Chapter 441: The Traitor of the Beautiful Country
This function, which seems to be very basic and even taken for granted in later generations, was epoch-making in 1999. It marked the first time that cross-device file transfer was possible in a single software. Apple later built its huge technology empire by relying on this trick.
For users, this function is a pioneering P2P concept, and is the concrete implementation of "I for everyone, everyone for me". They can upload their favorite music to Qianqian Jingting, and when they find music they like, they can also save it to their own account and download it to their computer hard drive and Tianyin MP3.
Seeing Eva skillfully performing professional operations such as "format conversion" and "uploading audio to the Internet", Kailin was shocked on the spot.
You have to know that before this, music distribution mainly relied on purchasing hard copies of CDs or tapes. Even if someone recorded a song and posted it online, it was not necessarily in MP3 format, and it was scattered and unsystematic. How could it be collected and organized in such a systematic and batch manner like Mingyuan Technology?
The 'MP3 + Internet' model is enough to make the entire distribution and copying of music untraceable and uncontrollable.
Karin was no longer able to describe her thoughts at this moment in words. She could even foresee that the Recording Industry Association of the United States would never recover from this dimensionality reduction attack.
After being horrified, Kailin was overjoyed: Isn’t this the big news I’ve been looking for?
At this moment, she simply ignored the Recording Industry Association and those stars and companies that relied on music to make money. After all, she was not a musician, so as long as she could keep her job, it would be fine.
"Dear Eva, you are simply my angel!"
Kailin kissed Eva hard on the forehead and promised, "If mommy deducts your food money, I will make it up to you!"
Then she hummed a little tune and went to write big news.
BloodyMary Bar, Hollywood.
There looked like a goblet filled with red liquid hanging on the neon sign.
This is the name of a drink that is very popular in underground bars and is known as "tomato juice that won't make you drunk."
Inside the bar, the dim lights and noisy music exude restless hormones everywhere.
Lu Yiming and Su Zhenge sat on high stools, watching the woman in a bikini twisting and turning in the middle of the dance floor.
Su Zhenge took a sip of his cocktail and asked, "I heard that you were suing the Supreme Alliance. How did it turn out?"
Lu Yiming had a nonchalant expression on his face and said with a smile: "I guess we need to come up with some money. After all, we are in the United States, so we should spend some money to avoid disaster. Probably more than one million US dollars."
I have to say that the laws in the United States are still very complete. Although Lu Yiming took advantage of a loophole in the Advertising Law to skirt the law, he still has to pay the fine.
To put it bluntly, this money is just like paying homage to the boss.
As a foreign enterprise, how can it not pay protection fees?
Lu Yiming was quite open-minded about this. With the current sales volume of Tianyin MP3, one million US dollars was just a drop in the bucket, similar to the exquisite key chain given as a gift when buying a Mercedes-Benz car.
Hearing what Lu Yiming said, Su Zhenge was relieved, and then he returned to his playboy nature, saying with a smile: "That Mila threw herself at you, and you are not interested at all? I tell you, men, when you go out to play, you shouldn't have so many psychological burdens. Nowadays, rich people, regardless of gender, who doesn't go out to play?"
Lu Yiming waved his hands, showing little interest, and said, "Come on, she's several years older than me, and it's not certain who will play with whom between us."
When Su Zhenge heard this, he burst into laughter: "Good fellow, you still think you've suffered a loss, right?"
Lu Yiming asked, "Do you know anyone from the Recording Industry Association?"
Seeing that Lu Yiming was talking about serious matters, Su Zhenge put away his smile and asked, "What do you want to do?"
Lu Yiming said: "I want to buy the copyright."
“Buy copyright?”
Su Zhenge looked at Lu Yiming as if he were a fool.
"Why do you need to buy copyrights? Can't you download songs directly from the Internet with your MP3 player? Who would be stupid enough to pay for free songs?"
Lu Yiming smiled and said, "That's right, but it's also good to know a few more people. Do you have any connections in this area?"
"Sure. How about I call him now and ask him to come over for a few drinks?"
