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Going into my research paper, I believed I would find ample proof that the RIAA should not continue its present course of legal action against people involved in file sharing.

PART 2

I was appalled at what I found. Going into the research, I was expecting to find that CDs were overpriced because of the exorbitant sum paid to big-name musicians, and that the market had to reflect that fact. I also expected to find that CDs had increased in price as a result of the increases of cost of living.

The music industry would have you believe that costs for creating a CD have endured “a 41% price increase in 5 years” (Boycott-RIAA). The fact is, the music companies pay about $7.50 to create a CD, including money paid to bands, producers, distributors, and songwriters. They then sell the CD to a retailer for a 30% profit, and the retailer sells it for an additional 30% profit. The record company uses their 30% profit to pay for “all the record company’s operations including, staff, severance packages, expensive building leases/rent, computers, cars, sushi lunches, flights, conferences in Hawaii, cell phones, etc.” (Taylor)

There was a time, leading up to 1996 when competition between music retailers had CDs selling for $9.99, delivering a smaller kickback to the music companies. At that point, the five companies that make up the bulk of the Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA, “modified their existing cooperative advertising programs to induce retailers into charging consumers higher prices for CDs, allowing the distributors to raise their own prices” (Anonymous – FTC). In 2002, the FTC found the RIAA, which controls 85% of all music purchased on CD guilty on monopoly charges, citing that their price fixing over three years caused “U.S. consumers (to pay) as much as $480 million more than they should have for CDs and other music” (Anonymous – FTC). Since the price fixing to stop CDs from selling at $9.99, the market has never dipped below the ten-dollar mark for individual CD purchases. Many would have you believe that that is simply a reflection of inflation, but it is interesting to note that DVDs, VHS cassettes, CD-Rs, CD Recorders, and CD players have all dropped significantly in price since 1996, with the Retail music CD being the exception. Although prices have fallen since downloading has provided an alternative, the average new release prices still range from $13.99 to $19.99.

When Napster first arrived on the scene offering downloadable music for free over the Internet, many consumers claimed to download because they didn’t want to have to buy entire albums for one or two songs they liked. Flash forward to today, and the recording industry would have you look at the new pay-per-download version of Napster, which charges 99 cents per song as the solution. The problem isn’t solved, however. “They will find that top-selling acts Madonna and Red Hot Chili Peppers sell their songs by the album, but not as singles. They will find some musicians on one service, but not on others”, they will not find The Beatles anywhere, and they will find all of this on a peer-to-peer network. (Ahrens) Finally, it is important to note that the record companies currently pocket 70% of profits from most online downloads, with artists getting only 10-15%, and all of this with the end user using bandwidth, time, and their own materials (CD-Rs for instance) in an attempt to get a better deal, and still failing to do so (Boycott-RIAA).

With all these factors in place, it is easy to see how the general public began to look for another alternative. What they found was peer-to-peer file sharing. The only question was.. is there any reason not to?

This will be the first of a 4 part series I will be posting regarding downloading music through peer-to-peer file sharing. The 4 combined are part of an assignment I have been working on as part of my degree.

PART 1

Should the RIAA continue its present course of legal action against people involved in file sharing?

This is an issue that is important to me for a number of reasons, and I will outline them here. Millions of people do it each day, millions of songs are downloaded, and, as an artist, I welcome the idea.

I create music. On my website, www.timpane.com, I have posted a number of MP3s online for people to hear or download for free. It would be my fondest dream that one of these songs end up on Kazaa, being downloaded in the millions. I would have new people hear my music every day, and from there, I could build a fan base, to whom I could market CDs, and perform live shows. Instead, I work hard every day at a job, then record my music at my own expense, and make my own CDs to give away to whoever will listen.

The music industry and a number of artists have taken this fond wish and rejected it out of hand, saying it is just not good enough for them. They want more of something they already have.. profit.

