"Kazaa and Napster and all that stuff is a brilliant way for kids to taste the album. Usually kids hear one track which is good, then they go out and buy the album and it turns out to be shit."

In a nutshell, that's the view of Scottish rockers Travis.

Quoted in the GuardianUnlimited, Travis lead singer Fran Healy says online song swapping sites are "brilliant".

Travis will be performing live at the MTV European Music Awards to be held in a specially built arena in Edinburgh, Scotland, on November 6.

The RRIAA, IFPI, BPI, and all the other I.n.i.t.i.a.l.s. owned by the Big Five record labels, are going blue trying to make bepople believe that a) fiule sharing is illegal (which it isn't), B) that it's theft (which it isn't) and b) that the music industry is working hard to sort things out (which it isn't).

Healey says it's the job of musicians to be provocative.

I don't take any band seriously that are on MTV. MTV is the RIAA's peddler of putrid trash that tries to pass at music. Travis should wake up and boycott them.

I agree completely. MTV is GARBAGE.

It's nice that Travis promotes file sharing.
Unfortunately he suggests "Kazaa and Napster...".

Would this be the new and improved Napster II, or the new KRIAA product that Kazaa & the RIAA are creating? http://www.boycott-riaa.com/article/8402

I think the "kazaa and napster" reference suggests someone who approves of p2p but doesn't actively use it, and is a few years behind on the news. That in turn suggests supporting it only to gain some appeal with the rebelious_teenager and geek sectors. Doesn't matter through, support is support.

MTV is serious trash. I'm 19 and I don't watch it anymore, most people in college don't want it anymore; apparently it's for high school kids now. Oh, that's just great, show Britney Spears half-naked to jr. high kiddies. Anyone who participates in the garbage transmitted to us in the form of MTV should be pooped on. I have a CD by Travis, which is very good, but I hate MTV. Music Television, yeah right, where's the music? All I see are ugly sorority girls and real world marathons from hell.

Someone deleted or hacked my RIAA are comunist accont. O well but kazaa is now a traitor to us. Man I will keep kazaalite for a while and see what happens. I don't really care about the MP3's on there but there is other stuff on there that is great. Kazaa is getting more and more greedy. Man this is become ver stupid. Im going to have to move one, is there any P2P's that work on 56k. Don't recomend edonkey because that does not work for me as well or overnet, or filetopia.

I mean move on, we must move on sadly.

Ooops i posted this on the wrong topic ingore this.

MTV turned into shit like a decade ago... 99% of the music is bubble-gum commercial shit. When I first heard that Headbanger's Ball was coming back, I was excited until I learned that it would only be on MTV2; sure, their's reruns of it at 2AM on regualar MTV --- but why can't MTV put the Ball on Saturday nights instead of re-runs of stupid fuckin reality shows. There's no point expecting MTV to get half-decent again. I'm going to start calling/spelling it "eMpTytV".

"Oh, that's just great, show Britney Spears half-naked to jr. high kiddies."

Britney Spears *is* a junior high kiddie.
And she's a waste.

In-Flames, its not bubbe gum music that MTV is all about nowadays, its "Gangsta rap".

Crumbing on certain types of music is not going to get us anywhere. Pop, rap or whatever, who cares.

Criticizing a company just because they make lots of money isn't going to get us anywhere either.

So Kazza is evil. No shit, so what. The majors are evil, so what, who cares.

The focus should be on the rules that are already established that give the evil-doers their power. If copyright laws are changed, so that they are fair, then Kazza and the majors will have their power greatly reduced.

So MTV is tacky and has no substance. Cool, so what. Who doesn't like to watch trash sometimes.

The problem is that the rules are set up so that the powers that be can stop others from competing with the trash that you complain about. Its not the trashy music's fault. That's not the problem.

It's the rules!

Well remember, MTV is owned by Viacom, who has a major stake in "Big Music". Viacom also owns CBS, Nick, and other highly profitable broadcast and cable networks.

Raoulduke1 brings up a serious point. The intellectual property attorney I talked with squarely put all the blame on todays mess of copyright law on CONGRESS, not the RIAA, not lawyers, not copyright holders. If congress never gave broad power to the copyright holders, we wouldn't be in this situation today. Period.

The boycott starts with "Big Music", but it DOES NOT END THERE. We should boycott all the idiot washington congressmen who support the ridiculous rules we have in place. How? Simple. Vote against them all in 2004.

*rant on*
raolduke is right. We can bitch and moan about the RIAA and now Kazaa as much as we want, but the simple fact is that they are acting within their business rights. They are doing what every business is doing, using the rules to the fullest extent possible to make money - regardless of the morality and all that other junk. We can't trust in the morality of large corporations. If we could, there would be no need for laws.
The simple fact is that 60 million or so Americans, most of voting age, want free Mp3 try-before-you-buy music. If we could get all those people to condemn the current copyright laws, they would be changed instantly. This is a democracy at its heart and in the truest sense of the word. Right now the democracy is working against us because those speaking out against the RIAA are outnumbered by their fleet of lawyers and ad campaigns. Relying on technologies like Filetopia or ES5 to pick up where Kazaa leaves off may work, but it will not stop the lawsuits or the harassment or the suffering. The ONLY (read - only) way to stop these corporations is to get the laws changed. That should be our one sole purpose as a group - to raise awareness of the issue to the point where it makes it to political debates.
*rant off*

MTV and the like were ok at the start. Then the majors saw that it was a good way to keep the bands and artists in hock. They were doing ok but when a hit came in the masses bought enough to make some of those bands come close to payout. Now we can't have that. So MTV was a great way to add to the cost, production, lighting, makeup, film, casting, sets, models, all of which had almost no place in the regular music business.

