JFB blog policy
Just a note:
In light of comments made and the potential for confusion, JFB would like to clarify its stance on what we post.
We hope that joelfightsback.com will become an active medium for discussion about the music industry, copyright law, as well as Joel’s case. We believe that letting that discussion happen, even when people disagree, will benefit everyone. You’ll note that though the RIAA has its own blog, they never allow comments on their posts while we encourage hearty debate (reserving the right to remove libelous materials).
From time to time, people write in interesting op-eds and articles to our e-mail, and we’re delighted to post them. As such, JFB does not necessarily endorse any of these posted pieces written by individuals outside our team anymore than we would necessarily endorse comments left about them. We post them because we think they’re interesting and could be worth discussing.
I love you! What you’re doing is great. Thanks man!
Intrinsic in human nature is the understanding if you want respect (and proper payment) for your own work or product, you must give it in return. All the “scarcity versus nonscarcity” and “it’s copying, not stealing” discussions are semantic masturbation compared to the awful feeling of being ripped off whenever a digital file intended for sale is taken for free. And that is society’s bottom line, the feeling of a trespass that damages. Infringement never truly flourished, but a technical headstart gave way to a sad anomaly that only proves that some will steal when offered the anonymous chance. That’s all this phenomenon has ever shown, something we’ve known for a very long time.
So just as thin window glass is adequate security to park a car overnight on a city street–with a small percentage of damaged souls seeing anonymous opportunity—it will prove out that society never embraced piracy in the majority not because it was illegal, but simply because in our collective gut we know it to be wrong.
The “cost is suppression/censorship” crowd will be revealed slowly as the poorly adjusted they sadly are. Everything else is window dressing and it’s just a matter of time, with the richly deserving Joel’s and Jammies inevitably going down in history as the arrogant few who demanded a perceived “right” to take something for nothing in a pay-for-value world.
People, tell me something. If file sharing is so inherently evil, even at the expense of an artist and their pimp(RIAA), why hasn’t law enforcement gone after the average American citizens like Joel Tenenbaum. They sure go after prostitution. I’m mean after all “it’s stealing” Grand Theft even!! The reason I believe is because the criminal courts have no idea how to quantify such an action of individuals who file share. How does one quantify the damages? By what standard? It’s impossible!!! But a stupid civil case jury can quantify by making the wrong people examples. Also, I remember the days when people shared LP’s (vinyl) by making a recording of them onto cassette. With enough quality to shatter a glass. How did RIAA handle this. Oh, getting a royalty on every freak’n blank cassette ever produced via a copyright levy/tax, even if it was never used on copy written materials. Nice racket, I’ll say. They cassette manufactures caved in. Did RIAA ever go after the end users that pirated the LP. No! But now with Gestapo power of computers, hey no problem. Just subpoena an ISP or spy on people. Isn’t spying on people an invasion of privacy? Perhaps illegal in some cases?? Peer-to-peer “decoying” and “spoofing would be considered entrapment if it was done by law enforcement. Look Artist should get paid along with entities that invest in them. I have no problem with that. It’s the 2 wrongs don’t make a right thing. Going after a person stealing in a store and clubbing them with a sledge hammer would stop would be thieves. But it isn’t right. Let’s be fair about this. RIAA!!! PLEASE QUANTIFY REAL DAMAGES… And Jury’s… WAKE UP!!! Go after industry, not the consumer. Protect your content and charge a reasonable price for the media. And don’t worry how consumers use the media for themselves.
I believe the inherent issue is that the majority of us have shifted to a digital medium that has evolved far faster than the music industry stranglehold.
The labels have continuously prospered from their abilities to draw us in with incredible live performances, consecutive enjoyable hours of radio play, and their enormous presence on television. Though substantial, these pale in comparison to our desire to have our own copy of our favourite music that we can play anywhere, at any time, without having to rely on a media conglomerate. So the industry tried to flood us with records, cassette tapes, and the thus-dominant CD.
Out of nowhere, something happened so fast that it would prove to plague the industry to this day. The internet exploded and physical means of obtaining music became an artifact. Rapidly growing, the internet provided so many paths to alternative methods of retrieving music, the industry couldn’t keep up.
The music industry has felt backed into a corner with profits down across the board. So much that they feel forced to sue developers, website owners and most importantly, masses of their own consumers. Only now realizing this mistake they implore more devious tactics of trying to negotiate a pre-school based ‘3 Strikes Rule’, large fees on our internet connection and other obvious signs of desperation Instead, I wish they would have shown interest in innovative ideas like decades past.
As one of my side projects, I was building a legal music download site (with open API), available worldwide. There was a big feature to it that I had going for me: It was going to be free. I developed a way to use a non-intrusive approach to advertising, with high revenues.
