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Hillary Rosen, the CEO of the RIAA (Records Industry Association of America) wants ISP’s and telecommunication companies to pay a fee for giving customers access to music swapping software.

This way the RIAA wants to recoup all lost sales and money because of music piracy. Next to that Hillary mentioned on the Midem music conference that more CD’s should be protected against piracy and licensing restrictions and download services by subscription should also be taken care about; She urged this to the major record labels like BMG, Sony music, Warner music, EMI and Universal.

More information can be found in these articles:
at News.com.
at Yahoo news.

What does this mean ?

This means the RIAA, a private company is already enforcing taxes on empty CD’s, MD’s, DAT’s and tapes. They want another “Internet tax” even on the heads of people that do not even touch any bit of music or P2P software on the Internet. Next to this they want a tax on memory cards (which get mostly used in cameras but also MP3 players), MP3 players and MP3 software.

Taxes by the corporations ?
Taxes are food for the government and not for the corporations. This is another point-of-evidence the corporations are taking over the world instead of the government.

You are a criminal ?
The last few years the RIAA, MPAA and other organisations are considering everybody to be a criminal. Even if you only use CDR’s or MD’s for your own productions or if you don’t even use these for music but only for data: you need to pay the extra amount of money that goes to the RIAA and not to the artists. This is to fill up the pockets of the executives of these cartels (or “Industry Associations” if you want to call it like that).

Because you have a PC, CD-WRITER and CD-ROM drive you are a criminal; you need to pay these extra fees (taxes) because you are automatically a music pirate according their analogy.

If I understand correctly you can be called a criminal by having:

• several knives (because you can kill people with them)
• a firearm (because you can shoot people with it)
• a car (because you can drive over people or property with it)
• a camera (because you could make illegal porn with it)
• a videorecorder (because you can record shows/movies with it)…

Where is the world going to ? These are taxes because of crimes a minority of people commit by sharing music illegaly!

Similarities ?

1. This way Microsoft should be also able to enforce taxes to the people because people pirate software.
2. Pirate cd’s get transported, the RIAA should put up road taxes because they loose revenue because CD’s get transported over the road, train, boats, …

What could really help ?
Currently a CD could cost up to 25 EUROS in Belgium.

Let’s make a quick calculation per CD …

1 EURO (box, inlay, cover)
2 EUROS (cd + pressing + marketing)
2 EUROS (goes to artist)

The rest of the 20 Euros goes to the RIAA, MPAA, SABAM, whatever cartel (or “Industry Organisation”).

If CD’s would be having a price tag of let’s say 12 EUROS more people will buy CD’s because they are cheaper. 50% of the CD’s is crap on the market anyway and you need to pay up to 25 EUROS for that piece of plastic. Sometimes there is only one or two numbers that are good on a CD and yet .. 25 EUROS !

Where goes the rest of the money to?
It goes straight to the pockets of these associations. Why? To enforce taxes, pay their lawyers, for their executives, … Worth to mention: the money does not arrive at the artist!

What can I do ?
Currently I have the feeling corporations are going to rule the world. They are imposing taxes on everything they can. The money of these taxes goes straight to these associations. Protections are being added not to protect the customer but to protect their pockets; against the customers.

CD’s getting useless …
The last 10 CD’s I have bought there are 3 CD’s useless in my car cd player, cannot play 4 of them in my computer CD-rom drive and 2 CD’s continuesly give problems in my (older) professional DENON players.

This is a problem for me, as DJ. I needed to get all these tracks from the Internet to burn to CD (from MP3) and get all the records; ADDITIONALLY next to buying the CD; to be able to use the music I have given money for !!!

I have lost 50 EUROS because I cannot play them decently in a old DENON cd player. I have lost 100 EUROS (in total) because I cannot play them in my laptop/PC CD player which is the only cd player in this room and my office !

Where does this end?

The RIAA and the MPAA (Motion Pictures Association of America or best said Hollywood) is also enforcing lots of restrains to the current PC manufacturers/owners to enforce DRM (Digital Right Management) so the PC gets theoretically their property instead of your property.

Next to that CD protections get added so you cannot play them on your PC/LAPTOP CDROM drive. Some of these protections do not allow these CD’s to be played in older CD drives like CAR CD drives because these use the same construction as a CDROM drive. The professional Denon 2500 series (worth about 2000 EUROS) cannot play some of these cd’s because the tracks skip …

If you buy a MP3 player in Canada you need to pay the MP3 player + you need to pay an extra for the internal harddrive. 21$ per gig; If you buy a Ipod MP3 player with 20 gigs you will pay 440$ on top of the price of the unit !!!

