FOREIGN CARPETBAGGERS invade US Congress and Copyright act.

PART 1

Call me a xenophobe. If there is something vaguely un-American about the way that students and consumers are being treated by the recent recording industry judgeless subpoenas ( found illegal by at least 2 federal courts so far) and mass civil law suits consider this: The RIAA represents largely foreign (non-US) interests. It does not represent Americans or American companies, by and large, and has not done so since for almost 20 years. Like the steel, television, textile and other industries, the music industry is no longer a US based business, at least at the corporate ownership level.

Prior to 1980, the music industry, measured in terms of dollar volume of reported sales, was based in the US. The world's largest company was Columbia Records, part of Paley's CBS. The second was Warner Brothers ( as in Jack Warner and Bugs Bunny). which had a distribution arm known as WEA ( Warner , Elektra, Asylum). Third was RCA, which had Elvis' contract, and the fourth was MCA, the diverse conglomerate started as a booking agency by Jules Stein ( of Broadway fame) and Lew Wasserman, which ultimately became MCA pictures and MCA records, and later simply known as "Universal" ( MCA has a rich and colorful history, and has a reputation for mob influence).

Overseas there was EMI of England ( a subsidiary of Thorne Industries, which had an American subsidiary (Capitol, known mostly as the Beatles label) and Polygram, a joint venture of Siemans of Germany and Philips of the Netherlands. Although there were hundreds or even thousands of small labels, they were invariably distributed by the big 3 US companies, and even EMI and Polygram had reciprocal distribution agreements with the US companies.

The word "Record Label" is not the corporate unit to focus on. It is the large distribution conglomerates that own or distribute these labels. Follow the buck.

In the 1980's Columbia, RCA and MCA were sold to Sony, Bertlesmann and Mashushita respectively By 1994 the "Global Big 6 controlled" $30 billion record industry: Philips (Polygram, A&M, Mercury, Island), Sony (owns CBS Records), Matsushita (owns MCA, Geffen), Thorn-EMI (owns Capitol, Virgin), Time Warner, and Bertelsmann (owns RCA Records) Only Time Warner ( recently bought by a group led by Bronfman of Canada) remained as the sole American large record company for the rest of the decade. MCA, which bought Polygram and became Universal, is now owned by Vivendi of France.

So by the time of the 1995 Telecommunications legislation, which included a "digital performance copyright for sound recordings" 17 USC 106 (6), the "copyright industries" most directly benefitted were foreign owned. At the same time, statutory damages under the copyright act were increased in 1999 to a sliding scale which topped out at $150,000 per infringement for willful violations. All of this are apart from any DMCA issues.

The organization that was instrumental in all this copyright legislation was "The Recording Industry Association of America".
Prior to 1980, that organization was most known for pushing audio standards ( I have several 1950's tube preamps with a selector for the "RIAA equalization curve - so in a sense, my bewilderment at the current civil liberties and litigation situation in the US is as if the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval organization became the Gestapo).

Prior to 1989, the RIAA was run by Jay Berman, who had been there since the inception or close to it. He now runs the IFPI, the international version of the RIAA, which has instigated "anti-piracy" raids in Spain, the Netherlands, England and elsewhere. In 1989, Hilary Rosen, formerly a successful gay rights lobbyist from George Washington University, took over, as Berman moved up the ladder to the IFPI, based in London.

At the present time the RIAA and IFPI have successfully:

1) Obtained an anti-trust exemption from the House of Representatives 460-0 so they could price fix digital royalty rates.
2) Got themselves appointed the sole and exclusive recipient of statutory webcasting royalties in the copyright act by having their controlled entity, SoundExchange, appointed as the sole statutory agent.
3) Through CARP proceedings and through copyright amendments, have made internet webcasting prohibitively expensive ( and has interfered with programming by enacting statutory restrictions in the webcasting amendments). The Webcaster's alliance has brought an antitrust suit. The main issue, of course, will be the Noerr Pennington Doctrine , a court made doctrine that says its Ok to lobby for a monopoly. Wonderful doctrine.


To be continued

PART 2. Musical Enron
PART 3. MUSICAL FASCISM - (even the Third Reich had Wagner)

This is EXCELLENT Larry!

I could not agree with you more.

You correctly point out exactly what is going on....

Everyone needs to pay close attention to this article,
because you said exactly what we need to understand about
this current situation.
~Code

") Obtained an anti-trust exemption from the House of Representatives 460-0 so they could price fix digital royalty rates."

they were TRYING to get this.. i dont believe they have succeeded yet.

