On Apr 28, 9:07 pm, "Martha Adams" <mh...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> It seems to me, these groups like the RIAA and
> Microsoft's BSA, morph into money raising by
> blackmail as naturally as seeds sprouting; and
> by a somewhat like process. But (for RIAA),
> what if....
RIAA and ASCAP and BMI all have legitimate wings that do try to
negotiate royalty agreements with nightclubs, DJs, and anyone else who
plays music in a money making enterprise. Most of the time, their
terms are pretty reasonable. You pay a flat monthly rate, and
maintain a playlist of what you actually play. Sometimes that's a
written log. More modern clubs keep it on computer.
The BSA and SPA were more like a blackmail ring. They didn't go after
the actual pirates, they went after the executive responsible for
compliance, usually the CIO or VP of IT.
Ironically, copyright violations were usually unregistered shareware,
applications like WinZip. These applications are usually downloaded
with a provision that after 30 days, the customer should either pay
for the software, or stop using it. The problem is that many people
think that free download means that it's free.
The problem is that if you have 30-50,000 employees running freely
downloaded shareware without paying the registration fee, and it's
discovered in a BSA audit, it becomes a problem for the CIO. If he
didn't make a significant attempt to audit their users, then there is
a good case of liability under copyright law. The blackmail scheme
comes when they threaten to file the lawsuit with the CEO, which will
pretty much guarantee that the CIO loses his job.
But now, with this blackmail hanging over his head, he becomes a
"mark" who can be made to sign corporate licensing agreements, as well
as providing "Positive Press" for the major contributors to the BSA
(like Microsoft).
> Most of what passes for "music" these days is
> much like any other sample of it: why isn't there
> software out there that will synthesize a
> perfectly good-enough more of the same and if you
> have that software you can run up a character
> table and the software will then produce any
> amount of this music?
There is lots of new music being written by teen-agers, college kids,
and others who want to break into the industry. Most of it sits on
web sites waiting to be downloaded by someone who can turn them or
their music into top-40 material
The problem is that it takes a lot of money, management, and politics
to move from a "club act" to a Top-20 or Top-10 recording star. It
takes advertising, promotional effort, and usually some concert tours.
> The idea was around ten
> to twenty years ago, and then it vanished; now
> the technology has worked its magic doublings
> of speed and power; it's time this came back.
Musicians use computer generated sounds quite regularly, but it's a
huge stretch from computers as a tool to create music to actually
creating music.
> For a singer, words wouldn't be needed. Just
> an appropriately made sequence of singing word
> *sounds*. There's a need for such a software:
> the RIAA proves that. I think it's a thing that
> could happen.
It's a bit like the "Infinite number of monkeys" theory, that if you
had enough monkeys banging on typewriters, eventually you would get
the works of shakespear. You might get the words, but they would be
randomly found among countless amounts of nonsense.
> And if it does (when it does), where will RIAA
> be then? Is it possible we don't see this good
> idea today, because it's *too* good? ??
>
> Titeotwawki -- mha [cola 2008 Apr 28]
|
|
