[Originally posted on goofyblog 3.30.07]
The Consumerist (Consumers Bite Back) had a poll asking their readers who is the worst company in the world. Halliburton came in second, but the RIAA tops the list.
This organization has been suing 7-year olds and parapalegics in a futile effort to preserve Big Music’s business model, a model no longer having any relevance. Recently, the RIAA demanded that universities keep records on their students, a move the universities say would cost them money they don’t have in their budgets.
Cd prices have always been too high and even though the technology took strong root by the early ’90s, making it possible to offer the consumer lower prices — via economies of scale; instead the prices have gone higher, yet the artists gets just about the same cut as they always did.
Treating music consumers like feudal serfs is typical of these bullies. But as David Byrne said at this year’s South by Southwest (NY Times):
UPDATE: An attorney for one of the many being sued by the RIAA has successfully had his client’s suit dismissed after he sent the following to attorneys for Sony Music:
The Consumerist (Consumers Bite Back) had a poll asking their readers who is the worst company in the world. Halliburton came in second, but the RIAA tops the list.
This organization has been suing 7-year olds and parapalegics in a futile effort to preserve Big Music’s business model, a model no longer having any relevance. Recently, the RIAA demanded that universities keep records on their students, a move the universities say would cost them money they don’t have in their budgets.
Cd prices have always been too high and even though the technology took strong root by the early ’90s, making it possible to offer the consumer lower prices — via economies of scale; instead the prices have gone higher, yet the artists gets just about the same cut as they always did.
Treating music consumers like feudal serfs is typical of these bullies. But as David Byrne said at this year’s South by Southwest (NY Times):
That year will be the “tipping point,'’ much like the mid-to-late ’80s when CDs overtook cassette sales. Once download sales became the norm, Byrne said, it will allow manufacturing and distribution costs to approach zero. “That is a fact,'’ he said.The RIAA is just a front group for a few mega-large music companies, so the Consumerist identified them here.
He said at that point, record labels will be faced with a sort of choice — to ramp up marketing services to use music as a loss leader for tours and merchandise revenue, or aim only for international stars of the ilk of Britney Spears.
UPDATE: An attorney for one of the many being sued by the RIAA has successfully had his client’s suit dismissed after he sent the following to attorneys for Sony Music:
The Evidence Code sections are quite clear: settlement negotiations of all kinds may not be used to prove the validity of any claim or defense. Mr. Merchant has and had no more duty to respond to attempts to “sell” him one of your clients’ boilerplate, non-negotiable $3750 settlements than he has to return cold calls from pushy life insurance salespeople. If your client (and your law firm?) are seeking probable cause shelter in a settlement negotiations house of straw (as suggested by your March 23 letter), all of you should consider the prevailing winds of the Evidence Code before making yourselves too comfortable. Straw will burn.From Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing.
Your client takes the position that my middle-aged, conservative clients should speculate regarding the identity of persons your clients’ claim used their AOL account to download pornographic-lyric gangsta rap tracks as predicate to possible case resolution. In an age of Wintel-virus created bot-farms, spoofs, and easily cracked WEP encrypted wireless home networks (among other easy hacks), the only tech-savvy response to such a request is, “You’ve got to be kidding.” The extensive press that has been generated over computer security (and the insecurity of Windows XP and its predecessors) underscores the complete absence of facts on which probable cause to sue my clients could be established and your clients’ willingness (even insistence) that others be implicated in Big Music’s speculative, “driftnet” litigation tactics. Sorry: Mr. Merchant cannot and will not expose himself to still more litigation by speculating.
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