Results tagged “RIAA” from theInput.net

The MPAA comments on the previously reported bill now in Congress that would threaten federal financial aid to a college if they did not police copyrighted works for the MPAA and the RIAA:

"When the government is subsidizing universities...and it discovers that those universities are spending a lot of taxpayers' money to build digital networks that are being used primarily to allow college students to traffic in infringing content, I think it's perfectly legitimate for Congress to say, wait a minute, if we're giving you money, we don't want it to be used to help college kids infringe copyright,"

Oh great, it's that stupid argument: "They have the fast Internets! They must be using it solely to infringe on our copyrights!"

Again, please tell your local Congressman to vote against this bill.

In case you missed the news all over the Internet regarding the ridiculous bill introduced by House Democrats on Friday, CNET News has a recap of the idiocy:

New federal legislation says universities must agree to provide not just deterrents but also "alternatives" to peer-to-peer piracy, such as paying monthly subscription fees to the music industry for their students, on penalty of losing all financial aid for their students.

The U.S. House of Representatives bill, which was introduced late Friday by top Democratic politicians, could give the movie and music industries a new revenue stream by pressuring schools into signing up for monthly subscription services such as Ruckus and Napster. Ruckus is advertising-supported, and Napster charges a monthly fee per student.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) applauded the proposal, which is embedded in a 747-page spending and financial aid bill. "We very much support the language in the bill, which requires universities to provide evidence that they have a plan for implementing a technology to address illegal file sharing," said Angela Martinez, a spokeswoman for the MPAA.

If colleges don't comply by testing "technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity," they risk losing all federal financial aid. Not only that, but they're forced to provide alternatives to downloading, basically making all colleges sign up for music services. What kind of demented lobbying happened to put that in? No wonder the MPAA loves the bill.

Please tell your local representative this bill is a stupid idea that is just meant to divert money from education and into the music and movie companies' hands.

The full text of the bill can be found here.

An independent, government commissioned study in Canada has found out what many of us who keep up with technology know intuitively - people who share and download music using P2P services are more likely to buy CDs than the general public:

When assessing the P2P downloading population, there was "a strong positive relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchasing. That is, among Canadians actually engaged in it, P2P file sharing increases CD purchases." The study estimates that one additional P2P download per month increases music purchasing by 0.44 CDs per year.

Jack Kapica provides a more in depth analysis of the government report, including this statement, which is obvious to anyone in the P2P scene, but it's nice to have an independent study confirm:

The study concluded that about half of all P2P tracks were downloaded because individuals wanted to hear songs before buying them or because they wanted to avoid purchasing the whole bundle of songs on the associated CDs. Another quarter were downloaded because they were just not available in music stores.

I'll be the first to admit that some of the music I look for, most recently some Tegan and Sara albums, are very rare and not found either in iTunes or in record stores. There's no other recourse but downloading their music via P2P services. Via boingboing.