Music shouldn’t have to be a means to make a living. It also shouldn’t be the meal-ticket for every huckster wishing to exploit and use some artist’s work. Which is all you and your ilk do, Mr. Simmons. You pretend you’re on the artist’s side until you sign them and then it’s nickel & dime time.

********************************

To the pampered artists-to-be:

I don’t feel particularly boo-hooish for someone who thinks it’s a cool ‘career’ to make their money from being a musician. While a nice thought, it more than irks me to hear musicians whining about their loss of means… No, buddy you lost a cushy lifestyle. Get over it, get on with your life and get a job. The rest of us have one. Why can’t you? You don’t have to live under a bridge. By doing that, you’re just regressing to the first phase of your wanna-be rock-star entitlement, which was holding your breath and starving until you ‘made it’.

I write music. I DJ as well. I release for free on torrent sites and host off my own servers. I don’t have any expectation of wealth and would eschew it if it came my way. I am VERY distrustful of offers I can’t control the outcome of. My music is quality, because I am writing for myself and no one else. I can’t be manipulated or coerced.

Musicians wanting to live off the appreciation of others oughtta try busking for thirty years… Those same people who dropped change into your case last week, won’t do so for thirty years. And that’s with taking into account the whole poverty angle. Eventually, they’ll tell you to get a job. So what are you waiting for?

Soon all that will be left to d/l will be quality music for music’s sake. Not money’s sake. And I will be thee contributing happily.[/quote]

I agree ive found better music given freely than i ever could of bought

They’re nuts… Take a look at the history too…

When did it become a crime to think about something but never go through with such actions?

If thinking about it did nothing to effect general population then why bother printing?[/quote]

Conspiracy is the Number one convicting crime in the US. 70% of all crimes that end up as convictions in US courts are for conspiracy, or have them listed as one of the charges.

Thought-crime is upon us.

Also, what the hell? This French law is stupid and impossible. Short of trusting a central authority and establishing general censorship, how do you implement the “feature” required? If it’s open source, how do you stop anyone taking out that stupid “feature”?

[/quote]

They Dark Side will eventually be using this concept to try to crush Open Source. It may take five or ten years, but the logical outcome of all of this will likely be that. The truth is, they don’t want Joe Average coding, writing music, making movies on their own. Mark my words, dood. The Shitwind is blowing.

Music shouldn’t have to be a means to make a living. It also shouldn’t be the meal-ticket for every huckster wishing to exploit and use some artist’s work. Which is all you and your ilk do, Mr. Simmons. You pretend you’re on the artist’s side until you sign them and then it’s nickel & dime time.

********************************

To the pampered artists-to-be:

I don’t feel particularly boo-hooish for someone who thinks it’s a cool ‘career’ to make their money from being a musician. While a nice thought, it more than irks me to hear musicians whining about their loss of means… No, buddy you lost a cushy lifestyle. Get over it, get on with your life and get a job. The rest of us have one. Why can’t you? You don’t have to live under a bridge. By doing that, you’re just regressing to the first phase of your wanna-be rock-star entitlement, which was holding your breath and starving until you ‘made it’.

I write music. I DJ as well. I release for free on torrent sites and host off my own servers. I don’t have any expectation of wealth and would eschew it if it came my way. I am VERY distrustful of offers I can’t control the outcome of. My music is quality, because I am writing for myself and no one else. I can’t be manipulated or coerced.

Musicians wanting to live off the appreciation of others oughtta try busking for thirty years… Those same people who dropped change into your case last week, won’t do so for thirty years. And that’s with taking into account the whole poverty angle. Eventually, they’ll tell you to get a job. So what are you waiting for?

Soon all that will be left to d/l will be quality music for music’s sake. Not money’s sake. And I will be thee contributing happily.

Entrapment, extortion, coercion under duress and out-and-out theft… Fuck this all sounds like the Mob…

“Mr. Vinnie asked you a question. You don’t want to anger Mr. Vinnie, do you? He can be– …well, unpredictable.”

If you live under a bridge then it’s because you joined a recording company, and then they booted you out. Because nobody likes you? -boohoo-. Maybe because the recording industries have a monopoly on what THEY want to be ‘the next music’.

Without filesharing, I wasn’t a metalhead, and I won’t go to concerts of metalbands, I won’t buy bandshirts, etc… It’s just true.

And for videos, well, every week I go to a cinema. Nothing is better then going away with your (girl)friend(s) with a lot of popcorn and cola. However, when the movie isn’t in cinema’s anymore, or the movie got bad reviews, I won’t put my money in it. Plain true, plain confession.

