MC Hammer: STOP… The Music Piracy Crackdown
Written by Ernesto on November 17, 2009MC Hammer, rap phenomenon and self-confessed geek, has kicked the major music labels in their over-sized pants with regard to their anti-piracy strategy. Hammer said that the labels’ decision to go after individual filesharers and ISPs has failed, because it only alienated paying customers.
There is a great divide between artists on how music piracy should be addressed. On the one hand there are the Lily Allens who believe that tough anti-piracy legislation will increase their profits, while others including Radiohead and Moby think that the RIAA and other lobbyists should stay away from their fans.
The latter group has not been very successful in convincing the big labels to change their anti-piracy strategies, but when MC Hammer says STOP they will have to listen.
In a recent interview Hammer commented on the industry’s struggle with piracy and the future of music in the digital age. In Hammer’s view, the RIAA’s legal battles against file-sharers have only alienated buying customers. ”The approach that the music industry took to fight piracy was the wrong strategy,” he said.
Aside from going after individuals, the entertainment industries have also targeted ISPs, for enabling their customers to pirate. The most prominent case at the moment is that of AFACT against iiNet, where the anti-piracy group wants the Aussie ISP to disconnect repeat infringers.
Using a murder and gun analogy to appeal to his fellow rappers, Hammer argues that AFACT is going after the wrong party by targeting the ISP.
”When there is a murder done with the gun, do they go back to the guy who sold the gun at the store and arrest him? No they don’t. They arrest the person who did it. So in this particular case, somebody is stealing content using the freeway. You can’t go back and sue the construction men,” Hammer said.
In addition to calling for a stop to the legal battles, Hammer thinks the music labels should focus more on digital content instead of trying to sell plastic to a generation of people that have never even owned a standalone CD player.
‘Digital files are no doubt not just the future, but the present. I think that it’s [the CD format] on its last legs, it’s on an artificial respirator,” Hammer commented.
“I don’t know what would turn them on about having to go through that terrible exercise of trying to open the packaging – it’s unbelievable when you’re trying to open a CD, right? You need a box cutter … it’s a tough deal to get it open. And once you get it open … you go and upload it to your computer,” Hammer added.
Hammer has a fair point there. Digital sales are breaking records year after year in terms of revenue generated, while the decline in physical CD sales is more likely to be a sign of the times rather than a side-effect of music piracy.
Previously: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
Next: The Pirate Bay Tracker Shuts Down for Good
68 Responses
Very very cool!
Slowly there is a nice buildup of artists who are voicing how they have gotten shafted, and clear lines are being drawn in the sand.
In the end it can only be a win for the consumers/artists and the f**king labels dying.
/facepalm at title
And I guess that is kinda weird, I used to have a NES but have never owned a CD player.
damn straight!
http://www.plentyoftorrents.com
So once again, it’s Hammer time?
why would MC hammer care? He already squandered all of his money on his entourage, chicks, and luxuries.
Yeah I read this at another site, and he sounds mature, responsible and he makes perfect sense to the rest of us.
However, we all know that the RIAA/MPAA, corporate lawyers, Reasoned Troll, .neo.troll and sometroll are all going to disagree with him. I’m sure they’ll all love to see him thrown in to jail.
It’s the same old thing.
Another sane person who sees the madness behind the big companies. Keep it coming.
I dunno bro. I still have a cassette deck in my 1996 automobile. CD’s will die when the auto makers stop putting players in the rides in my opinion
@9 I’ve got two newish(2006 and 2008) pickup trucks and even they have Aux inputs on the stereo system.
Could M.C hammer get any more awesome?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091114/1835036932.shtml
Mainstream Press Waking Up To The News That Musicians Are Making More Money
Totally agree with him, but is he due to release a new album?
I like how he even managed to work a car analogy into that.
the big four will now change there thinking cause mc hammer spoke please people. lmfao
?
Why doesn’t everyone practice what MC Hammer preaches then?
He didn’t condone piracy; he didn’t approve of labels going after ISPs (which I don’t agree with either).
If you don’t buy CDs, then buy the digital copies, from places like Amazon, or iTunes, etc.
@SomeGuy
* availability & time to market (think outside USA)
* DRM
* price
* file-sharing was first, content providers were/are late to the market, while sharing becomes more popular
what? whos mc hammer? i like him either way :D
MC Hammer is an old but famed artist from the USA. Most people know him from the hip-hop song “Hammer Time”.
