In a fabulous moment of stupidity the Recording Industry of South Africa (RiSA) has managed to piss off, and funnily enough, aid some South African internet users.
According to an article on MyBroadband RiSA sent local South African Internet Service Providers (ISPs) take down notices requesting that the ISPs block access to two international websites where music can be downloaded at very cheap prices.
Quoted from the article:
The two websites in question are Soundike (http://www.soundike.com/) and GoMusicNow (www.Gomusic.ru), offering subscribers music downloads at US$ 0.15 (R 1.20) and US$ 0.09 (R 0.72) per track respectively. Further discounts are applicable for full album sales.
These prices are significantly lower than local online music outlets. The local Nokia Music store typically charges R 10 per track and R 100 per album while RhythmMusicOnline charges R 7 per track for local music tracks. The price per track from certain local online music download services can however be as high as R 17.
Thankfully the ISPA sent RiSA some nicely phrased rejection letters to their request. In other words, they told them to get fucked. On behalf of those of us who listen to and buy music, I would like to say thank you ISPA.
Now can you understand exactly how stupid the RiSA has been? First of all they’ve brought attention to the fact that they want a monopoly. The greedy bastards want to make sure that their prices of R10 a track are seen as fair by the average South African. At R10 a track, you’d expect these tracks to be DRM free too…but they’re not. So essentially they screw you twice. That already makes me want to tell them to fuck right off.
Then there’s the other moronic move, they’ve gone and brought to the attention of the consumer, a wholly legal and vastly cheaper alternative. (There is some question over the legality of these sites but as it stands, they are legal in Russia and because of our laws, legal here too it seems).
So well done RiSA you’ve essentially taken a baseball bat and shoved it up your own arse. You’re going to lose a lot of respect by looking like greedy bastards AND you gave us a cheap alternative! JESUS CHRIST! Fucking well done boys.
You know, if it were possible, I’d nominate RiSA for a Darwin Award right about now. Especially when you take into consideration the last time (that I saw) they were in the news on MyBroadband which was a laugh a minute. If you’ll recall, or look back in my archives, that was when RiSA went up against local file sharing sites over pirated music. I have no problem with them doing that, however, they fucked up when they stated that Yvonne Chaka Chaka was one of the most downloaded artists. That’s just a blatant lie. No one respectable would waste bandwidth on her. Oh yes and when they said that music piracy was the reason many local artists don’t make it. I won’t rant about that here as I have done so before but yeah, I have views on this.
But thanks RiSA, Soundike looks like a great alternative to the Nokia site of legal robbery or Musica’s house of extortion.
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The only disadvantage with gomusic is that the Russian mafia steal your credit card details and buy drugs and women.
Still, since I generally use my credit card to buy drugs, women and music with, I can see where they are coming from.
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There is that minor problem.
It seems that Soundike may be alright though, a guy on the mybroadband forums claims to have purchased over 750 rands worth of music from them without any issues.