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“RIAA members are excited about the potential of the internet and other communication technologies to provide an efficient means of distribution to music lovers

“RIAA members are excited about the potential of the internet and other communication technologies to provide an efficient means of distribution to music lovers globally. Regrettably, this potential remains largely unrealized—mired in a morass of piracy,” the letter addressed to the USTR reads. Wow, these guys are lying through their teeth. You can now legally listen to music using an ever-increasing number of services services like iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, and Amazon. The large majority of the people I know use these services, along with CDs and FM radio, to listen to music. Only my most technically adept friends care to pirate music.

slowpoke 15y ago
The point isn't whether those services are legal or not. The RIAA fails to accept the fact that the internet has made middlemen (gatekeepers) utterly obsolete. The internet doesn't "have the potential" to be a an efficient means of distributing digital data - it's the whole point of the net in the first place. The RIAA wants the advantages of the net without having to deal with the consequences (namely, being obsolete), which is laughable, not to mention futile. I hope they'll be out of business soon so we can look back at their stupid whining in a few decades and heartily laugh at the faint memory of copyright while we freely access the shared knowledge, culture and information of mankind.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- kiba 15y ago
  The internet didn't make middlemen obsolete. It just that it make RIAA as middlemen obsolete. They could fit themselves to be the middleman that provide valuable service to musicians and fans, but they don't want to.
- felipemnoa 15y ago
  They remind me of AOL but at a bigger scale. They are trying to do everything they can to keep their ship from sinking. The fact that they seem like they could be successful is worrying. When AOL started to shrink/die it started doing really shady things to keep users from switching internet providers [1]. One of the most insidious ones was how they would screw with a user's computer so that they would not be able to switch internet providers [2]. The fact that RIAA is trying to cripple the internet as a whole tells me that the beast is desperate and dying. It knows that its death is near and as a last bid for survival has gone for broke. If we can just keep it at bay for a few more years it will probably finally die. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL#Controversies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL#Controversies [2]http://www.gcginc.com/cases/pdf/AOL/AOLNotice.pdf http://www.gcginc.com/cases/pdf/AOL/AOLNotice.pdf
bad_user 15y ago
Do they really think that blocking domain names will help stop piracy? In my country torrent trackers aren't even the preferred way for pirating stuff. The preferred way is good old Direct Connect and hubs to which you connect to search for stuff are IP-based ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Connect_network http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Connect_network Either they are incompetents, or they know they'll abuse this for killing legitimate small businesses with disruptive business plans, or both.
- sp332 15y ago
  Even The Pirate Bay hasn't run a tracker in years. They rely on DHT and Peer Exchange to find peers, and it seems to be working fine for them. All you need anymore is a magnet link with the hash of a file in it, and you can get the file without using DNS at all!
steve-howard 15y ago
I remember someone once saying that the ideal scenario for the RIAA would be a kind of "Universal Jukebox" which would force customers to pay every time they want to hear a song. If you frame everything the RIAA does in terms of this, their statement actually makes sense.
neuroelectronic 15y ago
I stopped pirating with the advent of Pandora and the like. Actually, sites like soundcloud provide fresh to the minute trends from new artists and established ones, so you don't even have to listen to that old over-processed and generic radio sound anymore that Pandora provides. It's obvious to everyone that the RIAA simply refused to inovate and the market left them behind... over a decade ago.

slowpoke 15y ago

The point isn't whether those services are legal or not. The RIAA fails to accept the fact that the internet has made middlemen (gatekeepers) utterly obsolete. The internet doesn't "have the potential" to be a an efficient means of distributing digital data - it's the whole point of the net in the first place. The RIAA wants the advantages of the net without having to deal with the consequences (namely, being obsolete), which is laughable, not to mention futile. I hope they'll be out of business soon so we can look back at their stupid whining in a few decades and heartily laugh at the faint memory of copyright while we freely access the shared knowledge, culture and information of mankind.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
kiba 15y ago
The internet didn't make middlemen obsolete. It just that it make RIAA as middlemen obsolete. They could fit themselves to be the middleman that provide valuable service to musicians and fans, but they don't want to.
felipemnoa 15y ago
They remind me of AOL but at a bigger scale. They are trying to do everything they can to keep their ship from sinking. The fact that they seem like they could be successful is worrying. When AOL started to shrink/die it started doing really shady things to keep users from switching internet providers [1]. One of the most insidious ones was how they would screw with a user's computer so that they would not be able to switch internet providers [2]. The fact that RIAA is trying to cripple the internet as a whole tells me that the beast is desperate and dying. It knows that its death is near and as a last bid for survival has gone for broke. If we can just keep it at bay for a few more years it will probably finally die. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL#Controversies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL#Controversies [2]http://www.gcginc.com/cases/pdf/AOL/AOLNotice.pdf http://www.gcginc.com/cases/pdf/AOL/AOLNotice.pdf

bad_user 15y ago

Do they really think that blocking domain names will help stop piracy? In my country torrent trackers aren't even the preferred way for pirating stuff. The preferred way is good old Direct Connect and hubs to which you connect to search for stuff are IP-based ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Connect_network http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Connect_network Either they are incompetents, or they know they'll abuse this for killing legitimate small businesses with disruptive business plans, or both.

sp332 15y ago
Even The Pirate Bay hasn't run a tracker in years. They rely on DHT and Peer Exchange to find peers, and it seems to be working fine for them. All you need anymore is a magnet link with the hash of a file in it, and you can get the file without using DNS at all!

steve-howard 15y ago

I remember someone once saying that the ideal scenario for the RIAA would be a kind of "Universal Jukebox" which would force customers to pay every time they want to hear a song. If you frame everything the RIAA does in terms of this, their statement actually makes sense.

neuroelectronic 15y ago

I stopped pirating with the advent of Pandora and the like. Actually, sites like soundcloud provide fresh to the minute trends from new artists and established ones, so you don't even have to listen to that old over-processed and generic radio sound anymore that Pandora provides. It's obvious to everyone that the RIAA simply refused to inovate and the market left them behind... over a decade ago.