Back when hip-hop and rap was becoming mainstream in the USA he was one of the artists that made a big splash…but he squandered all his money and ended up flat broke very fast.
Good music. Just horrible with his money.
“So in this particular case, somebody is stealing content using the freeway.”
Hammer’s an old goodie. At least he’s got his facts straight.
Now it’s just a matter of identifying and punishing the right parties.
Wasn’t he part of the anti-piracy movement a long time ago? “Don;t copy that floppy”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpv6_6pCpY8
Please Hammer, Don’t hurt ‘em!
Why should I pay 99 cents for a single track from iTunes, and therefore $15-$20 per album, basically retail for the physical disc – at 10% quality (mp3) of the disc – when I can get it from AllOfMp3 for anywhere from 10 cents per track at mp3 (even price for quality of disc vs mp3 and price of disc vs mp3) or that 99 cents again for full original quality? If the big labels would release a damn service that offered SIMILAR PRICE vs QUALITY to physical media, I wouldn’t have to resort to a “un-licensed” (and nobody has ever explained to my satisfaction exactly why the MAFIAA won’t take their exorbitant royalties from them and make it “legal”) Russian music shop…
Which one does not belong in this group?
1. Radiohead
2. MC Hammer
3. Lily Allen
4. Moby
[When are you guys gonna get an editor?]
@ 9 Nov 17, 2009 at 01:03 by wax
I dunno bro. I still have a cassette deck in my 1996 automobile. CD’s will die when the auto makers stop putting players in the rides in my opinion
My truck has a cd player although I haven’t used it in about 2 years. I see no need to b/c trying to burn cd’s takes too long and I would like to have all my music in my palm so I have a http://www.dreameo.com
Also Mc. Hammer is now a preacher.
Who needs a CD player anyway? My kids don’t know this stuff any more. They are grown up with their Ipods. Where they get music from? From school… just copy from friends… that’s also filesharing, right? And where did the friends get it from? Who knows… CDs are out, getting scratched etc… notice, I myself own a large collection of CDs but the last one I bought about 15 years ago.
@ Rabbit80:
That’s M. E. Hart, attourney for the SIIA.
@#9
They have been making car systems with line in ports for a few years, at least. Last time I looked, it was a feature offered on some of the low end models. (~US$150ish)
A few bucks on top of that for a 1/8″ stereo jack male-male cord, and your digital player is in business. :D
How is any of that “calling for a stop to the legal battles”? The text just before that quote (”When there is a murder done with the gun, do they go back to the guy who sold the gun at the store and arrest him? No they don’t. They arrest the person who did it. So in this particular case, somebody is stealing content using the freeway. You can’t go back and sue the construction men”) reads as a call to sue. It’s a matter of who should be sued, not whether there should be (copyright infringement) lawsuits.
So MC Hammer endorses suing individuals who engage in unlawful copying and distribution. He does nor endorse suing the ISPs for providing those people with Internet connections. This is hardly a call to stop crackdowns.
Furthermore, with digital music sales (as opposed to CDs), you’re much more likely to get lower quality encodings riddled with DRM. Yes, that “wax album” that “collector’s item” as Hammer puts it, carries more freedom than what you often get with legally obtained digital downloads. You have to be so careful about whom you do business with that most people aren’t going to know what to look out for and won’t care as long as it plays immediately after sale. They only complain after they realize their first-sale rights are mediated, the files might not work across all their devices, and they can’t always get back what files they lost. That’s no bargain.
The music industry just needs to get with the program. If I pay .99 a song, I expect to be able to get it in a lossless format, properly tagged with ALL information, and not have it DRM’ed all to hell.
If I download it illegaly, it means I will NOT buy it.
Copy-paste this.
Really, if we download something illegaly, it means we will not buy it, right? They really think they will make more money? No, they will lose MILLIONS pushing people in court, which makes them a bad reputation.
It really makes me LMAO’ing that a few people are trying to control the earth.
Yes!
Let’s punish, sue and throw dead people, children, single parent low income families, pensioners, etc, in to jail.
I mean, lawyers need to earn their living and promote their views and interests in public forums, right SomeTroll/.neo.troll/Reasoned Troll?
@31
Actually, I only download what I intend to buy or can no longer buy. Old games that would cost up to $80 from a collector or $2 from a (if your lucky) garage sale.
If I download a game and liked it, I go buy it. Download a movie and I plan to watch it more than once I go buy it…or borrow it from a friend who bought it. Most likely that second one. xD I’m not a big movie watcher.
