Cool, there are a couple books there I wouldn't mind 'thumbing' through. Though that TeX book is one of exactly two O'Rielly books I've purchased that I considered to be a waste of money. It's more of a catalogue than a manual. Zane

Why is that? Five years ago, when a friend would make me a copy of a CD and I liked it, I would go to the record store and buy one. Today, I do the same thing. I'm sure that not everyone does that, but presumably not everyone did it five years ago either.

Wayne M. Smith said: Really? Where do you get these statistics? Most things I have read contradict what you are saying and reinforce the "most people sample then buy" assumption. If you have a source for these numbers I would be quite interested to read it. - Dan Wright (dtwright(a)uiuc.edu) (http://www.uiuc.edu/~dtwright) -] ------------------------------ [-] -------------------------------- [- ``Weave a circle round him thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honeydew hath fed, / and drunk the milk of Paradise.'' Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan

Unit CD sales were down 10% last year, the first double digit drop ever. Some argue that there might be reasons contributing to this other than piracy, but it's pretty hard to ignore the nose on your face. The rest of the evidence is largely anecdotal as it is essentially impossible to survey a pirate market. A recent article in the LA Times -- I think on 12/2 -- reported that many college networks have maxed out on their bandwidth due to massive student downloading of music files and videos during the evening hours.

Wayne M. Smith wrote: Given that MOST industries making non-essential consumer goods have lost way more than 10% in sales, I think that is pretty good evidence that "piracy" is NOT the problem.

On Fri, Dec 13, 2002 at 11:03:04PM -0800, Wayne M. Smith wrote: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ It most likely is. In my opinion, at least 95% of the music played on the radio and advertised by the big media companies is total and utter crap. "Artists" which can't sing and wouldn't recognize a good song if it came up and bit them on the ass, "new super stars" whose only qualities (if any) are their looks and which are best listened to with your ears plugged firmly with wax - as in "nice ass/boobs, whats that noise he/she is making?". Albums filled either with the 42. recycling of a song which was good when performed by the original artist 20 years ago but which now causes your ears to bleed or with mindless drivel written by an underpaid and talentless "songwriter", performed by an equally bad "artist". And they keep making more of it. Finally, they wonder why people aren't all that hot on buying this crap - which still sells amazingly well. I still have a (growing) collection of CDs, from artist that are either unknown in the mainstream media (heard their music usually through friends) or, although being known in the mainstream media still make good music but aren't hyped like mad (like Pink Floyd, Joe Cocker, Lenny Kravitz, ...). Sorry for the rant. Regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison

On Thu, 12 Dec 2002, Wayne M. Smith wrote: Speaking for my personal CD purchasing habits, I'd have to say O'Reilly's observations match my practices. For one, I don't like "Top 40" or mainstream music. Most all of it is crap. And nearly none of the music I enjoy gets played on the radio stations in my area; so my ability to find out about music I like is somewhat hampered. If someone recommends a song or a band to me, they'll often point me in the direction of some of their MP3s. If I like their work, I buy their CDs. I think his main point was that the recording and entertainment industries need to get their acts together and figure out a good way to open up their catalogs and provide reasonably priced services to their customers. His free-TV vs basic cable vs premium cable is a great way to describe it. The models being adopted now with the pay-per-play stuff are just annoying. That approach is hardly any better than having to go to a movie rental place (and the quality of video tape and DVDs will be better and those don't require me to have a bunch of drive space and to have to wait a couple of hours to download the film). Never underestimate the bandwidth of your Toyota Corolla speeding back from Blockbuster Video filled with VHS tapes and DVDs. Whether it was Johansen's intention or not, I don't know. In my opinion, he at least had the right to play DVDs on his Linux system; there was nothing available to do this, so he used his head and figured out a way to do it. AFAIK, I don't believe he ever distributed any illegal copies of DVDs, did he? In the end, he can only be judged based on his actions. Now, the MPAA folks say that reverse engineering their lousy CSS encryption is a crime. I think that's absurd, and I'm really surprised that /anyone/ on /this/ list would agree with the idea that reverse engineering something is, in itself, a criminal act. I'd add that I'm speaking as someone whose livelihood depends on the financial success of those blockbuster films, given that I'm employed on the production side of a major Hollywood motion picture studio. We're finishing a record year; it was sometime in July or August that we passed the $1 billion mark with our box office revenues. I don't know what the end of year total will be, but it won't be insignificant. So, I think we'll "survive", at least if more effort can be spent on figuring out how to reach a profitable compromise in our services to our customers. Hopefully we can do this before we imprison them all, either literally in jails, or in spirit, by allowing the DMCA to continue to exist as a law. My $0.02. -brian.

