quote:

---

She could put people like Merle Haggard outta business. He no longer has a major record company and is self produced.

---

No, it's monetary greed, plain and simple. Most of the writers and singers she gave us glimpses of are long gone, anyway. Now, of course, the industry hopes you'll just buy more current stuff..."We'll take away all the free stuff, and make it so they'll have to buy everything from us!" Maybe, but maybe the public will just turn to some other form of entertainment. One thing is for certain, the artists and writers of the past will only be more quickly forgotten, and their contributions to American music (for which they wouldn't receive royalties, anyway) will sooner fade away.

Her site now has a notice that says:

quote:

---

"you can e-mail me at recldy (at)mail.com if you'd like to know any of the "whys or wherefores" of this forced shutdown."

---

If anyone want to contact her and post what happened, I'd be interested in reading it.

Goodbye , Record Lady.

[This message was edited by Joey Ace on 01 August 2005 at 11:33 AM.]

What really matters, I would think, is whether she has permission from the copyright owners to make the stuff available to download.

And, come to think of it, maybe the reason why some of that old stuff isn't available on CD is because of websites that make it available for free.

Just my 2 cents.

[edited to correct typo]

They'll pry my copy of "Take A Tater and Wait" from my cold dead fingers....

Another way to look at it. Her site might actually help sell records. First you hear people you had not thought about in years. 2nd, the sound quality was so bad on the site. That if you liked the artist you would try to purchase the real deal.Made me wanna buy the Hank Thompson box set.....

[This message was edited by Bobby Boggs on 01 August 2005 at 07:45 PM.]

Listening to those RealAudio sound files is really a far cry from being able to put your ear up to the speaker of a machine that's actually spinning the record.

Rose the recordlady says that her site was to educate, entertain, and bring back a memory. (It definitely educated me during the time that I knew about it).

I found great songs I hadn't heard, (though I mostly searched for songs and downloaded them right away, as not to be a bandwidth-theif, as Rose called it). I also requested a few great songs I already had on record but wanted on the PC.

Rose also said that she does not put entire albums on her site, so it cannot at all be a substitute for 'buying the record'.

I'm grateful for what Rose did to keep all that old music alive to be remembered, and I'm relieved (now more than ever) that I downloaded the 20 or so songs that I did onto my computer.

Is it OK for someone to trespass on your land w/o permission as long as it's educational and entertaining? Or can I use your car without asking you as long as I'm taking an educational or entertaining trip?

I know that personal property and real property are different from intangible property, but on the other hand, property is property.

I am uneducated in legal matters. I coundn't say whether or not that the website violates artist's right to intellectual/'intangible' property.

From my point of view, the poor quality of the soundfiles never attracted the typical collector, I think the main purpose for many of us was to search for songs, write out lyrics and bring back memories or find new "old" material we have not heard so far. I think this even might have caused people to look for the songs and buy the material in CD quality (if available), but on the other hand, Tom is right, property is property and who wants to draw the line?

Would be interesting to find out the real reason!

Kind Regards, Walter

------------------
www.lloydgreentribute.com

quote:

---

She could put people like Merle Haggard outta business. He no longer has a major record company and is self produced. She puts his CD online and soon no one will "BUY" his music and he will have no choice but to quit producing it.

---

----- Original Message -----
From: "Fred Shannon"
To: recldy@mail.com
Subject: site closure
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 16:24:35 -0500

why was the site shut down.
fred
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks for writing, Fred...a copy of the letter I'm sending out to all
who ask "why" is copied below:
------------------------
The "disclaimer" on my site has always read, in part, "if you hold legal
right to a song and wish it removed, it will be once proof of your ownership is
verified." Somebody finally took me up on that:

On Friday, July 29th I received this email:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
To Whom It May Concern,

I own, co-own, control or have a vested financial interest in all music
from the following labels and their subsidiaries:
RCA, Mercury, United Artists, MGM, Decca, Dot, and Kapp
I demand that all music files on your web site, both streaming audio
links and download links, for these labels be removed immediately.
I demand that a full accounting for licensing fees paid, songwriting
royalties paid and publishing royalties paid, from site inception to
date, for all songs streamed and downloaded be provided to me immediately.
Failure to comply by 9:00 AM, Monday, August 1, 2005, will result in
civil and criminal actions.
Sincerely,
(and I won't give his name and his affiliations, except for the fact that
he apparently owns a small record label in Florida)
---------------------------------------------------------------------

My first thought was WHO IS this person and does he indeed have the RIGHT
to make those demands of me?...(hell, any "kook" could have sent that
e-mail...) I also knew there was no way in hell I could go through all
the songs on my sight and "eliminate" those that were on the labels he
specified before his "deadline".