Lu Yiming said, "This is not the right occasion. Let's wait until tomorrow or the day after tomorrow and find a place to have a meal. It should be more formal after all."
"Okay. Tell me whenever you need anything."
"Um."
The two of them played in the bar for a while, and then Lu Yiming returned to live in an apartment he had bought in the name of Suqiao Pictures, next to the office building where Suqiao Pictures was located.
The next morning, Lu Yiming had just sat down at Mingyuan Technology's headquarters in the United States when an Asian employee found him and said, "Mr. Lu, someone from the Recording Industry Association came and said they want to talk to you."
"oh?"
Lu Yiming couldn't help but feel surprised.
I just told Su Zhenge last night that I wanted to meet someone from the Recording Industry Association, and they came early this morning? When did Su Zhenge become so reliable?
"Please ask him to come in."
After a while, Archie Nelson, head of the California branch of the Recording Industry Association of the United States, came in with several staff members.
Archie Nelson has a curly beard, messy long hair, and wears a black leather jacket. At first glance, he looks full of artistic atmosphere.
Behind him were several middle-aged men in suits, who were obviously either lawyers or clerks of the Recording Industry Association.
"Are you Mr. Lu?"
Archie Nelson's tone of voice was very aggressive, just like what others had said about the Recording Industry Association of the United States - as far as Lu Yiming knew, the Recording Industry Association of the United States was an organization that represented the intellectual property rights of the music recording industry, and the organization took an extremely aggressive attitude towards Internet users who wanted to freely copy published music.
Obviously, in Archie Nelson's view, Lu Yiming is also an "Internet user who wants to freely copy published music."
Lu Yiming was not panicked at all, and even acted quite enthusiastic: "Yes, I am Lu Yiming. Yesterday I asked my friend to meet the Recording Industry Association of the United States. I didn't expect you to come this morning. You are really quick to act. Would you like some tea? Or coffee?"
Archie Nelson was not moved by Lu Yiming's enthusiasm. He said in a tough manner: "Don't try to bribe me. I came here today to sternly warn you to stop running your Qianqian Jingting software in the United States and stop your infringement. Otherwise, we will sue you!"
"Huh? Weren't you introduced by Su Zhenge? What a misunderstanding."
Lu Yiming couldn't help but touch the tip of his nose, and his tone suddenly became serious: "Sorry, I thought you were friends. Are you going to sue me again? I went to court with Dimeng yesterday. Besides, uploading songs is a spontaneous behavior of users, and our company doesn't make money from these songs. You want to sue us? Did you win the lawsuit against Dimeng?"
Archie Nelson became depressed when he heard Lu Yiming talking about the lawsuit with the Recording Industry Association of the United States and Dimeng.
Since the establishment of MP3.com in March 1998, record companies in the United States have expressed great dissatisfaction with this so-called "free" and "resource sharing" business activity.
Because the hundreds of thousands of songs stored on the website belong to major record companies under the Recording Industry Association of the United States, such as EMI, SONY, PolyGram, etc.
The extremely high traffic volume of MP3.com has undoubtedly caused a large loss of traditional record consumers and will cause record companies to lose nearly $5 billion in revenue each year.
Therefore, when Diamond, which started out as a sound card manufacturer, began selling MP3 players, the angry Recording Industry Association of the United States took Diamond to a California court in October 1998. This marked the beginning of a life-and-death struggle between the Recording Industry Association of the United States and MP3 manufacturers, operators and players.
The Recording Industry Association of the United States filed the lawsuit based on the following grounds: Diamond's actions violated Article 17 of Chapter 10 of the current Copyright Law of the United States. The Diamond RIOMP3500 it produced was a type of digital recording equipment defined in the Recording Act of 1992 of the United States. Therefore, it requested the court to prohibit Diamond from selling the walkman.
The defendant, Dimeng, refuted this, arguing that the function of RIOMP3500 is simply to replay the compressed music files, which is different from the "independent recording function" stipulated in the recording law of the United States. Therefore, RIOMP3500 is not a recording device.
However, this argument was rejected by a California court.
