They’ve been railing against peer-to-peer for some time now, and more recently have put the squeeze on webcasters via royalty hikes, but it looks like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has added a new foe to its ever-expanding list: social networkers.
They must have read Entertainment Media Research’s survey, which is limited to British respondents, which showed that 86 percent of (British) Internet users have used a social network, and that 43 percent of them were pirates. Of course, that survey was done in conjunction with a media law firm that represents the music industry.
So I’m sure the numbers aren’t loaded at all.
Regardless, after receiving a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) violation notice from the RIAA, Facebook promptly ejected Audio, an application developed for the social network that allows users to upload MP3s and share them within the site.
In just a week, the app was downloaded 750,000 times. And the RIAA didn’t like that one bit. VentureBeat updates its original article to note that Audio plans to be back online soon, pending some sort of resolution.
Not that copyrights shouldn’t be protected, but it makes you wonder if the RIAA would approve of someone playing music at a party where people who didn’t buy the CDs (okay, the MP3s) could hear it, too.
Don’t ask Elton John how he feels about the whole thing though. His beef isn’t so much with piracy (he doesn’t like it, in case you were wondering), but with the whole darn Internet.
The 60-year-old not sure what appeal, if any, all this technology has, but he is sure that it’s destroying art and music.
“In the early Seventies there were at least ten albums released every week that were fantastic,” he told The Sun. “Now you’re lucky to find ten albums a year of that quality. And there are more albums released each week now than there were then.”
Well, there was a lot more acid floating around back then, fewer lawyers, and fewer corporate shills. Not that I would know, but my parents might.
At any rate, John would like to see the Internet – all of it – shut down to the impact it has on art. If I remember the artifacts from the Seventies, though – Velvet Elvis, Pet Rocks, the Osmonds, Shawn Cassidy, polyester, Disco Duck, shag carpet, and men with friggin’ permanents – I’m not sure if we want those days to return.
Oh well, at least we know Elton’s less dangerous than the ol’ RIAA and its teams of lawyers.
