Goucher Event Very Educational by George Ziemann -- December 6, 2003 Here is my take on what happened at the Goucher College event in Baltimore on Wednesday, Dec. 3. Instead of a play-by-play (my original approach to the story - which became excessively long), let me just hit a few high points. If Mitch Glazier is going to be the RIAA's new representative on the education front, they've got bigger problems than peer-to-peer. To put it succinctly, Glazier looks and acts like an attorney propped up to speak the party-line propaganda, as opposed to someone who actually believes what they are defending. In other words, Glazier is no Hilary Rosen. Rosen at least appeared to believe the RIAA rhetoric, whereas Glazier seemed to be merely defending a position. Larry Feldman (aka leflaw), aptly defended the side of reality and, despite Glazier's position as the RIAA's government lobbyist, it was obvious which one had actual trial experience, as Glazier would simply spout a standard answer, whereas Larry would first lay the foundation for his argument, quoting copyright law and illustrating where Glazier had stopped just short of the truth in several instances. And leflaw was infinitely more entertaining and personable. The most fun was during the question and answer period following the discussion. While it didn't heat up as much as I would have liked, one student came right out and asked Glazier how the industry expected to survive when the consumers AND the artists all hated the labels. He responded with a lame story about how you weren't supposed to pay attention to which label an artist was on, followed by the admonition that just because you didn't like a company, that was no excuse to steal from it. Well, Mitch, ever since Napster, we DO pay attention to which record label is producing the product. While we don't have the right to "steal" from the RIAA (NOT the definition of copyright infringement, BTW), we certainly do have the right to not buy your product, which is what all the whining is about anyway. Ironically, Glazier had earlier advised that the consumer is represented by the marketplace. Hmmm... the consumer tried that. We decided the price for inferior goods was zero. When pressed for an explanation as to why we are supposed to pay for the same files that Hilary Rosen told us for three years were inferior, Glazier responded that some formats are almost CD quality. Uh... "almost" is not "as good or better than". Thus, it is inferior by definition. When one student asked about pricing, Glazier tried to tell them that prices had not gone up. Larry responded to this by producing my chart of the RIAA's suggested list price since 1990, which only goes up. "But back in 1982 when CDs were first introduced, they cost $20..." Yeah, and CD burners cost $15,000 then, which also has nothing to do with the fact that we nailed him for lying and used the RIAA data to prove it. There is also the simple fact that in 1982, most of those students had not yet been born, making whatever Glazier was saying immediately irrelevant to them. I did get to tell Glazier that part of our mission was to help him achieve the RIAA's goal of eliminating their music from the Internet, just to get it out of our damn way. Then I asked him how the consumers, the students, were supposed to tell the difference between the quarter-million artists' music that had been freely posted and the RIAA's batch of "illegal goods." No answer was forthcoming. Larry also seemingly threw down the gauntlet to the RIAA, informing them that it's time to build an alternative approach to the industry, which is the focus of DMusic. And Larry made Glazier define "legitimate", forcing Glazier to admit that DMusic was, in fact, a legitimate site, as well as each and every other independent act's web site, shared material, etc., that the artist has posted. This will certainly be good news for Grokster, Kazaa, Morpheus, et. al., who now have a million examples of what must be considered non-infringing uses -- namely the music which recently disappeared from mp3.com. Saved this for last... Early in the evening, Goucher College President Sanford Ungar (who was an excellent moderator, BTW, reasons for which are evident in his bio) asked Larry about the document on top of his stack of notes, having noticed that the title was "The Infamous Villain, Mitch Glazier." I have to give Larry credit for restraint in his response, which he ultimately referred back to Glazier, asking him to explain it. Those who know anything about the actual story will be interested to know that according to Glazier, he didn't actually come up with the work-for-hire amendment. In his version, it was penned by the House of Representatives, who apparently decided out of nowhere that an act pertaining to satellite transmissions needed a clause to screw every major recording artist out of their copyrights in perpetuity. Tom Barger later commented that, given the chance to respond to the question, his answer to Glazier would have begun with "How dare you...?" Overall, it was pretty obvious by the end of the evening that the one who probably received the most education Wednesday evening was Mitch Glazier. From the responses and reactions of the students, it was obvious that Glazier's appearance to "educate" them was, for the most part, relatively futile. Though the crowd dwindled after the discussion was ended, all the DMusic acts gave a good professional performance (both during the discussion's Q&A period as well as afterwards), but the artist award for the evening certainly must go to Jennae, if only because she played until her fingers literally bled. You've gotta love it.

©2003 George Ziemann All material on azoz.com is protected by copyright law and by international treaties, but it all seems rather pointless. You may reprint any article on this site in whole, in part, in effigy or in ridicule. I really don't care.