A Letter To The Entertainment Industry

Dear RIAA and MPAA:
I can’t say that I speak for the entire movie-going music-listening public, but I feel relatively certain I represent a fair cross section of them, so take some time to hear me out.

I like movies; in fact I love movies. I love music too. I don’t like to be bored. No one does, it’s just not fun. There is, however, a sizeable difference between what you tell me I should like, and what I do like. Sometimes, you can be right on the money. You said movies like Anchorman and Wedding Crashers were hilarious, and I agreed. You said Batman Begins would be a dark, gritty, and wholy compelling restart to a franchise that, to be honest, you screwed up. And it was. Then again, you also told me that Dukes of Hazzard would be just as good, if not better, than the original series, but I didn’t think so. But you know, it’s ok, because I’m in a position where I don’t have to watch or listen to something I won’t like.

There was a time when, after a little kicking and screaming, you embraced new technologies, and made boatloads of money for yourself and others. After the initial stink over the VCR, you aquiesced (you didn’t really have a choice), and you brought more of your product to more people and made more money. Sure, you lost a few sales-I remember my father would record tapes rented from Blockbuster, unless they were really good, then he bought them. But that soon came to an end (Cliffhanger was the last one). Then you guys said “Hey, check this out! We’ve got these discs, they look like CDs, only they’re not!” And everything was cool. We took pleasure in your 5.1-ilized, director commentated, double disced goodness.

But there was a problem with this. It was called Content Scrambling System, a padlock you threw around your product so we could only do what you wanted us to do. Imagine how people would feel if Honda decided to do something like this with their next Civic? Or if Dell welded their computers shut? As you could imagine, people would be none-too happy. How would mechanics make money if they have to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in Ford tools, and Honda tools, and Dodge tools? What will CompUSA do if Dell cries “We have our rights!” and no longer allows them to repair, upgrade, or sell parts and programs for their computers? And just what am I supposed to do, the loyal consumer, if I’m bereft of the choice I used to have?

That’s an extreme case, but you know you industry-types are doing just that. Your telling me that I can’t consume media that I have legally payed for in manners which I may see fit. You have more platforms than ever before to distribute your content through-but instead your closing them off. It would be swell if I could rip a DVD onto my iPod so for those two hours I have between classes, I have something to do (besides homework, of course). It would be really neat if I could take the best scenes and make a mix-DVD. In fact, my dad keeps asking me to do this with all of his concert DVDs. You know what I tell him? “Well pop, that sounds neat, but it’s illegal. That being said, yes I can do that.”

I’m not an expert in encryption-I’m not even that good at math. I don’t know what sort of crazy algorithms your using to lock me out of my own DVDs, nor do I know how Apple’s FairPlay or Windows PlaysForSure works. I do know that someone, somewhere does know this. In fact, I’d wager that a whole lot of people in a whole lot of places do, and they’re probably on the Internet.

It’s not that people don’t want you to make money, if that were the case your industries would have been long dead by now, because people wouldn’t have paid you in the first place. It’s not that you are necessarily stupid and they are necessarily smart; nor is it that they are moral and just and you are not. There’s a simple fact that you seem to be forgetting: for as long as human beings have had “stuff” other people have wanted to take said “stuff.” As long as human beings have made “stuff” other people have wanted to get their hands on “stuff” without paying for it.

If someone has never paid for a piece of recorded music in their life, no lawsuit in the world will make them start now. It’s like Cory Doctorow said, “Keeping an honest user honest is like trying to keep a tall user tall.” It’s not you, it’s them.

But I’ll share a little secret with you. The people I know who download the most music, who steal the most of your stuff-go to concerts all the time. They’ve got more posters, t-shirts, wristbands, hats, hoodies, and any other form of merchandise than one person should actually own. The people who pirate the most movies are the ones with the largest collections, downloading the films they want to see, that you won’t let them. They’re addicted, and they’re spending more money on their habit than they’re making.

That or they’re studying. Studying to one day be one of you. They’re your apprentices, studying the masterpieces. During the Renaissance, if you were apprenticed to Michelangelo or DaVinci, most of your time was spent copying their stuff, not making your own. And sure, there were people out there who would gladly rip the Mona Lisa right off the wall but you know something, they were going to do it anyway! And if DaVinci decided to start suing people who looked at his paintings, well what kind of Master would he be?

That’s exactly what you’re doing, though. Your little rootkits and CSSes and Macrovisions aren’t stopping the criminals-the people who have the same equipment that you do and are reproducing your products on the same scale that you’re cranking them out. I’m not the bad guy when I download a song from BitTorrent that I wasn’t going to pay for in the first place, but the person pressing (not burning on his computer) 5000 copies of that same song every few days and selling them for profit is.