On Fri, 13 Dec 2002, Wayne M. Smith wrote: Wayne, I can't buy your argument for the same reason I can't believe anything the RIAA or MPAA or any of those silly acronym-based organizations say. They don't back them up with hard data, because if they did, we would probably find that sales are only increasing. When the recording industry is willing to allow an independent auditor to check its books and report the findings, then I'll believe it. Until then, I don't take their word for anything. Also, I think it's pretty petty for the recording industry especially to be griping about losing sales, especially when it robs most recording artists blind anyway. But that's another (and even more off-topic) thread. Well, we are basically dealing with human behavior here, and no matter how much pissing and moaning and bitching and griping by the recording industry and no matter how many silly laws that do not at all cater to the general benefit of society are passed, people will still do what people do. The trick is to figure out how to make money from it, rather than being completely obnoxious about it as the recording industry has been so far. O'Reilly was right on, and history will prove him (and all the others striking the same chord) right. But it does preclude distributing that research, and I can't believe you could support that provision. The economy is also right about where it was 5 years ago. People just don't have the money they did in 1999 (I certainly don't). The correlation is more than a coincidence. Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org * Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *

At 09:12 PM 12/13/02 -0800, you wrote: -BZZZTTTT- Wrong answer... the recording industry contracts state that Yes, you can ahve your contract audited, but only with a list of 'approved' auditors, as a matter of fact if you show your contract to ANYONE you are in violation of the contract. I haven't, I have friends that are / were in signed bands, and they were ripped off royally by the record companies they were signed through. There are plenty of stories out there by recording artists that are getting the royal purple shaft by their recording companies (lets start with the band having to pay the recording company back for all expenses incurred in advertising a record or tour...., the same expenses that the record company wrote off in their takes but the band has to repay.) Um, I seem to remember text in the DMCA that makes it a criminal offense to do ANYTHING that could be construed as an attempt at bypassing copy protection, that would include reverse-engineering CSS....

It was thus said that the Great Wayne M. Smith once stated: According to Steve Albini [1] a band who sells 250,000 albums (not that bad a showing) will make $710,000 for the record company, and only $4,000 *per band member*. $4,000. Given that an audit can cost anywhere from $10,000-$100,000 [2], even if the band in question *wanted* an audit, they aren't going to very well afford one, are they? And there *are* restrictions on what they can audit [3], but I've yet to find any restrictions on who can do the auditing. There are also some horribly one-sided contracts being signed [4] (and you have to read that to actually believe it---trust me, it's as if Satan himself wrote it). Now, are the artists stupid for signing such contracts? Perhaps, but when it's your only shot at being a recording star, and if you decline, any number of other starving artists are willing to sign, well ... where's that dotted line? The recording industry pretty much controls who sells and who doesn't. And dead artists? They're the best [5] for they don't bitch, and they don't attempt to audit the books [6] (really now, sixteen albums for a dead man ... the money used could have been used to promote how many live artists? Who knows ... ). But do you have *any* evidence that downloading MP3s hurts the recording industry? With figures *not* supplied by the recording industry? All the non-recording industry evidence I've seen has been to the counter---that it has, if anything, *helped* spurr sales [7], but not of the industry backed acts like Britney or N'Sync. And giving content away for free has helped other industries [8] generate more sales, oddly enough. The machinations that the RIAA is forcing on us may have killed a major company in another field [9] and is certainly keeping the smaller players day-to-day business [11]. There is nothing in our laws (yet) that say that these companies are required to make money, but given their recent track record, they sure as hell are trying to make sure they're legally mandated to make money at all costs. And just for the heck of it, a few more links I found: http://www.woodpecker.com/writing/essays/royalty-politics.html http://www.recordingartistscoalition.com/rip.html http://www.wardrum.org/protection/congress/10_02_3.html http://www.recordingartistscoalition.com/contracts.html Please do take the time to read all the articles mentioned here; it's quite illuminating. -spc (Thank you) [1] http://www.negativland.com/albini.html [2] http://www.recordingartistscoalition.com/hollyreporter_092502.html [3] http://www.futureofmusic.org/news/CAaccountinghearing.cfm [4] http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/09/05/204941.php [5] http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/story/0%2C12102%2C823068%2C00.h… [6] http://www.recordingartistscoalition.com/hollyreporter_092502.html [7] http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle [8] http://www.counterpunch.org/flint0419.html [9] http://www.davetrowbridge.com/MT/archives/000323.html#000323 [10] http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/webcasting.html [11] http://www.boycott-riaa.com/article/5763

