate was fairly [...]
[...] industry are getting increasingly desperate in these times of file-sharing and free downloads: here we find one trying to bully a blogger into deleting a link he posted to a story about heavy-handed RIAA [...]
[...] editorializing seems to have ruffled the feathers of an IFPI executive who is now threatening action, not against us, but against another blog who simply linked to our piece. In an effort to quell what Paul Birch of Revolver Records calls, “malicious statements and [...]
[...] New Music Strategies blog, here. Via Boing Boing, here and BOL, [...]
[...] with Birch’s permission, published the correspondence in full. It began with the following email from Birch: “I do think allowing indiscriminate criticism [...]
[...] Bovendien is er nog genoeg ander moois te vinden op zijn blog waaronder een hilarische email conversatie tussen hem en een IFPA Board member. Exemplarisch verhaal over een gefrustreerde muziekindustrie [...]
[...] Our Strategies If you want to see just how confused recording industry execs are these days, go read this exchange between Andrew Dubber and Paul Birch (via Boing Boing). Dubber is a lecturer at the University of Central England who writes a great [...]
[...] An IFPI & BPI Board Member Writes This was a spectacular post by pretty much any measure you want to throw at it. In a series of [...]
[...] Birch of Revolver Records has started a blog. Paul, you’ll remember, had that email debate with Andrew Dubber last year that went all viral, so it’s great to see him embracing the form. And given he’s an [...]
gioca a poker on line…
Probably texas holdem poker game advance card cash credit…
[...] industry are getting increasingly desperate in these times of file-sharing and free downloads: here we find one trying to bully a blogger into deleting a link he posted to a story about heavy-handed RIAA [...]
129 Comments
………………..speechless……………
Oh, for goodness sake!
Doesn’t that just reaffirm our general opinion about the
RIAA and those associated with it?
Apparently, it’s now improper to have a negative opinion
about the RIAA. (I’m sure they wish it was already illegal.)
“If you’ve got a negative opinion about us, keep it to
yourself, or they’ll be hell to pay!” Sheesh.
I’ll bet they’d sue if they could … maybe they will. :)
Great stuff.
Stand firm!
Well, isn’t that telling?
Doesn’t this just serve to reinforce our opinion of the
RIAA and those associated with them? I know it does
for me.
So, apparently it’s now improper to have a negative
opinion of the RIAA?
“FREEZE! RIAA Thought Police! If you say anything
negative about us you’ll live to regret it!” Sheesh. :(
> What does concern me however is the repeating of
> malicious falsehoods that … are re-reported as having
> validity
I wonder if Paul could suspend his straw men and confirmation bias long enough to read these articles critically:
Ten inconvenient truths about file swapping
IFPI files 8000 lawsuits but can’t keep story straight
More IFPI disinformation
Slyck Interview With ITIC
I’m not saying the IFPI “repeats malicious falsehoods,” but they certainly don’t have the moral high ground here.
This is absolutely priceless. That sentence might actually be one of the quotes of the past decade on this whole debacle!
“It expresses opinion, it’s not factual.”
(Take it down or we’ll get it taken down)
Unbelieveable. I hope this exchange gets all the attention it deserves.
Hmm… Standover tactics.
Thanks for publishing this Andrew. It would seem Paul doesnt “get” the internet and the way the industry is changing.
I imagine back in the day the wooden-wheel-making folk also felt the same way about those new-fangled rubber tires.
Thats some pretty serious charges the RIAA are facing if the Download Squad article is accurate.
I have to say I hadnt read it (or noticed it in NMS until this post with Pauls emails) until now, but now that I have I will be following the cases with interest.
Thanks Paul
“RIAA, extortion, and conspiracy, in the same sentence”
…I guess “censorship” can now be added to the sentence, eh?
When your association deals heavily in negative, reactive behaviour like threats, blackmail and punishment, it shouldn’t be a surprise when people think and say negative things about it.
We want his email address!
“with last FM and You Tube there is near on demand service free at the point of use”
so it’s ok to watch copyrighted music videos on youtube? ‘kthxbye
I’m not giving out Paul’s email address.
He has offered his comments and given his permission to publish them here. He has not given me permission to circulate his personal contact details, and in the light of his comments concerning the personal abuse of members of his affiliate organisations, it would be bad form of me to do so, to say the least.
Nor do I encourage anyone to contact Paul directly about this. If he invites debate, then fine. I have merely given him a public forum within which to express his views.
To dispel any potential accusations of bias or agenda-setting, the account is unedited, and I have made sure that he has the last word. He is also, of course, free to post any additional comments here.
I’ll refrain from commenting further, but I just wanted to make it absolutely clear that I wish Paul no ill, and I am not inclined to set the internet on him.
I just wish to report, with fairness and accuracy, issues of interest to the music industries in the online environment, of which the major record labels and their representative organisations form one part. That’s what I do on this website.
Giving out the personal contact details of individuals within that ecology without their approval is not part of that brief, whether I agree with those individuals or not.
Andrew,
A very interesting exchange. Kudos to Paul Birch for allowing it to be posted unedited.
Paul’s personal view is understandable, given his job at a record company. It’s just unfortunate that he sees his view as the only valid one. The legality of file-sharing is not the issue – everyone understands that. The RIAA’s pursuit of individuals whom they know were not involved in file sharing – that’s the real issue. Why would Paul have a problem with criticism of a clearly dubious practice ?
Oh – and if you ever have an exchange with Paul again, could you clear something up for me ? If I am only buying the right to listen to the songs on a CD – so I can’t make a backup – will he replace it if it gets scratched ?
Andrew
Thank you for clarifying these are my personal views not those of the IFPI, RIAA, BPI or others.
In response to Mark I actually think there is nothing wrong with making a copy for your own use, in a sense side-loading to an iPod or similar is an extension of that use. Under current copyright legislation there is a need for customers to be allowed that facility but without it giving rise to them then making multiple copies for sale. The very specific instrument that allows the one and not the other is the difficulty in drafting any amendment.
Paul
Revolver Records
What strikes me most about this piece is: “against consumers for illegally downloading OUR copyrights”
Shouldn’t that say ‘our artist’s copyrights’ ???
THAT is the problem of these moneyhungry pimptypes.
You’ve just been BoingBoinged just wait until the US comes online.
in case yopu haven’t seen the Grauniad today : ‘Downloads fail to stem Britains’ love of the CD’
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2103600,00.html
Paul needs a hug
I’d be very afraid if I were you – who cares if he reports you to your university – but he might just tell on you to your Mum next!!! That could be nasty.
(Childish, ineffective and prone to tantrums? RIAA? Never!)
:-)
Just getting this in Canada, I was just about to share this with Boing Boing when I found I was beaten to it. Indeed, Dub, you’ve been entirely above board to simply lay out the complete debate (if one could call it that) with no decoration of additional opinion/bias. It speaks for itself without you pushing it, so you won’t.
The internet community will make of it what it will – and believe me, it WILL. You’ve done your due diligence, and been classy as always. Well done.
This Paul fellow is out of touch with reality.
People who fileshare know exactly what they are doing but continue since they realize that a solid moral case can be made for a culture of sharing. Copyright has from the beginning been a virtual right i.e. a construct that societies may decide to have if (and that’s a big if) it leads to better consequences compared with other systems of cultural and intellectual production. Internet and globalization has now provided those other, better systems so laws against non-commercial copying has served its (short) historical purpose. It’s simply time to move on. Polls shows that the people agree on that. Just give us a fair referendum on the issue and we’ll settle it democratically once and for all.
“If people need to affirmatively hide their activities, then there is an understanding of wrongdoing.”
Uh no, rather there is understanding that organizations like IFPI and RIAA have grown so powerful and full of themselves that they don’t hesitate to bully anyone anywhere.
Finally, thanks Paul for drawing my (and probably countless others) attention to the interesting article in Download Squad.
Putting aside the RIAA actions for a moment I was really taken aback by the final threat.
“It expresses opinion, it’s not factual. If you persist then I shall make a formal complaint to the University.
Your choice.”
All this has done is REINFORCE the negative view a lot of people have about recording industry execs. If Paul had simply argued against music piracy he might have got somewhere, but the threat? Oh no, that is exactly where he looses any sympathy and goes from man who has a point to just another recording industry bully. Own goal.
What I don’t like about Paul’s interaction is the underlying threat. He clearly doesn’t like the link, but it’s a link of interest in relation to the music industries and how consumers feel about current developments (but never mind, the biggest downloaders are only the biggest legal consumers too).
And as for ‘telling the University’, what is that all about? This is Dubber’s personal space, and is nothing to do with the policy of a University. By the way – ‘redundancy’ is when you haven’t a role for someone anymore, not as the result of formal complaints against some imaginary policy a University should have (in your mind).
If I disagree with you Paul are you going to sue my Mum (who is certainly an institution ïÂÅ )? She knows about my opinions, which are personally interwoven into her life; surely this makes it her opinion too. Cripes, she may even be responsible for some of my opinions too; I’m dialling the thought police now. Now I know that sounds daft – but do you?
By the way – aren’t Universities supposed to be arenas of rationalised debate and a variety of approaches and opinions on subject areas through evidence and developments from the perspective of both music consumers, producers and institutions (something that Dubber provides material for)? God help those academics who have ever carried out ethnographies of music consumers who may criticise the controls of the music industry; I can only imagine Routledge will be recalling books as we speak.
Did people not challenge the ‘earth is flat’ in such arena’s under the threat of prison, death and such like….It’s amazing that when people don’t like an opinion they lash out; but do note that being bombastic doesn’t make you right. Perhaps it would have been more useful to put your point across about such matters Paul, rather than lashing out and talking about issues (personal hate mail) against individuals which the link doesn’t even deal with! Paul seems to think that anyone who criticises the current copyright system and legal action is a ‘hate-mailer’; people can actually disagree sensibly you know. Ironically this becomes quite a personal and individualised attack with an attempt at a ‘superficial’ threat against Dubber’s vocational postion.
I don’t like the undercurrent and attempt at bullying here – it’s not big and it’s not clever. Either debate or don’t bother – but don’t start with my Dad is bigger than your Dad stuff and threats to intelligent people’s livelihood and any notion of free debate in the public sphere. As I remember when I was a kid, those who started with those claims, often found themselves with egg on their face (that’s a metaphor by the way Paul, I’m not threatening you in some superficial semi Mafioso way).
I think it is pretty important to remember here that Andrew writes a blog that is designed to help those that make their livings from music in it’s various forms to understand and best utilise the online environment.
Trying to educate the owners of copyright and producers and suppliers of music in the different ways they can make money online is a million miles from encouraging copyright theft. Andrew is trying to stimulate and encourage economic activity in new and interesting ways so that small music industry people can use the online environment to make their livings.
If reading NMS helps a small label or online retailer to understand that every mp3 shared does not equal one lost sale but is another opportunity gained, then the industry will really be moving in the right direction.
This only leaves me firmer on my stance to never buy another thing produced by an RIAA company. Thanks Paul!
I’m bringing out an album shortly.