I fully accept that it should be illegal for others to make money off of the work of the industry. I know that there are websites selling advertising space and giving away songs (called “warez”) royalty free to the public. This is an unacceptable practice, and I agree that it must be stopped. There is a phenomenon, however, of which I do approve. It is called file-sharing. This phenomenon involves a program on the internet that links two individual computers and lets them trade files between one another. This program connects millions of individual computers, and allows you to search through archives on each one. You find something you like.. go ahead, you can have a copy.

The Music industry has, after successfully shutting down websites that allowed people to download music, started to prosecute the end users of this file-sharing software, calling it “stealing” or “piracy”, and claiming it is affecting their sales. Their targets have been regular people like you and me, including students, teachers, grandfathers, and a twelve year old girl.

At the heart of this issue, there are two questions. 1) Are current paid music options viable or fair? 2) Is it wrong to download music from peers?

If the answer to those both those questions is yes, then we will take it as an axiom that peer-to-peer music downloading should be stopped, and that the RIAA has the right to prosecute those involved in that activity.

I will try to take a balanced approach regarding this issue. I will explore the websites of the RIAA as well as their opponents. I will look at the history of the issue as well as the situation as it stands today. I will use news articles, legal research papers, web pages, advocacy papers, and anecdotal information to see if my stance is correct.

Going into my research, I believe I will find ample proof that the RIAA should not continue its present course of legal action against people involved in file sharing.

TOMORROW: PART 2 – Are current options viable.

A story near and dear to my heart: both because it happened in Taylorsville, Utah, relatively near my town of Tooele, and because it involved a very large Pacific Islander couple on the Atkins diet. I have to wonder if their race, due to popular stereotypes of Pacific Islanders as having prodigious appetites, and their noteworthy girth figured into the manager’s decision to kick them out?

No-carb eating couple booted from buffet

That all-you-can-eat buffet isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. “The Choice Is Yours at Chuck-A-Rama” should be “The Choice Is Yours as long as you’re finished when we want you to be”. And yet…

“It’s so embarrassing actually,” said Isabelle Leota, Amaama’s wife. “We went in to have dinner, we were under the impression Chuck-A-Rama was an all-you-can-eat establishment.”

Not so, said Jack Johanson, the restaurant chain’s district manager.

“We’ve never claimed to be an all-you-can-eat establishment,” said Johanson. “Our understanding is a buffet is just a style of eating.”

I listened to some people who claimed to be there on the radio Friday Morning, and, according to rumor, the couple had been there for three hours, had exclusively eaten meat (mostly the roast beef) during that time, and had visited the carving area over a dozen times. Depending on who you believe, the manager asked them to leave because they’d stayed far too long, or asked them to leave because he’d watched them visit the roast beef station several dozen times. The manager was the one carving the beef. Regardless, their refusal to leave for not getting a refund was apparently the cause of the police being called and it making national news 🙂

I’m not sure whether to be ticked off or just laugh my head off about it. Sticking around at a buffet for three hours, I can understand, particularly with a large party of friends. Eating enough meat in that time to cause the manager to ask you to leave because the other patrons can’t have any roast beef? I’m not sure who to believe, but it’s funny!

Believe it or not, this made the World front page on CNN!

Oh, one more thing: Happy birthday to me. I’m thirty-one today. Ugh, I feel old. I’ve edited this since I posted it… I spent last night in agony in my ribcage. Saw the doc this morning, he said my heart couldn’t be better though my second number for my blood pressure (118/92) seemed strangely high, and that my rib cage’s cartilage is inflamed. I knew it didn’t feel like a heart attack, but it kept me up ’till 4:30 AM because of the pain. Whee! Here’s a birthday song I made up:

Happy Hapy Birthday
You’re looking pretty stout!
Have one more slice of birthday cake
And fill those trousers out!

I ran across an an old thread here on barnson.org where I got caught by Universal for file-trading The Hulk. I decided to look around the Internet a bit more to see what the latest deals are on file-trading legislation.

I read an article, written in November 2003 with the laughably ponderous title of Feinstein pitches stricter penalties for music, movie thieves Recording copyrighted movies, songs could bring 5 years in jail . Beyond the remarkably long name, though, I found a quote from the RIAA talking about loss of sales:

The Recording Industry Association of America, hit first by the now-defunct Napster and later by such currently popular file-sharing programs as Kazaa and Morpheus, says that in 2000 the top 10-selling albums sold 60 million copies. By last year that had shrunk to 34 million.