It was thus said that the Great Wayne M. Smith once stated: So you mean that the artist makes even *less* than $4,000? And you are still defending the RIAA? While not the music industry, it is well known that you *never* agree to a percentage of the net in Hollywood (movie industry) but of the *gross* since *no* movie ever *nets* if the accountants are any good. Even a movie pulling in thrice what it cost is still considered having lost money (I suspect it has to pull in ten times the amount before a net profit is called). -spc (How pulling in three times the expense can still be considered loosing money I will never know ... )

that are an performing I which Please don't stoop to labeling me a defender of the RIAA because you disagree with me -- I am defending nothing but my own opinions. Under GAAP, "gross profits" does not include overhead, and many, many companies that show a gross profit also show a net loss. In simpler terms, "gross profits" does not equal "profits". You need to compare apples to apples. Participations defnitions labeled "gross profits" have not been used in the entertainment industry since the Buchwald case ten years ago. Buchwald argued that because the studios labeled their participations definition "gross profits," they should be stuck with the GAAP definition. That was the end of participations based on "gross profits" definitions. Since then, participations are calculated against "defined proceeds". I suspect that your notions of what a movie "pulls in" and its profitability are based on box office receipts compared to negative cost. Given that the studios only receive about 1/2 the domestic box-office receipts, and only about 40% of foreign, and that the reported "cost" of making a movie does not include prints and advertising, a movie does in fact need to "pull in" about three times its cost in the box office in order to break even -- at that point in its distribution. Because this happens with only a small percentage of films, most don't make anything, if in fact they ever do, until the money from DVD and television sales rolls in.

Sellam Ismail wrote: BTW LP's still sell well to the high end audio people. This is where you can still have smaller production runs.

On Fri, Dec 13, 2002 at 09:29:41AM -0800, Eric Smith wrote: I find it amazing: the economy is going down, lots of companies are shrinking or going out of business - but the recording companies complain that their profits aren't growing as fast as they used to and blaim it on the customer who - according to them - is a lying, stinking, filthy stealing pirate who needs to be put in jail and have his money taken away (and handed over to the poor, starving record companies who'll have to delay the purchase of another dozen personal jet liners for their CEOs because those damned customers aren't purchasing new CDs fast enough). Yes, this is a bit over the top, but still I think the RIAA and MPAA need a serious whack with the reality cluestick. Regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison

On Fri, 13 Dec 2002, Brian Chase wrote: I have to second that. Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org * Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *

I'd have to too, had they said it.

At 10:22 PM 12/12/02 -0800, you wrote: Road Runner, my underlying ISP is pushing a service called Rhapsody, which I caught the last few days of before it went to paid (like $10 a month and 99 cents a burnt track, unlimited radio and specific song streams at decent bit rates). I've bought like 5 CDs from using that (Sneaker Pimps, Becoming X, Blue Man Group, Audio, Itzhak Perleman live in the fiddlers house, and more). It was just so neat to use, about a second of delay between clicking on any song and it starting and playing full length, fast searches, and three windows open, Rhapsody, allmusicguide, and ebay or BMG etc. Open text is really growing too, My wife is glued to her Palm M515 (tiny and convenient), which has about 4 books in at all times. Now the point I wholely agree on, the top 40 mainstream artists are going to get ripped off, to some extent, but for everybody else its the lifeblood of exposure. My belief is that Sony et al are not worried about bootlegs of Brittany Spears as much as having NO CONTROL over who the public picks as the next pop start.

It's not just the top 40 mainstream artists, it's the tens of thousands that they employ. To the end, there have been substantial layoffs in the music business over the past two years. Warner/Elektra/Atlantic just laid off another bunch.