If any of you evil file-sharers who are reading this copy it or give it the Russians then I’m going to get my Dad on you.
Absolutely fascinating stuff! I simply had to bring this to our readers over at TorrentFreak. We have a million hits per month so this will now get a little more exposure ;)
You can find our post here
http://torrentfreak.com/ifpi-board-member-threatens-university-lecturer-for-riaa-criticism/
and of course for all the Diggers (don’t be shy!)
http://digg.com/tech_news/IFPI_Board_Member_Threatens_University_Lecturer_For_RIAA_Criticism
Wonderful post Andrew, thanks for the fast response.
Good grief. Why should government funding prevent someone from commenting on the policies of an industry body? Why should government funding prevent someone from commenting on the policies of *any* body?
Would Paul subscribe to the belief that academics at a government-funded university shouldn’t criticise government policy? Perhaps he’d like press censorship too. Never mind that I disagree with the RIAA’s ridiculous bullying, as someone who used to teach at a government-funded university, I find his whole viewpoint very disturbing.
Amen to the above. Since when did a publicly funded institution have to say only the things that businesses want to hear?
Get that, Paul? PUBLICLY FUNDED…not RIAA funded! If Dubber has a duty to anyone,it is to British taxpayers like ourselves, all of us who want to know how to find our way around the ever-changing world that is the music industry. Tools that we can use, rather than the recording industry keeping all its secrets to itself to dole out in teeny chunks to the favoured few, thus keeping all the power and not sharing it with the actual producers of the music.
This blog is empowering musicians like myself who don’t necessarily want to have to sign their rights away in blood to record companies to make a living. and if that means less for the big boys, so be it.
I just had an email from Paul. It seems that somebody claiming to be him posted a comment here, welcoming discussion via email — and gave out the address.
As I said — and meant — I’m not in favour of giving personal details out without Paul’s permission. The real Paul, that is.
I’ve deleted the comment at his request.
Play nice.
Dear All
There seems to be a lot of bashing going on here that shouldn’t have happened. As you read through all the correspondence between Paul and Andrew, the complaint to Andrew is very clear; the journalist in downloadsquad has used words such as terrorists that is highly inappropriate especially in this day plus many more that were in fact an expression of personal opinion not fact. Paul was correctly pointing out the RIAA are attempting to do their job by protecting the intellectual copyright of the artists and composers. I personally feel that if RIAA were in the wrong then the US courts would have made criticism and thrown out their cases, which from what I understand is not the case.
Paul is a very well respected member of the music community who has done much great work for the artists and independent labels; often he has battled against the major companies all in the name of making the playing field fairer. I feel the comments made by many people show that not only a lack of knowledge and understanding on their part, but also a rudeness in not reading the entire thread. This whole situation makes a mockery of what Andrew is trying to achieve as this is clearly becoming a place where individual thought cannot be expressed.
Universities are for expressing thought however thought should never be expressed until you have a thorough knowledge of the subject matter on both sides of the coin. I hope that people here will read thoroughly the article and the emails between Paul and Andrew before joining the bandwagon of nonsense views and refrain from making threatening and unproductive views. I would hope there are musicians here who realise not everyone is out to rob them and that there needs to be things in place that will protect you from the thoughtless people who blatantly steel (such as the RIAA, IFPI and BPI etc).
The threat here is pretty explicit. First, “…and I think that puts you in an exposed positon (sic) Andrew. It might not be nice to be sued by the RIAA and potentially put in a position of being made bankrupt;” And then, of course, the final “If you persist then I shall make a formal complaint to the University.”
Now, Andrew here is a polite and well-mannered fellow. I am afraid if a RIAA/IFPI exec threatened me with personal bankrupcy I would have been much more forthright about what he should do with his “warnings”.
Paul’s complete lack of understanding what does “freedom of speech” means is no surprise, but it’s rare to find it on display in such a naked and explicit way…
Kaa
“thought should never be expressed until you have a thorough knowledge of the subject matter on both sides of the coin”
This sentence violates its own edict. In fact, universities are places that embrace dialectic — that is, the proffering of contradictory theses and the vigorous discussion of their clash. If you understood “both sides of the coin” (e.g., how academic discourse works), you wouldn’t assert this.
And no one at the site in question called anyone a terrorist. The word is “terrorize” — as in “frighten.” Given that the RIAA’s publicly avowed purpose for its lawsuits is to frighten students and other downloader, this seems like a fair accusation.
Everything else in that post is a quote from a legal filing: IOW, the site reported on a lawsuit that alleged several charges, and, in the course of its reportage, recited the charges. This is just journalism.
Paul: “Thank you for clarifying these are my personal views not those of the IFPI, RIAA, BPI or others.”
So, Paul, you’re allowed to have personal opinions separate from organizations you might be associated with, but Andrew is not? Right, good to know.
Oh cry me a river Paul!
Do you even realize how much PR you’ve just generated from this threat? Sans the threat this would have just gone down as another e-mail exchange about the music industry, but thanks to your immature hollow threats I would have never known about this blog (thanks to Boing Boing) and e-mailed the link to several other news sites.
Your industry is dying, thanks to people like you.
Now you going to tell my mom?
Here is a factual post on the subject:
“”RIAA Accused of Extortion and Conspiracy in Tampa, Florida, case, UMG v. Del Cid”
Hi Andrew: Interesting post, to considerably understate it : )
I’m running it in full in p2pnet here http://p2pnet.net/story/12517.
It’ll be interesting to see if Birch follows up on this, and if any of the Big 4 cartel members have anything to say about it.
Cheers!
Jon
Nick,
I have really only read one clear instance of ‘threat’ on this posting board and that is from Mr. Birch. Surely, if your point about knowing all sides of the argument is true, Andrew is adding to this knowledge and not taking away from it; he even looks beyond the two sides of the coin! It’s really patronising to maintain that the posters here do not have the knowledge and awareness of the music industry, and to say they are threatening anyone. I really don’t see that happening.
This article really has a very vague allusion to the anger felt by many consumers and that they feel their civil liberties and privacy are being undermined (do see the detail of the legal action, especially related to the alleged abuse of information gained from computer hard drives – this is linked from the page).
Surely music consumers and the public (whose personal data may be used in ways which contravene various state/international laws) are ‘one side of the coin’. I also don’t think that court judgements make the RIAA’s actions morally correct even if legally correct, but that’s a whole different debate – and whoops, it’s based on reasoned opinion.
Personally, perhaps the RIAA should look at how consumers want to use and consume music, what technologies are developing and work with these continual changes rather than restrict, control and punish. Consumers are a fairly key part of the industry, wouldn’t you say? This is not to say, ‘it should all be free’; but the approach currently being taken is not productive for consumers (those people who BUY from the industry).
To me, Paul Birch’s responses only further underline this ‘control’ focus, even to the extent of academic debate (which Dubber was not really indulging in with the link). Does this now mean that as an academic one cannot go and interview consumers about their opinions, consumption practices and music use (ethnography) then publish the material online/in literature? Would our publisher (and potentially as the provider of funds for research our University and/or international funding body) be sued as these ideas are ‘only opinion’ and we are then introducing them to the wider world? If this is the case then that’s exceptionally worrying, especially for media studies, social sciences, criminology, psychology – the list goes on. Perhaps it would be wise for some people in this forum to really make themselves aware of what Universities do before making claims and threats about how to potentially hush/restrict an employee of one on his personal blog.
The online article offered a perspective on something which actually happened, and barring getting into a debate about the impossibility of objectivity in any reporting I don’t see anything wrong with that (what fun we could have with a variety of news networks and their labelling of various groups in society). In fact the article DOES NOT mention ‘terrorists’, but uses the word ‘terrorized’ (please ensure your comments ARE accurate). As I say, it would be wise to ensure that accusations and claims regarding the article are correct – especially before you publish that opinion.
If you want to be pedantic, internationally renowned journalists use in their everyday reporting:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_yorkshire/3496117.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/england/4484395.stm
http://newswww.bbc.net.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/tees/4233635.stm
Your vague allusion to events in the wider world is a little tenuous. It is odd the BBC have not been briefed on such a consideration. In fact, as many journalists will know the word can also be used to discuss coercion and dominance too, as it is in the linked articles.
(cont.)
I would also say that
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/06/05/tech-riaadropstanyaandersenlawsuit-20070605.html
would likely fill the person being sued with terror and fear.
Do note that you claim winning lawsuits vilifies the RIAA and proves them right. In this instance the case was ‘dismissed with prejudice’ against the plaintiff (RIAA), this actually means that the court considered that the RIAA cannot bring a lawsuit against this same person again. Do see
http://www.answers.com/topic/prejudice-law
for why this decision is usually made.
(cont.)
This rather undermines your claim, although sadly most other plaintiffs just pay up rather than face three years of such a suit and the emotional, financial and health consequences of such litigation.
You may be right that the RIAA’s job is to protect copyright. But there is something which is NOT their job, and that is to try and restrict online blogs which may link to content which reports an actual event. Neither is it their role to control academic research and debate (although as this is Andrew’s site this is really not an issue).
What is really sad here is that Andrew is probably someone that the music industry bodies could learn a huge amount from, as are the consumers of music. His research offers insight into the development of the music industries and how it can benefit music and economy. Nick, I really think you are underplaying the threat contained in Paul Birch’s interaction; it’s misplaced, unfair and unfounded.
In my opinion (if I dare have it) change seems to be something seen as dangerous which must be restricted; even through media coverage and creating a fear of litigation. Can change not be embraced and developed? The opinions and feelings of the consumers in the industry matter – many feel maligned and I think that the RIAA should take some notice of that.
Andrew,
Thanks for the link and the thoughts on my post. I feel that there is a valid point made in that the RIAA has gone too far and used tactics that are less than honorable to attack people who clearly have not been involved with infringing activity. Scare tactics and PR seem to be the aim, but really the point is that someone is finally standing up for their rights in court against what I consider to be unjust litigation in some cases, nothing more.
My personal opinion is that the RIAA should spend more time finding innovative ways to allow their customers to purchase and use music freely (such as EMI and iTunes have begun to do) and the general populace wouldn’t be so filled with angst (if you will) against the big bad wolf.
If the record companies and the association would consider the fact that CD sales are not in their best interest with the advent of newer digital music technology, they would be better off. DRM is another issue which turns consumers against the RIAA as well, and incidents such as Sony’s CD root-kit fiasco don’t inspire trust and goodwill either.
To sum up, I think the RIAA and some of the record companies deserve the negative PR they are receiving to some degree, and will continue to receive the same until they align their priorities to providing content that consumers actually want and stop attacking helpless and uninvolved persons as a scare tactic for the general public.
I wish the association no ill-will, and appreciate Paul’s candor on the matter, though as you might expect I must soundly disagree.
Thanks again.
-Ryan Carter
writer of the article linked that created this whole mess in the first place.
I wouldn’t buy a music CD if it was given to me. These jokers have to be put out of business!
Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and consult for their common good, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
1st Amendment. Hey RIAA – I grieve you. Sue me.
Nick Dunn: “the complaint to Andrew is very clear; the journalist in downloadsquad has used words such as terrorists that is highly inappropriate especially in this day plus many more that were in fact an expression of personal opinion not fact.”
