Zappa.com

How else can we put a hurt on those record company pricks?

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Some folks got it
Some folks don't
Some so yoogly
They never won't

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TB -

even youtube is getting a bit tricky to store the files.tried today.the old video downloader in the corner of firefox don't do the trick no more.looks like it,s comedown to money again.shit free stuff about recorders only 75% of video or another one was you got to put up with a load of writing in the middle of the screen.I admi it got me fucked up

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Arf you out of your fucking mind.

from USA Today

States settle CD price-fixing case
By David Lieberman, USA TODAY
NEW YORK — The five largest music companies and three of the USA's largest music retailers agreed Monday to pay $67.4 million and distribute $75.7 million in CDs to public and non-profit groups to settle a lawsuit led by New York and Florida over alleged price-fixing in the late 1990s.
Attorneys general in the two states, who were joined in the lawsuit by 39 other states, said that the industry kept consumer CD prices artificially high between 1995 and 2000 with a practice known as "minimum-advertised pricing" (MAP).

The settlement will go to all 50 states, based on population. Consumers may be able to seek compensation.

Under MAP, the record companies subsidized ads by retailers in return for agreement by the stores to sell CDs at or above a certain price.

"This is a landmark settlement to address years of illegal price-fixing," New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said in a statement. "Our agreement will provide consumers with substantial refunds and result in the distribution of a wide variety of recordings for use in our schools and communities."

The companies, including Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, Bertelsmann's BMG Music and EMI Group, plus retailers Musicland Stores, Trans World Entertainment and Tower Records, admitted no wrongdoing.

The companies have not practiced the pricing agreement since 2000. At that time, they agreed in settling a complaint by the Federal Trade Commission that they would refrain from MAP pricing for seven years.

Former FTC chairman Robert Pitofsky said at the time that consumers had been overcharged by $480 million since 1997 and that CD prices would soon drop by as much as $5 a CD as a result.

In settling the lawsuit, Universal BMG and Warner said they simply wanted to avoid court costs and defended the practice.

"We believe our policies were pro-competitive and geared toward keeping more retailers, large and small, in business," Universal said in a statement.

Previously, the companies said that MAP was needed to protect independent music retailers from rising competition from discount chains such as Wal-Mart, Circuit City and Best Buy. They had slashed CD prices, below cost in some cases, in the hope that once consumers were in their stores they would buy other, more expensive products.

The music companies said that MAP did not directly help them because it didn't affect wholesale prices. Retailers added that they needed support to keep prices up because their rents, particularly for stores in malls, were higher than the discount chains.

Lately, several record companies have cut prices on some CDs, particularly for new acts, to counter the continuing industry slump. Album sales are off nearly 11% this year compared with the same period in 2001, according to Nielsen SoundScan.



So, anyone seen CD prices fall by that promised $5 yet? I sure havent.

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"Ya like horses?"

Orbit Downloader. Beats Firefox Video Downloader by leaps and bounds. And it's free.

|Thanks works a Treat

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Arf you out of your fucking mind.

"This just in," from Counterpunch....

Keep on Downloading--Just Don't Get Caught!
The RIAA vs. the World

http://counterpunch.com/rovics10092007.html

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), representing massive multinational corporations with tentacles in every corner of the global economy including the music business, has just won a lawsuit against a mother of two who refused to be pushed around. Jamie Thomas' pockets were not nearly deep enough to mount the kind of legal defense for the occasion, but she rightly thought that paying an out-of-court settlement of several thousand dollars for the "crime" of sharing music online was ridiculous. So she told the RIAA they'd have to take her to court. They did, and they won.

The fact that one of these cases actually went to trial, the amount of money involved, and the fact that the defendant could have been your neighbor, a middle-aged single mother of two who was not selling anything, but was just engaging in commonplace song-swapping via Kazaa's peer-to-peer network, has made this case newsworthy. But what lies beneath it are the ever-growing tens of thousands of people who have been spied upon, harassed and threatened with lawsuits if they didn't pay the RIAA thousands of dollars for sharing copywritten music in a way the RIAA, the US government, the World Trade Organization, etc., deem inappropriate


....COMPLETE ARTICLE on the link above...

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Lesser-evilism IS war.

fucking thieves.

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Got what she deserved.
Her whole defense was "I didn't do it."
And the jury decided she did.
She's a thief. I have no pity.
Not like she was stealing groceries to feed her kids...

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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true Art and Science. - Albert Einstein

This thread is likea time machine...

Well, I've downloaded quite a bit. Even burned a few CDs. But now, I'm just listening to whatever Zappa that I like so I can buy them.

Swedish faith based on file-sharing recognised as religion by government Church of Kopimism given official religious status

The Church Of Kopimism, who believe that copying information through file-sharing is like a religious service, were granted the official recognition just before Christmas, says the BBC.

The church, who believe that CTRL+C and CTRL+V – the shortcuts for copy and paste on a computer – should be deemed sacred symbols, were forced to apply for the status three times before they were finally recognised as a faith by the Swedish government.

19-year-old founder Isak Gerson said: "For the Church of Kopimism, information is holy and copying is a sacrament. Information holds a value, in itself and in what it contains and the value multiples through copying...

http://www.nme.com/news/miscellaneous/61308

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Stay with me flagrantly and we'll have ecstasy for all eternity.

Amen...

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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true Art and Science. - Albert Einstein

The Church of Zappantology,free downloads,CD's,and free old vinyl too! All tax deductable!

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I'm getting larger as I walk away.

Studios lose landmark anti-piracy suit in Australia

Major film and television studios have lost a landmark case over illegal video downloads in Australia.

The High Court upheld a previous ruling that internet service provider (ISP) iiNet did not authorise copyright infringement among its customers.

US and Australian studios had wanted iiNet to stop its customers from downloading pirated material.

In 2010, a federal court had ruled in favour of iiNet, saying it did not authorise the downloads.

The court also said that the country's third-largest internet provider did not have the technical ability to prevent the piracy.

The unanimous ruling from the High Court upheld the lower court's decision.

"The High Court held that the respondent, an internet service provider (ISP), had not authorised the infringement by its customers of the appellants' copyright in commercially released films and television programmes," the court stated.

"Rather, the extent of iiNet's power to prevent its customers from infringing... copyright was limited to an indirect power to terminate its contractual relationship with its customers."

The 2010 judgment was the first time a court had ruled on whether an ISP could be held responsible for copyright violations by its users.

The case revolved around thousands of downloads over Perth-based iiNet's network in 2008 using a file-sharing programme.

The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft group, made up of 34 film, TV and music companies, had appealed the lower court decision, saying it set a dangerous precedent.

The group's managing director, Neil Gane, was quoted by news agency Agence-France Presse as saying that the ruling exposed the failure of copyright law to keep pace with the online environment.

"Both judgements in this case recognise that copyright law is no longer equipped to deal with the rate of technological change we have seen since the law of authorisation was last tested," he said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17781482

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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true Art and Science. - Albert Einstein