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By George Ziemann 9/01/03 Having become totally disgusted with the music business, I'm about to go offline forever and pursue a more noble career, like flipping burgers at McDonalds or becoming a mental patient in a padded cell. But I've been asked to write one last article. |
I've seen the ridiculous explanation the national media has bought into hook, line and sinker describing the RIAA's "ingenious" and "surprisingly technical" approach to identifying how to tell the difference between mp3 files which were obtained from legally purchased CDs and those which came from "pirated" sources.
The RIAA's explanation of how they've made their technical deduction is exactly
the same sort of misdirection that's apparently fooled the entire country.
I've watched on the pages of even Boycott-riaa, which I thought comprised humans
with a speck of intelligence, as they ponder the technical wherewithal and mystery
surrounding the RIAA's brilliant masterpiece, which allows them to trace the
origin of a file back to the time of Napster, using this as their "evidence"
of wrongdoing.
To put it bluntly: How stupid are you all?
The fact there's post after post of concern and worry over this magical technological
marvel, concocted by one of the world's most technologically inept organizations,
led only in their ignorance by the US Congress and the US Copyright Office,
makes me certain that the RIAA will win this battle because no one has asked
the incredibly obvious question.
In all the news articles, television reports, comments and posts, not one of
you has asked this magic question. You have all bought into this misdirection
like trout going for bait. You have given the word of known liars more credence
than you would give a streetcorner magician.
Let me run the important phrase of a previous story past you - "By comparing
the fingerprints of music files on a person's computer against its library,
the RIAA believes it can determine in some cases whether someone recorded a
song from a legally purchased CD or downloaded it from someone else over the
Internet."
Although this lie has already propagated to such lengths that it will now be
impossible to convince anyone of the truth, allow me to explain how everyone
has been baffled by this bullshit.
Since a digital copy of an mp3 is not a perfect copy of a CD track, as the industry
has led so many to believe, once it's been created and placed on the Internet,
each recurring copy of this file WILL be an exact duplicate of the original
mp3. If this were not true, the RIAA's statement would fall apart at this point
in the logic. If it were altered in any way, this entire wild theory about hashes
and digital fingerprints would be quickly proven false.
While you've blindly accepted this theory, no one has raised the issue of where
that original mp3 came from.
I don't want to be overly technical here, but ask yourself this: If the mp3
was not created from a legally purchased CD, where the hell DID it come from?
What can the origin of an mp3 file be if no one possessed the physical CD? Magic?
It just appeared on their computer one day? They hacked into the recording studio's
computer? Broke into the studio in the dead of night and stole the master recordings?
If an mp3 was not created from a legally purchased CD, then there's only one
other possible source - the record label itself, if not the artist.
Oh wait, there's another possibility.
If the song is out of print, and NOT available on CD, it may have come from
a legally purchased vinyl album. With more thought, myriad possibilities come
to mind, none of which point to the consumer as the guilty party. Were they
recorded off the radio? If so, the Home Recording Act comes into play.
Do the $4 billion a year in free promotional copies have different digital fingerprints
that the legal CDs? Can you tell a shoplifted CD from one which was legally
purchased?
Unless the recording industry itself is responsible for creating mp3s from the
master recordings and distributing them over the Internet, ALL mp3s MUST, by
definition have come from purchased CDs. To entertain any other definition is
blind ignorance. There is no magic. Just more lies and deceit.
And everyone fell for it - again.
You've been arguing everything over the past week since this announcement except
the obvious.
Has the lowest common denominator really fallen faster that the recording industry's
sales?
It would appear so.
The 128MB Philips PSA MP3 player for the gym is available on Amazon
Other MP3 stories:
Copy Protection
and the Reasonable Man
Review: Neuros
MP3 Digital Audio Computer