Inappropriate? Quite possibly yes.
Personal opinion not fact? Absolutely
Why should Andrew face a formal complaint for pointing out someone else’s opinion? If we stand idle to such threats, what do we open ourselves up to next, being threated for linking to a one-star review from Rolling Stone? After all, such a review would merely be one’s opinion, not fact, and could hurt those with a financial interest in the album in question.
Found this via Digg. Prepare for more traffic. :)
Birch, are you attacking our freedom of speech? We’re all entitled to our opinion! that is why this is the free world!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8956330@N05/556063377/
I believe, that Faye needs her own blog. I would subscribe tomorrow. Fabulous writing.
The problem, Paul, is that you have done exactly what the world would expect you to do – when you see that something isn’t going your way… You threaten. I don’t put it past you to go whine at the university – the recording industry will just add it to the laundry list of things to whine about in their next regular meeting in which they complain about all the evil students that are stealing from them.
Here’s another of my opinions: Too many people (other than the artist), have gotten too rich, for too long, on the backs of those that can accomplish that which they cannot. This is unfortunate, as those that can create, will always do so and those that have profited unjustly from their work will find themselves a failure. The winds of change are blowing. People, while still buying music, are changing how they buy it, and it will cleave the industry in two.
I am fully aware of Paul Birch, he has been a cornerstone in the industry for many years. I have been running my own label for about 8 years now.
Paul has helped the music industry dramatically over the years, however, his ideals havn’t moved on and his theories havn’t evolved with the times.
Please DO NOT take his opinion as the opinion of ALL record labels. I disagree with the way individuals are sued for downloading. I am angry in the way he our free speech is deemed as unviable towards the industry brass.
I saw the site was offline last night and I scoured the internet for contact details for Andrew to tell him about it and voice my anger at the way this site has been treated.
Long Live New Music Strategies!
Glad to see you’re back up Andrew.
This article has been put up at http://www.boycott-RIAA as
well.
This is the statement that I feel is really the key here …
” It might not be nice to be sued by the RIAA and potentially put in a position of being made bankrupt; ”
A clear threat to sue, not for legal redress, but as
a threat to ones livelyhood.
Using the law as a weapon.
I don’t know how the law works in the UK ( similar to
Canada ? ) but in the US I think a judge would be
REALLY interested in seeing that.
That open threat ( and the permission given to post it )
will keep this incident alive for a very long time.
I’m a lyricist and have also worked in different capacities with indie labels. There’s one myth I’d like to kill: the idea of the labels making millions on the backs of musicians.
Many, many labels have gone to the wall over the past five years and many more have become even smaller. Nearly every label I know has cut back on production and certainly development. This despite the fact that many of these same labels embrace the new technologies, etc.
So the idea that, “they had this coming” only goes so far. It was certainly true of the majors, but that’s only about 20% of music production. It’s kinda tiring to hear the indies being painted with the same brush the whole time.
Music-sharing has had a direct effect on every level of the business. Mr Dubber’s blog reflects one mentality: “well, let’s make the most of what we can”. I subscribe to that as well. But it takes a brave man to sink upwards of €30,000 / £20,000 or whatever in the production of a first album these days, with the double or more in promotion (very modest estimates by the way).
Apart from that, I find the exchange with Mr Birch as gob-smacking as the rest of you! Not very inspired.
hmm …
Why is my other comment blank ??
Weird.
Anyway .. to try again.
As another poster mentioned.
If it weren’t for the not-so-veiled threat
” It might not be nice to be sued by the RIAA and potentially put in a position of being made bankrupt ”
This would have been just another P2P/sharing debate.
The open threat to Mr. Dubbers financial well being
will insure that this exchange will be heard far and
wide.
Thank you Mr. Birch for helping us show just how much
contempt you have for musicians, artists, and fans.
So I JUST finished watching “V for Vendetta” – with all the censors blocking your freedoms, prosecuting dissidents, etc. And then I read this. A guy being threatened (financially and through employment) for linking to an op-ed piece written by someone else. Scary times.
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t really have a clue about what’s going on about the whole RIAA thing. I do know a thing or two about Free Speech though. This is not a good precedent being set here.
Good luck.
I think you should try some other media outlets out there and get this exposed as much as possible.
> “It expresses opinion, it’s not factual.”
I ran that through the English-to-Newspeak translator and it came out, “Doubleplus ungood crimethink.”
> “If you persist then I shall make a formal
> complaint to the University.”
I bet you didn’t expect a kind of RIAA Inquisition, did you, Andrew?
[JARRING MUSICAL CHORD]
“NO ONE expects the RIAA Inquisition!!! Our chief weapon is fear! Fear and surprise! Our two weapons are fear and surprise! And lawsuits! Our three weapons are fear, surprise, lawsuits, and an almost fanatical contempt of the consumer! Amongst our weapons… Amongst our weaponry are elements such as fear, surprise… oh bugger, I’ll come in again.”
[JARRING MUSICAL CHORD]
“NO ONE expects the RIAA Inquisition!!!”
Amazing read. I knew it was bad, but I never really knew how bad.
Dear Paul,
In your attempt to defend an industry that has serious problems you have now managed to alienate a large number of people that might have been receptive to your arguments, had you not completely blown your credibility by including some veiled (and some not so veiled) threats.
Normally if you don’t get your way the proper response is not to threaten to use force but to try to find common ground and then to use reasoning and factfinding skills.
You misrepresent the piece that was linked to, you threaten a respected individual, you reserve the right to have your own ‘personal opinions’ but you deny that same right to others.
I don’t know what your position with ‘revolver records’ is, but I hope that your management and shareholders will see this for what it is, an old fashioned attempt at bullying whilst being in the wrong.
You have managed to do Revolver records unimaginable harm with your careless words, and you have harmed the interests of all the artists that are currently with ‘revolver’.
Congratulations.
Now aim for the other foot…
Jacques Mattheij
“You might argue that your professional blog is your opinion alone, however you are interwoven into the views and policy of the University of Central England and I think that puts you in an exposed positon Andrew”
“If you persist then I shall make a formal complaint to the University.â€Â
I hope this chap is thoroughly ashamed of making such ugly, transparent threats in pursuit of censorship. Kudos to Andrew Dubber for standing firm on his right to hold an opinion.
“Universities are for expressing thought however thought should never be expressed until you have a thorough knowledge of the subject matter on both sides of the coin.”
Mmf. As one with a thorough knowledge of scholastic numismatics, it is incumbent upon me to express the thought that this is either tripe… or a sublime expression of ironic absurdity.
Occam says tripe.
Since this is a professional site, you are in the employment of an academic institute, would not the opinions of this blog fall under academic freedom?
The constant battle of the RIAA and its other international organizations to sue users while fighting a loosing PR battle seems hopeless. It is something I often comment on, and I feel my comments are as valid as their’s. I have every right to comment on the products I consume as the producers of those products have a right to rebut my comments.
Although it’s hard to accept the opinions of a trade organization since it is their job to defend their products, even when that same industry might be wrong. They gain from the defense, I as a consumer gain nothing from defending or criticizing a particular product or organization.
So while Paul might not be happy with your comment, they come from some educated and experienced background. I would consider them more valid then his. After all, he is paid to defend a particular view point and if possible enforce it. Since your comments are not libel, you are fully entitled to criticize to your hearts content. He can complain, but I believe your University should only acknowledge the complaint as far as to say they received it. Nothing more.
Thank you for being civil to this pinhead. The RIAA will be history in a short time. The usefulness of hiring a gang of lawyers is destroying the corporations PR. They will fall together. Seen it many times.
The riaa has been charging Canadians a surtax on blank cds(regardless of what they are to be used for).
When do we get our music? Or are we supposed to get it via P2P? Mr. Birch?
great read but shows how much the Riaa is losing this battle
rather then reading what people are saying and learning they just attack
It’s so nice that Birch’s commnents are self-parodying.
It saves me so much work.
Hello Andrew Dubber,
I’m a bit confused;
“Revolver-Man” demanded:
“but I think that what is more desirable is to take down links from your site that promote this hatred of the recording Industry”
While I tried hard to find on your site some of those links Mr. Birch talks about in your email conversation, I couldn’t.
Of course, it could be that my search capabilites aren’t as good as his, or that I did it wrong even when I tried to use google as aditional help when my own initiatives where fruitless.
So please, If you do have somewhere on your site a posting of yours where the link is mentioned by you (or in a comment) please be so nice and point me to that post.
Thanks.
I can only think that Paul must have found my Newswire page, which is a collection of links to news stories and articles about the online music world.
The page is updated daily, and many of the site’s readers choose to get the latest links emailed to them on a daily basis – which is very easy to set up.
Like you, I scoured the site and couldn’t find the link, even though I had a clear recollection of having read the article. Then I remembered where I’d put it.
It was just another link in my day to day round up of “what’s being said today about music business on the internet”.
I’ve read through the email correspondence, followed the links and then followed a few links-of-links.
To be honest, I’m not sure what the fuss is all about.
The RIAA are being sued by someone, a blogger wrote a post about it, then Andrew re-posted the link.
It seems to me that other than the word ‘terrorize’, which perhaps in America has now taken on a new meaning and has become unacceptable to use, that the Download Squad article was the kind of thing of which I would normally scan through the first sentence and then close the browser tab.
The RIAA and other trade associations are no doubt going to be redefining themselves over the coming years, and as a co-owner of a record label I would urge them to do so as rapidly as possible to maintain their relevance, support and influence – especially for independent labels like mine that have embraced the Creative Commons / non-DRM environment we operate in.
However, I do think that Paul has a valid point in questioning your position in who you represent, Andrew. From his point of view you are a University lecturer, and as such most of us would expect you to treat your blog in the same way as any other academic publication method. By linking to another site, does this mean that you endorse the content I will find there? Has it been peer-reviewed for accuracy? Can I trust your sources? etc.
In other academic situations I would expect a degree of filtering to have taken place before publication occurs. It seems to me that the blog article you linked to is relatively sensationalist in the adjectives it uses and is not the kind of reference I would expect to see in a publication.
I think at this point we need a clear lead, maybe a link on every page on whether you are blogging here as an academic ( I heard you’re using some the content of your 20 things on your course? ) or independently.
Perhaps your next area to look at is freedom of content publication for music academics? I know that many academics are afraid of publishing content on blogs external from their departments because this content will not be handled by their Universities’ legal departments. Could academic content move to an open source model? What happens to the 6 year PHD in that kind of environment?
“New academic strategies”?!
Perhaps a Manifesto for academic bloggers?
Anyway – I hope it resolves itself.
Best
Stef
All good questions, Stef — but I think there are two key things to point out here. The first one’s really simple: I am not my job.
The About Me page on this site mentions what I do for a living for the sake of context and perhaps, to an extent, to offer credentials, but none of my three other blogs are peer reviewed either.
The second deserves a bit more explanation: this is not an academic publication. I write in all sorts of different contexts.
The fact that I work for a university does not mean that everything I write must be in the academic mode.
