Best Lady Gaga cover EVER!

Yes I'm Evil ^_^

My take on the RIAA and DRM-Free Music

So on other forums a person asked "Why is the music industry STILL taking its sweet time about this [moving away from DRM laden music]?"

I present to you below my full answer, which also includes my own view on the background to the current stance the RIAA (and MPAA for that matter, whom I affectionately refer to the Music and Film Industry Association of America, or the MAFIAA) takes to the digital medium.

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I consider the old experiment of putting a frog in boiling water vs cold then slowing boiling them to death. The idea is the frog gets use to latter and won't jump out even when it's near death.

The RIAA, on the other hand, reacted like the former when presented with Napster. It existed, almost literally, under their noses. They had no "warming up" period to the idea of digitally available music. Because of the initial knee-jerk reaction they whole of the association is still reeling from the notion that anyone could rip them off in a few clicks. The slowness is due to the hard coding of the idea, in executive heads, that the control of the physical media the music is listened to on is paramount. Given that you can rip tracks from a CD or convert files from one format to another and from one device to another, this isn't possible. Draconian is my usual word for mentality because of this. They missed the boat for the digital age and are slowly dying at an industry because of it. A very slow death, but a death nonetheless.

Metallica -- Death Magnetic

Ok since the album has come out I feel ok in doing a mini review. I'll say I... acquired... the album via other means a week before release.

And you know what, I'm buying it right now on iTunes. The last good album they put out, IMHO, was the black album. I have a coworker (dealer of music, in this case) that felt the black album was when they were already in decline. Either way, we're both buying the album.

It's a return to what they are great at: Music that doesn't try to do anything else but rock. Load/Reload/Garage Inc are blemishes. St. Anger was a good start, but this is the full return. 

I'd sworn off buying their albums after the whole Napster hypocrisy (geeze, you guys like tape trading but not file sharing? What a crock of shit).

Go buy album now!

[Edit] Oh I had bought S&M, but since that's such and odd piece (as is Binge & Purge) I didn't include it initially.

Topics

So this post will remain until I use at least one of the 'labels' *cough*tags*cough* below, mostly as these will be the main tags I use (all others will be secondary)

Guess I could fill this post up with what they mean:

• Technology: things that make the IT world go around
  
• Games: I play way too many, and have opinions on them
  
• Music: Releases, controversies, karaoke
  
• Politics: Decline To State liberal and how I see htings
  
• Life: Things happening to me, where I'll be, things I'll do, shit like that.
  
• News: General news items, or things that don't fit the next catagory (or the above ones)
  
• Oddball: Oddball his hosted by our good friend Sum Ting Wong. Things in the news, tech, life et. al. that are not quite what you would think they would be.
  
• Parting Shots: Kinda my 'followup' tag... I mean label. Used when I do a post, well, following up on a topic I've previously posted about.