AzOz

by George Ziemann -- March 2, 2008

I started contributing material to the Boycott-RIAA site in 2003, before they started suing people. It was so long ago that you always had to explain who the RIAA was. Now everyone understands. Sales have dropped severely. The fans despise them. The artists are shunning them. Our job is done.

Today, I popped over to check for new info and the DMusic site came up in its place. Boycott-RIAA has always been a subsection of DMusic anyway, so even though it was an unexpected change, it was not really all that surprising. It was inevitable. We've really been done for a while. There were really only about a dozen of us who were still commenting there.

Looking back, the pre-lawsuit theme was actually very simple. The record labels were (and still are) a colluding cartel, engaged in price-fixing and accounting gymnastics that prevented artists from ever being paid fairly. Our advice to get the majors to wake up was to not buy, download, share or, if you wanted to be hardcore about it, don't even listen to anything you haven't already paid for that was produced by the RIAA members.

Naturally, we were considered to be pirates in disguise, no matter how many times we pointed at the thousands of artists on DMusic, many of which were migrating from mp3.com at the time. Universal had just destroyed it, after a brief period wherein downloading music from their artists for free was theft, but downloading mp3s from independent artists for free was a promotional service for which they should be paid -- by the artist.

Personally, my message has always been that everything the RIAA does in the name of protecting its artists serves the secondary purpose of impugning the integrity of anything that it does not own. CD-Rs, mp3 files, file-sharing -- all the tools that independents use to spread their work outside of the system, as well as the work itself, are considered tools of piracy. I was much more interested in convincing artists to boycott the RIAA than the fans. The fans will go where the artists lead them.

Anyway, most people that listened to us followed our first suggestion and stopped buying RIAA product, which is what a boycott is. The "don't download, don't share" part, not so much.

My wife's first reaction was, "Mission accomplished? You didn't change the (copyright) law."

I don't think the copyright law is the problem. Never really did. For me, the battle seemed to be to stop the RIAA from changing it. The problem is the four companies who own the overwhelming majority of all music-related copyrights and have twisted the law in such a way to justify suing thousands of people based on a theory that if others can see what's on your computer, you're distributing it, whether you know it or not.

After a mere 5 years, the viability of the RIAA's "making available" theory has come into question and the testimony of their "expert" has been deemed "borderline incompetence." We've known that all along. MediaSentry, the RIAA's investigators, are now running into problems because they are not licensed to investigate people. Saw a link on Ray Beckerman's site a week or so ago wherein MediSentry was trying to not discuss their information-gathering method.

The artists have just started to figure out that they'll never see a dime of the settlements from Napster, Kazaa, any other p2p service the RIAA squeezed money out of, not to mention the lawsuits against p2p users. Don Henley started asking around in August and it's sounding like he's getting ready to sue someone over it, along with a few of his friends.

If I remember correctly, Henley thought the lawsuits were a good thing. Now that his record label is WalMart, things are apparently looking different.

In 2003, boycotting the RIAA sounded like an absurd notion. Now it's just good common sense. It's time to move on. As I said earlier, the fans will go where the artists lead them. It's always been up to the artists but the contracts are just now running out. Radio is dead. EMI will be lucky to last another year.

It's a whole 'nother world out there now. The RIAA is irrelevant. They don't want to be here on the Net with the rest of us and, more than ever, I hope they get their wish soon.

I'd also like to say that I have no delusion that Boycott-RIAA was necessarily responsible for anything at all. I stopped buying RIAA music before I started boycotting. I think it had to do with Clive Davis turning a Santana record (Supernatural) into something that would make Santana fans go "WTF?"

The RIAA has reached the point where, if we ignore them, they will go away because they serve no longer serve any purpose to the business of making music.

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Later That Same Day...

Well, it appears as if I jumped to an erroneous conclusion, as the Boycott-RIAA site has been restored. Someone still wants to continue flogging the RIAA and that's okay with me. I still think it's time to move on. I'm still going to watch the comedy show that is the RIAA Spiral O' Death, but I no longer have an emotional response when I hear them lying. I used to think that they mattered, that they had some power over music.