I co-wrote a book fairly recently about new technologies for broadcasters in developing countries. It was commissioned by UNESCO, and in the brief was the requirement that it NOT be written in an academic fashion. We were pretty thorough and well researched, as you might expect — but I would expect an entirely different standard from a peer-reviewed journal.
Nor would it be appropriate for me to do a conference presentation the way I teach a class, or write an email the same way I talk on the telephone.
In the Media and Communication Department, where I work, that’s one of the first things we try and get through to the students: mode-appropriate communication.
If you need a parallel, I suppose this is more in line with an op-ed piece. I write what occurs to me, and it’s important to me that I get at least some of it right.
But this is not my job. I’m not teaching the 20 Things as part of a degree course. It’s not a textbook, and nor should it be. But nor am I keeping it a secret from my music industries students. I think it might well be helpful to them. I tell them to read Music Week too — but we’re not studying that either.
That said, much of what I tell my students doing the 2nd year Music Online module also turns up in discussion here. We talk about Web 2.0, we talk about Creative Commons licensing, and we talk about innovation.
Hardly surprising, I suppose.
But if you really need to make the distinction, I’m a music industries academic who also blogs about what he’s most interested in — not a “blogging music academic”.
Links to external sites indicate that there is other stuff in the world other than just what I write here. It’s all publicly accessible. You make your own mind up whether you agree or not.
The idea that this blog won’t be ‘protected’ by my university’s legal team is a notion that has never entered my head.
And apart from anything else, if my salary was also covering all the time I spend working on this blog, I’d be on about £2 an hour.
Does that help?
Thanks Andrew,
so do I understand it right that he was “mad with you” just because of a link you gave in some semi automatic newsletter RSS feed stuff thingy that is not even a “real work”-posting like your minifesto link or other postings of you that involve real editorial work of yours!
Oh boy, under those circumstances me wonders what Mr Birch might thing about this (*) posting then, where there is also not so much editorial work in it but links to the “story about the story” which I understand introduces Mr. Birch as “RIAA coward”.
(*) http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2007/06/story-about-story-riaa-coward-threatens.html
Funny, I mentioned this same cas in my blog a couple of weeks ago, as it happened in the State in which I live (my city even!). I agree that you are not your job, but Stef brings up a point worth pondering. I work in acedemia myself, and sometimes my superiors don’t always see it that way you see it. I found myself wondering what your University thought of all this. Your opinions are always well balanced and well researched, so I don’t think anyone could fault you, at least I hope not, I want to keep reading you for a long time!
I’m a 40 year old average consumer who isn’t a big buyer of music and who never goes to the trouble of downloading it either – but I was thinking of buying a CD recently just to support an artist whose politics I like. Now after reading this I’ve decided to never buy a CD again. I’d rather not hand any of my hard-earned dollars to thugs like Paul.
I’ll stick to listening to the radio, like we did in the olden days.
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for the considered response – that does help. I obviously got the wrong end of the stick about “20 things” (which is great, by the way) being used in an academic situation.
It was mainly this sentence in the email exchange that made me think along those lines:
You might argue that your professional blog is your opinion alone, however you are interwoven into the views and policy of the University of Central England and I think that puts you in an exposed positon Andrew.
I’d guess that he clicked on the ‘Author’ tab in your navigation and got this intro:
My name’s Andrew Dubber. I’m the Degree Leader for Music Industries at UCE Birmingham, UK. I’m a senior lecturer and researcher with a particular interest in online music, radio and new media technology.
So, perhaps you could adapt some of what you just said and add it to that page?
Either way, keep up the good work.
Stef
Nice thought, Stef. I’ve made an amendment that will hopefully deflect even the most wilful misinterpretations.
It now reads:
My name’s Andrew Dubber. I’m the Degree Leader for Music Industries at UCE Birmingham, UK. I’m a senior lecturer and researcher with a particular interest in online music, radio and new media technology.
I tell you this not to suggest that anything here is connected to UCE — merely to offer context, and in some small way, present my credentials.
(etc.)
Paul you have done yourself more harm, with your e-mail then this blog could do with Dubber’s opinion piece. This is now on Digg, Slashdot, and many other places of Geek interest. When are you going to come to the understanding that if you try to censor something the communities on the internet come together? Ignore it and it won’t become big something those AACS Lawyers should of realised.
You’re associated with Revolver Records? I shall never buy a CD from there now and I shall tell my friends and family to do likewise. I stopped buying from Sony BMG after that stunt with their draconian XCP, and treating all honest consumers like thieves. You also make it sound like you’re helping Artists, shame the Labels own the copyrights and Artists make 5-6% on CD sales.. They make most their money on touring.
Artists are rebeling at your own tactics, check Trent Reznor voice about your evil record label tactics http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21741980-5006024,00.html helping the Artists? hmmm… what about Jamiroquai? http://blogs.smh.com.au/entertainment/archives//002923.html more and more are rebeling, eventually you will be out of the job. Not a bad thing, bands will turn to releasing music digitally no labels like what Enter Shikari did for a long time.
I am mostly eating popcorn and laughing my head off at this one. Some people have nothing better to do than argue all day on the internet, some of us have nothing better to do than read it. What does Paul do for a living again? Where does his income come from again? What percentage of his total income comes from Music? Is he saying he has never done anything illegal? Sorry I can’t offer any additional discussion on the issues raised above but i have work to be getting on with and i can’t spare the time right now. ha ha. I tell you what, I’ll write to the university and make a complaint myself, this stuff should be televised, not blogged. I wonder how Paul would react if anyone who disagreed with him wrote to the suppliers of his wages and threatened to make complaints about him. oh sorry, i forgot, thats bully boy tactics isn’t it. Cheers Paul and Andrew, you both make top entertainment for someone with no idea about anything anymore. more! more!
So if you work for a government funded agency you are not allowed to speak your opinions regardless of where you do it. I didn’t know working for a government funded agency you don’t get to voice opinion anymore. On my blog I am often critical of Microsoft and I work for a government agency in the US. I would staunchly defend my right to free speech. And on a side note I think its deplorable that in the US the RIAA gets to write legislation for laws written by the US government. I am critically outspoken on the RIAA and their tactics. I do think that the tone of what you say should be objective. I feel that the blogger in this case was objective in their criticism of the RIAA and fits the guidelines of someone who has a right to speak out against them. They did not incite riotous behavior. the IFPI exec needs to get off his high horse and examine comments to realize why people are so critical of them in the first place starting with why its inappropriate to play tattle tale because of commentary that doesn’t suit them. They need to take a step back and quit the militant behavior against the very people that fund them. Its amazing that consumers pocket their salaries but its those very consumers they turn into villains through their zeal to protect intellectual property. Its amazing however that they keep pushing.
Jesus Christ what happened to freedom of speech ??
Astra asked:
“Jesus Christ what happened to freedom of speech ??”
-> That was copyrighted by God with an exclusive usage license given to RIAA/IFPI/BPI members.
*SCNR*
Haha, I guess the RIAA doesn’t believe in our country’s freedom of speech. All they care about = $$$$$!!! Hey, doesn’t bother me considering USA is on it’s way to a big bad downfall, considering everythings shabby state.. How much longer will we allow lawyers to destroy the world we live in? Down with RIAA, up with PIRATING MUSIC, and DOWN WITH THE INHUMAN SUITS!
I always chuckle at the argument that music sharing steals from the artists. Back in the hay-day of Napster I downloaded quite a lot of music, most of it was deleted within very short order, while some was kept a bit longer before being deleted. This was also a period during which I PURCHASED more CDs than at any other time.
Via downloading, I discovered many new artists that I hadn’t known about, or had heard the name of, but never listened to. When I found an artist I enjoyed, I purchased their album, and usually all of their previously released albums as well. It was wonderful being able to explore the music universe without going broke buying music that didn’t appeal to me.
When did I stop? I can still remember the last “major label” album I purchased. It was B.B. King and Eric Clapton _Riding with the King_, and it was US$18. Why did I stop? Because the price was outrageous!
So now I purchase music from small independent labels, or explore the Blues and Jazz backwaters of previous decades. The big business music can keep their manufacturered pop-bubblegum-gottaloveit-latest-whatever music that they want us to purchase.
I absolutely _hate_ seeing the RIAA and its ilk post (mis)information that says ‘file sharing is illegal’, or worse, ‘downloading music is illegal’. Those are INCORRECT statements! In America, the Copyright Act of the United States very specifically allows for any copyrighted items for purposes of criticism, comparitive journalism, reviews, and parody. It also allows for, very specifically, the making of backup copies of the media for ‘archival purposes’. The actual ACT OF DOWNLOADING is NOT illegal, REGARDLESS of what you are downloading!!! The burden is on the user who downloads, and what they do with the content. If any laws are broken, it is by what the user does with the content after they download, NOT at the point of downloding it!
Good grief.
We also have a Very Bad law amendment that unfortunately got passed called the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). In part, it makes bypassing ANY copy protection device or code illegal, except under some very restrictive situations (such as university algorithm analysis). The problem is that this law is in direct opposition to the Copyright Act in that it now makes it impossible to create an archival backup copy of purchased media because everything is now copy-protected! OOPS. It is bad law and needs to be amended and/or thrown away…but the RIAA has too many of our legislators in their deep pockets. :( /sad
Hi,
I stumbled across this discussion from slashdot and it isn’t really something I usually follow with any interest although I guess I fall into the camp that dislikes the way RIAA (and others) go about their business (which they have a right to protect).
I did find it interesting though that someone who can say:
“You might argue that your professional blog is your opinion alone, however you are interwoven into the views and policy of the University of Central England and I think that puts you in an exposed positon Andrew.”
Can later as a post say:-
“Thank you for clarifying these are my personal views not those of the IFPI, RIAA, BPI or others.”
When he is a board member for IFPI and BPI.
Hang on, isn’t this the same Paul Birch the Stone Roses threw paint over when he re-released their single without permission?
I rather think it is!
” Hang on, isn’t this the same Paul Birch the Stone Roses threw paint over when he re-released their single without permission?
I rather think it is! ”
They can do that.
One fact the RIAA avoids is that the Record LABEL
owns the rights, not the artist.
Don’t agree to that .. you won’t get signed.
A LOT of acts didn’t read the fine print then, and
don’t now. The RIAA/IFPI etc are protecting their OWN
interests, and sadly most people either aren’t aware
or only get their info from the media outlets that
the RIAA control, hence the general belief that the
Artist = copyright holder.
Truth ?
Label = Rights holder.
Artist – Indentured servant.
To Paul:
I think the biggest issue you face isn’t downloads. You work in an industry that is hated and loathed by many. You may not like negative or differing opinions but please point me to a place that has a positive spin on the music industry. As long as you engage in models that sue your customers you won’t find many supporters.
The biggest issue you face is reforming your own industry to produce products that consumers want and delivering it in a way that they will purchase it. I am 44 and own roughly 600 cd’s. I bought Vinyl, I bought cassettes and I bought cd’s. I think I have purchased about sixty plus albums in all three formats. I am your model consumer and demographic but I no longer purchase cd’s. I bought a roughly 12 cd’s after last years Grammy’s and six of them were crippled and did not allow me to rip them for use on my ipod. When the Sony root kit issue came to light of course being a purchaser of lot’s of cd’s got the root kit screw over from Sony. This is the price you pay for doing the right thing.
