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Originally Posted by gadgetguru
Sad that dual use software like these are being taken offline. Most people use this for transferring legally bought DVD for mobile viewing... Do we really have to pay time and time again for the same content? VHS, DVD, UMD, why pay again, when you have paid once, and willing to take the time to convert them...fair use rights are being dwindled...
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Unfortunately, yes we do.
The industry is slowly moving to a model where you "lease" your media, and it will either exire, or refuse to play. Think of it like putting quarters in a hotel television set to watch a movie. You get to pick what you want to watch at any time, but you can only watch it if you put the quarters in the slot.
We pay a tariff on the player, the original CD/DVD media ("The Movie", or "The Album"), the blank CDR/DVDR media, the aftermarket players (iTunes, iPod, mp3 players), and now the RIAA/MPAA is talking about extracting another tariff if you resell music or movies you've already purchased (such as at a second-hand music store).
So basically that means they get paid two, three, four or more times for the same physical product.
Think of it like auto sales. If you buy a car from a dealer, new.. the salesperson gets a commission. What if you bought some tires for that car. Would you expect to pay the salesperson again, even if you bought them from Sears? What if you sell the car 10 years from now to your neighbor? Should you pay the salesperson again? We wouldn't accept this in any other industry, but for some reason we ignore it in the music and movie industry. It just boggles the mind.
What I don't understand is... the artists make ~$40k USD, on average, and we pay a tax on the player for example, which presumably goes to the artist (through their record label) for the right to play their music. We pay another tax on the original media (which also is supposed to benefit the artist), we pay a tariff on the blank media to record copies of that original media (which
does have a legal reason to exist: I'm not going to take my collector-quality albums out into my truck where they can (and have) get stolen. I'm going to burn copies so I always have the originals safe and sound). I don't want my daughter scratching my original discs, so I make copies to play at home.
But now they want the media to "expire", and the players to "refuse to play" after a certain amount of plays. They're also saying that they don't think they're charging
enough for music and movies.
WHAT?!
You're taxing every single point along the chain, including second-hand sales and public performances, and you're making it impossible to listen to the media you produce... you fail to compensate the artists, and you think we're not paying
enough for the music/movies? Are you that blind?!
The other thing that irritates me (at least in the US), is that the reason CD and DVD recordable media is so inexpensive, is because the process to produce it leaves off one (or more) extra coatings of the plastic surrounding the disc media itself. I've had several store-bought CDs "oxidize" over the course of a few
months (not years), because there wasn't enough plastic around the disc media to prevent oxygen from degrading it.
This means you should go through your CDs every 2-3 years and re-burn them, because they won't last past 5 or more years. When you want to recover that old email archive you burned 5 years ago... good luck. Magnetic tape lasts significantly longer than CD/DVD media, despite what the general public disinformation would have you believe.
We pay a tariff on the appliances and recordable media even if we don't listen to their artists or record their artists music onto disc. I use CDR and DVDR to back up my machines here on the LAN as well as to hand out Linux ISO discs to my LUG every month. Ever single disc I burn pays the RIAA a few cents, which goes to their bands... even though I never burned any of their band's music.
Its pathetic extortion to an extreme, and we're all presumed to be guilty immediately (which is why the tariffs exist in the first place).
If you want to see how badly the artists are getting ripped off, read
Courtney Does the Math for a real eye-opener.
I just don't buy any movies or music anymore, and I don't go to the movie theatres either. If I like a band, I'll buy something from their website, or send them donations directly... but I don't go through the recording company to do it.
The RIAA/MPAA really missed the boat on using the Internet as a media distribution mechanism, and now they're reeling from it. Most of us have access to broadband, most of us have high-speed printers and burners. Why not let us pay for the media, download it, burn it, and download + print some album artwork for the jewel case... it would save millions per-year in distribution costs of sending that media to brick and mortar stores, not to mention the other costs associated with keeping those stores open, employing people to man them, and so on.
They really screwed up, and the less we support their crack habits, the better.