Downhill Battle(http://www.downhillbattle.org) is a protest page against paying for any kind of RIAA endorsed music. The authors of Downhill Battle, hail from
Worcester,
MA. Their principal argument is to rid the world of the horror of the
RIAA,
Big 5 Labels, and
Large Media Conglomerates. They say that with the advent of P2P networks, and the ability to violate copyrights easily has opened up the way to get rid of the
Big 5 and their ilk.
This is true, but more than a few years late.
As of Tuesday, August 26th, Downhill Battle has a page with pictures of their various flyers in various locations. They also provide .pdf's for anyone to download and print, for flyering around the world.
Downhill Battle also has a page detailing how P2P is actually civil disobedience, and therefore desirable.
Their piece de resistance is their iTunes Music Store parody. Much along the same lines as the Don't Buy Music parody, their version of the iTunes Music Store is modified in a few ways.
- Switchers pictures are used in a mouse-over way so that they 'say' why they use iTunes Music Store over P2P networks.
- The first point on the pages is a comparison between iTMS, and burning a CD from a friend.
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The second point details the loss inherent in M4A compression.
- The third point details that the artist's take is still small, compared to Apple's cut from the track.
- Fourth, they say that nothing has changed about money distribution (by that I mean who gets how much per song).
- They challenge Apple to display the artist's cut beside each track available for sale.
- They say that the best way to support artists is to download their music from a P2P filesharing network.
They (Downhill Battle) even went to great lengths to maintain the 'Apple'
feel of the webpage. The traditional
sidebars have been altered as well.
- The first sidebar details how the internet should eliminate the exploitation of musicians.
- The second 'bar shows a graph of the decline of sales through the iTMS.
- The third takes a look at the pros and cons of the iTMS for independent labels.
- The fourth criticizes Steve Jobs terminology in describing the iTMS.