Lawyer who fights the RIAA speaks out

[dbarrow]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060721-7322.html

...Ray Beckerman is one of the few lawyers who has taken a stand against the RIAA, and he recently took part in a conference call organized by Defective by Design, an anti-DRM coalition. Beckerman gave a broad overview of the RIAA's tactics; not surprisingly, he was opposed to them on the grounds that the group's investigations turn out very little actual evidence. ...

[mikehende]

It's about time somebody did, I have my personal beef with them too, I am all for the Artists getting their due but what have they [the RIAA] done for us, the end user? They have made purchasing songs cheap at 99cents but you get wma files and have a hell of a time converting it to mp3 and they are increasingly making this conversion process more and more difficult.

I have been collecting records since I was 8 years old and have thousands of them from the 50s to the present, since I went into digital music 8 years ago I got rid of my turntables for space and lack of use reasons and now when I want an mp3 of a song I have on record, what's wrong with me downloading it from the net? I already paid for it years ago and for many songs I have them on LP, 45 and 12" so the Artists have been paid handsomely and so what? They would sue me for getting this song off the net just becuase I don't have turntables anymore? The RIAA are just a bunch of greedy bastards if you want my opinion:mad:

[Seth]

I have been collecting records since I was 8 years old and have thousands of them from the 50s to the present, since I went into digital music 8 years ago I got rid of my turntables for space and lack of use reasons and now when I want an mp3 of a song I have on record, what's wrong with me downloading it from the net? I already paid for it years ago and for many songs I have them on LP, 45 and 12" so the Artists have been paid handsomely and so what? They would sue me for getting this song off the net just becuase I don't have turntables anymore?

Agreed!

Or what about audio tapes that quickly lose their fidelity?

There are many albums that I've had to purchase over and over because of technological changes and/or media degradation.

As far as I'm concerned, if I purchase a song, then I have purchased the right to obtain that song by any means, provided that I use my own media to record it.

The Canadian government agrees with this. As such, downloading music from the internet is legal in Canada. The only issue is the computer users who downloads music that they have never purchased at one time in their life. In the end, the Canadian government chose not to make music file sharing a crime. Instead, they imposed a small fee on blank media. This fee goes directly to the music industry.

[Tortanick]

Thats a great idea! Its not perfect, unfair against he who buys CDs to burn something legal and non music, e.g. Linux distro.

But while its a minor hastle for a few, its a huge gain for the millions of music fans, on balance its brillaint!

[mikehende]

In the end, the Canadian government chose not to make music file sharing a crime. Instead, they imposed a small fee on blank media. This fee goes directly to the music industry.

I think this a great idea and also agree with Tortanick's words.

And according to what you wrote Seth:

"As far as I'm concerned, if I purchase a song, then I have purchased the right to obtain that song by any means, provided that I use my own media to record it."

Seeing that we pay for the music then why can't they give it to us in mp3 format?

[Seth]

I think this a great idea and also agree with Tortanick's words.

And according to what you wrote Seth:

"As far as I'm concerned, if I purchase a song, then I have purchased the right to obtain that song by any means, provided that I use my own media to record it."

Seeing that we pay for the music then why can't they give it to us in mp3 format?

I've never used a site where you had to pay to download a song. But having the songs in the wma format seems ludicrous. I would think that any payed music site (other than a Microsoft one) would have a few different formats for a particular song.

[mikehende]

I pay for the legal downloads from Walmart, Napster and itunes and someoone still has yet to give me valid reason why the RIAA is selling the music only in wma format and also why they are trying to prevent us from converting it to mp3, most users on the planet use mp3 so that seems to be the logical format in which to purchase songs, when they first started selling the legal songs, it was a 1, 2 ,3 easy process to convert the wma to mp3/wav and ther were many softares out ther that would convert the formats but then they the RIAA started coming up with newer and newer DRM protection that now makes it extremely difficult and for some, impossible, to convert the wma files, the method I use involves 3 processes using 3 different softwares to do this but most people don't even know how to do this by ANY method!

[dbarrow]

http://www.poikosoft.com/
Audio File Format Converter

Mike, have you tried this?
Always has been my favorite utility suite.
Fast and very efficient. One of the easiest to use. Convert a whole folder of WMA to MP3 in minutes.

The audio editor in HitRecorder is another I love.

The WMA format is particularly annoying with the DRM built in. Not only does it take up more space, it makes "portability" a real issue. Despite MS claims that WMA is a superior audio quality, I could never tell the difference, especially with "cd quality" mp3 bit rate conversion. Not likely your car audio system will either ... except for when you go to play a WMA file on it and it won't.

With the real risk of cd degeneration in the heat of a closed car in summer, no way would I ever take an original cd on the road.
In fact, I never play an original cd. It gets ripped to the hard drive in MP3 format and packed away in the basement.

For the car, I have found cheap USB flash drives and my little fm player not only adequate but much easier to manage than the 2 cd cases under the seat. I regularly rotate a 40 track selection to a flash drive from my Winamp playlist in a few seconds vs. the time to burn a 12 track cd. Easily refreshed and reused, I pick up a 256 stick whenever they are on sale dirt cheap and keep several in the glove box.

Note that it is still legal to record "off the radio" although RIAA is working really hard to kill that.
Internet radio is still alive and well (though shrinking rapidly).
HitRecorder does a great job of recording tracks as MP3s and, depending on your broadband connection, you can record 10 stations at the same time. If you stick to 128 and higher streams, quality is "near cd".
http://hitrecorder.com/frameset.htm

If nothing else, the audio editor is worth the price of the program!

[mikehende]

http://www.poikosoft.com/
Audio File Format Converter
Mike, have you tried this?
Always has been my favorite utility suite.
Fast and very efficient. One of the easiest to use. Convert a whole folder of WMA to MP3 in minutes.


Are you saying that this will convert "purchased wma's" with DRM9 protection? I have to ask because I don't see this mentioned anywhere on their site and since it's payware, I would have to be 100% usre before purchasing, let me know please?

[dbarrow]

I believe the trial download is 30 days or X number of files.
I have not used it recently and have a much older version which always worked flawlessly. I always found it to be one of the easiest utilities, with the most options, and best interface.

[Tortanick]

If your sound card supports it you could try what u hear recording. I have use audicity and can just record whatever is comeing out my speakers, its a bit of hastle but for the tiny amount of music I need to convert its great. Also supports Ogg Vorbis.

[mikehende]

Yeah, recording the audio involves playing the entire song and this turns me off. The method I use is to burn the wma in itunes to cd and then rip in Musicmatch which is a lot easier than recording the sound then adjusting frequencies.

[mikehende]

Just tried the Easy cd-da extractor Doug, it clearly says it cannot convert drm protected files. So far, looks like my way is still the easiest?

[mikehende]

I am being told this

"I have tunebite and moved to muvaudio. Both of these programs do indeed work. Both are fine programs. I prefer muvaudio. There is some slight sound degredation but not much. Up to a year or so ago they did not have this type of software nor technology. But that has since change. These programs will indeed change your legaly bought drm files to mp3's. Mike the way you do it is the old school way. The small amount of money that you will spend for muvaudio will make you wish you knew about it before. This was hard to find stuff but real. You can download the demo and watch what it dose it will put some words like "unregisterd version" in your new mp3 you will have to buy the program to change it."

I will try muvaudio when next I should purchase a song and will report back here but you guys can try out the demo of either software in the meantime if you wish:

http://www.muvaudio.com/

http://www.tunebite.com/website/v2/en/home.php?affiliate=0c36cfa4536537b26eb04646b002cd5 a