This was a hatch initiative... i havent seen one hatch initiative pass in the house.. he's an extremist and viewed as such by his peers.

Hmmm...Got me thinking again, Leflaw. That can be a dangerous thing.

Needless to say, however, they are the standard oil of the 21'st century. I will continue to bug everyone I can in high places to point this out.

That webcasting thing brings up a major issue.

These media giants are trying to prevent effective use of the internet by the average citizen by lobbying to have it regulated like television and radio. They can shove it in my opinion.

Largely because to them it is televison. Its a new technology, and they think of it in terms they are familiar with. The TV model, where a few large broadcasters send a stream of programs to a vast number of passive viewers, is as familiar as possible for the high-ups in the media industry, and more than a few polititions.

This informative article should be given to high school teachers to combat the corporate "education" that the music industry wants to legislate in the American schools.
Jack Valenti was given two opportunties on C-Span last week to educate the public about media piracy and indecency, and to lament the lost revenues that the movie industry was experiencing due to internet "piracy". He never mentioned that he fought against that new-fangled video recorder. He also never mentioned that VHS and DVD sales of movies have generated a ton of income for the industry - even the really lame movies. No, he just thinks that the public needs to be educated...but keep it simple...
Why doesn't this history lesson by leflaw ever get reported along with the RIAA propaganda and lawsuits? Shouldn't Americans know who is suing their college students?
What could Brian Ross of ABC News uncover in an investigative report? Or would that be too dangerous?

I don't mean to go far afield on this topic...but I happened to see some of the photos of prisoners being abused by OUR troops...one site showing them is www.ogrish.com . I've heard people who see these photos responding that "well, they tortured our people"...folks..torture is bad no matter WHO does it.

What the tie in is that , as in an earlier article I did called "A Nation of Targets" is the desensitization of people to seeing scenes of citizens of all countries, being tortured and the targets of prosecution, persecution, and terror. It reminds me of the way the royalty in earlier periods, would torture or hang people in public to get them used to the idea that the State can do this to "commoners". The photos I've seen are troubling...but the mindset behind gloablists who see us as serfs or just functionaries to promote their plans, is even MORE troubling.

Although it may not be immediately apparent to folks, I believe, the foreign carpetbaggers trying to influence our laws, and who would put us under their rule, are grapes of the same vine as these torture photos...

It is essentially a class struggle between the common man/woman, and those who would grind us under their feet and control our lives.

I hope I don't sound too obtuse on that...lots of times things come to me as a revelation and it is tough to translate it into something understandable.
~Code

Au contraire Lachatte -- Valenti lied through his teeth and said he supported the VCR. I wish someone had grilled the bastard. Of course, more and more he sounded like a doddering fool a la Ronald Reagan. (ooh la la, two frenchisms in one paragraph.)

that sounds about right..

copyright in itself is a good thing, even strict copyright, but even the strictest copyright is designed to protect the common artist from COMMERCIAL exploitation.

The problem is large corporations are trying to say copyright gives them an excuse to micromanage and control our personal lives, which is bullshit.

Take a look at this and you'll see how correct you are in assuming theyre corrupt control freaks.
look at this..
http://cdbaby.net/fom/000010.html

Vraiment, Carla? I didn't hear "The Count" mention the VCR. Was that in the lecture to the students?

Copyright is not a good thing. It is a joke and has no basis in nature.

Our copyright law was based on English copyright law, which in turn, was an effort by the Crown to control free speech, in association with the Stationers Guild, who were greedy fat cats who wanted to be able to be the only ones "authorized" by the Crown to legally publish works of literature...

So see, the government/big media connection continues after centuries to be the driving force behind copyright...

"So it goes" Kurt Vonnegut

"At long last Mr. Sherman, have you no shame. Have you no sense of decency Sir?" ~Code

Ever see the McCarthy documentary "Point of Order" by Emile D'Antonio ? ( or was that from "Citizen Cohn"?

I must confess that French is not my language -- I took Russian. And here's an interesting tidbit. The word bistro, meaning cafe, is from the Russian word meaning "quickly" which Napoleon's troops would yell to the waiters when they occupied Moscow. At least that's how my Russian teacher told it.

When Valenti was answering live questions on C-Span that morning, one of the questions (it was an e-mail question) was along the lines of: Mr. Valenti, you were against the VCR and now it's become an important source of revenue for the movie industry...doesn't this new technology offer the same thing.
The "Boston Strangler" line was never overtly stated, but Valenti said something like, back then I said some things....but I supported the idea of the VCR. He never acknowledged that he was vehemently against it and never addressed the sharing issue in the same framework.