Give the media back too the people! Long time before recording industries, people made their own plays, their own music. It didn’t matter how much CD’s you had, how ‘much’ music you had, no, it mattered what you liked. This is happening again.
From ’60 till ’99, people were trying to get their music/vid collection as big as possible. That’s in my opinion, a ruthless form to work with music. Music comes from the heart, and it should go back too the heart, not in your wallet…

I’ve been working in the music industry for about ten years now as a producer/engineer, and I can firmly attest to the FACT that musicians who signed on with major record labels get FUCKED out of damn near all the money made from record sales. ALL the money goes to people who have NOTHING to do with the music at all, aside from their “legacy” of just generally being on top of the whole fucking music world.

I wasn’t even born yet during the days of the Beatles, and maybe things were different back then – but the only people I see actually making money from music these days are the ones who give all their recorded music away for free and make their money from show ticket sales and merch sales. That’s the plain truth of it.

Neither musicians nor consumers have a real need for a record industry at all anymore.

Bands record with people like me for quite a bit of money – I won’t lie, but it’s not some enormous fee I charge…really, it’s not. Bands can easily recoup money spent on professionally recording their album if they get out there and bust their asses with shows and merch sales.

Free music downloads being used as promotional tools for live performances, and musicians getting paid to PLAY – not getting paid over and over and over again for what they played once upon a time on a recording – is the real future of the music business….like it or not.

I don’t know if you noticed, but if you are not making real money being a musician then that is not your field. Real talent doesn’t go without notice, the only reason that artist is living under a bridge is because he/ she wasn’t any good or not persistent in there craft. If your not making money, or not happy at the end of the day you got to cut your losses and venture else where. Musicians get paid no matter what … if they are good at networking, have talent, and the will to go through hell until it pays off. What would happen is that more people have access to produce what was only commercially available before, and the unknown talents of today get a platform to become professionals in the future. Lastly if you haven’t noticed the Recording Industry has become such a Cartel that they choose who is hot or not, they trade and use artists like commodity … and they stall the careers of the best, just so that an untalented act like Britney can pump out an album.

Rather uncharacteristic of you, Phishy, to launch ad homs at the writers.

(Is that really you…?)

Done. Everyone using GPL-ed software and not releasing the source and denying users the same freedoms (to release/modify/distribute the software themselves) should burn in hell.

Its disgusting how this is allowed to occur and how musiclabs is massively infringing the rights of the owners of the Shareaza logos, and worse stealing a name associated with an open source project to “pass off” their brand of lameware this is a an offense in law and I urge anyone downloading the fake Shareaza to sue at their local civil courts for this misrepresentaion of goods and services.

Lets see how they like facing thousands of folks in many lands,they only have to lose one case for sanctions to swing into action against them.

When did it become a crime to think about something but never go through with such actions?

If thinking about it did nothing to effect general population then why bother printing?

I also find it confusing (no fault of the article’s author) when P2P defenders argue both for copyright infringement and against it. I understand the need to deal with law – and scammy capitalists who like it – that’s hostile to P2P activities while at the same time trying to make the case that other philosophies – and business models that might hew to those philosophies (P2P players) – are desirable. Depending on how well that’s done, that will no doubt determine how effective the (pro P2P community) argument will be in wining over many who are on the fence on these issues.

P.S. Personally, I enjoyed the namecalling at the end… :P

Obviously anyone reading the facts can draw their own conclusions. No need to stoop to name-calling (like “The author of this letter considers La Societe Des Producteurs De Phonogrammes En France to be cowardly, deceitful, underhanded and, by engaging in this reprehensible domain-raping action, a threat to any person who values a free and open culture.”).

It’s entirely irrelevant whether they’re cowardly or not; being cowardly is not illegal. I think the letter would have the most legal impact (and here I’m assuming someone wants to have it translated and submitted to the French court) if it only contained a rebuttal of the SPPF’s claims (with links to proofs/sources) and an enumeration of possibly illegal actions by SPPF and their subsidiaries (also with links to proofs to back the claims up). The “recording industry” doesn’t care about you, us, whatever; I think the letter should rather be addressed to the French courts and to the “community” at large.

TPB database seems to be non functional. Their homepage seems ok

http://www.pcinpact.com/actu/news/40957-SPPF-radioblog-radioblogclub-autorisation-li.htm

Radio.blog.club is the French Imeem.

SPPF has said to Radio.blog.club “We are going to sue you” (for the same fallacious reasons).

Radio.blog.club says “No problem” and promises to automaticaly check with SPPF the “validity” of each song in their database by sending one email per song to the SPPF.

We are talking ten thousand songs.

Plus, each RBC’s “check” request is written in such a stringent legal way (like SPPF has to prove it really represents the song, that the song has never been posted “for free” by its producer, that the artist has really waived his “internet” rights on the song, etc, etc.) that it should take SPPF “quite an amount of time and resource” to respond properly.

It should be fun to follow.

But better sue the States or the (D)ARPA for inventing the internet. Its basically the same way of thinking.

The open letter makes it all clear.
Reminds me of the first Kazaa-case.

Me hopes Sarkozy will remember that he can not download his Carla Bruni torrents anymore.