If we let do the RIAA, well then during the "WW II" they would have placed copyright protectection on all spyproducts that have lead to the loss of the germans and japanese. Nobody would have been able legaly to decript and read all spymessages during the war. If we let them, it's gonna go so far that they even gonaa put protection on are computerharddrives, disabeling everyone to make any legal backups of our own systems. It is even impossible at this time to make safecopys for own use of original software and or games, not to be forced to allways use the original cd's against loss by use.
The only thing that interrest them is their own profit. All the money that they make, how many goed to the artists themselves.

"demanding $150,000 for every song recorded by customers."
wtf... how can they even know if a customer recorded a song and isnt 150,000 a ridiculous amount?!?!
f*ck the RIAA seriousely, f*ck them

The $150,000 is the amount they are asking for in damages from Limewire for providing access to illegal downloads. Of course they will have to prove their case and likely not ever see that amount. Generally speaking they will ask for a larger amount than they will ever settle for. From a devil's advocate point of view it is possible for a song to constitute that amount of loss if it shared enough times.

As long as piracy is as rampant as it appears to be now the RIAA is going to feel justified with these tactics... they have every right to protect their interest. I don't agree with their strong arm tactics with file sharers, but allowing things to play out in court may not work as well for them in the end. The amount of money the RIAA makes is irrelevant and the percieved lack of value of new music is not justification for copyright infringement.

I find it interesting that the quality of the illegal recordings is an issue here. They could probably thwart file sharing more effectively by flooding the Internet with low quality and incomplete copies of popular songs.

Oh, and to stay on topic... how many people record from the radio or satellite? Just curious.

WOW! When will someone put a stop to this dictatorship that calls itself RIAA? By what right do they have to pursue these thousand $/million $/Billion $ frivolous lawsuits. The artist won’t see any of this money, make me wonder who is???!!! No wonder it takes me six months to get a court date to get back child support, the court dockets are so bog-logged with crap suits. This argument should have been put to rest when VHS users won the right to tape their TV shows. It’s at the point now where the artists are fools for signing with anything to do with RIAA. GO INDEPENDANT!

"The RIAA sued XM Satellite Radio in May over a device that lets users save songs, demanding $150,000 for every song recorded by customers."

WOW, and the feds haven't done anything about this extortion yet?

Unbelievable.

"The RIAA's interest lies solely in preserving its existing ways of business, with the hope that it can maximize profits by limiting innovation and undermining long-standing consumer rights," said Shapiro, noting that, "the RIAA should not be surprised that we will continue to fight its legislative efforts on Capitol Hill, and that we expect to prevail by defending innovation and consumer rights."

There it is, right there. They are a greedy bunch of know nothings that want money for something every time a song starts playing, whether it be on tv, radio, even your own computer. Somebody needs to step in and wake these morons up, people have been doing this kind of stuff for years and will CONTINUE to do this stuff for years, even after the RIAA runs themselves into the ground.

Again and again, STOP buying, listening to or giving money or support to ALL music/industry.
EVERY dollar spent on an indie band brings them closer to a RIAA pigeon. EVRY dollar spent on RIAA supported items including ITUNES, brings you one step closer to Lose of freedoms and more.

SO STOP!!!

I havn't done any of the above since 2000, join me and watch RIAA fall apart.
(and yes i refuse to let any of my household buy CD's my offspring will not be part of the problem)

Randal - I think that you're a little misguided here.

The RIAA, the Record Labels and the artists share a symbiotic relationship. While the relationship is extremely disfunctional at times -- and some relationships more disfunctional than others, many bands do need their labels to help promote their live tours, pay for studio time, etc.

The best way to help a band is to purchase items directly from their online music stores or from their concerts. The bands will often charge more than Best Buy, WalMart, etc., but you'll be guaranteed that the money you are spending is going towards the band. The band just has to buy boxes of CDs to sell on the road from their label (because it costs money to produce CDs with nice little Jewel cases and creative artwork).

I'm not in anyway trying to say that you're wrong, Randal, but I think that it would be best to find out how the band feels about music piracy. Blue October, for instance, prints a note in their CD jackets or on the CD about how they feel about audio piracy. They don't want you to do it because it hurts their livelihood. So in that case, you can either say 'Well, I'm not downloading THAT band's music', or do the exact same thing and download it with another excuse.

It often comes down to record labels. The RIAA is like a union and the labels generally belong to the union for several reasons.

The band signs up to a label so that their material will have a wider reach, so that they will be provided with proper equipment, studio time with better producers, and a bus to tour with (or to tag behind in a rental car if they aren't doing so well).

I'd encourage musicians to post their personal opinion about piracy and their music. I'd also give grace to the musicians who don't really comment on it because they are already in a record contract that they need to fulfill before they move to a different label.