Why was I so optimistic I could keep this free? Through my inventive approach to advertising, I would be able to generate up to $0.10 per raw download, most that I could put directly toward licensing fees of the industry and thus pass no cost onto the user. I believed this to be the perfect solution. It would give the masses unlimited free music, pay fair compensation to the copyright holder, and be completely open to other distributors to integrate into their own website platforms.
Apparently I couldn’t make everyone happy. Living in Canada, my first step was to contact SOCAN to apply to be a legal music download service. The fees were minimal, at $0.021 Canadian per download, much was left over. Until I found out there are two other similar organizations in Canada I’d need to obtain licensing from, so now I ended up at just over $0.10 Canadian per download. The biggest blow came when I was told that I still had to contact the record labels and get licensing from them at a hefty price of up to $0.60 Canadian per download. Just to kick me while I was down, I was told I’d also have to do that in every country that I’d like to let have access to my website, and apparently, many of them have even higher fees than Canada. So much for innovation.
Fight on Joel Tenenbaum.
Dan, that’s like saying you showed up at the car dealership with $5,000 cash and it’s their fault you couldn’t purchase a new car.
So now you feel justified in stealing one. Because Hey……… you really did TRY to buy one first, right?
Dan, that’s like saying you showed up at the car dealership with $5,000 cash and it’s their fault you couldn’t purchase a new car.
So now you feel justified in stealing one. Because Hey……… you really did TRY to buy one first, right?
Actually, you’re trying to buy a goddamned alternator but until the last year they’ve only offered the whole car.
ForWhatIt’sWorth, I never said I agree with stealing anything. Downloading a digital file is no more stealing than it is to listen to the radio, depending on who you ask.
What I was saying is that the Industry has failed to capitalize on the digital file like they have on the radio (or any other means).
And now they are well-poised in their attempts to apply a tax to radio stations that always have been and continue to be the most influential promotional tool for radio. I remember when artists used to pay radio stations to get airplay. When did everything become so backward?
The only thing coming now is most radio stations not being able to afford the licensing and having to either close shop or cut back on music and increase in-house or independent content. This will cause a radio fallout with more people moving away from radio in masses as Good programming becomes scarce.
Just another one of the ridiculous tactics of the industry.
I have renewed my efforts to launch my music-sharing website sometime in early 2010. I will still pay the creator as much as possible, as is the right thing to do. But I’m not going to go through any of the licensing organizations. I welcome the attempts by the Industry to shut me down. I won’t be doing anything illegal in my country.
As for your analogy ForWhatIt’sWorth, I fail to see the similarity to my dilemma. A car dealership provides a physical product that you can touch, at a modest profit above their cost to manufacture it.
It costs nothing to make an MP3 file. It costs time and money to make the work that is contained in the MP3 file and that compensation is easily paid for by concerts alone.
So I hardly see the justification in the immense fees imposed by the Industry that would equate me to owing them $10 million dollars for providing access to 100,000 MP3 files that only cost me $1000 in bandwidth. They are stifling innovation by imposing levies per download that are higher than what they make from a single song off a physical CD.
There should be a balance. The price should be fair. A digital file does not have the worth of it’s physical counterpart, so why is it more expensive?
Great list! This is what I have been looking for since I switched to Firefox.
Hi, interesting site, just a quick question, what filtering program you use for filtering out junk websites because I have been hit by tons on my website.
Hi, i just found this here after an fast google search. Neat post you have here! Keep it up!
I wrote a similar article on this subject but you nailed it here.
Sorry for my english, it’s not my natural language.
This is another stupid case of copyright infrigment. I fully agree with Seth; in my opinion the so-called digital era, has taken by “surprise” these record companies which cannot adapt to sell music through the web. iTunes and many other services, are more clever and doing business (although I really don’t like iTunes quality, I mean 192 kbps is terrible!).
It is all about to squeeze the consumer, as they have been doing for long long time ago. The sad thing is that current american law cannot adjust either to this rapid growing digital sharing.
There is no way they can stop that and still people like Joe will have to pay the price times thousands.
Don’t give up Joe.
By the way, I tried to donate through PayPal just a few bucks but there is no way to do it from my PayPal balance. I don’t have a credit card available at this moment.
If you could modify your setup and accept PayPal balance for payment, please let me know.
Thanks.
Ty Debartolo
Can i make a recommendation? I believe you have got something very good in this article. But suppose you included a number of links to a page that backs up what you are stating? Or possibly you might give us a little something to look at, a specific thing that would connect what youre saying to some thing tangible? Just a suggestion.