I won’t pay for any copyrighted work, ever. Not even if it costs a stinking cent, for a lossless download with no DRM. Everything that can be copied, I will copy.
I toured around the world from London to the BAY
It’s Hammer go Hammer
mc hammer yo hammer and the rest can go and play
can’t touch this
Ah, Mc Hammer is a smarter dude than I thought. I’m not too sure he’s ever had too much respect for music labels, wasn’t he the guy that started off selling his own home made cds from the trunk of his car?
Good man.
Hammer’s single was called ‘U can’t touch this’ not hammer time
But… I like CDs… I like the package, I like the physical ownership. I’m one of those typical “pirates” who just ends up spending more. Please don’t die out CDs!
(For some reason this is the first time I’ve ever posted a comment, so hi all :))
Digital sales… why are they talking about digital sales? I am amazed there are people who seriously spend their money on copies of files.
Take a look at bands that are working with file sharers (directly or indirectly) by releasing free songs direct from their websites and saying if you like it, come to our concerts, buy our merchandise or donate… they’re making money and usually more per track than the pittance that filters down through the record companies or even through the likes of i-tunes.
MC Hammer has always been popular and funny in public opinion, and not so in record sales and being a great artist, hes an entertainer.
He is a posterboy for the fact that you can get rich by being an performing artists, rather then by having a big record company pushing your albums.
Wow. who knew he was so well spoken?
Well, considering he got famous AND rich by lazily sampling and covering other peoples’ music and then squandering it all away i really dont care what he has to say. :p Yet, he is still talking about suing, but suing the RIGHT person.
@31 “LMAO’ing”?
You’re “Laughing My Ass Off’ing”? LMAO
Its a fact that MOST young kids these days do not even work a CD player, they have IPODs and lots of them.
P2P – “Cant’t Touch It!!!”
“When there is a murder done with the gun, do they go back to the guy who sold the gun at the store and arrest him? No they don’t. They arrest the person who did it.”
No, but it’s been suggested. The anti-gun people would LOVE to have such a power to use as a club against anyone connected to the manufacture or sale of guns.
I like this, he isn’t saying that piracy is good but instead saying that you should go after the pirates, not the boat. And he sounds like he doesn’t really want them to do either. He’s walking that rope of not wanting to support piracy yet not wanting to go after them at the same time and unfortunately the rope might tie him up in the end if he doesn’t pick a side.
Atleast people are starting to wise up more and more on what they need to do to ACTUALLY battling piracy.
Congrats, a C-list has-been rapper has called for an end to the tactics of the RIAA and it’s suing of fans of other musicians. Yes, he’s gotten another 15 minutes of fame.
In the case of complicity to commit piracy, recording studios are the ones to blame… they’re are the ones that make piratable material in the first place provoking piracy!
At least that is according to the logic they used to go after ISPs.
A hiphop artist with brains. it is unbelieveable!
One thing bands and solo artists are having difficulty realizing is that they don’t need record labels to produce music anymore. Seriously you can go to any online retailer/manufacturer or retail store and buy everything one needs to produce and release music. If the artists/bands out there do this, they will no longer need to throw half their earnings to these record labels to release their music. Further more by doing this, we can get our music in lossless format or whatever format these bands/artists’ fans request, plus they can charge whatever they want for their tracks and albums.
The whole music industry is screwed up at the moment because alot of em fail to realize how much technology has improved over the past two decades and how inexensive alot of it has gotten.
At least some people in the industry understand it!
True that, I never have had a CD player :).
If I’m interested, I’ll download it. If I like what I downloaded, I’ll buy the vinyl. If I can’t get it on vinyl, I won’t buy it.
I can get perfect, lossless copies with vinyl. You can’t put DRM on analog media. And most importantly, it’s uncompressed and recorded at reasonable loudness as opposed to the atrocious levels on CDs.
Go ahead, try to rip a track from a CD directly to flac and then load it into any audio editor, it’s already compressed from the start.
I swear cds/dvds were invented because of their inability to last…I still have tapes from the 90s that play fine…
Depends on how well you take care of your CDs. I keep all of mine in a CD wallet, binder, or jewel case when I’m not using them and they all play fine. I have is a Surge promotional disc that came out when the drink launched back in 1996 and while the music leaves much to be desired (only keeping it as a collector’s item), it still works perfectly.
I’ve got a Luniz CD (best known for the song “I got 5 on it”) made in 1995 that I found years ago which is all scratched up from the previous owner and it still plays fine as well.