Because, judging from the wording of the law, there is no requirement that the recording function of digital recording equipment must operate independently; secondly, adopting the defendant's defense will violate the legislative purpose of the Home Recording Act to protect copyright owners.
The final result of the court's judgment was: Diamond's sale of RIOMP3500 could indeed cause damage to music copyright owners, because according to the Home Recording Act, any manufacturer of digital recording equipment must install a copy management system or other system with the same function in the equipment it produces to prevent digital recording files from being illegally recorded.
Therefore, the court ruled that Dimeng should deposit a portion of the funds with the U.S. Copyright Office so that it can be distributed to relevant copyright owners to compensate them for the losses they may suffer due to reduced sales of their music works caused by consumers' self-use of digital recording equipment.
However, for the Recording Industry Association of the United States, the damage it will suffer is not "irrecoverable damage", so the court rejected the Recording Industry Association of the United States' request for the judge to issue a temporary injunction against the defendant.
Although this round came to a temporary end with the victory of Dimeng, a company in the MP3 camp, in order to resist the infringement of online music copyrights by illegal piracy, the Recording Industry Association of the United States announced on December 15, 1998 that it would cooperate with the five major record companies and IBM to launch a standard format EMMS3 for downloading music from the Internet to counter MP3.
However, Platinum Entertainment, the largest record company in the United States, did not join the Recording Industry Association of the United States. Instead, it used the application of MP3 technology as a very good marketing method and played the songs of its singers for free through MP3.com, a website that provides up to 75,000 song downloads every day. This directly led to the death of the EMMS3 standard format of the Recording Industry Association of the United States.
There is no doubt that although the Recording Industry Association of the United in name, it actually lost miserably.
Now that Lu Yiming brought up this matter, it was obviously to embarrass Archie Nelson.
Archie Nelson was about to refute Lu Yiming, but Lu Yiming changed the subject and said, "However, I consider that you are indeed in trouble, and I personally support the healthy and orderly development of the music industry, so we are willing to pay."
When Archie Nelson heard this, not only was there no joy on his face, but he felt that Lu Yiming was mocking them. He immediately flew into a rage and said, "Didn't you cause all this? Now you want to buy the copyright? How shameless!"
Lu Yiming's smile remained unchanged. He shrugged slightly and said in a relaxed tone, "Ah, if that's the case, you can continue not asking for money. I don't mind."
"this……"
Archie Nelson was dumbfounded.
Afterwards, he couldn't help but feel a little proud.
Piracy is rampant out there and they simply cannot control it. Now that he has come to them and said he wants to sue Mingyuan Technology, it is actually more of a threat than a practical significance.
However, what he didn't expect was that Lu Yiming was actually frightened and was willing to pay a fee.
To Archie Nelson, it felt like a windfall.
It turns out that the Xia people are easy to bully.
He immediately forgave Lu Yiming for his rude remarks to the Recording Industry Association of the United States, and said happily: "Let's talk about money..."
Lu Yiming immediately laughed: "That's right, how can there be a fool who doesn't want money?"
Archie Nelson: "..."
Forget it, I'll just bear with it as I'm getting paid.
The news that Lu Yiming had reached an agreement with the Recording Industry Association of the United States and paid a fee in exchange for a settlement spread like wildfire. That afternoon, the news media broke the news.
Subsequently, various news about Qianqian Jingting's upcoming charging began to spread.
Without a doubt, they felt that Mingyuan Technology had made a very wrong decision. They felt that as long as the Qianqian Jingting software was scrapped, Tianyin MP3 would no longer be a rival to the Dimeng RIOMP3500.
Afterwards, many users voiced protests in the comment section of Qianqian Jingting.
They said they would never pay for Lu Yiming's wrong decision, and they would never pay for songs that could have been free. If Qianqian Jingting chose to charge, they would immediately uninstall the software.
However, after hearing that Lu Yiming had reached a settlement with the Recording Industry Association of the United States, Ferdinand Mitford flew into a rage, calling the Recording Industry Association of the United States a traitor and a traitor to the country, and saying that they were unworthy of being a citizen of the United States.
