Jacqueline/Connie wrote:
> I just got the newspaper from the musician's union and there is quite a > controversy over the MP3 site and how they have made available copywritten > music to the masses. Personally, I have not spent much time using MP3 > technology but it did cross my mind that people could get music off the > internet instead of buying it. Anyone have any comments?
There is a lot of mis-information about MP3 giving away copyrighted music to the masses, but it's just not true. MP3 was merely acting as a music bank for people who had bought CD's and wanted to hear them away from home. Say you wanted to hear one of you own CD's at the office. You subscribed to the MP3 service, got your private account and your password and uploaded your CD into your account. Then whenever you wanted to hear you CD at work or wherever, you accessed your account and played your CD.
The mis-information is that anyone could access your private account and hear your music. Not so. Neither could you hear CD's uploaded to someone elses account.
It is amazing to me that this simple music bank technology could be twisted so much that the RIAA sued MP3 for copyright violations without having a clue as to what was actually happening. Their main argument was that when an account holder played his CD at the office, anyone within the sound of the music could hear it and that, they said, was a violation of copyright. Come-on people. This is the same argument used by HFA and ASCAP when they posted a warning that anyone listening to another's CD playing in a public place, the park, a store, a backyard was guilty of copyright violation and would be fined.
If you want to read more about the threats to our musical freedom and how the powers that be want to limit us from singing or humming or whistling a tune in a public place (another supposed copyright violation) go to your nearest search engine, type the words Midi Conspiracy and hit go. You will be directed to thousands of music sites with the real story.
I once posted an article on Vocalist (about a year ago) that no one seemed interested in reading. Well, you'd better start getting interested before Congress decides to pass a bill removing our rights to sing or hum copyrighted material which is played in the supermarket within the hearing of another. That's where all this is going. And once the bill is passed it will be too late to quash it.
-- Dean FH Macy, Lit.D./Mus.D. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------\ --------
"Specializing in Management of exceptionally talented youth in Music" <http://www.newenglandtalent.org> EPI Records - NetWork Films <http://stations.mp3s.com/stations/3/epilogue_recording_artists.html> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------\ --------
"Making children do something they don't want to do is the job of the parents. If that doesn't work, there are always juvenile detention centers." - Mike R. -
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