At this stage you’re probably wondering where the hell I’m going with this. Well, here’s the point. There’s no way that you’ll ever be able to realize your full, 100% potential. It’s the nature of any business. Even if you’ve strong-armed everyone into paying you, you’re still going to have to deal with losses and layoffs and late-starts and all that noise. You can’t litigate and lobby the market into submission, that’s not the way the game works. I need you guys because I hate being bored. And you need me because you’re probably not good at counterfeiting money, or you just don’t want to. But the funny thing now is, I don’t need you as much anymore. All this technology allows you to produce bigger and better and louder stuff, but it also allows a lot more people to produce their own stuff. And it may not be as high quality, it may not have the highest budget, and maybe they can’t get the talk show appearances and fast-food tie-ins that you can, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good at doing what they do. And that doesn’t mean that I’m not taking notice of them. You’re not making any new fans by taking this road. Your laws and lobbies are only making criminals out of innocent people, and if they’re already criminals, why shouldn’t they go all out? You can only put a gun to so many heads and shout “LOVE ME!” before someone points there own at you. And then what? What will you do when the theaters are empty, when the cable and television and radio channels go ignored, when we’re all online laughing and crying and singing along to stuff that we like and that was produced just because someone wanted to produce it? I have an exit strategy, do you?

Sincerely,
Fan, Customer, Pirate, Criminal, Friend, Foe

Can You Lose To Yourself?

I just voted a few minutes ago and there were a few areas where only one person was running. That got me thinking: what happens if you’re, say, a judge, and no one is running against you? Do you win by default, or do the votes still need to be counted? What if you’re the only candidate and no one votes for you?

Where Have All The Smart People Gone?

I really wanted to avoid jumping into the whole violence in videogames/media debate, but I just have to get it off my chest. We all remember the infamous Hot Coffee mod for GTA: San Andreas. And we all remember the various senators who were outraged that such filth could be placed in a game that children play. But somewhere, everyone forgot that said game is all about being a criminal. It’s about stealing cars, shooting cops, going on dope runs, screwing prostitutes in cars to regain health and then robbing them, chopping heads off, and generally causing mayhem. It’s damn fun too.

They also forgot that the game already had an M rating, meaning stores can’t (or perhaps, shouldn’t) sell it to anyone under the age of 17. But of course, that rarely happens, as usually the child in question will go whine to mommy or daddy, who will promptly berate the staff until the game is sold. The parents will probably go home, happen to glance at their child looting/shooting/stealing, and return, outraged, to the store and demand why they would sell such a product to their child. There appears, to me at least, to be a glaring flaw in this whole chain of events. The parents aren’t, well, parenting. Don’t buy something for your child that you don’t want them to use. If you won’t let your child watch Saving Private Ryan, A Clockwork Orange, or Schindler’s List, why would you buy them a game that contains just as much violence? The Passion of The Christ is too violent and gory to watch, but Mortal Kombat is all right. Is anyone else as confused as I am? Moreover, why do we rely on the government to parent for us? Why are we banned from reading books written about Southerners in the 1800′s because they contain the N word? Were people not discriminated against because of their color? Is Mark Twain a liar? Or do we simply wish to avoid demonizing ourselves, to erase the cultural memory of all the terrible things that our society has done in an effort to cancel out their existence?

I think we have been, for quite some time now, determined to view ourselves as the ‘good guy,’ like Superman. Superman would put some pretty bad hurtings on criminals, but since he never killed them, it was ok. It’s eerily reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984, in which the job of the title character is to rework history to match the government’s line. If Big Brother said production of food was up 300% last month, then he has to go through every newspaper and recording to make sure that they all say that food production was, in fact, up 300%. The problem, at its core, is that we want to have our cake and eat it too. We want to have the right to say absolutely whatever we please, but we only want people to say things which we agree with, things that won’t shock and disturb us. But that is impossible, for the same right that allows me to say “Our President is stupid” is the same right that allows people to say that a certain race is biologically inferior, that women have no business in the workplace, that Hitler was right, and a million other heinous things. Like when former Secretary of Education William Bennet said “If you wanted to reduce crime, you could — if that were your sole purpose — you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down.”