And if it's playing on MTV on high rotation -- I'm pretty certain that the record label and the RIAA are very protective of their property. There's my bit of bias. Most of the music on MTV is not the product of hard work, but the product of smart business.

"I think the way we could win the war against terrorism would be to tell the RIAA that Al Queada and Hezbollah have rooms full of servers for hosting MP3 and DVD-rip files on the net. I'm sure they'd take care of it (sure, yeah, right)."

Yeah! Let's see them prevent the terrorists from operating a bootleg I-Tunes store in the mountains of Afghanistan. We already know than Osama bin Laden makes money from selling bootleg tax free cigarettes in the USA.

"Plus, how could we bootleg one-off recordings (on the BBC for example) if they *somehow* managed to stop it recording internal sounds?"

It used to be illegal to record music off the BBC radio in the 60's. Record companpanies like EMI, even buy concert footage, from the pirates who collected this music decades ago.

Some of those BEATLES Anthology releases are indeed made from illegal source materials. Bob Dylan's BOOTLEG Series is a commercial version of old vinyl LPs that used to be sold under the counter.

The RIAA and MPAA are looking more and more like the Nazi party every day. Their views, their behavior, their lobbying, everything about them. I'd bet anything more than half of their employee's kids (if they have any) have illegal MP3 files on their iPods and computers. Gee. I wonder if they'd put their own kids in jail?

I think the way we could win the war against terrorism would be to tell the RIAA that Al Queada and Hezbollah have rooms full of servers for hosting MP3 and DVD-rip files on the net. I'm sure they'd take care of it (sure, yeah, right).

"I wonder if they'd put their own kids in jail?"

Gee, if Bush & Cheney have any son, do you think they will rush the country to war dis-regarding no proof of their claim and the whole world was against it? To them, it's someone else child die, not mine.

Here you go: Classic... http://uncyclopedia.org/...scusses_the_analog_hole

OOOO Mitch you sweet _itch!!!

I still get amused when the Recording Industry Ass. of America does things in the UK... Oh, hang on, the United States of England...

Ach, lost again...

The way RIAA are going they will be banning the ownership of music CD's. They are starting to go stupid on this now. Why dont they just stop people from buying anything that records altogether and stop the building of computers for public use.

This is getting stupid. I hope the CEA wins this and goes to court with them with some of the other stupid things theyre doing.

Nice. The CEA has a huge membership list filled with major big bucks corporations and lots of lobbying power. This should get interesting.

Of course, some of those companies have membership in both. For example, Sony Electronics belongs to the CEA, while Sony Music is a member of the RIAA. Sony has always had a conflict; making CD and DVD recorders that can copy music CDs, while trying to fight "piracy" through the RIAA.

I think the RIAA has gone too far. Money motivated without concern for anyones rights. They use bribery in government and threats to acheive their goals. (we want the money, show us the money, money, money, money.............

All these copy protection schemes are such a waste of time. If you can hear it, you can record it. Its simply called internal recording and impossible to prevent without making it impossible to hear :P

Exactly. Plus, how could we bootleg one-off recordings (on the BBC for example) if they *somehow* managed to stop it recording internal sounds?

Hold a microphone up to your radio. =)

Holy crap, I was humming a tune at the Bus stop and I got served papers by the RIAA's goon squad, saying I can't hum or even sing the song in my head unless I pay for it each time!

That's what it's coming to. The RIAA is now a fully-vetted terrorist organization.

Wow, so thats how people work themselves up over Bush, eh?

RIAA are over-zealous and money hungrey, or better described in this article:

"The RIAA's interest lies solely in preserving its existing ways of business, with the hope that it can maximize profits by limiting innovation and undermining long-standing consumer rights"

They are not terrorists. I know you're joking, but you are saying that out of pure hatred, and showing your hatred implies you will criticise them without objectivity. It just makes your opinion seem biased is all.

The RIAA is a union that serves big business and it's doing it's job. What I find amusing is the very apt-definition of the RIAA's interests in this article.

It makes sense. Any business wants to maximize profits and when the system that generates profits is at risk - it's necessary to lobby against other technologies.

Look at the slow push for hybrid cars? In 2000, Al Gore was pushing development of alternate energy sources and removing a dependency on gas. A minority of politicians have been concerned about this, and there's a good reason. The oil industry draws a lot of water in the US as does the automobile industry.

So... if you think about it - the RIAA is no different than most large businesses who are trying to protect their assets by stifiling technology.

I am fine with watching the RIAA try to limit music piracy and am of the opinion that ultimately, the consumers dictate the market.

I'm not fine with paying $3.00+ at the pump for gasoline when I -NEED- to drive to a specific location.