DVD writable disks you need to pay 2.27$ more per disk, what will you pay if any high resolution disk with four times more storage comes out? 9$ ???

Indeed .. where does it end?

I know MP3’s, am I a criminal ?
I buy my CD’s legally. I buy my VINYL legally. Why? Because I play it in public and I have the best quality. When downloading MP3’s the quality is mostly too bad to use in a discotheque.

I download MP3’s because I need to pre-listen. If I need to buy every CD I would now be bankrupt and be living on the streets. Thanks to MP3’s I can first listen to certain songs and if I like these I start to search around for a CD compilation or VINYL records. This way I minimize my expenses and get a maximum of quality music I can play.

Is this illegal? *NO* because I pay for the music by buying the CD’s and VINYL. Do I use these MP3’s ? *NO* because they are mostly crap anyway to use/handle decently; next to this VINYL is a lot easier to handle than mp3’s or their burned equivalent (with distortion or bad recordings).

I am not a criminal by prelistening my tracks!

DVD’s and CD’s …
You can get a full DVD with movie, commentary, special features and extras for about 20 EUROS.

You can get a soundtrack of a movie for 25 EUROS without any extras.

Where is the f*ck*ng difference? You pay 5 EUROS *MORE* for a piece of plastic that is worth LESS! The prices of CD’s are outragious higher than of a DVD while a DVD costs more to make!

Endnote …
I am worried to grow up in a world where citizens do not run the government anymore but corporations have all ropes in their hands … corporations run the government and the people.

I am worried as a citizen, I am worried about my government,

I am worried about my voice and rights because if I look to the USA ..

the rights of their citizens are almost all taken away …
Why ? For the sake of terrorism (the newest buzzword), piracy (the second newest buzzword) and extortion …

I hope more people will understand their rights are subconsiously taken away and I hope more people will fight for their rights and their privacy …

What will you do if Microsoft, the RIAA, MPIAA and other major corporations run YOUR house, property and laws?

Other links available:

• BMG decides to make copyprotected CD’s only!
• RIAA allowed to hack?
• Napster down, others to follow!
• Leave your comments down here!
  

Bertelsmann (BMG Music) will stop to sell uncrippled CD’s. This means such cd’s will not play at certain older & newer CD players, certain car players and will not play in your computer. This for the price of 20US$ to 22US$ per CD !

As DJ I am very worried because one scratch crashes my CD into oblivion. The copyprotection does not let me play half of my cd’s on my old cd players in my house (and I have three of those).

The protection on these cd’s is the Cactus Data Shield from Midbar. The protection is currently only being used on EUROPEAN cd’s. A lot of the cd’s being used in Europe are not available in the US what leaves only one option, buying them here and praying they do not get damaged + work in the CD players you use at that time.

The error is in your player, not in our copyprotected cd’s.
BMG distributes a lot of the cd’s that are currently being used by me as DJ and shows no respect for their customers whatsoever by creating CD’s that work on only 80% of the home/pro audio equipment. Additionally they say “the error is your player’s, and not in our CD’s”.

I am at a very moral dillemma because every time I buy music I first search the MP3’s and then write down the titles I want to find. Some of these titles are only to be found on CD’s and some of ‘m are only to be found on vinyl.

legally bought music is working against me now!
I used to go to the recordstore and get about 20-30 records whereof 1 or 2 where usable. Whenever I go to the recordstore now I give 20 titles and get 15 useful numbers out of it. I currently have over 800 CD’s and over 22.000 records of vinyl. Currently I am buying more on CD because carrying all the vinyl is breaking my back

Since I cannot use the cd’s wherever I want and 1 scratch can kill the CD because of this lousy copy protection I need to buy the CD *and* burn the same MP3’s to seperate CD’s to be sure I can keep using the music I want to play legally!

The secret agent not working everywhere!
I have bought the CD of James Bond (Universal) and it seems not to work in my PC (where I play the most of my music, my PC speakers are the best in my house!) and they seem not to work in my old cd players of my own DJ equipment! Next to that the shop does not want to take the Bond CD back. With the line of defence BMG has by saying “their cd’s are fully redbook compliant and it’s your player’s fault” they also tell you you can bugger off by bringing it back to the shop where you bought your precious CD.

I have bought several other CD’s like “Solid Sounds” which is giving me errors as well. Currently I am trying to recover one of the legally bought CD’s by searching the MP3’s and burning them in the same order on another CD because I cannot just copy it and the CD is damaged by (over)usage as DJ.

