Britney says don't download

[sbp]

http://reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?t ... ID=1497917

Pop princess Britney Spears, the bubbly dancing spokesgirl for Pepsi, will soon be hawking again but on a more serious note in a commercial to warn people of the evils of online piracy.

Spears, rapper Nelly, hip-hop diva Missy Elliott and other pop stars will be featured in coming weeks in TV spots funded by the world's biggest record labels to educate people about illegal downloading of music, which the music industry blames for a protracted sales slump.

After falling more than 5 percent in 2001, CD shipments dropped another 7 percent in the first half of this year as illegal downloading of music persists at high levels.

Industry estimates show that more than 2.6 billion music files are downloaded illegally from the Internet each month, mainly through unlicensed "peer-to-peer" services.

"We want to hit fans with the message that downloading music illegally is, as Britney Spears explains in one of the spots, 'the same thing as going into a CD store and stealing the CD,"' said Hilary Rosen, chief executive officer of Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a trade group for the music industry.

"Too many people don't realize that when you download a song you like from a peer-to-peer network or some other unauthorized Internet source, what you're doing is stealing music," she said.

The TV ads will be shown at a congressional hearing in Washington on piracy Thursday, but will not be aired for a few weeks. The print portion of the campaign will be launched Thursday with full-page ads in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and publications like Roll Call aimed at lawmakers.

The print ads ask the question, "Who Really Cares About Illegal Downloading?," then answer it with a diverse list of nearly 90 major recording artists and songwriters, including such superstars as Eminem, Madonna, the Dixie Chicks, Missy Elliott, Elton John, Sting, Phil Collins, Luciano Pavarotti, Brian Wilson, Spears, and Natalie Cole.

The campaign is the brainchild of an alliance of several recording, publishing, musician trade groups known as Music United for Strong Internet Copyright (MUSIC) Coalition.

The group includes the RIAA -- which represents industry giants like Bertelsmann AG BMG, EMI Group Plc, AOL Time Warner Inc., Vivendi Universal and Sony Corp. -- the Association for Independent Music, American Federation of Musicians, Christian Music Trade Association and several others.

The campaign is the industry's latest effort to discourage illegal trading and sharing of music made popular by Napster, which at its peak attracted tens of millions of music fans.

While the labels succeeded in idling Napster through copyright litigation, the once popular song-swap service exposed an entire generation of youths to the concept of file-trading, leaving in its wake a more powerful crop of imitators including Morpheus MusicCity, Grokster and Kazaa.

In addition to pursuing these services in court, the labels have resorted to a method known as "spoofing" on the free peer-to-peer services and are also mulling lawsuits against individual song-swappers.

With "spoofing," the labels hire companies to distribute "decoy" files that are empty or do not work in order to frustrate would-be downloaders of movies and music.

Some analysts see these methods ultimately working. "File-transferers are the ones who are going to migrate to paid subscription services," said Lee Black, analyst with Jupiter Media. "The disadvantage that come with peer-to-peer services, like bad or bogus files, will ultimately drive people to subscription services," he said.

[Danielm7]

Heh, like I'm downloading her music anyway... err... I mean, yeah that stuff is wrong!

[smb]

Maybe if they made better music, the "Industry" woudn't be in a slump.

[wvjohn]

hmm..thought this was about downloading pictures of her


actually,

we all know cds cost $0.01 to buy, and about $0.10 to copy and the artist gets $0.25

sell them for $2.00 at Rite Aid, Walmart, and Food Lion and the problem goes away.

BTW I don't use those download programs, and I did buy a CD some time last year I think (Hendrix-Electric Ladlyland)

[tunis5000]

"Britney says don't download..."

con't: "...so I can make even more money. Kthxbye!"

[PreDatoR]

Piss on them... Bunch money hungry already richer than hell pricks anyways... I know they get only a small percentage of the sales but their millionares why should they give a rats ass if a kid downloads their song... boofvckingwoo... They all need to be piss ass broke making 25k to 40k a year like the majority of americans then they'd appreciate what they have.

[Karchiveur]

Well... as a former Napster user i also use Kazaa, Morphieus, WinMx, Mirc....
are there anyother p2p aplication programs out there?

plz lmk,
Jordan

[TheSovereign]

they can never stop us
one service goes down anohter service goes up
and look at directconnect
u can start a private hub, like the one i belong to
and u dont have to worry about crap like this

[TonyH]

Having that bubbly bimbo tell us not to download isn't going to get anyone to stop.

Putting out albums with better content will help to improve sales more than anything. I can't stand it when I buy an album that has a few songs that I like just to find out the rest of it is nothing but crap.

When I do download music it's to find out if an album is even worth buying. Sadly though, it's not often that I find anything worth buying. :foo

[Executioner]

I've been getting all my music from private ftp servers.

It's still hard for me to imagine the cost of a music cd today. Back when I was young and foolish (70's), vinyl LP's cost between $2-$4 each. Note that vinyl requires petroleum to make, so it was considered expensive. Now with the advent of the digital CD, there is no way they can justify spending $15-$20 for a music CD. The music industry forgot what drives sales: kids buying CD's. How may kids today have a spare $20 spot they can let go to buy a music cd?

Both my teenage kids (boy & girl) copy CD's from each other, or download them from the net. The next thing will hear from the RIAA is they want to charge people that swap music CD's. Greedy bastards.

I have no idea why they think that an airhead blonde can change kids mind is beyond me, unless of coarse she's wearing her see-thru top.

[renovation]

anyone know how much of a concert ticket a band see in its pocket ?

[Absolut Talent]

Originally posted by sbp

The print ads ask the question, "Who Really Cares About Illegal Downloading?," then answer it with a diverse list of nearly 90 major recording artists and songwriters, including such superstars as Eminem, Madonna, the Dixie Chicks, Missy Elliott, Elton John, Sting, Phil Collins, Luciano Pavarotti, Brian Wilson, Spears, and Natalie Cole.

What we should be asking ourselves.......is why anyone would care about downloading such crappy music from those crappy artists

I swear........not one of those artists has had a good song since like 1998 and before. And I dont even waste my time downloading their music. I spend my time downloading stuff from like the rock era of late 70s to early 90s. That kicks the shit outta their craptastic lyrics. "Im not a girl, not yet a woman".......THEN WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU!?!?!?!

go take your 24 million and go get another boob job you greedy bitch :|



and to think........this all started with Metallica.....what a joke they are now

[TonyH]

Originally posted by bellringer
anyone know how much of a concert ticket a band see in its pocket ?

I'm not sure but I'll bet it's about the same proportionately as they see from the albums.

[wvjohn]

I was going through a box of junk the other day and found a ticket stub to the rolling stones from the mid 70's - $7.50

[Pugsley]

/Entering world of pugs

Ok lets say that all the mp3s that people are getting from the net.... bah... forget about the net even existing. Ok now you have people recording stuff off of the radio and trading it and copying it... did the riaa (even exist back then) go after all them people doing that.

Ok now the net exist again. So all the mp3s out there were rips form the radio.... the riaa would probbly still go after everybody. SO WTF???? radio is to blame for all this. If it wasnt for radio we would never hear all this awfull musich that is worth (supposidly) so much.

/Leaving world of pugs

And yes... with verry few exceptions todays music sucks. i too am gathing god old rock and such because it is actually GOOD!