So how can someone like me who wants to buy his music get it in a way in which he can use it without drm crap from apple and without buying cd’s? If you spent as much time, effort and energy to promoting models and places to support consumers I think you would have a better result than suing them.
My kids clearly think differently about entertainment and music than I do. However, my kids pay money for ring tones and other stuff which they discard and buy again and again. If you made it as simple and easy as buying a ring tone I know they would buy music too.
Holy Shit!!! This things gone global now. How appropriate his company is called ‘Revolver Records’ as everytime he opens his mouth, he shoots himself in the foot.
Congratulations Paul, Zero to globally ackowledged Asshole in 3 days.
I hear the MPAA and RIAA are planning a merger – to be called Music And Film Industry Association of America or more simply MAFIAA!!!
Record companies are losing money due to their own stupidity and greed. If they stopped trying to rip of the consumers and the artists they would have one of the biggest industries on the planet. I wish I had 20 million people helping to promote my business for free.
In Paul’s defense, the Sally Cinnamon escapade, to cut a long story short, was NOT about re-releasing their single, it was in fact about the video. HOWEVER, this episode happened because the Stone Roses manager at the time screwed them over by stealing the money Revolver had delivered for the creation of the video.
Mani from the Stone Roses recently talked to Paul Birch at In the City, Manchester. Paul explained the full situation to him, Mani then walked away and assulted their old manager who was a guest speaker at a seminar at the time. This is because Mani then knew all the facts. There have been man Stone Roses biographies who have printed false information.
It seems everyone has a misconstrued perception about record labels. Single sales have fallen by 11% within the last year alone (Source: Music Week). If you think label owners are millionaires, it’s almost a comical image. The reality of it, indie labels have never had it so hard. I would seriously suggest if you are intereted, to apply for work expierience at a label and get to know what exactly happens.
People who aren’t in the music industry have painted an evil image of labels and that the artist gets manipulated. Well, this HAS happened in the past, and it has ALSO worked the other way around. There are therefore companies in place to ensure artists will always get played, PPL, VPL, MCPS & PRS (England).
It’s important to understand, the MMF (Music Managers Forum) in association with the Musicians Union launched a campaign 2 years ago to attempt to spread the word of how labels we’re being screwed over, they gathered a panel of industry experts. What they concluded? that in fact they weren’t aware of all the facts and the campaign was scraped.
Many labels have dissapeared since the birth of Napster, another indication how little labels are earning.
There is a divide in the industry between Major’s and Indies, the majors can demand and they normally recieve, they have more power, money and resources to develop their artists careers. Indies, on the other hand HAVE to club together to ensure they aren’t elbowed out of the game by the bigger boys. Indies HAVE to give discount’s to get into stores like HMV and TESCO (up to 50%), they get less when a track is downloaded, they basically have to pay more for things.
People who envision the demise of governing bodies of the IFPI such as the RIAA and the BPI are kidding themselves. As long as there is music, these companies will exist, they are funded by their members, who are the music companies, labels, publishers & managers etc.
Didn’t mean to waffle on, but couldn’t sit back and have people read this blog and walk away with the wrong information.
Anthony Herron
So much for “Free Speech”…
It is ofcause clear that any such action is illegal and I would prefer to see you bring legal actions against Paul Birch for his threats against you.
As always I encurage all to STOP BUYING NEW CDs! A line I have been following ever since the record conglomerate have started sueing us, their customers.
It will ofcause lead to a period for all of us not listening to new music in CD quality (As I don´t encurage stealing) The sooner we can bring down the moguls the sooner we can normalize the market and get things the way we (the customers) want to pay for.
What a ridiculous scenario…one that’s becoming more and more common these days.
Good for you, and don’t let the buggers grind you down.
” It seems everyone has a misconstrued perception about record labels. Single sales have fallen by 11% within the last year alone ”
True ..
But the labels do not tell the truth about why this is
so .. ( the MAJOR labels, that is ).
They blame this dip entirely on P2P, even though there
are many other factors .. uninspired ‘product’ other
entertainment options, consumers with less disposable
income, and .. comsumer backlash.
You can’t sue people who have DONE NOTHING WRONG ..
( Grandma hip-hop, the dead etc .. clear proof that
they are simply using a driftnet approach ) and not
have some backlash. Let’s not even mention the rootkit.
” If you think label owners are millionaires, it’s almost a comical image. ”
I’m sorry .. not buying it. I am ,of course talking
about the MAJOR labels and their lapdog affiliates.
Let’s look at Paul’s own words ..
” I am not concerned that people decide to take out law-suits against our organisations; we have the resources to deal with that. ”
This is VERY clearly true. They have enough ‘resources’
to not only withstand very long and VERY expensive legal
attacks on themselves .. but they were able to run
several P2P companies into bankrupty through legal
action based on questionable premises.
Now they are using the same EXPENSIVE legal tactics
against individuals, with NO PROOF that they have done
anything wrong. ( they have sued the wrong person
enough times to show that their methods are unreliable)
They continue because they can afford it .. easily.
Your ( and THEIR ) contention that they are going broke
is carefully crafted spin that they are DESPERATE to
perpetuate. Why do you think they fought so hard on
Capito v. Foster ( she fought back and WON, not only
her case but attorney fees ) to keep how much they
paid ther .. ‘legal’ team a secret ??
The Majors ARE millionaires.
” The reality of it, indie labels have never had it so hard. ”
Which ‘indie’ labels ??
It’s so hard to tell who is REALLY Indie.
The majors have coopted the term ‘Independent’ and
use it like a genre, instead of an ideal.
That little ‘Indie’ label just might be owned by a
Major label. Check http://www.riaaradar.com/ to see
just how ‘Independent’ that act really is.
You might be surprised.
I don’t doubt that Label controlled ‘Indies’ are suffering.
What’s also true is that TRUE UNAFFILIATED Indies,
are flourishing. The Majors, though they control
Radio, TV, the press, and are working on streaming,
are losing ground fast to a tidal wave of non-affiliated artists and groups.
The greatest irony is it’s the MAJORS OWN FAULT.
They have pushed their customer right into the arms
of the competition, a competitor that they deny
exists.
What label do you represent ?
” There is a divide in the industry between Major’s and Indies, the majors can demand and they normally recieve, they have more power, money and resources to develop their artists careers. ”
Yup .. As I said .. the MAJORS ARE millionaires.
Never did anyone claim the non-affiliated independent
label was wealthy.
I don’t think anyone here is getting the wrong idea.
Paul has done a great job of showing everyone just
what the RIAA/IFPI do best.
Hello Mr. Dubber ( and the others who posted),
First of all I would like to specify that I’m not a native english speaker so I hope I don’t sound too confusing. I would also like to state that I have no elaborate expertise in law, economics and business ( the music industry in particular ), and… in your blog in general.
I was linked here from SlashDot, and decided to read this while bored at work.
Despite the current debate, and your understandable style of writing in particular ( which I really appreciate, considering that I have no background in the fields stated above ), I have refrained from reading more of your material in order to avoid being influenced by your ideas. That way I can stay true to my ignorance and bravely ensue this utterly unfounded comment.
There’s 3 short points I’d like to bring up.
1. Mr. Paul Birch’s reaction and the total incompetence of the MPAA/RIAA in matters of PR.
2. The actual effects of these law suits on illegal sharing.
3. The lack of dynamism on behalf of the big record companies and RIAA.
1.
I am saddened by his not-so-subtle threats.
Some others have posted about the many, positive contributions Mr. Birch has made to the music industry. As someone who, like many, really enjoys music, I can only congratulate him and thank him for that. But he has given a perfect example of how things should NOT be done. It is not just him. The record industry and RIAA have been making one huge blunder of a statement after the other. I’m no expert on PR, but let’s analyse the definition.
public relations
–noun
1. the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc.
2. the art, technique, or profession of promoting such goodwill.
Hmmmmmm… I’m not a university professor, but I’d have to fail them on this point. I think their actions have earned them anything but a good reputation in the eyes of the public.
In that case, if Mr. Birch or someone from the RIAA is reading this, I hereby request a job at a record company or with the RIAA. I have no degree in Public Relations or anything, but I believe that not being a stubborn idiot would already prove my superiority in relation to the current employees. ( Mr. Dubber should have my e-mail. You are welcome to contact me. I could certainly use the money if I want to be able to afford CDs nowadays. )
Scaring people only works for a short while and is hardly effective.
2.
Despite all these aggressives moves on behalf of the RIAA, has their situation improved?
The answer is obvious enough. These people need to spend more time on the internet. Nothing (realistic) can end the proliferation of unwanted material on the internet. It’s simply impossible. And if it were possible, it wouldn’t be through the use of the legal system. I rather enjoyed the Slyck interview with ITIC, a company that has been analysing p2p networks and thus the effect that recent legal actions have had on those networks.
The entire debate on the effectiveness of the RIAA’s recent legal battles can be concluded with the following quote:
“Lawsuits and lobbying are useless against networked, distributed, impersonal and decentralized file swaps whose P2P is just an implementation. If you want to fight misused technology, use the technology itself first. If you reject the technology, technology will relegate you to the past.”
The desire for total control over their music is something of the past.
3.
Despite what ITIC said about fighting technology with technology, I still do not agree with that kind of solution. In my oppinion ( and that of many other people ), these companies should not fight the recent evolutions in the market, but embrace it. Rather than spending money and manpower on countless legal struggles, it is imperative that they use those resources to come up with new and innovative way to market their goods.
The true motor of any economy is innovation.
It’s hard and takes a lot of time, but in the long-term it will be what makes the difference between failure and success. The record companies can not go on like this. Someone stated earlier on that the RIAA and record companies will never disappear. I have to agree with that. But that’s because I’m sure that the companies will somday see the light of their mistake. I just wish they did it sooner than later.
Thanks for reading my useless rant,
Eduardo
Back to oblivion!
First of all, I’m not an English Barrister, not even the “son of a barrister”, and not well versed in English law, but here in the States, we have free speech, and just linking to an article should never be grounds for legal action. It’s good to see that Jon Newton and Ray Beckerman have waded into the topic, and since I know both individuals to some degree, I feel comfortable opining on the subject matter.
My personal opinion of Paul, generated only by his comments posted, is low, and I fear would only get lower the more I was exposed to his earbashing. He is acting like a Drongo.
“Paul” talks about the “hate mail” targeted to the RIAA and the IFPI. Gee, reckon they did something that caused this unpleasantness?
I’ve never been a big fan of threats. If a man has a beef with another bloke, he should have the courage to meet him face to face and settle it.
Hasn’t this bloke got anything better to do than to try to start a row over something so asinine?
It’s sad to say, but noting RIAA’s previous record on suits and Paul Birch’s demeaner, it appears to me that a number of your responders (to this blog) have left themselves open to be sued by the RIAA and Paul Birch. I really don’t understand how Birch can make the statements he has and expect anything but lousy PR.