One of the problems about the response of most people to music is that if you hear a piece of music often enough and have little critical musical facilities, it becomes familiar and comforting. At one time the now-common interval of a 3rd was considered discordant in western- world music by most people only used to unison, 4ths, or 5ths. So if you hear the current industry "playlist" often enough, you decide you like song x . You are "programmed" by Sony and the "music" industry. If you combine that with the "show-biz" stage and video presentations, Bingo ! , you have a hit. One of the good things that happened in the late 50s and 60s was that for a time the "Biz" got out of control of an industry that had fallen behind the current musical tastes. Whoops, correction made by the mid-sixties, and rigid enforcement and standardization of play lists brought "pop music" (and R&R for that matter) firmly under their control once more, and the independant recording companies were either bought out or marginalized. The result of course was the present ill-health of most music and the poor quality of musicianship. One of beacons that is encouraging is the indie labels and self- produced CDs, as well as the disdain for present product that is growing not only among an older generation but also among many younger musicians and fans. That I would suspect is a spectre haunting industry execs more than Napster and pirated CDs. It also relates to their efforts to control the i'net a potentialy very dangerous distribution rival. Lawrence On 14 Dec 2002, , Jeffrey Sharp wrote: lgwalker(a)mts.net bigwalk_ca(a)yahoo.com

Oops I displaced that by a decade. Should be midsixties to midseventies. To us old farts one decade looks much like another. However, I meant controlling the media and it isn't only the MP3 thing that has them worried. Amazingly good quality music can be produced in home studios using IT and can then be used to produce your own CD to be sold at shows or transmitted via the internet. The recent moves to force alternate radio to pay exhorbitant RIAA and ASCAP royalties is also a part of it. They're trying to shut it down before it gets to a point where they can't control it. Hopefully it's too late. And considering their sorry history of ripping off artists the crocodile tears they are shedding for the creative artist is laughable. As many professional musician friends of mine have said, " the music part of it is great, the business side of it sucks". From club owners, to producers , to record companies, and broadcasters. The few who AREN'T leeches are the exceptions. I say to the Napster kids, go for it, burn the bastards. And the film industry stinks just as highly. Very little good or original film comes out of Hollywood. And when they do gamble and it wins big, they milk it to death by doing the same format over and over until the public grows tired of it. Most of the best stuff comes from independents and foreign film. But of course the control lies in the distribution which Hollywood has by the throat, even here in Canada. If you can't show it in the tightly controlled theatre networks, you can't make back production costs. Another area ripe for assault. Lawrence On 15 Dec 2002, , Mike Ford wrote: lgwalker(a)mts.net bigwalk_ca(a)yahoo.com

Geoff Reed wrote: And before that the concert impressarios complained that that new fangled phonograph invented by Edison would surely put them all out of business!! -- hbp

And of course Edison went to great lengths to show that the competing AC of Tesla would electrocute everybody. (And incidentally take profits from his DC, Edison Electric company) Lawrence On 15 Dec 2002, , Hans B Pufal wrote: lgwalker(a)mts.net bigwalk_ca(a)yahoo.com

At 02:36 PM 12/15/02 -0600, Lawrence Walker wrote: Edison would LOVE being in our times. OTOH that doesn't mean anybody can hear what they imagine they do.

Wayne M. Smith said: <sarcasm>OH NO! The record industry just LAID PEOPLE OFF! There are absolutely NO OTHER companies doing that right now! It MUST be because of the EVIL MUSIC PIRATES and have NOTHING to do with the state of the economy!</sarcasm> - Dan Wright (dtwright(a)uiuc.edu) (http://www.uiuc.edu/~dtwright) -] ------------------------------ [-] -------------------------------- [- ``Weave a circle round him thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honeydew hath fed, / and drunk the milk of Paradise.'' Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan

Sellam Ismail wrote: I'm like Sellam here. I have bought quite a few CDs, based on hearing a song or two from the album via Napster. Granted, I'm one of those people who look for that album in the used rack first, before resorting to a buying new copy. It is a form of recycling; but I wonder what exactly do the record labels think of me for that? I also believe that new audio CDs are still overpriced. Doesn't stop me -- ---Dave Woyciesjes ---ICQ# 905818

On Fri, Dec 13, 2002 at 12:26:18AM -0800, Sellam Ismail wrote: The nerve these companies have. Imagine General Motors, Ford, Toyota or any other car maker wanting a cut of the money if you sell your old car to somebody else instead of just dropping it into the next landfill. The article raises the key point: the companies already squeezed the customer for all they could for the initial purchase of the CD - wanting to cash in again when he sells it to somebody else is just robbery in (bad) disguise. Agreed. If I'm buying CDs it's mostly used or directly at the concert of the band. Only if that doesn't work I'll order from Amazon or hit the shop. Regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison

