FC: Chuck Charbeneau on RIAA in action

From: Declan McCullagh (declanat_private)
Date: Thu Sep 11 2003 - 21:08:02 PDT

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    From: "Charbeneau, Chuck" <CCharbeneauat_private>
    To: "'declanat_private'" <declanat_private>
    Subject: RE: RIAA suing individual P2P users
    Date: Tue, 9 Sep 2003 09:26:33 -0400
    
    Here's a great example of the RIAA in action.
    
    <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,96797,00.html">12-Year-Old Sued
    for Music Downloading</a>
    
    Man, the RIAA sure does know how to pick fights it can win.  Kind of like
    Mike Tyson heading over to the middle school to collect some lunch money.
    
    "<em>Asked if the association knew Brianna was 12 when it decided to sue
    her, Weiss answered, "We don't have any personal information on any of the
    individuals."</em>"
    
    *shrug*  Must mean all those subpoenas didn't work, then, hmmm?
    
    At least some of the labels are getting with the program and reinventing
    their profit models to fit in with today's methods of market and
    distributing music.
    
    http://abcnews.go.com/sections/business/Entertainment/forbes_concertcash_030711.html
    
    This is just another step in the evolution in media, just as was the
    cassette and the DVD.  Instead of always trying to fight the changes that
    are bound to happen, shouldn't these multi-billion dollar companies spend a
    little bit of money investigating how to evolve with the rest of us.
    
    We, the consumer, keep pointing to the metal spear, and they keep picking up
    the rock to kill the mammoth.  The only thing that keeps them around is the
    fact that there are thousands of rock throwers in their clan - that and they
    use big rocks.
    
    Perhaps all this litigation is a stall tactic, designed to keep the rest of
    us busy while they get their act together and roll out a new and improved
    method for providing us with their product instead of suing their
    prospective user-base.  I hope so, because I foresee a large group of
    successful, forward thinking artists disassociating themselves from the RIAA
    and making money as the market dictates, rather than fighting and trying to
    dictate to the market how it should evolve.  I know, I know sometimes we
    forget our Econ 101 class...It was so long ago.
    
    There is an interesting sidebar in this month's wired (Oct 2003,"The CD's
    Sad Song" -Rebecca Harper) that says that the number of releases on CD has
    fallen by 14% while prices for CDs have climbed 16%, which means we are
    paying more for fewer choices.
    
    "The CD is reaching the end of it's life cycle, just like the cassette did
    several years ago"
    
    Like paramecium have done for billions of years...maybe it's time to evolve.
    
    Chuck Charbeneau
    Lear Corporation
    Lead Software Applications Engineer
    ccharbeneau at lear dot com
    
    
    
    
    
    
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