I’m very impressed by your matter of fact response to Paul Birch’s email.
cramoft
As someone who has spent very many years (though no longer) in many different aspects of the music industry, I can say this…
There IS a difference between Major Record Labels and Independents. The major labels are thugs, the independents have the opportunity to reinvent the wheel.
This is a time of uncertainty for the Music Industry. It is not a time of uncertainty for music…music is created by people who love it so much they cannot bear to do anything else with their time every day. The music industry is mostly about greed and fear…Greed, because they merely sell what others create, Fear, because people are getting hip to the scam.
The people at Major Record Labels for the most part know nothing about music anymore. They are (since those labels are owned by even larger corporations) money people and lawyers who only know that their limos and perks are threatened.
In the old days we had people like Morris Levy, Dick Griffey, etc. who were street people…they ripped off their artists, but being from the street and not totally lacking heart and character would occasionally do something nice for those artists and allow them to earn a living too. Then came the lawyers, and over the last 30 or so years, the artists (except for a very few huge stars) really got hosed in ways previously unthinkable to individual label owners who were, at bottom, music people.
Now a situation has arisen where, because the industry is in flux, those same lawyers are looking to keep their jobs. It is not more complicated than that. Those smaller labels that manage to find niches in the marketplace will sell music. Possibly the business will evolve over time to a model whereby an artist will do it all themself, write, record, release, market…and we will have the marketplace determine which of those people it will support. I believe of a certainty that MUSIC will be better for it.
The RIAA, the IFPI…they are dinosaurs. They are done. The asteroid has already hit. They have sold us the same music three times already…vinyl, cassette, CD…it’s enough. They’ll go on selling stuff out of their vaults for years to come if they so choose…what they will no longer do is give us new, exciting music…they have long ago lost the ability to do it. Now is the time for you to lay down a create petroleum deposits…at least that way you can leave some kind of legacy for future generations.
Overviper
Oh, That reminds me. A little something I forgot to mention.
There’s a fact I never really understood…
A few years ago, SABAM, the Belgian association for the protection of the artists’ copyrights, through lobbying, imposed a new tax on empty media, CD and DVDs in particular. They went from the presumption that any CD, DVD, hard disk drive, could be used to stock illegal data. So the prices were raised with 14% or so.
That such a thing could happen is just mindboggling.
It basically implies that everybody who buys a CD/DVD/etc will use if for illegal means. Although it would certainly be the case for me, there’s a great deal of people and businesses who would disagree.
Is it not wrong to fine a person for a crime they might or might not commit? No, that doesn’t make sense.
Well, if it’s not a fine for engaging in illegal activities, I can only guess it’s a kind of compensation to cover for a possible violation of their copyrights.
But wait… wouldn’t that mean that we are paying those companies… for the copying of their copyrighted material…
So, let’s see. We pay SABAN in advance because we might or might not consume SABAN’s copyrighted material. That seems a lot like a purchase to me. So why is it still illegal for us to consume their copyrighted material?
Well, I guess it’s still a tax. But that just means that you’re paying them indirectly. Make no mistake, that 14%, which is a LOT of money, goes to the pockets of SABAN and the politicians who helped them pass that law. Nothing goes to the artists.
Although I do not normally contribute to fora, I felt obliged to do so in the light of the polemic and evident misunderstanding a number of the comments above demonstrate. While this is typical of such fora, it is atypical of those supervised by academics in the field. While I accept anyone’s entitlement to hold a viewpoint certain staements in this blog are simply wrong and need to be corrected before they end up in someone’s exam paper.
The underlying philosophy of copyright (and the parallel French philosophy of Droite d’Auteur) is to incentivise creativity by rewarding the creator for his work in what is a high risk commercial environment; i.e. a fraction of 1% of creative works generate any return for their creators (or those who buy the creations from them thereby assuming the risk of their success – including record companies). Absent that incentive creators will, by and large, stop creating and do something that they can earn a living at (unless they subscribe to a non-capitalist philosophy across all aspects of life).
comments (which are common place) such as Thomas’:
“Copyright has from the beginning been a virtual right i.e. a construct that societies may decide to have if (and that’s a big if) it leads to better consequences compared with other systems of cultural and intellectual production. Internet and globalization has now provided those other, better systems so laws against non-commercial copying has served its (short) historical purpose. It’s simply time to move on. Polls shows that the people agree on that. Just give us a fair referendum on the issue and we’ll settle it democratically once and for all”…
assuming Thomas is not advocating a far more radical and wideranging change in the structure of our global society, he is completely ignoring this.
Further to answer Michael Jackson’s query about whether Paul Birch should have referred to “Artists’ copyrights”. The answer is yes – if they haven’t assigned them to record companies in return for advances against roylaties (which in nine out of ten cases are not recouped).
Obviously if an artist decides to put their material up on the net for free then there is no issue (although there is usually a commercial reason underlying that decision – typically to generate enough public interest in their product so as to be able demostrate to record companies that they are worth signing). To that extent the internet has democratised music. It is worthy of note that, while record companies are demonised and artists idolised, very few of them turn down the deal (in the early stages of their career) if they are lucky enough to get offered one.
The reason the RIAA and BPI has gone after individual file sharers rather than those higher up the chain is because that, certainly prior to the Supreme Court’s “Grokster” decision in the US this was the only course of action available to them to try and stem endemic file sharing (which would ultimately put them out of business).
Those providing the software that facilitates file sharing make huge sums in advertising revenue (usually on a per click basis) and yet to date have been immune from prosecution. Why is it OK for them to make vast sums out of content and yet the content owner is castigated for trying to protect his investment and his artists right to be paid royalties?
If P2P sharing of copyright material continues unchecked, there will no new material. People will stop producing films, writing books, making music. What will advertisers and technology innovators dependent on content and those reading this who rely on books for their education do then? That is the logical end result or immasculating copyright to the point of the irrelevance by way of the free exchange of creators efforts.
Sorry to be pedantic, again, but I’ve just noticed this in Paul Birch’s email:
“If you take a look at the criticism on your blog of the RIAA by one of the contributors, they are engaging in a similar malicious prosecution in the US courts…”
What makes the counter action in the blog malicious and the RIAA’s action not? I don’t think I’ve taken this out of context.
If you look at the detail of the claim there are specific legal reasons given for the claim.
I am going to comment on this from the pespective of a professor of ethics. Paul is taking the position that the record labels are sovereign (much like the Queen). To make use of items belonging to the sovereign is a priviledge not a right and the sovereign reserves the ability to rewrite the rules at any time to suit the sovereign’s fancy at a given moment. One is not to question the sovereign because questioning may in the long run erode the sovereign’s clear authority to do as he or she likes without check. This position is only “ethical” if everyone subject t the sovereign has given affirmative consent to the situation or if the sovereign was placed in that role by God.
Paul it is obvious that the consumers are denying your soveriegn authority. Would you be so kind as to reveal to us your correspondence with God Almighty and when it was that he installed you in this exalted position?
If you have such correspondence which you can/will share it may successfully turn this debate in your favor.
A lawyers comments were right on about Copyright. He just forgot a few pertinent facts.
“The underlying philosophy of copyright (and the parallel French philosophy of Droite d’Auteur) is to incentivise creativity by rewarding the creator for his work in what is a high risk commercial environment”
English for non-lawyers – Copyright law was permitted in our constitution as a means to motivate CREATIVITY. Great point. But don’t forget to tell the whole story. It was set up “FOR LIMITED TIMES”. It was never intended that copyrights were to provide a means of living for someone’s estate LONG AFTER that creators death. Nor were they intended to fund major corporations. Most of our forefathers didn’t even want to provide for Copyrights.
The problem with today’s copyright laws is the bastardization of “limited times”. What limits? 70 years after the creators death? What kind of limit is THAT?? I know I won’t get to see most works created in my lifetime reach the public domain, as our forefathers that wrote the Constitution wanted. To me, the copyright terms might as well be unlimited, in violation of our Constitution.
“If P2P sharing of copyright material continues unchecked, there will no new material. People will stop producing films, writing books, making music. ”
Really? I don’t think so. P2P sharing creates interest. It encourages people to perhaps drop $20 on a concert. The creator can make a living many other ways completely without copyright. People will always be interested in new films, books and music, and supporting artists that create such. People are no longer interested in supporting the bottom line of mega corporations that buy Congress to pass laws that destroy the intent of our Constitution with obscene Copyright terms.
“If P2P sharing of copyright material continues unchecked, there will no new material. People will stop producing films, writing books, making music. What will advertisers and technology innovators dependent on content and those reading this who rely on books for their education do then? That is the logical end result or immasculating copyright to the point of the irrelevance by way of the free exchange of creators efforts.”
I call BS first!
Oh, come one. You’re talking about how people demonize the record companies, but there you go simplifying a great deal and inventing the rest.
Well, just to be fair, let’s say you’re somewhat right and P2P results in the downfall of record studios, movie studios, publishers, etc. The only industry that would truly suffer from that is the film industry. Music and literature wouldn’t, or at least not to the point of certain extinction.
Anyhow, people would never let that happen. They love music, movies, books too much. In a world where there is no large-scale, physical distribution by major companies, the internet would become the main tool of proliferation.
However, I’m not going to describe an entire new business model here, because I don’t have the know-how.
One thing is a fact, never underestimate the willingness of people to pay a FAIR price for something they appreciate.
I’ll give you a stupid example, but take for example “fansubbing.” The fansubbing scene is the collective of groups that take it upon themselves to translate movies, tv shows, cartoons in a foreign language to their own language. ( Which is of course illegal, but bear with me. ) As someone who has had experience in that scene, I can tell you this:
From the smallest groups with the worst releases, all the way up to the biggest groups with the best releases, fans would reward them with donations every now and then. By delivering a free service, and without usually asking, groups would receive amounts going from 100 to 1000 dollar or more a month. ( Which were only used to support the group and its activities. ) All of this considering the fairly small size of those groups, and the fact that it was just a hobby.
Now imagine this in a larger scale and better managed. That is the future. ( Well, I overly simplified things, but still… )
Well, sure… perhaps the revenues wouldn’t be as high as now, but is that really needed? Why should some of the more famous musicians gain such an exaggerated, disproportional amount of money?
Anyhow, I’m just ranting now. It’s just that I hate to hear people talk like that.
Peace,
Eduardo
To my friend – “a lawyer”
My friend, you are the problem. I make money from royalties. I will gladly give it up to see the companies that have created a system of what can only be called “indentured servitude” brought down. Record labels are notorious for signing artists to bad deals they can’t get out of. Now we no longer need them.
Your side has all the lawyers, all the money, all the resources. In a recent US case Disney was instrumental in extending the length of copyright because Mickey Mouse was going to fall into public domain. When this extension is up, I have no doubt that some smarmy attorney (or more accurately “Legal Team) will file to extend the copyright further. When is it finally enough? 75 years? 100 years? 500 years?
