On Friday, Sept. 12, musicians, lawyers, industry leaders, record executives, and representatives from groups including the RIAA and the Electronic Frontier Foundation will gather to battle it out at TechTV's studios in San Francisco.

During the show, our panel be taking questions via email, in a special chatroom, and by telephone. Stay tuned for information on how to contact us, and don't miss the show for your chance to be heard.

P2P vs RIAA

A song pattern emerging in the RIAA subpoenas...

Slyck News - The RIAA Hit List - A Pattern Emerges?

Hard Rock album sales increase 232%!!!

Hmm, but I thought that piracy was killing the music industry!!! (that's sarcasm). COuld it POSSIBLY be that the music that the labels are pushing and putting out one after the other and trying to shove down people's throats (via radio, MTV, etc.) is the music that people are getting sick of? Could THAT be part of the decline? No Way! I CAN'T BE the recording industries fault!

Country music is declining too. Why? Well the last 2 years were by far the biggest years ever for country music. The O Brother soundtrack was HUGELY successful, as were artists like Faith Hill, etc. What goes up, must come down. Shades of the dot com boom/bust...

USATODAY.com - Album sales down, but hard rock rebounds

Guitar Player magazines small article on the RIAA P2P lawsuit against a few college kids, which resulted in settlements ranging from 12-17.5k EACH.

A couple of things that the article missed:

1) In addition to the arguements given about why the music industry is losing money, the article makes no mention of the economy which is also losing, and the fact that if you compare losses of the music industry to similar end-consumer markets (dept stores, clothing stores, etc.) the music industries 9% loss over the past year is actually BETTER than in other markets.

2) Also not mentioned is that 2 years ago the music industry reached RECORD LEVEL sales. When losses like this occur in the Stock Market, it is call a "correction". When they occur in the music industry it is called "piracy".

3) (maybe because of the timing of the article they missed this one) - Of all of the recent subpoenas issued against P2P users, not a SINGLE one was issued against an AOL user. THe interesting thing about this is that Time/Warner not only owns Warner Borthers records and all of the other subsidiary labels (Atlantic, Elektra, Interscope, etc.), but T/W also owns AOL! Draw your own conclusions...

Guitar Player Magazine

Music Industry Wins 871 Subpoenas Against Internet Users.

...and they are not just going after people offering large amounts of mp3s either...

Notice the slightly conflicting statements:

" The trade group for the largest music labels, the Washington-based RIAA, previously indicated its lawyers would target Internet users who offer substantial collections of MP3 song files but declined to say how many songs might qualify for a lawsuit."

"We are identifying substantial infringers and we're going to whatever entity is providing (Internet) service for that potential infringer,"

[Brain21]So from these statements we think that, as the RIAA said a few weeks ago, they are only going after people who have huge mp3 collections online. However, other statements in the article show that this may not be true:

"In some cases, subpoenas cite as few as five songs as "representative recordings" of music files available for downloading from these users."

"the RIAA asked Depaul on July 2 to track down a user known as "anon39023" who was allegedly offering at least eight songs."

FOXNews.com

An absolutely insane article trying to link pirated software and mp3s to Hezbollah and Al Quieda!

MP3s fund terrorism