The only power they exhibited is the power to alienate the fans, the artists and anyone whose musical taste lies outside the confines of pop and hip-hop. What goes around, comes around and it's finally coming around.

More Ziemannesque gems [in his outstanding article above]! Here are my favorites this time around:

"The record labels were (and still are) a colluding cartel, engaged in price-fixing and accounting gymnastics that prevented artists from ever being paid fairly."

"Personally, my message has always been that everything the RIAA does in the name of protecting its artists serves the secondary purpose of impugning the integrity of anything that it does not own or control."


What a writer George is. (As a plus, he's a pretty good music artist, as well.)

(Damn it, I've got to stop writing in such a positive manner; after all, my username IS "pessimist".)

George the Z, a great article (as usual) from you. But, personally, when the horse looks like the RIAA, talks like the RIAA, smells like the RIAA, and continues to sue poor kids, single moms, and dead people, I take particular joy in flogging the shyte out of them, dead or not.

I guess I'm more extreme than the Wizard of Azoz....I will pound on my enemies until not even one scintilla of their original atoms are there.

If you watch many horror movies (which I've watched more than my share of), the BIG mistake the protagonist (hero to you and me) makes, is when he or she THINKS the villain or monster or vampire or whatever is dead or defeated, and victory is a fait accompli, and turns their back to walk away.

One must grind their enemy into the dust, and then scatter that dust.

I admit that the RIAA is irrelevant and almost dead, but they still have the money to sue and lawyer up, and that money comes from the record labels and sale of gold records, so you must cut the head off the snake, you must start the creature's source of nutrition.

The Phoenix rose from the flames of destruction, and even the RIAA could manage to survive if we think it is a "dead horse".

CD as a distribution media, is really obsolete. The term "ripping a CD" in the future, will probably as mystifying an idea to future kids, as me telling folks how I used to take my 8-track tapes apart when the 8-track tape player would eat them up, and with my trusty glue, I would cut and splice the tape back to a usable music producing device.

Personally, my message has always been that the RIAA are greedy, lazy, effeminate bastards who need the virtual crap squeezed from their black souls.

They are pus filled bladders of purulent intellectual property rhetoric, all ripe and ready to rupture. They are toadies and toe lickers for both Beelzebub and Dracula. They are not immortals, only "undead" (a claim I once afforded to "Hack" Valenti, but now, he can no longer claim "undead" status).

In a way, the dead horse analogy is very apt for the RIAA. They are bloated, useless, stick, full of gas and shyte, infected with DRM, and in the world of the internal combustion engine, the horse in many ways lost its prime function as a means of primary transportation and beast of burden.

But, horses are sweet, kind, beautiful animals, and I love horses , and to me, it is a very sad thing to contemplate a dead horse.

But, the RIAA members are not sweet, not kind, definitely not beautiful, and I dislike them a great deal, and would find no sadness contemplating the lot of them as worm food, with dirt in their pie holes and pennies on their bloated eyes.

BASTARDS!

So, I don't see NO (double negative alert) STINKING dead horse beating.

Instead, to continue the equine analogy,
I'm kickin' ASS and taking names.

~Code

I still see danger in the RIAA even tho their physical sales are definately down and download sales really haven't "taken off" for them to any appreciable level.

For one, MySpace, YouTube, and other Social Networking sites are starting to pay the RIAA via ad revenue for use of RIAA material by the users. I fear that this in itself will prove to be a model that will sustain the dying enemy's industry - UNLESS we can bring realization and understanding to the kids that putting a video/audio link of the latest pop/rap/rock star on their MySpace page is verboten - even if it is "free" and "authorized" by the label to do so.

We have always said DO NOT SHARE unauthorized RIAA music (because it helps the RIAA)

...well, now-a-days, due to all these revenue sharing deals being made, we need to keep beating the "dead horse" - but this time, the RIAA music is unfortunately not only begining to be authorized for use - it is monopolistically being pushed in the social network user's face, nudging out the independent artists who SHOULD be dominating that market.

It's radio all over again.