It’s the same thing with DVDs. Everyone I know treats their music and movie collection like trash because I’ll always find discs all scratched to hell from abuse in their collection. Blu-Ray is very scratch-resistant due to the disc coating though. That’s something we didn’t have back then.
Granted this is much less of a problem for people that go hardcore digital since there is nothing physical to abuse outside of the hard drive.
let the music speak
i am thrilled to see that radiohead, my by far favorite group, supports music file sharing. its ironic really that radiohead is one of very few bands i will buy the cd of to support the band.
perhaps if lars ulrich and eminem put out something more orginal and worth hearing they might not feel such a pinch in record sales.
/bearfacesmiling
Aoshi101,
Yes, bands can put out their own albums and record their own music, but they will never do as well with their own music as a record company can.
Record companies have access to the best producers, the best equipment, the best mastering and the best advertising companies in the music world.
I’ve produced a few albums and I know the equipment and the software very well, but I could never do as clean of a job as a professional studio working for a major record label, nor could I advertise it nearly as much.
The problem isn’t with their system, it is now with how they sell their product.
Joss Stone says:
I like Piracy. It’s all about the music.
She agrees that Neogays and Reasonable Maggot are, and I quote, “brainwashed”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCkX0KcNwrI
She who is hot, is always right.
Also, I would totally bang her.
Quoting Lily Allen in this case is the wrong way to go seeing as how she really is not able to make up her mind. Now – using Lars Ulrich as the example is much better.
MC Hammer is a Navy puss. he don’t think his kids know how he lost all that moeny, g.
HOW IS CENTIPEDE FORMED? HOW RIAA GET HOMELESS?
wow this old fart is still alive?
damn, he was considered cool, when I was like 10. guess the old timer has some spunk left in him. :D
The past: Big record companies and popular musicians made millions from album sales and concerts. But record companies always controlled the purse strings, and always ultimately made more than their fair share.
The present: Profits from album sales have plummeted. Record companies are suing anyone and everyone they can, including torrent site administrators, ISPs, and even their own customers, in a desperate and vain attempt to retain the old (profitable) system which they alone controlled
The future: Only those directly responsible for the production of music will receive remuneration, including of course artists themselves, sound technicians, producers, etc. They may have to recoup their salaries from concert ticket sales, or sales of other (physical) merchandise that can’t be digitally copied. Whether this is fair or not is no longer the question. It is inevitable.
On the issue of record companies suing ISPs: Nobody would tolerate their post being monitored or intercepted, or their phone being tapped without a warrant and reasonable cause. Why should this be any different online? The only agencies with the power to enforce law are law enforcement agencies with legal instruments (e.g. warrants) licensing them to do so. If ISPs are given the power to monitor and disconnect suspected copyright infringers, this is a major breach of privacy (and human rights) and will only result in the increase of anonymous networks (i.e. VPNs, which has already been seen in Sweden) This will itself probably result in record companies going after VPNs in order to enforce THEM to monitor and disconnect infringers.
I do agree that those genuinely responsible for the production of the music I love should be remunerated in some way – how this will actually work remains to be seen, when the shrapnel and dust caused by record companies firing every legal canon available have settled.
Until that time I’ll continue to download music. If record companies can’t control their rampant greed long enough to come to an acceptable compromise with consumers (and some services which I would be willing to pay for aren’t available in my locality for – guess what – legal reasons) — and if they can’t match or attempt to match services currently provided for free — then they deserve their inevitable fate.
Lets hope all of this, combined with all the ISPs against it, will be enough to sort it out!
That has been said over and over here on TF and its loyal trollers, fans, readers and all the ecosystem.
Another kick in the buts eh MAFIAA?
Thumbs up. But I have to agree MC’s statements won’t do a thing to the industry. They aren’t just come out of their lethargy just because he said what has been being said ad nauseum… Still, nice when the actors voice their opinions contrary to the industry.
MCHamer Moron Crackhead hammer
I have’nt bought a single CD since iTunes exists!
(and for anything I can’t buy on iTunes, I can get it illegally… shame on the music industry that cant PROVIDE EVEN FOR A FEE all of their content.. but strangely, some users are able to pull that off! )
mcHammer is right!
The problem is not the users, it’s the industry!
Provide the music to the people for what it’s worth.. stop thinking about micracle money… artits should not be making that kind of money anyway unless they are amongnst the MOST PROLIFIC ARTIST OF ALL TIMES!
(this will also stop all the stupid empty (30 mins) albums… )
Damn people! They’re all alike..
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