The music INDUSTRY is notorious for non-payments, late payments, under-payments to the artists it professes to represent in the struggle to maintain control over that which it only sells but does not create. It forces artists who are owed money to hock their homes to force audits that are then delayed, obscured, and appealed by those same teams of lawyers.
I have sat at tables with those same suits who have said with a straight face (upon my questioning of a few of the details in their contracts) that, “You shouldn’t really expect to make money off of record sales. You’ll make your money from touring. A record is more of a promotional thing.” Now that they have been caught peeing on the carpet, they want to have it both ways. No…they do not represent me or any other musician.
The future may dictate that a recording artist may only sell a few thousand CD’s, and 100,000 may constitute a huge hit. Fine…the artist will get a much bigger bite of the pie and maintain much more control over his own creation. You guys have continually seeked to stack the deck against us and cry the blues (which by the way, you have no shred of understanding of but only see as another market niche)and ask us to feel sorry for you as your ship goes down. Allow me to throw you an anchor.
Today Bob Lefsetz wrote an interesting piece re: the iPhone and Verizon, and how (because Verizon was unwilling to cede any control to some other company) Apple got into bed with AT & T/Cingular, which was not their first choice…and how Verizon missed a very big boat. Same thing here…those companies that put their music online at a reasonable price (not $1.00 per song, which is another ripoff) and without all that DRM crap, will do well. They will create a revenue stream that will be in place for many years to come, require little upkeep or oversight, and can even grow over time. But they won’t do it because they fear that same loss of control.
Music touches our collective souls. It is not “a product”. It is not something that fits some advertiser-dictated radio demographic…and yet, you have been giving us, indeed shoving down our throats, this type of product (for product this type of music indeed is) for so long that you are not even aware that there’s a difference. I have news for you…the Public IS aware…and they are making their choice.
Overviper
” If P2P sharing of copyright material continues unchecked, there will no new material. People will stop producing films, writing books, making music. ”
So, when there was no recording industry,
there was no music ?
No musicians ?
No artists ?
uummm no.
Not true.
Never will be true.
As has been said before.
The true artists will always continue to create.
They have to, they are born to it.
With P2P .. these artists can be seen and heard by
millions, whether that majors want them to be heard
or not. On the P2P shelf, the unsigned sits next to
the signed.
The REAL reason the Majors are so upset ?
Many are PREFERRING the unsigned offerings to the
Majors :).
Scary.
They have pushed the unsigned out of the major retail
chains.
They keep the unsigned off the radio.
The are trying to eliminate the streaming internet
stations that play unsigned AND signed .. by hiking
the rates unfairly high.
They are having great success in running the specialty
stores out of business ( making sure that only the
major retail chains, which they control, can sell
CD’s )
The RIAA is running scared.
They can’t control the internet.
All of your fancy legalese will not change the facts.
The artist will create .. always.
Thanks to Dreddsnik and the others who point out that “a Lawyer” is wrong in his opinion that artists wouldn’t create without the incentive of copyright. (Saves me from having to do so and my time online is unfortunately very limited these days!)
:)
Keep up the war against evil folks! We ARE going to win this thing eventually!
–Shmoo, of Electric Gypsy
Just when you thought that RIAA moguls and their schills couldn’t do any worse than, say, sue dead grandmothers for downloading Metallica, this utter UTTER &$%£ comes along and attempts to silence an academic with threats to their job for merely _linking_ to an article. I mean, how low can a person get? How degrading a job do you have to have to consider this normal behaviour? I mean, to be that low, you’d have to be the kind of person who would consider suing dead grandmo…
Oh.
One amusing thing about this is that, already, there currently only 16,000 mentions of Revolver Records on the Internet, and 5,000 of those are in relation to this article. Paul has managed to royally *&$% up his company’s image; from hip, alternative, dark and edgy to the most enthusiastic inhalers of corporate sweaty pink swords in one fell swoop. A class act, sir.
P.
Just come across this and many of the points have been covered but I would like to add my support for Andrew in this matter and hope that the UCE are also supporting him. I imagine that 99% of readers/contributors to this discussion couldn’t give a monkeys where he works and it wouldn’t affect their judgment of the site/debate but people would rather read and form their own opinions based on what he has highlighted in his blog. I think it was encouraging of Paul to allow his opinions to posted (and ironically copied and shared around the world) but he lost any semblance of support he may have garnered and lost the debate with his proposed threats of reporting Andrew and suing the university (one of the most absurd things I have read in years) . As others have pointed out it just shows how desperate the industry is becoming, at a time when they should be working out how to embrace the challenges facing them to the benefit of artists, consumers and the industry bodies themselves rather than embroiling themselves in rather sad posturing and bullying tactics.
Well, I found this site in a roundabout fashion following links from Groklaw. I have just submitted it to the newspicks there, given the rather large following of that website this might end up being a rather poor choice of actions on Paul’s part.
I’m new to your site, but I love it so far. Suffice to say, this guy sounds like, if I may use a layman’s term, A Douchebag. He makes no convincing arguments, and sounds like the many robots I hear speaking on behalf of the RIAA.
sorry, but what?
the record corps feel they can dictate freedom of speech and expression?
SCREW “EM..
as an independant musician nobody, i can assue them we don;t need them any longer…or their bloat and greed.
i prefer to give my music away…if someone wants to reward my efforts, and some have, they are usually pretty fair.
not that i care.
what i read above gave me the visual of a cunning conniving and dangerous rat on a ship sinking fast.
see, for them, it’s about that bottom line…for THEM, not even the artists.
they need to either adapt or die, perhaps the record company’s future lies in the resources they own…and no more abuse of artists or dictating the pablum fed to folks .
am i bitter?
not really…p.o’d about paul’s tude?
hell yah.
i say they need to worry about their future careers, because they have rendered themselves obsolete in a vampiric sort of way.
we artists can deliver better quality at this point than the rec corps can.
i’ll take my chances on my own; your mileage may vary, and this is just my opinion.
i don’t condone selling someone else’s music, but neither can i condone folks sharing what they already paid for or changing it’s format to a digital one.
anyways,,,
peace
jimi
oooops…excuse me, the last line should read:
“i don’t condone selling someone else’s music, but neither can i condone folks sharing what they already paid for or changing it’s format to a digital one.” and being PERSECUTED for it…as someone presumably paid for the original liscense to use it’s content.
most of the copies of albums i had given to me over the last 4 decades or so encouraged me to BUY the actual product, and sometimes even the entire discography, btw…and i doubt i am alone with that.
j.
Paul came to a gig I was doing with my old band. There was a bit of on-stage drama between the other bands drummer and ours…our drummer started to smash up up their kit…
Anyway it was a brilliant & tense affair.
Paul stormed off yelling “This band are a disgrace to the music industry!”
I’m certainly not advocating our drummers behaviour but I am very gratefull to Mr. Birch for revealing a new depth of Irony.
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Glad you posted this email exchange.
lets get a few things straight for the record:
1). The RIAA policy of suing music fans/consumers has been a massive failure. have we seen a decrease in overall P2P usage? Prob not.
2). Businesses should not sue their customers – a better line would be to prosecute the accessories to the crime which by default are the ISPs. It is the ISPs infrastructure and turning a blind eye to copyright infringements which makes them accessories to millions of P2P crimes. The IFPI, BPI and RIAA should be suing the ISPs. They are the only ones with the technology to stop file sharing
For more details on this check out:
http://themusicvoid.wordpress.com/2008/06/09/are-isps-thieves-of-music-in-the-digital-realm
Would be good to get peoples thoughts…
Cheers,
Jakomi
lets face it…for the majority of up and coming artists and producers the route into the “indusrty” as set down by such organisations as major labels, governing bodies etc have been CLOSED to them for YEARS. As such most of the artists, producers etc have been forced to use other methods to get themselves heard ( putting on illegal events, making white labels, hell we used to drive around europe putting on parties, going to shops and distributors and selling self produced vinyl out of the back of a van before the internet came along)
so later on down the line…finally the big boys have had a word in their ear by someone who still has a connection to the real world and says it may affect sales if allowed to continue and THATS the key phrase isn’t it.
there was no proof in the beginning it was going to do any more damage than home taping, it was all speculative. what about the factories in south america and asia running off all those bootlegs? for years before the internet arrived.oh no, they’re in cahoots with them because any exposure counts when trying to make your top artist ubiquitous, and theres always the chance of a lucrative bribe…..
there’s still a stone in someone’s shoe though. how do we eek it out they ask?
i know, lets do like every other organisation or government that has a problem with so called ‘terrorism or piracy’ does. lets make our public, our society , our people into the TARGET. LETS SHIT ON THE LITTLE GUY.
you upload a track to myspace it automatically becomes the property of rupert murdoch apparently when you read the small print – look what happened to the arctic monkeys. does that stop anybody doing it? NO.
are you really gonna trawl through every myspace page and sue people who put their favourite track of all time up on their profile? ooh i’d like to see you try.
the main thing is , people like a track , they’ll do what they can to get it , BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. people wanna get their stuff heard THE SAME THING APPLIES. music is supposed to be heard. its the ultimate bastion of TRY BEFORE BUY. and its not by having corporate playlists ramming the same old shit down your throat on the radio day after day we’re all gonna back down and say”well, maybe what they want me to hear is all thats out there guys” what a sad world that would be.
the amount of people creating their work has flourished over the past 20 years in ways that kiddies in the 50’s with a guitar could only dream of. the internet has provided a way for anybody to get at least somebody else to hear their work which is essentially the rasion d’etre of making music or writing songs in the first place.
and now some paranoid guys in suits who probably haven’t looked in the a+r pile for years now wanna come shut us down?
sorry, thats your karma for not listening to us when we asked for your help. sad truth is, we don’t need you anymore.
and the more illegal it gets , the more interest it will generate, the more people will subscribe to different ways of getting their music.
HELL even MY GRANDMOTHER USED EMULE, and thanks to some nutter in hicksville , nowhereland , she managed to finally get the bing crosby collection her local record shop (closed down now) refused to stock SO THERE!!!!!!!!
by the way am i the last person in the world to read this blog?
“I can only seek to reason with those views but my argument about biting the hand that feeds it is I feel valid.”
Ironically enough those of us who do download music through P2P services or other means think the same thing. Big businesses and organizations forget the they don’t feed us, we feed them. Without music lovers they would have no business. With these ridiculous lawsuits and things like the MPAA’s recent explanation of why they should no longer have to provide proof in copyright infringement cases because it’s too difficult big businesses in music, film, and what used to be considered the arts rather than a group of products and the organizations surrounding them are biting the collective hand of the one that feeds them.
Hello Andrew,
Your site has been a rather magnificent discovery for me this week!
I am a UK Music Fan with a broad range of tastes and a hobbyist songwriter in my spare time.
I have been reading your ebook and several of your articles/discussions with interest and have picked up some really useful tips so thank you for that…
Now for the bad news…
I seem to have noticed a prevalent theme in your posts…
You seem to think that providing music for free is the way forward in the music industry and that when artists don’t want their music provided for free (without their permission) and when they or their representatives/industry bodies take legal recouse to stop this happening ie prosecuting file sharers….that this is a great sin…
You seem to get extremely irriated at “corporate†bodies taking legal steps to protect their music and i just can’t understand why!