So once again the artist are in hock with no way or hope of payout and the fat cats are rolling in the money again.

They are desperate to hold on to a control that they see rapidly slipping away because the chances become slimmer with p2p and the ability to stop the idiotic policy of resales due to changing format. It is a main driver behind the attempt to put some kind of control on files that prevent you from using them how you wish. Anything that can put a dampener on you being able to do your own thing with the music you purchased is a serious challenge to their monetary health. So they are on the critical edge of losing all control and money as a result of inflexability and unwillingness to change the business model to something the consumer truely wants. Add to that the indies which have found a way around the bottleneck that the music industry has erected, while they had control of who gets heard and you have the makings of the apocalypse as from the viewpoint of the RIAA and associated terrorists groups in gang step with them.

Do they ask for whom the bell tolls? Yes and stupidly enough they believe it tolls for the consumer and the p2p scene...

50 gold stars for jon newton

However, as far as the evil-doers go. The laws are written by them. Literally, their lobbyist draft them and them give them to congress to pass.

Campaign finance reform would help the situtation, but that appears to be impossible.

The only solution that I can see is a massive demonstration on washington. Not likely.

So the only resort I can see is to keep distributing music for free until they are forced to come up with a new mechanism for payment that is fair to the consumer and the artists. This of course, by definition, would need to leave the mutlinational conglomerates out in the cold.

baby you've been going so crazy...
lately.. nothing sems to be going right...

Biggest problem the music industry faces is that no matter what they do, if you can hear it you can copy it. I swear, if they made CD's for 5 bucks a pop, people wouldnt even bother downloading music. I think for the average consumer its worth 5 bucks not to sit and download bad tracks, demo tracks, and poorly recorded tracks.

Honestly, theres not even any incentives for getting a CD, no extra features nothing. Not saying the music isn't worth it alone, but if free is out there, thats always going to be the best price.

MTV is basically the RIAA video style. Peddling their shit across the airwaves while loading the channel with commercials. I barely watch MTV anymore because i've come to realize that besides the fact that the music is getting crappier every day, they load the channel with so many commercials that each program is only about fifteen minutes long. MTV might as well be considered an info commercial for useless crap!

I can't remember who posted this here before but after watching Merchants of Cool you will never ever want to watch mtv again. Guaranteed! It is the full episode in streaming format so you can watch on your computer.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/view/

Credit goes to who ever posted this link before, sorry I can't remember their username.

MikeTwo, rOdrOddy, and raoulduke1,

You three are all right on the mark: it is the rules (i.e. the copyright rules) that need to be changed. And, it is the unfairness of these rules which give P2P users some justification for trading copyrighted files, since there is virtually no recorded music in the public domain thanks to the manipulation of Congress by the big content holders. Raoulduke1 said it best, and part of his post bears repeating:

"...keep distributing music for free until they are forced to come up with a new mechanism for payment that is fair to the consumer and the artist ..."

I would not have a problem with effective enforcement of copyrights if the copyright terms were reasonable (say 28 years max).

I have been able to convince several people that P2P use is justified when I point out the craziness of existing copyright law. But so far I have not been successful in publishing any letters conveying the message of unfair copyright rules to any major media outlets (maybe I'm just a lousy writer).
If any of you guys have any ideas on how best to get letters published in media that lots of people read, I'm all ears (err, I mean 'all eyes').

"But so far I have not been successful in publishing any letters conveying the message of unfair copyright rules to any major media outlets (maybe I'm just a lousy writer)."

maybe you just have a knack for picking sisyphean tasks

while rauolduke1 is right: "The focus should be on the rules that are already established that give the evil-doers their power" I also have to agree with raoulduke1 who said "The laws are written by them. Literally, their lobbyist draft them and them give them to congress to pass."

So the point is to (financially) cripple the major media (ie BOYCOTT), so they can't keep buying laws; then maybe we can get some honest congresspeople to fix the bad ones we got. (My opinion anyway.) I guess the other tack would be via finance/lobby reform, but it seems about as likely to get that as it would be to have the major media present a fair and balanced view of the P2P/MP3/DMCA/copyright/RIAA cartel mess.

They're both good ideas. This needs to be a two-pronged attack. One prong should extend to Congress to try to change the laws that give the RIAA super-subpoena power. The other prong needs to be directed at crippling the RIAA's ability to pay off Congress. Both are necessary for a smooth transition. The laws will not change easily if we have to claw, grab, and fight our way through each mound of RIAA cash placed on the doorsteps of the senators. At the same time, the RIAA will not die if the rules continue to remain in their favor.
We're doing good... but we need to organize this assault.