Even though the RIAA may be dead or dying, I don't think that any distribution channel has stepped up to fill the void as a major outlet. The ideal distribution outlet would provide artists an attractive means to get their media out and would also provide a means for artists to receive compensation for their efforts.

Peer to peer media distribution software in the form of bit torrent networks are thriving. Although, this does effectively hurt the profits of the RIAA labels it also steals profits from the artists. Therefore, this is not a realistic solution to the music distribution issue.

Free distribution websites such as this one pose the same problem - they do not provide the means to support the artists.

However, we must consider the popularity of free music distribution. Even the RIAA states on their website that is will be impossible to completely restrict people to share media and distribute it for free. So why not work with it?

An ideal solution would allow free distribution of media – which will happen regardless – but would also press upon people a moral obligation to support the artists they enjoy. Through a donate and download system the users would be able to pay what they think the media is worth. The artists would receive almost all of the revenue from these donations as opposed to an extremely small percentage of a major RIAA label’s sales. Also, bands would retain the rights to their brand and their media – they would be able to keep 100% of merchandise revenue.

I have come across one website that proposes to do just that – www.webceleb.com. They also have a pretty kick ass media player where people can experience the media before they download it. Webceleb is just getting up and running and has not yet proven the model, but I have faith that it will catch on.

First of all, my apologies for my premature announcement of the site's demise.

I guess I'm more extreme than the Wizard of Azoz...

If you watch many horror movies (which I've watched more than my share of), the BIG mistake the protagonist (hero to you and me) makes, is when he or she THINKS the villain or monster or vampire or whatever is dead or defeated, and victory is a fait accompli, and turns their back to walk away.

Hmmm.... That's only if you're going for a sequel. The biggest mistake you can make in a horror movie is to have sex.

They are pus filled bladders of purulent intellectual property rhetoric, all ripe and ready to rupture.

That's my favorite part. Awesome.

But seriously...

The only reason the RIAA pissed me off is because I tried to sell my music and they got in the way. I stopped trying to sell my music. They are no longer a problem.

I've tried to be a spokesperson for the independent musician, but I'm far too altruistic about it because I don't play music for the money. Never have, never will.

I play music because it's fun, it allows me to release emotions, it's my group therapy session and I need it on a regular basis to stay sane.

Sure, it's good to get paid. But, to paraphrase the Furry Freak Brothers, music will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no music.

The vast majority of musicans do not agree with me. Money is everything. Even aware of how bad the record labels are, they still want that recording contract and the record labels will go as far as recruiting high school bands to find willing victims.

And the fans are no help.

Through a donate and download system the users would be able to pay what they think the media is worth.

Nice idea. Unfortunately, it relies on people feeling a "moral obligation to support the artists they enjoy." Not in 21st century America.

The people using p2p are not going to stop downloading RIAA music. They're not going to stop sharing it either, because apparently 3/4 of them are too stupid to even know they're sharing, much less stop it.

And I really don't care. Never could use Napster, Kazaa, iMesh, Gnutella, Morpheus. Limewire worked for a while, but it's really useless on Mac OS9. For me p2p is a non-issue.

The lawsuits go with p2p, which makes them equally nonimportant. Even as intellectual entertainment, they have gone on for five years without a definitive legal judgement on whether or not these cases have any merit in the first place.

Recording contracts -- If you don't "get" why this is a bad decision by now, you never will.

Either because they are cheap or out of principle, the entire country is pretty much boycotting the RIAA. Look at their sales.

I used to think the RIAA was important. Thought they had some kind of power, like the monsters in the horror films. But they don't, unless maybe you bought a Sony rootkit CD, and only then because you bought their product.

Six years ago, I used to have an emotional response when I heard the RIAA or George Bush lying. In both cases, it was because no one was calling bullshit on it, everyone was buying into it.

Now, no one believes either one of them. As a result, what they say no longer matters.

As far as the RIAA, the artists have begun the exodus, EMI's going to cut 97 percent of its acts. All the labels have downsized severely trying to become more profitable without becoming more musical.

The RIAA has nothing to do with music. They have no power. They have nothing to say of interest to musicians. Whether they live or die has no bearing whatsoever on the future of music because they're not involved in it. The artists are leaving.