Now, there are a few different ways of looking at this little statistic:

• The RIAA’s Perspective: Instead of people buying the missing 26 million records, they are downloading them on the Internet, directly affecting our profits.
• The Independent Musician’s Perspective: Dude, those albums aren’t being sold because the Internet has enabled people to find music they really like rather than the rubbish the RIAA promotes. Their loss is our gain.
• The File-Traders Perspective: i d0N’+ \/\/@N+ +h3 +r@$h pu+ 0u+ by +h3 ri@@ @Ny\/\/@y. +h0ugh i h@v3 16,000 $0Ngz 0N my h@rd driv3, i purch@$3 @ 10+ 0f mu$ic 3v3ry y3@r 13gi+iM@+31y. (Translation: I don’t want the trash put out by the RIAA anyway. Though I have 16,000 songs on my hard drive, I purchase a lot of music every year legitimately.)
• The Economist’s Perspective: The U.S. economy is still in a very deep recession. Although traditionally, entertainment sales remain strong in a slow economy, in this case spending in real dollars on musical recordings is up from ten years ago before the economic “boom”.

My take: I think that the reason the top ten albums are suffering is directly related to the Internet, but I espouse the Indie Musician perspective. More small bands are taking a larger slice of the pie from larger ones. I know many people today who buy CDs from small-time bands, and it seems to be a pretty hip thing for college students to latch onto indie bands now as well. The depressed sales are a result of consumer choice — ask independent labels what their sales figures are like, and the successful ones will tell you their bottom line is way, way up, due in large part to file-trading and Internet-based distribution.

So did I miss some reasons? Do you agree with the Indies, the Economists, the RIAA, or have a totally different explanation for the large statistical difference in top-10 album sales between 2000 and November 2003?

Have you ever done something so embarassing you just couldn’t deal with it?

For instance.. last week, I was in Starbucks.. and I was a hoot. Man, i was being funny, getting everyone around me laughing.. and generally trying to be the life of the party. Boy it feels good to have the attention… That is of course, until I was handed my caramel Frappuccino, and as I was there in the limelight of my own creation, My fingers slipped on the wet cup.. and I spilled it all over the counter, the girl handing it to me.. and myself.

The ironic thing is not just that i had drawn so much attention to myself.. but I had asked someone who I thought I knew who they were.. and we couldn’t place it.. until I realized he was a good friend of an ex-girlfriend of mine.. and I swear, as i tried with the recycled napkins to clean the frozen delight from the counter, he was yanking out his celphone and dialing furiously.. maybe its me.

So do we all have these mortifying times?.. cuz I have many.

I’m naturally interested in how people influence others. This, along with understanding the basis of people’s knowledge, fascinates me. I love “The Apology of Socrates”, by Plato, for that exact reason: it’s Socrates’ attempt to explain to a lay audience why he questions everything. He wants to understand how people know what they know, and throughout his life found that, underneath it all, all logic is circular. We really know nothing, except assumptions built upon assumptions so ancient that we can’t possibly hope to trace their antiquity. My personal goal is to push the frontiers of my knowledge to where the circularity of my assumptions is no longer obvious to me. I’m not nearly there yet.

In a related note, at work, there are people who appear to be naturally charismatic: they can propose a solution to something, and theirs is chosen quickly and unanimously. In many cases, it’s a less-than-ideal solution, when better solutions have been presented.

I found myself wondering what makes the difference between a successful influencer and a non-successful one?

Well, the answer organized itself for me this morning. I have in my lap a training manual for sales professionals that I once studied in an attempt to be a more successful pitchman. In reviewing it this morning, I was struck by how, with a better understanding of how persuasion works, this manual actually reads like a playbook of how to convince someone of something by appealing to their base instincts, rather than their capacity to reason. Its unstated goal is to manipulate emotions to the point that the person is invested in the idea, and then will make commitments based upon that investment. And, once you’ve gotten someone to say something, feel like they owe you for something, and invested in something, you’ve got ’em hook, line, and sinker. They’ll have a very difficult time deciding not to do what you want.