You guys must be getting desperate for page impressions. This isn't surprising given how much your traffic has been tanking the last few months, and P2pnet has been picking them up. Guess you're too wacked even for the wackos.

Xenophobia is unintentionally hilarious, though. Like American-owned firms would act one iota differently under the circumstances.

It's also pretty funny wrapping yourself in the American flag while simultaneously defecating on one of America's core founding principles, the protection of private property under the rule of law, day-in, day-out. Fortunately, given your small audience, it's more like pigeon doo-doo.

I saw Citizen Cohn...very interesting program...James Woods playe Cohn I think

I'll look for the Point of Order documentary

Geez, Code, (ogrish) that's a nasty site! I'll have to take your word for it.
Awehr, thanks for that link. I was wondering about what was said at that conference.

"It's also pretty funny wrapping yourself in the American flag while simultaneously defecating on one of America's core founding principles, the protection of private property under the rule of law, day-in, day-out. Fortunately, given your small audience, it's more like pigeon doo-doo."

really? so... I guess only the owners of a copyright have that core founding ability to own their own property.. and that of other people spareme?

we certainly don't own our own property anymore, they do, because theyre certainly allowed to govern it despite our supposed rights to property.

I also find it interesting how you talk about lulls in traffic.. maybe youre responsible for the pinging and hacking going on with this site and it's visitors to it.

sorry lachatte, they usually have the media that the main sources don't carry, but you're right.

I believe this is where that videogame called life gives me a signal of success for throughly oblitorating that argument... kinda like banshees blowing up in halo =)

I invite spareme to msg me on aim... my ID is aew51183 if youre interested in holding an actual argument rather than flaming our site.

Of course, judging by your posts i dont battle wits with an unarmed person.

spareme
Type: DMember
Status: Non-Subscriber
Points: 120
Member Since: Oct 14, 2003
Last Seen: Offline - 0s

he's offline, this is typical of him...he makes a lame, outrageously false comment and like the coward he appears to be...runs away like a frightened little girl.

awher...I think, given his one note and run behavior...what is going on is that his mommy catches him on her computer and runs him off...and he has to wait until she's not around the computer to come here ...then, he spits his bile...and runs away like a petulant little girl...

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

well i find it interesting he tries to use my argument, and fails miserably.
Unfortunately it isnt him that ticks me off, it's the fact that there are so many people like him who see things in such simplistic terms that they are incapable of perceiving reality.

I continuously engage people in argument, not to piss them off, but to force them to abandon those oversimplified bases for their points of view.

Because of this I have many intelligent friends. =D

codewarrior

Awehr, I just read that page on cdbaby. Your comments were great!

Code, speaking of subscribers, I was hesitant to use PayPal in order to be a subscriber here. I got my card ready this morning, but this message comes up:
"Error Detected
This recipient is currently unable to receive money. "
I e-mailed the site, but got no response.
I would prefer direct, snail-mail as an alternative.

Thanks for the input lachatte...much appreciated, will pass it on.
~Code

I too would like to buy merchandise and contribute funds.. but I get the feeling those pings reported before were to confirm and track the revenue this site receives. It bothers me.. i'd like to see a pdf version of the catalogue which has enough information to order via the physical world.

awehr...thanks as well...will take this up with leflaw...
~code

I dont believe those pics are legit, you have to be pretty fuckin stupid to engage in that kind of conduct, take pics of it, and not expect to run a risk of having them exposed. As far as the RIAA post here, didnt mean to troll, RIAA may as well drop the of America part from its name, because its only interest is to that of the foreign companies it represents.

"These media giants are trying to prevent effective use of the internet by the average citizen by lobbying to have it regulated like television and radio. They can shove it in my opinion."

awehr, you NAILED IT!

Hammer, I was in the army about 10 or 12 yrs ago and was even part of the often mis-nomered 'military intelligence' branch and in that time I saw a LOT of stupid things done by some of our finest. (By NO means do I implicate the majority of our troops... most of them deserve our support 1000 fold!) ...but there are ALWAYS a few bad apples who slip thru, and the peer pressure causes a few who were otherwise ok folks to play evil too when under pressure, especially if given the "ok" by stupid orders like "soften up the prisoners before we talk to them."

War tends to bring out the worst in some folks. I hang my head low in shame right now over all this.

Even tho this is not the time or place, I say "Bring our troops HOME NOW"

we are causing more damage than we are trying to repair.

Read Seymour Hersh's article in the New Yorker magazine, "TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB."
http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040510fa_fact