BMG’s reply of one of their CD’s
Whenever you send a note to BMG you get the following mail back (unaltered):

“we are sorry you have troubles with our copy protection technology. The copy protection reacts on the special new technology that is build in in burners. Unfortunately htis technics was built in many new CD players, even if they can’t copy a cd.
“The copy protection yet does not recognize wheather that burner technics is build in a cd player or in a burner. That’s why the cd playern might not play a copy protected CD. Since burner technics are also built in car radios, this may be the reason, why you can’t listen to a copyprotected cd in your car.
“As far as we were adviced, our copy protection is according to the Red Book Standart as well as all labelling on the cd.
“A standart home CD player is one that has no burner technics built in. Our Cds play on all Cd players without burner technics.
“There will be no cd manufactured without copyprotection any more.”

This seems to limit a lot of options and costs me a lot more to find the numbers, import these from wherever possible and find them on mp3 to have a backup CD of my original CD! Of’course they tell “we are sorry” though they also tell us “the fault is in our bought players and there will be no cd’s manufactured without protection anymore”… I wish I should not have read this blasphamy towards a lot of customers!

Moral dillema, I am for the music, not against!
Because I am a DJ I cannot tolerate (for myself) to be using illegal material! I live by the music and I live FOR the music and not AGAINST. Seems to be BMG has the same reason but not only FOR the music but to protect their precious wallet!

What about radio stations ?
A lot of radiostations use MP3 jukebox software hooked up to the mixing board. A lot of bars/discotheques use that same kind of software. This means CD’s cannot be used for these kinds of commercial purposes anymore.

More information here
BMG’s line of defence can be found here. Another news article can be found here.

Please, sign the petition at petitiononline if you are also worried or if you do agree with this article.

A older article from me about this matter can be found here and if you wish to give your comments to the guestbook, please leave them here

According this article the RIAA (record industry) tried to have a hacking-authorization against all music swappers. They want to “get the law back” by breaking the law?

This is a follow up to this article (Napster down, others to follow!).

It seems nothing is too weird anymore on this world. Go imagine yourself files being deleted from your PC without your knowledge!

According to this story the RIAA is going to sue the dutch company Kazaa together with Morpheus and Grokster. This internal memo show the record label’s findings and strategy to battle P2P networks. There is also a letter from the RIAA president to the industry leaders about this matter.

This is not the only problem, the problem extends to even copyrighted CD’s, lawsuits and the lack of ability to spread your own productions on the public media because of the stress made on these companies.

Music for the rich?

It seems you need to be rich to have the freedom to listen the music you want these days. Not only rich though …

What’s my deal in this?

I am diskjockey myself and buy regularly CD’s and vinyl. As a DJ I need new music. I am very selective about my music I play. This is not only because I want the best-of-the-best but also because I do not have the cash to buy every new CD that comes on the market. I would need to be millionaire to afford one year of buying all new techno-cd’s that are new on the market!

P2P or MP3’s usefull?

Here is where these P2P (mp3) networks come in handy. I can relax in my own officechair on my own volume and hear whatever is (un)usable and (no)good. If I like a certain song, I will search it on CD or search a CD set with such numbers on them. Finally I always end up buying the CD.

It has happened too many times to me that I bougth a unusable record or CD (set) in a hurry because I liked one or two good numbers on the SET (which seemed to be on another CD I bought a short time later). That is for about 25 euro thrown away AND a unusable CD!

Not only are networks like Napster, Kazaa and others useful for this, but they are also useful to spread your own artistic productions! Whenever I make music I want people to be able to use and listen to my music. My world is partially based on music; Mr. RIAA and others cannot take that musical freedom and expression away!

Copyprotection on CD’s

It does not stay with this though. The RIAA is also protecting cd’s so they are unable to be played in a PC and DVD players! Hello?? Some people do USE their PC to play CD’s!

Whenever I am in my office I want to be able to listen to my own-bought CD’s ya know? Not only I want to listen to them but I also want to be able to backup the CD’s I like (and use, professionally and in my car!). These protections have been bypassed almost faster than they come out.

Next to that it would be easy for the mainstream “kiddies” to copy a CD to mp3 files by just running a cable from the CD to the (digital) input of their soundcard and put it online on the major P2P networks.

Fair use

What did happen to “fair use” of these media, so you can make (backup) copies for your own usage?

In the USA they also have the DMCA what makes it theoretically illegal to copy such CD, even for own use, because you are circumventing the copy protection and therefor breaking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

If I would not make backup cd’s then I would end up every year with atleast 5-10 CD’s with minimally two tracks failing because of scratches and (carefull) handling!

Final note

All these “protections” are to protect the record-industries more than to protect the authors of the music. It is still very expensive to buy a CD in Europe which makes it hard to “just buy what you see” unless you have hard cash.

There are also people listening (and using) music they buy! I buy all the music I like on vinyl and CD, though I do not want to buy music I dislike!