alex chiang: web 6.0

It is time for Napster to stand down and build their business the old-fashioned way. By seeking permission
first. –Hillary Rosen

• The Problem With Music by Steve Albini (produced Nirvana’s In Utero) describes exactly how bands get fucked when signing with a major.
• Piercing the peer-to-peer myths is an excellent paper written by Michael Geist
• Wal-Mart, everyone’s favorite megacorporation to hate, is actually rather progressive in forcing the labels to lower their prices. Here’s a pretty good article in Rolling Stone.
• Cory Doctorow gives an excellent speech to a group of Microsoft researchers regarding DRM and why it’s bad.
• Lessig’s Free Culture is a must read. Typical of Lessig, it’s thoughtful, insightful, and actually proposes a reasonable solution.
• The EFF defends p2p.
• Avoid albums published by RIAA members with the RIAA radar
• Orrin Hatch wants to destroy your PC if you’re caught with copyrighted works. Good job, Senator. You are a true American.
• “My Beef With Big Media” is an excellent article by Ted Turner about media consolidation.
• Media consolidation is a graphic that makes Ted Turner’s point hit home
• Hilary Rosen sucks because she wants to charge ISPs a fee to make up for the money the music industry has lost due to file swapping.
• The Internet Debacle written by musician Janis Ian debunks the RIAA’s claim that internet downloads of music hurt artists.
• Fallout is Janis’ followup to her above article.
• Courtney Love does the math and explains why we still pay $17 for a CD that costs less than a dollar to make.
• Pie Chart showing how the revenue of a $1 single downloaded over the internet is divvied up.
• More record contract economics at the NY Daily News
• Why does radio suck? Because most radio stations only play the songs that record companies pay them to.
• Raising the Barriers to Entry written by Richard Menta is a good primer on how the RIAA is methodically stomping out its competition.
• Another RIAA sucks page by a guy who goes to a decent university.