I’ve become better, over the years, at sniffing out fact from fiction on first hearing, but simple knowledge of these techniques doesn’t grant immunity to them. And learning the lessons has been a very, very expensive tuition in the school of hard-sell. Sales appeals go straight to our pre-programmed, impulsive, biologically-driven responses; trying to break out from following the pattern the sales person expects you to follow requires constant mental effort and vigilance. And the funny thing is, I think using these to try to get someone to buy into something is abusive, yet I use them every day at work, home, and online to get people to do the “right” thing.

• Authority: You are more likely to believe someone who claims greater knowledge, regardless of whether or not that knowledge is in the field under discussion. For instance, I’ve been recently hearing commercials on the radio where a psychologist pitches a weight-loss pill. He even jokes about not being an authority — yet I feel more likely to believe him because, well, such an educated, well-spoken person wouldn’t be deceived, would he?
  (I also find this happening at home. The unspoken assumption towards my kids is, “I’m your parent, bigger, stronger, and older than you are. I’m right.” How do you get away from using that?)
• Commitment: If you can convince someone to agree to something, they will most likely continue to agree to it in order to appear consistent. For example, a common practice of door-to-door cleaner pitchmen is to get you to agree to statements such as “don’t you want a cleaner house?” “don’t you want healthy children?” “don’t you want more time to do what you really like, rather than scrubbing?”. The next question is often “then don’t you want our cleaner to help you do those things?” Human instinct drives us to want to continue to agree.
  (I find myself using this at home, too: “Write down your goals.” “Tell me what you plan to do.” “Go tell your brother you’re sorry.” “Are you going to do that again?”. I see this in my own life up until two years ago, repeating mantras from the religion of my youth in order to appear consistent and trustworthy. It’s human instinct to try to preserve our consistency, but it can also lead to some pretty severe psychological problems when misused.)
• Liking: If you have a friendly relationship with someone, they are more likely to agree with you. Why do you think salespeople get their clients to go golfing with them?
  (I have to wonder if I use this at home, too. Why do I go on “dates” to fun places, be nice, and try to make sure I bring as much pleasure to our family relationships as possible? Is this actually a selfish thing, because instinctually I understand that if they like me, they’ll be more likely to do what I want them to do? I don’t even know if I want to go there 🙂 As with other things, I think it can be abused — the key seems to be how we use this.)
• Social Proof: If many other people also agree with you, you’re more likely to believed. This is why you’ll see blurbs on books saying “over one million sold!”, on DVDs saying “The funniest movie in America” (implying that most Americans think it’s funny), or “As seen on TV!” (implying that, if it was on TV, millions of people have heard of it).
  (This is also sometimes called “peer pressure”, although that’s a much smaller thing. I use this at mealtimes: “Look, everyone else ate their food, why don’t you?”)
• Scarcity: If it’s difficult to get something, or something is rare, it’s more desirable. You run into this in hard-sell automobile pitches all the time. Coercive statements on the sales lot, such as “This special price is for today only!” or “The car you want today will probably be gone tomorrow” are rather brutal examples of this principle in action.
  (I wonder if in home life, this is the reason for the “kids are starving in China” argument at mealtimes? Never held much water for me as a kid, though. But if my parents had said “this is the last meal you’re going to eat for the next two days”, I may have been inclined to eat it all up.)
• Reciprocation: If I have given you something, or done something for you, you are more likely to want to give me what I want in return. A good example is the cleaner pitchmen that work door-to-door: a vital part of their presentation is to scrub your toilet, stain in your carpet, sink, etc. with their product to “show you how well it works”. The REAL point of this exercise is to put them into a position where you owe them for the “favor” and are more likely to buy. Ditto for the people giving out “free samples” of a product.
  Or like when Christy and I went to try to purchase a vehicle in Las Vegas, we walked out of a deal because it wasn’t to our liking, and the manager of the lot ran out to meet us before we climbed in our car and said “wait, we just did all this work for you, contacting the financing company, spending an hour going over paperwork… I thought we had a deal?” You know, in my gut, I still feel bad for that poor sot, yet my head knows that he was just giving us another section of an elaborate hard-sell sales pitch.
  (I see Reciprocation in use in my relationship with my wife all the time: I help her with something, she helps me with something in return. It seems to be a very natural, healthy human pattern, and a cornerstone of society, but it’s also abused by salespeople. This seems to be the trend in all these patterns: intentional abuse of common human “shortcut” behaviors to get you to agree to something you don’t want.)