Woah! There is a heck of a lot of broadcast material that is well outside the perview of the RIAA including news, sports, concerts, editorial comment and the list goes on. Until they own everything that is being broadcast they might want to spend some time working on their industry and allow technology to flourish. They are way out there on this subject.

I don't get it.

I know for a fact that both Sirius and XM radio are not even close to CD quality and are in fact potentially lower quality than FM radio when it comes to certain things.

I'm not sure on HD radio.

I wouldn't see the loss of HD/Satellite radio recordings as a big deal.

I remember when I used to buy an LP and BOTH sides were damn good. At most, one or two songs on an LP were not as good as the rest but that was simply a question of taste. The day I bought "Too Legit To Quit" for my son was the early warning of what was to come. The RIAA is nothing less than trying to be the next best thing besides the Gestapo. If the RIAA has its way, does that mean I will have to give my VCR and tape deck and what ever other recording device I may own because some damn moron might find a way of making owning anything outside its liking a "retroactive crime"? How about all those LPs, CDs, DVDs, tapes, without copy protection? Would they ask me to either take them to my nearest Gestapo office or at the very least give my word to destroy them since they could be copied? Am I pushing too far with that kind of reasoning? I wonder to whom I will have to do a pledge of allegiance next, my country or the RIAA? Time to make damn sure they get put back in their place. In the trash can. They never have done anything to protect the artists, to start with. If they had you would never have heard of payola scandals that, apparently, are still going on. As for the artists they do need to get their acts together and start producing music worth listening to. By the way I listen to any kind of music so that comment covers all genres of music. I remember when I simply didn't have enough money to be able to even buy a tenth of what was so damn good coming out every week. Now? In the last few years I've bought only a hand full of NEW music. The rest were second hand CDs of "old stuff".

Finally, someone steps in that can actually stand up to this bunch of over zealous penny pinching morons. They justify this crusade of theirs saying they are doing it for the artists when they are only doing it to give their pathetic existence meaning.

The RIAA is in desperation mode. I personally believe the majority of America is fed up with their tactics and I do believe many are not buying music as and unwritten boycott based upon how the RIAA has treated the public. They seem to forget it is the public that buys the products. I can only speak as a senior citizen who thinks they can go to Dante's Inferno. This group has screwed us for years. I go back to the age of Records with one or two good songs on the vinyl and the rest crap and still paying big bucks. Go CEA

GO CEA!!! :D I like these guys. A lot.

Ditto >> GO CEA!!!

On this issue, I agree: RIAA cannot and will not prevent piracy, they should only try to prevent blatently easy methods of illegally copying copyrighted material. This extreme is going quite a bit overboard, however. Kinda reminds me of the idea about using computer "dongles" a few years back...

I gotta ask...

{Devils' Advocate}

How would an 'Audio Flag' affect you or anyone listening?

I'm sure it didn't bother anyone much when Music was recorded off of AM/FM radio. The quality sucked. It generally wouldn't stop anyone from going to the store.

Now that the music they can record of digital broadcasts is the *same* quality they'd get in the store, why would they go to the store?

The flag would *only* affect those recording broadcasts without permission. Seems kind of pointless to get worked up over somethig that hasso little impact on legitimate use.

{/Devil's Advocate}

That said....

If they push it over public airwaves, they get what they get. If someone wants to, they'll find a way to copy it. But I hardly think those few folks are going to have a huge impact on music sales.

Oh...and FYI, dongles are still being used for security. I've seen several instacnes with current sofware in the past year or so. It's hardly widespread though.

You're absolutely right, they cannot prevent determined copying/piracy. What's "illegal" is still, to some degree, debated. That's one reason they sue instead of pursuing creation and/or enforcement of law.

BTW, even those dongles weren't secure. Most of them were cracked or bypassed.

i'd imagine it would spell the demise of the radio dvr-equivalent while it's still in its' infancy. eventually, a large chunk of folks will be able to record their favorite talk radio show at 6am and listen to it on the way home that same day.

the RIAA can suck it. i will do whatever i please with my digital media.

ok, so who gives a **** about what the RIAA wants?

Oh, and lobbying should be ILLEGAL, plain and simple. Can someone explain why it isn't?

Because lobbying is not limited to greedy corporations and religions, it also includes everyday people concerned about something organizing to bring attention to an issue...and jsut like free speech, we can't pick and choose.

Ah ok. That makes sense. But the giving money part to get laws passed should at least be outlawed.

Pretty sure it already is, they are just sneaky about covering up crookedness.

"The RIAA's interest lies solely in preserving its existing ways of business, with the hope that it can maximize profits by limiting innovation and undermining long-standing consumer rights," said Shapiro, noting that, "the RIAA should not be surprised that we will continue to fight its legislative efforts on Capitol Hill, and that we expect to prevail by defending innovation and consumer rights."

This guy is my new hero.