Death knell for mp3.com(??)[alternative website]

As many of you who read the newspapers are aware, the RIAA -- Recording
Industry Association of America, with a lawsuit by the largest record
companies, is succeeding against the web site mp3.com concerning
copyright infringement. The RIAA wants to put mp3.com out of business,
and makes no secret of this desire.

The RIAA is, so far, succeeding, and they are going for restitution
that, if successful, would put mp3.com out of business through huge
fines. (They are asking, now, for $6 billion in damages)

There goes the "Tuning Punks" and all the other "alternative" .mp3's we
have had the pleasure to listen to of late...

Frankly, I believe mp3.com idiotically got into this mess by involvement
with the "commercial labels" in the first place... Originally, it was a
service for the "under-exposed" artists.. AND IT WAS MAKING GOOD MONEY!
They made money through advertising and through the sales of what they
term "DAM-CDs" -- CDs assembled by the artists and sold by mp3.com.

They had to RUIN it all by starting a new service called "My.mp3.com"
where COMMERICAL recordings could be accessed by users. To do this,
they "illegally" copied THOUSANDS (more than 80,000!) copyrighted CDs to
their computer servers with no permission or license. I'm not certain
whose bright idea this one was... but he or they certainly have a
limited experience with the recording industry or copyright law.

So now, ALL is in jeopardy. Will mp3.com survive?? It is now very
questionable. I'm not certain that anything can be done by anyone not
involved in the lawsuit... (??)

Perhaps EVENTUALLY someone will "take up this slack" if mp3.com goes
"belly up," but it just shows one more instance of great ideas that are
RUINED by misplaced hubris and commercialism...

This post is about TUNING, since there is LOTS of alternate tuning on
mp3.com... on John Starrett's great Tuning Punks site, on Dan Stern's
fine microtonal guitar site, and on many others...

____________ _____ ___ _ _
Joseph Pehrson

Joe,

I've followed the mp3.com story from it's inception, with even more than a passing interest since it is located here in San Diego.

>The RIAA wants to put mp3.com out of business, and makes no secret of this >desire.

I don't believe that is a correct statement; they certainly want them to stop streaming/distributing copywritten materials, but I do not think that their efforts are based on shutting down mp3.com. In fact, the suit is against the my.mp3.com setup.

Hell, it's a dot-com company -- it will go under on it's own! :)

>The RIAA is, so far, succeeding, and they are going for restitution
>that, if successful, would put mp3.com out of business through huge
>fines. (They are asking, now, for $6 billion in damages)
>
>There goes the "Tuning Punks" and all the other "alternative" .mp3's we
>have had the pleasure to listen to of late...

Then one must ask: does the pleasure outweigh the ripping off of royalties to artists who did *not* post their music on the site? Sometimes we have to take other issues into account. I'm not saying which way I fall on this issue with regard to mp3.com, but I do not side with the "all music/art/photos/etc should be free" -- unless the original artist wants it that way.

>Frankly, I believe mp3.com idiotically got into this mess by involvement
>with the "commercial labels" in the first place... Originally, it was a
>service for the "under-exposed" artists.. AND IT WAS MAKING GOOD MONEY!

It was?

>Perhaps EVENTUALLY someone will "take up this slack" if mp3.com goes
>"belly up," but it just shows one more instance of great ideas that are
>RUINED by misplaced hubris and commercialism...

The strip-malling of the web.

>This post is about TUNING, since there is LOTS of alternate tuning on
>mp3.com... on John Starrett's great Tuning Punks site, on Dan Stern's
>fine microtonal guitar site, and on many others...

As David put it, it may just mean that people have to empower themselves and make their own sites, with streaming files and direct sales to the public. Nothing wrong with that at all. The convenience and central locale of a place like mp3.com will be missed, but should be able to be duplicated somewhere. Hey, the tuning list survived the change of location from Mills to Onelist!

Cheers,
Jon
`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`
Real Life: Orchestral Percussionist
Web Life: "Corporeal Meadows" - about Harry Partch
http://www.corporeal.com/