As the Rolling Stones began their tour while welching on the more than quarter of a million dollar deal they made with my Friend, I started this e-Blogazine journal to document some of my experience of the fallout, and to create a forum for discussion and resources to reform the Music Industry. May Artists, Musicians, and Free People everywhere find it useful.
Got Something to say? Are You a Musician, Artist, or Person with an opinion about the Music industry, music downloads, contracts or royalties? Are You concerned about the RIAA and other industries' assault on our cyber-Freedoms? Copyright and Intellectual Property law? Well?
This site is our Music, played on a virtual sidewalk. This button is our hat in front of us. If You dig the Vibe, toss in a few coins so we live. Thanks.
One of the most powerful, comprehensive, and well articulated articles I have seen recently on the reasons that lead to the ultimate triumph of file sharing is John and Ben Snyder's "Embrace File Sharing or Die". Snyder is president of Artist House Records, a board member of the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), and a 32-time Grammy nominee.
John and Ben hit the bottom line..."It could be argued that MP3s are the greatest marketing tool ever to come along for the music industry. If your music is not being downloaded, then you're in trouble. If you can't give it away, you certainly can't sell it."
Definietly worth a read, a close read, and a re-read. In fact, it's Stoned Out Loud's Featured Article. Click the Headline above or the link in the box at the left to go to the printer friendly version all on one page, the logo to the upper right for the image-rich Salon e-zine treatment (replete with advertising :-) ).
And while Your at Salon, be sure to catch Farhad Manjoo's piece, "AOL's Jekyll and Hyde act" on the ever-schizoid AOL and their conspicuous silence regarding a judge's ordering Verizon to shred the Constitutional Rights of and disclose the identity of a Kazaa User so that the RIAA could go after them.
In Manjoo's (edited) words, "The RIAA's efforts to obtain ... identity has ballooned into a major courtroom battle over the scope of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act...[This] litigation has split the ranks of Internet service providers and content companies: ISPs, who say they worry about their subscribers' privacy, have generally sided with Verizon, while copyright holders have supported the RIAA.
"...stuck in the middle ... is a firm that is both a huge copyright holder as well as a huge Internet company -- in fact,... the leading company in each industry.... a combination that has left the company pretty much speechless on a case that could determine the privacy rights of its more than 30 million subscribers, not to mention the rest of us. While other ISPs are running scared, AOL, the biggest ISP of all, is keeping mum.
"In January, after months of legal back-and-forth in the Verizon-RIAA case, U.S. District Judge John Bates ruled in the recording industry's favor, ordering Verizon to hand over the Kazaa user's name and address. Internet service providers, privacy advocates, and people critical of the growing influence of copyright owners were devastated by the Bates opinion. The ISPs are worried that they'll be flooded with requests for their subscribers' information, and that they'll have no way to determine the accuracy of these claims. "
Important stuff, those Constitutional Amendments, especially when barristers and judicial districts twist them around this way. Didn't someone once, recently, say that "The Constitution is not a Suicide Pact?" Yeah, well, neither are the Amendments to that Constitution, and neither is the DMCA. Who is willing to sacrifice the First Principals of the United States of America to build a nation by the Corporations, of the Trade Groups, for the Consortia?
(phew. preachin's thirsty work...) The link above will take You to the regular article. Here's the print-on-a-page version.