Recognizing these tactics for what they are, particularly when they are wrapped in an inoffensive package, is often very difficult.

What are some of your experiences with coercive sales pitches?

So, I got together with three buddies and we went to the 9:50 PM showing of “Man On Fire”. Here’s my review! WARNING: Moderate spoilers contained within.

OK, first thing’s first. I loved the Die Hard movies. I enjoyed the heck out of Ransom. I never entirely got First Blood. But they seemed cool.

Man On Fire is definitely not entirely something in that vein. The plot summary: Ex-special-forces assassin Creasy is a washed-up drunk. He’s out of the service, but haunted by it. His buddy convinces him to take a job as a bodyguard in Mexico City for a little girl who’s parents are concerned about a rash of kidnappings. Of course, the little girl he’s guarding gets kidnapped and presumably killed — which sets the stage for a tale of revenge.

Suffice to say, it’s a bloody flick. Not “spray blood all over the room” bloody like the old Nightmare on Elm Street movies, but realistic, painful-looking stuff that’s enough to make anybody wince.

The whole first hour of the movie deals with Creasy’s relationship with the young girl he’s assigned to bodyguard — building a rapport, yet foreshadowing the eventual disaster. I felt like it was really, really slow. But then after she’s kidnapped, and Creasy spends weeks in the hospital recovering from gunshot wounds, the action is enough to quicken anyone’s blood, and the sometimes-cartoonish situations provide an excellent foil for Denzel Washington to show off some terrific gallows humor and intensity.

Overall, I’ve definitely gotta say it’s ultimately just not my sort of movie. I enjoy action flicks, but I prefer movies where the violence is a bit less graphic, and certain plot twists less predictable. It seems at certain times the director simply delighted in how he could make each extraction of information and dispatch of a “bad guy” more creative.

In the words of one of the characters, “Creasy’s art is death. And he’s about to paint his masterpiece.”

That’s really the heart of the movie.

Mediocre, predictable storyline is livened up by superb performances by Denzel Washington as Creasy, young Dakota Fanning (for, alas, only the first half of the film) as Lupita, Christopher Walken’s enigmatic portrayal of Rayburn, and Giancarlo Giannini as the honest cop that looks the other way while Creasy goes on a rampage.

But, under it all, it’s a fairly average revenge flick with only a unique setting, powerful actors, and interesting camera effects to redeem it.

I’ve gotta give it two and a half out of five Barns. A few redeeming qualities, a noble sacrifice, a predictable storyline, and violence that… well, I’m a little squeamish, and it was a bit beyond my comfort level.

Note to self: Must create nifty “barn” graphic and half-barn graphic for future movie reviews. Additional note to self: check out reviews of movies before I go see them in the future; although it was a great chance to hang out with my buddies, I’d have probably passed on this movie if I had a do-over.

For you Star Trek fans, Paramount has finally released the long-awaited service pack for the original series. This hotly anticipated release has me on the edge of my seat with excitement!

Mother’s Day is right around the corner.

Have you thought much about what to get for your significant other, mother, mother in law, and grandma?

If you don’t want to think too hard about it, let me help you!

I am a Home Interior Decorator and I’d love to help. I do custom-made floral arrangements for great prices and would ship whatever you need to where ever you need it to go. If you’d like to take a look at my products, visit my web site at www.homeinteriors.com/cbarnson. You can place an order from the web site and it will come right to me!

EDIT by matthew: Fixed formatting and a tpyo 🙂