Dammit, first I downloaded bunches of copies of Elephant by the White Stripes, and most of it was just loops of the first thirty seconds of each song. Now I'm trying to download Lucinda Williams new shit, and every song I find is a loop of "Righteously". I also hear that if you try to find Madonna's new single you're likely to hear her say, "What the fuck do you think you're trying to do?" Shit, this is getting annoying.
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
Article comments
1 - Michael Croft
Hey, if they want to drive their customers away from their products and convince people to download independent artists. If they kill their own monoculture, then great.
There's lots of great music out there, and lots of it has nothing to do with record labels who are willing to poison the P2P networks. Search for the good stuff. It's out there. And independents are much more likely to support the web with legal downloads.
2 - Matt Moore
It ain't like Lucinda is gonna be the next Avril.
3 - andy
oh I think major labels support legal downloading too. Except, some yoko putting albums on the internet w/out artist concent isn't legal.
4 - Al Barger
Well, NO the major labels do not support any form of downloading. They have been doing everything they possibly can to stop any form of it.
Also, non-commercial copying for personal use falls within the classic understanding of fair use, no matter what kind of judges the RIAA has on their payroll.
This decoy/loops crap is at best a stop-gap measure to slow downloading a little for a minute. We'll figure out how to work around that cheap crap before long, and it won't be effective at all.
Note that even now the loop/decoy stuff gets filtered out now in a fairly short order. It seems to get worked out of the system after 60 - 90 days, max. Come back for that White Stripes album in June or so. There's a lot of other interesting music to listen to in the meantime.
Finally, this loops and decoy crap does NOT constitute record companies getting smart. It's just more nuisance and insult to the consumers. It doesn't at all address any of the record companies fundamental problems. It will not stop or even significantly slow the use of P2P. It's just something to piss off their soon-to-be former customers.
5 - andy
Fair Use doesn't cover unauthorized distrobution
6 - andy
ahh hell. People have been going back and forth on this forever. You and I aren't gonna solve it Al, so we'll just drop it haha
7 - Flea Rosca
personally, i was able to download "White Elephant" without a problem using... um, better not say, someone might try to shut it down.
8 - Matt Moore
Yea, I got around the Elephant decoys, too. None of them were 192 kbps, so I just found some that were. Still having trouble with the new Lucinda, tho.