As far as his second demand went, I'd always believed that I was exempted
from having to pay licensing fees and royalty fees because of the "fair
use" part of the copyright law...I wasn't "selling" any of the music and there
was no way in hell that my tiny ra files of old out of print music could
be seen in any way, shape or form as interfering with "possible sales" by
the record companies....

I was all set to write back to this guy and demand NOTARIZED PROOF that
he had the right to make the demands on me that he had, but decided I'd
better go online first and check out a few things so I'd have something to back
me up, BEFORE I wrote a letter to him.....

I re-read the "copyright laws" and eventually ended up on this page of
the RIAA's website:
http://www.riaa.com/issues/music/downup_faq.asp

(For those of you who don't know, the RIAA is the organization that has
been suing users of peer to peer file sharing programs for trading near CD
quality mp3's of the current music the record companies are trying to
sell.)

I was shocked when I read this and realized that I didn't have a leg to
stand on...that because I hadn't paid thousands of dollars in licensing
fees and the such, I could be considered by them to be some kind of
"criminal"...hell, according to this, anyone of us who even sends a song
file via e-mail to a friend can be considered guilty of "copyright
infringement"!!!

Bottom line is that it makes no difference whether or not this jerk had
the right to make his demands...all he'd have to do (and probably already
has) is report my site to the RIAA and then the law suit would come from them
and not him.

I have no money to hire a lawyer and I don't need or want to have to
defend myself on criminal charges, when all my intention was was to share some
memories (in song) with friends out there who had a want and need to hear
them.

Oh well, the powers that be don't want us to waste our time listening to
the old music...they want us to hear only what they want us to hear...the new
crap they are tiring to sell. They control radio pretty much now, so now
they're trying to control the internet....

As much as I hated to give in to this, I felt I had no other choice but
to close down the site.

I'm grateful to each and every one of you who have helped keep the site
online for as long as it has been and I consider each and every one of
you a friend of mine....we've shared a lot together and they can't take that
away from us!

Rose

------------------------------------

Guess that pretty well answers the questions posed.
Phred

------------------
"From Truth, Justice is Born"--Quanah Parker-1904

The answer is more or less what I expected it to be, some peanut counter somewhere who fears he might lose a few bucks, not knowing that this website was NOT interfering with record sales for several reasons:

1) No current material was available, every file was pre-1980.

2) The quality of the soundfiles was really low, nothing that you could burn on a CD and sell yourself. They were merely thought for song searching, writing out lyrics or simply finding old songs again and dicovering new "old" material (ironically that might have led listeners to buy CDs if the material was available in good quality).

From the law perpective "Mr. Financial Interest" is right, yeah, but can you really compare this site with the professional download and trade platforms that make 100.000's of songs available for free download???

I hope "Mr. Financial Interest" is satisfied now, he won a big battle, something to be proud of!

Kind Regards, Walter

------------------
www.lloydgreentribute.com

The quality issue is a red herring: did you ever see the quality of the bootleg dvd's and cd's sold on the streets of New York?

and the pre-1980 arguement is a red herring as well: there is tons of money to be made in pre 1980 recordings - ask Michael Jackson about the Beatles catalog or Slim Whitman's estate, or Box Car willie.

It is a business folks and there is no difference here from the kid copying his favorite artist for download because he loves the music and wants to share.

quote:

---

Oh well, the powers that be don't want us to waste our time listening to
the old music...they want us to hear only what they want us to hear...the new
crap they are tiring to sell.

---

I agree with Bobby Hofnar in that the artists, song writers, singers, etc should be paid for their efforts.

The music folks in RIIA are battling for their natural lives, and I think that Steve W. has hit on their undoing. The internet is so vast, and accessible that eventually lawsuits from RIIA are going to be a moot point in the discussion.

In short, it's gonna' be impossible to monitor every P2P, peer to peer, communication that occurs. Nuff' said in that area because it has come to that climax already.