While were the "you-haven't-given-us-what-we-want-in-the-form-we-want-it-so-that-justifies-our- the You are in the vast majority, but it only takes a small minority engaged in theft to turn the economics of the business upside down. The LA Times ran an article last week where they interviewed college students about music buying habits. Student after student stated that they hadn't bought a CD in a few years, and offered all the usual justifications -- greedy recording industry, rich artist, etc. No one mentions all the employees -- who rely on those greedy artists et al. for jobs -- who have been laid off as sales have turned down. I agree, in general. But you could say that a nuclear device is a tool as well. It's all in that "how you use it" thing.

an industry, greedy I agree completely. But if the recording biz wants to destroy themselves that's up to them. It doesn't justify theft. well. Agree completely.

On Thu, Dec 12, 2002 at 10:22:05PM -0800, Wayne M. Smith wrote: It isn't. I've bought quite a stack of CDs after copying the MP3-files MP3-encoded music, I would never have heard about most of those bands (because they aren't plugged by million dollar ads from some big record company). In my experience, swapping music is basically (almost) free advertising. Yes, there will always be a load of freeriders who'll just burn a CD instead of buying it - but most of them wouldn't have bought the CD anyway, so thats not much of a loss. IMHO he is right about this. Either you sell the masses what they want, or they'll find another way to get it - but likeley without money ending up in your pocket this time. The big record companies are deadly afraid of the need to adapt their business model to modern times. They were crying "our companies will die" when the video tape came out. What happened? Now they make $BIGNUM on selling pre-recorded video tapes to hundreds of millions of customers. That market most likely shrunk in the last years - because customers where moving over to DVD. Yes, I find it absolutely believable. I'm annoyed at CSS because it is intended to keep me from using the product I bought if I don't comply with whatever stupid ideas the media industry comes up with. I don't own a DVD player. I do, however, have a DVD drive in my workstation - which runs Linux (no MS Windows OS on my machines, since several years). Without DeCSS I would never have bought a single DVD because they would have been useless to me - now I have a small stack of DVD I bought sitting on the shelf behind me, because there is software that breaks the stupid CSS nonsense (What cracksmoking monkey invented this awfully bad excuse for an "encryption" algorithm anyway?) in realtime and allows me to watch my (legally purchased) DVDs. And while I'm at it - the DVD region coding is another annoyance - thankfully, being "region code free" is an almost required "standard" feature for DVD-Players (and DVD drives) around here, customer cash at work ;-) Regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison

Wayne M. Smith said: Yes... but the OTHER myth is that they WOULD buy if they COULDN'T sample. That is certainly untrue, as well. Each song downloaded by a "sampler" certainly does not represent a lost sale. I would be suprised if even 1% of downloaded songs represented actual lost sales for the record companies....I think that's part of the point O'Reilly was making. - Dan Wright (dtwright(a)uiuc.edu) (http://www.uiuc.edu/~dtwright) -] ------------------------------ [-] -------------------------------- [- ``Weave a circle round him thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honeydew hath fed, / and drunk the milk of Paradise.'' Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan

I think you are greatly overestimating the ambition and attention span of the public. The reason this guy became popular is because he can actually craft a good song*. It is not something that everyone can do, even if they actually spend the hours to crank out a tune. Many kids try, but almost all quit after they find out that the tracks they just laid all sound like a bunch of Casio presets. Look what happened when the electric guitar started coming out in force, back in the 1960s. With a fairly minimal amount of training, you can make a song. What we ended up with is a bunch of crappy garage bands making crappy music, and pretty much everyone went nowhere selling out in the huge garage sale guitar glut of years later. *No, not a Trent fan - no CDs, no MP3s...hell, I didn't even give him any airplay...and yes, I *reeeally* don't like the RIAA. Oh, and he did have a bit of help from Adrian Sherwood - that didn't hurt the record, certainly. William Donzelli aw288(a)osfn.org

"Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner" &lt;spc(a)conman.org&gt; wrote: That would have been even more difficult than breaking CSS, because the DVD-ROM drives will NOT give you all of the encrypted data unless you successfully authenticate. They will simply return errors (and no data) for some (but perhaps not all) of the encrypted blocks. I don't recall whether reading the encrypted data requires just the negotiation for the disc key, or whether the title key is involved as well. Eric