What’s needed is an addendum to the First Amendment. One that says that speech is free, so long as it is nice and clean and decent. Of course any proposal to that affect would be met with the fiercest of opposition, even though that’s really what so many people are asking for. Nobody wants to just come out and say it, but that’s what all of the insinuations are. Nobody wants to admit it to themselves that they’re really asking for it. But they are, and there are those out there that do see it. I’m sick and tired of hearing these endless debates about why videogame companies need to stop publishing such violent content because our children are accessing it. If you don’t want your child playing the game, then be a parent. Because the cold truth of the matter is, this a terribly violent world we live in, and whether we would like to admit it or not, it will always be that way.

How To Eat Your Own Foot

We’ve all heard the old saying “put your foot in your mouth,” and many of us have probably wished we had the flexibility to do it at least once in our lives. Well, it appears Sony BMG has been taking yoga.

After numerous complaints from iPod owners about the DRM-laden discs the labels have been producing, several artists including The Foo Fighters and Dave Matthew’s Band, and even SonyBMG itself, are now disclosing how to beat their own DRM in order to rip tracks from the CD to an iPod. Those who contact Sony about the iPod/Sony incompatibility are directed to this site which includes instructions on how to beat DRM. You have to enter the artist and album name, the name of the store you purchased it at, and your email address to receive the instructions.

I had a good laugh at this article, just like I had a good laugh at the RICO case against the RIAA. I guess the lablels just love being pricks, like the guy in TFC who does nothing but shoot his own teammates. I could just picture some executive sitting there, thinking to himself, “You know we’re really getting a bad rep lately. I don’t know why people don’t want to pay outrageous sums for our content-which isn’t even that good-and don’t want to get sued by us when they go elsewhere for it. That’s not so bad, is it? Hello? Guys?” I hope that guy and the rest of them all get bunks with Hitler and Osama in Hell.

Bastards.

The RIAA is the New Mafia

I first caught this story on digg.com- a 41 year old disabled woman in Oregon is countersuing the Recording Industry Association of America under the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization Act. Her countersuit claims some 65 violations of both RICO and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, illegally gathering information from her personal computer and basically trying to extort thousands of dollars from her. Tanya Anderson allegedly downloaded gangster-rap at 4:24 am (no date is given) under the Kazaa user name “gotenkito.â€? She claims that she doesn’t like gangster rap, she doesn’t know who or what “gotenkitoâ€? is, she’s not awake at 4:24 am, and she doesn’t download music at all. The countersuit states that the RIAA uses a company called MediaSentry to harvest information from computers of individuals named in any of the 13,500 John Doe lawsuits the RIAA has filed. This information is then passed along to Settlement Support Center which is responsible for collecting debt. There are a lot of strange and weird things going on with this case. There’s the fact that she was supposedly an “unnamed defendantâ€? in a suit in D.C. Or the fact that she was “’viewed’ downloading and distributing over 1,000 audio files for which it sought to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars.â€? Or the fact that “despite refusing Ms. Andersen’s offer to allow an inspection of her own computer, the record companies wrongfully continued their improper debt collection activities against her…..â€? She also alleges that

“51. An employee of Settlement Support Center admitted to Ms. Andersen that he believed that she had not downloaded any music. He explained, however, that Settlement Support Center and the record companies would not quit their debt collection activities because to do so would encourage other people to defend themselves against the record companies’ claims.�

If you check out the Wikipedia article on the RICO Act, you’ll notice something mentioned called the Anti-Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) Act, which “can be applied in an attempt to curb alleged abuses of the legal system by individuals or corporations who utilize the courts as a weapon to retaliate against whistle blowers, victims, or to silence another’s speech.â€? Tanya Andersen is my new personal hero. I hope she wins her countersuit and that there are a thousand more just like it. I hope more of these lawsuits get thrown out in court We’ve been told that file sharing hurts artists, but you know record labels were already hurting artists on their own. The record companies are hurting themselves, badly. CD sales are down, while legitimate downloads are up 350%. Now they want to change the iTunes price model and charge more money. I’ve long been of the opinion that the easiest way to make more money is to actually sell products for less, because you’ll end up selling more of them. Steve Jobs has taken the firm stance that the record labels are greedy, and that “”If the price goes up, they (consumers) will go back to piracy and everybody loses.” Makes sense to me. The fact is that 99 cents really isn’t that much of a bargain, but it’s much easier to buy music at home in my boxers than to go to the store. Of course, the iTunes songs aren’t of the greatest quality. And, at the end of the day, Apple Computer only gets about 4 cents after the labels take their cut and bandwidth and other costs are factored in. So in conclusion, we should all just stop listening to music all together. It’s become way too much of a hassle, and most of it isn’t even good.