I don't know what the answer is to their problem, but as long as 2 computers can talk to each other, without going through something other than the corresponding ISP's, the RIIA, and other organizations are really shovelling crap against the tide. My take.
Phriend Phred

------------------
"From Truth, Justice is Born"--Quanah Parker-1904

It may have received the last payments from airplay, but compilations, box sets, etc are big business. Again, I use the Slim Whitman example. Who in the mainstream had heard of him before the ran that infomercial. Just because an asset is not currently being marketed does not mean that potential sales are not there at some future date.

Saying since no one is currently marketing those items, its okay to let them stream for free is like saying its okay to let mice eat the grain in the silo because no one is eating it right now.

But this is strictly legalistic. I already concede the legality, since the DMCA really is a boondoggle to copyright and mechanical rights holders. I only argue about the merits of the legalities.

So, if you have a problem with TRL, you're perfectly right that there is a legitimate issue of property rights here. In the past, after a reasonable period of time, works went into the public domain. This was set up so that the creator of the work could get the benefits of creation, but this reverted back to the public after they could no longer get these benefits. Now, the primary owners of these older copyrights seem to be large corporate interests who have bought them up. Like treating designs as trademarks (e.g., Fender and Gibson's claim that their patented features like headstock and body shapes are actually trademarks), this all seems simply to be an attempt to greatly lengthen the period of time these corporate interests can 'milk' their product. Should some corporation hold a copyright to Bach and Beethoven? How about Steven Foster's songs? How about George M. Cohan or Hoagy Carmichael or Jimmy Rodgers or Hank Sr? Where do we draw the line? I argue that when the principal creators are no longer alive, the copyright and mechanical rights should expire after a reasonable period of time. Right now, they seem to go practically into perpetuity.

My earlier point was that I don't think any songwriters or artists are being deprived by the posting of poor audio copies of songs greater than 25-years old which haven't been in print in that period of time. As long as TRL would pull down any song which claims infringement quickly, I don't see the damages here. It seems to me that somebody should need to show how TRL is inflicting damages before she's just shut down.

I think not. Read on...

Have you ever made a tape or recording of a famous groups live performance?

ILLEGAL!

Have you ever sang "Happy Birthday" in a public place?

ILLEGAL!

Do you have images on your computer that you can't verify aren't copyrighted by someone else?

ILLEGAL!

Have you ever made a copy of a copyrighted song, or it's lyrics, and gave them to someone else?

ILLEGAL!

Have you ever performed Praise songs in your church that aren't your own, or "PD"?

ILLEGAL!

Have you ever made a backup copy of a computer program?

ILLEGAL! (Regardless of what the "manufacturer" says, the law, Copyright Law of the United States, Title 17, U.S.C., now says that backup copies may be made only if a computer is to be repaired. Once it's repaired, the backup copy must be destroyed!)

Have you ever sung "White Christmas", or "Jingle Bells" in a public place (like your office party) that hasn't paid a license fee to ASCAP or BMI?

ILLEGAL!

Have you ever asked someone to give you the lyrics (words) to a copyrighted song?

ILLEGAL!

Have you ever posted copyrighted lyrics on a web site?

ILLEGAL!

There's far more in the law than most people think, and ignorance of the law is NO EXCUSE!

I seriously doubt anyone here hasn't done something illegal in this area. I've printed out the whole law text (290 pages) and it makes interesting reading. What's more interesting is that all "intellectual property" isn't treated the same. Song copyrights are good now for a minimum of 70 years! However, inventions (covered by patents) are only protected for 20 years! Why? I suppose it's because inventors don't have the same big lobbying groups (like the R.I.A.A. and the M.P.A.) that spend millions to get these laws to passed like the media moguls do.

Yep. I suspect you're all guilty. I also suspect that Bob will now have to add a new rule or two to his Forum to protect himself. No more lyrics posted...no more pictures posted (unless by the photographer, himself), no more full songs (MP3's or .wav's) posted (except "PD", or your own works).

My GOD...we're stealing someone's living!

Y'all can read these laws (all 290 pages) if you care to. I have, and it ain't pretty (unless you're a writer or a publisher).

Yeah. I think there's going to be some changes here.

I could name some people now, but I won't. You all know who you are. I trust we'll see no more "violations" here.

Right?