It seems as though you are trying to turn the issue into an “us and them†Corporate vs Fanboy Filesharer war when your site is geared towards supporting the very people who want to share their music and earn a financial reward for it – Indepdendent Artists/Record Labels
The BPI and Record Companies are just trying to protect their music.
Who provides them with the music they are trying to protect? The Artists. People like me and the many people reading your site.
Do you endorse filesharing of copyrighted music? It appears you do (Please correct me if I’m wrong).
If you don’t endorse it (officially) You at least seem to agree with the principle of giving away music for free as this is a theme that runs through this forum and your ebook.. You keep talking about “promotion†and “getting your music listened to†at any cost…
In this case the cost of the music….
I just can’t understand why you insist on this theme of “free†music for all.
I am starting to wonder if you have a hidden “sponsor†or agenda for this site – Is someone bankrolling you Andrew? Do you have an interest you need to declare?
As an independent artist if you give away your music for free – How do you earn a living?
Do you make money from sell out tours? Er no because your not Prince!
Make money from the local gig scene? Er no you have to provide at last 50 people or you have to PAY the venue between £100-£200 because as one of my buddies got told “we could have put someone else in your placeâ€..
Ok so Independent Artists DON’T make from from their music and they DON’T make money from gigging so i’m going to ask a very, very simple question of you Andrew:
How do you suggest an independent artist who is not signed to a major label makes their money?
I have read your site from top to bottom and side to side yet you don’t seem to have an answer….
Yours,
Sarah…
Dear Sarah;
As one who has been in and around the “Industry” for more than 30 years, I can only tell you that you are very naive if you think for one minute that an entertainment conglomerate (of which the major record label to which you desire to be signed is only one very small division of) will represent your interests in ANY way at all once you sign that contract.
If you think that people swapping files is ripping you off, you have no idea at all how much you will be ripped off by the people who you have given up control of your music to.
The Internet has given you, the artist, the tools to fight back with for the first time in history and you are too stupid to see the opportunity, but can only see that you cannot get your hands on a “signing bonus” or are losing the opportunity to be plugged into their “star-making” machinery.
You need to know that the odds, once you do plug into that machinery are very long against helping you and very long FOR chewing you up and spitting you out like a piece of meat.
The musician/artist/songwriter of the future will create , market, and be in control of their own product. There will be new companies that arise to help those artists. Their paradigm will be to make deals that give them some rights for limited periods, but will leave the artist in control. Managers will play an ever bigger role…live music will return to prominence. Venues will spring up that do not charge the artist to work in them. Some smart person will construct a loose amalgamation of second-tier venues that can put artists on a touring circuit that takes the Live Nations and Ticketmasters out of the equation. The “360 degree” artist deal will be shown for the sham that it is. All of this will be possible because the CREATOR will be in control of their own creation…and you think we should go backwards?
You are a very silly person…
Overviper
I kindly request that everyone declare their interests from the start. It would make reading blogs and groups and network sites so much easier. For instance, this eMail firestorm would be so much more valuable had every single respondent declared the following at the beginning of their post:
a) I am a singer/songwriter who does not perform; or
b) I am a performer who does only covers; or
c) I am an industry person.
Therefore, before I go on, I will state quite clearly that I am a performing singer/songwriter who primarily wishes to provide others with material for their albums and projects. No stranger of the stage, I prefer hearing my material played by others than performing it myself.
That being said, the overwhelming theme of these posts (as with many other such places that touch on the subject) is that (a) the big companies are bad; and, (b) we all have to give away our music for free to really show ‘em who’s boss.
I’d like to know which percentage of those supporting the “give it all away for free” are cover artists who do not or cannot write their own material. For once, I’d like to see not one but a community of accomplished songwriters come forward and support this method. I doubt any ever will.
The “angler fish” is a fish that has a light emitting from a dangly thingy that protrudes from its forehead (like the one in that scene from Finding Nemo). As I read through this and many others blogs, I cannot help but feel as though we are being drawn toward this “enlightened future” for music only to ever more quickly be chewed up and spit out (or worse).
In Canada, and I assume other places, we can no longer participate in any competition or apply for any festival or such without being SonicBids members. While I understand the service SonicBids provides (a cute little template and standard submission model), it boggles the mind that (a) this is a monopoly; (b) I not only have to pay up front for a service which I can easily provide for myself via my web-site and (c) to add insult to injury, I must also pay again for each individual opportunity I wish to apply for. Outside the arts world, no other work community operates in this fashion. The music industry is above labour laws too now?
Why do I mention this? Because it continually seems as though we’re being nickled and dimed by everything we want to do in this “free world” called the internet, yet every corner I turn (after paying the applicable set-up and finders fees) tells me I should give all my stuff away for free.
I’ve no doubt Andrew’s intentions are honourable as are those of posters like Overviper but I cannot call Sarah’s entries “silly”. If I was a performing artist that didn’t write my own songs, I’d sure love to see those copyright laws reduced and/or convince the majority of new artists to give away their rights from the start.
And, even more sinister, if I were a major recording company, I would sit back and quietly gobble up the CD Babies, Facebooks and SonicBids of the internet world. (see the Angler Fish now?)
Yummy.
I’ve no trouble giving certain rights away to certain people given certain circumstances. I’ve written a gazillion songs but I can’t help but feel for the guy who’s written just one who reads these posts and hears an entire community telling him to give away what amounts to his life’s work in a globalized environment such as this… it just seems so unfair and irresponsible.
Could we all declare our personal interests from the start? Please?
Luc
Hi Luc;
You make a couple of good points…so I’ll declare…
I’ve been a professional musician for over 40 years. I am currently inactive due to the nature of the business. Some of the hats I have worn over the years are composer, arranger, orchestrator, recording engineer, studio owner, jazz pianist, studio musician, record producer…I could go on and tell you about the time my band opened for the juggling act (true story), but what’s the point…I’ve been around the block a few times.
One of the biggest mistakes that I personally made was in not understanding early on the value of owning your own copyrights (publishing). Due to the nature of broadcast media (US…I don’t know Canada), if you own your own publishing, you can make about twice as much money. Broadcast media such as film, TV, radio, etc. must pay license fees to ASCAP, BMI, etc. who collect money for you. If you are a Publisher member, you can have that money collected as well, or assign someone to collect it for you (usually smarter, but more risky). I have received royalty money from all over the world because Broadcast media must make those payments. It is the revenue stream that is most valuable to the artist and composer…because it pays regularly…and that’s the reason that record labels, etc (the man), are so interested in taking ownership pieces of that revenue stream away from you.
We could talk about how you may on some level believe that the demise of these companies is bad for the artist, but I am only too glad to see them go. They do not, have not, never will, and never did protect, defend, or care about any artist. They cared about the revenue stream. When you own your own product, you can control that stream.
If you think back 100 years to small town America, it was much harder to lie if you were in business. You may have done it a couple of times, then you got a reputation for it, and customers went down the street to someone else. The major music companies have been lying to everyone for so long it’s astounding, and the reason the could get away with it was that they were the only game in town.
Maybe you, Luc…maybe you will be that person who starts up an online song placement service, or an online honest publishing company, or an honest music management company…if not you, someone WILL do it…because it needs doing. So if you complain about how Sonic Bids takes a bite of your cash, start an alternative service. If you do it well, not only will you put them out of business, the TALENT will flock to you because they will rightly perceive that you are helping them and not ripping them off.
The Internet is a golden opportunity for musicians to control their own destiny…except that most musicians are too lazy, too into becoming stars, too into their image to actually do the work. Before you just jump down my throat about that opinion, remember that we had all of the poseurs in my day too. When you decide to pursue music as a career, there is no guarantee that you will succeed…none. You can work your ass off for years, at the end of the day, if the public does not like you, like your songs, like your music…you will get exactly nowhere. Along with democratizing music, new technology has had the side-effect of allowing SO much product into the marketplace that the gatekeepers are confused. At large companies, those gatekeepers are lawyers and business people. They are no longer music people…so if you take a song to them, they have no clue whether it’s good or bad…their only concern is to keep their job, so what they put out is the least threatening…not the best.
Small labels can take more chances, many times have more people who love music working there, and are more helpful in terms of providing the public what it really desires…which is good music. The problem is that the smaller labels mostly operate on a shoestring and don’t pay that much…so for now, people like yourself are caught in a kind of no-man’s-land…my opinion is that will likely evolve over the next few years, and you will see people step up into the breach because there IS money to made from that revenue stream, and there IS money to be made from managing a great band, and there IS money to made from putting music into TV and films…it may not be as much money as you want…in my view, that’s a good thing…because it will cause all the people who think music is about having the right “look” and not having any chops to fade away.
Music will be better for that…
So if you want to give your music away for free…do it. If you don’t want to…don’t do it. It’s your choice…I would only ask you to take a look at what Trent Reznor is doing…he sent a questionnaire to his fanbase, asking THEM what they liked or didn’t like in the way he was doing his business. He gave away some product, gave away some tickets, and for the fans that paid to download his music, there were still other giveaways…tickets, merchandise…that people who didn’t pay couldn’t get. Now…OK, it’s NIN, but he didn’t get to where he is by having contempt for his fanbase and asking someone else to do the work. He dug down and got his own hands dirty.
Ancient Chinese proverb…
Chaos creates opportunity. Dig it.
Overviper
I have a question for you or anyone else who wants to address this: I know of several folks who have decided to stop contributing to their 401k’s and other retirement accounts and start putting that money towards paying down their mortgage. Right now I put $250/paycheck into my retirement fund, and yet my balance is less than it was six months ago. Is it smarter to just keep with the traditional wisdom of investing the same amount no matter how the market is going, or is a diversion into debt reduction a smart move? FYI I’m about 15 miles out from retirement.
What do you think?
http://www.moneyning.com
Laura Kauffmann
“Seven Oceans Investments Club”
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Hi,
Looks like this is a friendly board.
I thought I would make this initial thread my introduction
I hoping to acquaint myself with every one of you over the next couple of weeks =)
Just saying hello to you all .. Still a bit confused about the goings on here, but I guess I’ll keep poking around.
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A contestant, Sally, on ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire?’ had reached the final plateau. If she answered the next question correctly, she would win $1,000,000. If she answered incorrectly, she would pocket only the $25,000 milestone money. And as she suspected the Million Dollar Question was no pushover.
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Is it:
A) The condor
B) The buzzard
C) The cuckoo
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her friend had given her. And considering her friend was a blonde that would seem to be the logical thing to do. But her friend had responded
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‘Oh, come on,’ said the blonde ‘Everybody knows that cuckoos don’t build nests. They live in clocks.’
Sally fainted.
Hi to all!
this is my first Thread, i hope thats okay, i would be say “hello” to this Forum :-) I came from Germany and i must lern English for my School Exam. so i will be speak over this Forum to any Members to train my English Online. Thats more Funny that the boring Schooltraining….
So, thanks in Advance for your Questions and Answers to me to help me train my English….
Greetings to all,
Sandra
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