Comfortable Disappearance

I’ve posted before about my dislike of major record companies and their business practices, but I thought it would be fun to do a recap of stories about why the recording industry has the strangest business practices.

1. Punishing Their Own Customers

This is just one example of the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) suing their own customers (i.e. people who buy music).

Leslie Maxfield, his wife and three daughters are “a music family” whose tastes for old rock, country western and other tunes sent them to an Internet site offering free music downloads.
…
Maxfield is one of three Southern Oregon residents among 235 people across the country who were sued Friday in federal court by the recording industry for allegedly illegally distributing music over the Internet.

Clearly in this case, these people were downloading music illegaly. What I find interesting however, is that the RIAA claims this family owes $1,700″ USD per song! The RIAA makes about 70 cents off of songs sold in the iTunes music store. If my math is correct, that means the RIAA is figuring that this family has redistrubeted each song over 2,428 times! That’s insane and possibly unconstitutional.

Not only does the RIAA sue customers who have computers, but they also sue people who have never owned a computer!. Say what? Come on guys, you should really check into these things before you start dishing out lawsuit after lawsuit.

This one is my favorite. Not only do they sue families who don’t own computers, but they sue people whom have died! Smart move on that one folks.

Now, as a recent college student, I thought this one was also pretty funny (in that are you kidding me sort of way?). One student at MIT, when speaking to the RIAA about their lawsuit against her, was told that the RIAA has suggested that students drop out of school or go to community collegest to be able to pay the settlement fees. Awesome! And I’m sure the RIAA was settling for a reasonable $1,500/song amount, right?

Not only, do they punish their customers monetarily by destroying their futures with unconstitutional fines, they also will destroy your computer and open it to viruses.

To stop people from copying CDs for use on their computers, members of the RIAA (in this case Sony) resorted to installing a rootkit on their customers’ computers. A rootkit is a piece of software that buries itself so deep in your computer that any normal person can’t find it. In this case, Sony-BMG’s rootkit also allowed other hackers and viruses to hide themselves from Antivirus programs. Thanks! I’m glad I’m your customer…

My favorite part of that one? Sony’s CEO’s comments about the rootkit on NPR:

No wonder their record sales are bad (one of their artists drops 24,000 spots in the top seller list in 20 days during the rootkit crisis).

To my next section…

2. Stupid Ideas About Copyright & Fair Use

“Fair Use” is a clause is US Copyright Law that allows for unauthorized reproduction of material based upon four factors. Many people assume that the fair use clause allows you to use your CDs in anyway you choose. For example, you do not need to purchase one CD for your car, and one for your home. Your first purchase of that CD gives you ownership over the content on it, and you can listen to that CD wherever you like. However, the RIAA thinks that it is doing you a favor in not arresting you for ripping a CD for use on a portable digital music player. From the article:

Nor does the fact that permission to make a copy in particular circumstances is often or even routinely granted, necessarily establish that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization. In this regard, the statement attributed to counsel for copyright owners in the MGM v. Grokster case is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use.

MGM v. Grokster was the Supreme Court case in which it was decided that a peer-to-peer (P2P) company could be held liable for the copyright infringement its software made possible if they marketed the product in such a way that fostered the infringement of copyrighted works.

Justice Souter wrote:

We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties.

So the recording industry claims their sales are down, so they sue people. Then people get pissed off, and don’t buy music from an industry that punishes its customers. Clearly, someone has to give, and it sure seems to me that the RIAA is grasping at straws to save their broken business model.

I could go on and on, but I think it’s a good place to stop as any.