Slashdot Mirror

Here is a good analysis by a music lawyer of how the royalties get whittled down to zero. Here is a detailed article about how it works. Here is the detailed Courtney Love presentation. Some more information on how it works. Here is a report by the Recording Artists' Coalition.

Untrue, artists figure highly when the RIAA is trying to screw them over:

http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/052500.asp

Contrast with:

http://www.recordingartistscoalition.com/issues_wo rkforhire.php

The following contributed to Sen. Murray in the 2003-2004 election season:

Disney Worldwide Services, Inc. - $1,000, 8/23/2004
Motion Picture Association of America CA PAC (MPAA) - $1,000, 8/16/2004
Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc. - $158.02, 5/27/2004
Recording Artists Coalition - $5,300, 6/30/2004
Fox Group - $1,000, 6/15/2004
Paramount Pictures Group - $1,000, 5/27/2004
Motion Picture Association Of America CA PAC (MPAA) - $1,000, 5/27/2004
Warner Brothers PAC - $1,000, 5/27/2004
Don Henley, musician (The Eagles) - $5,300, 3/4/2003
Howard S. Welinsky, Warner Brothers Senior Vice President - $500, 3/6/2003
American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP) - $1,000, 3/20/2003
National Association of Theatre Owners of California/Nevada - $1,000, 3/20/2003
Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc. - $5,004.93, 3/20/2003
Glenn Frey, musician (The Eagles) - $5,000, 4/2/2003
Warner Brothers PAC - $1,000, 4/1/2003
Paramount Pictures Group - $1,000, 4/2/2003
Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) - $1,000, 4/24/2003
Fox Group - $1,000, 5/15/2003
Disney Worldwide - $1,000, 5/27/2003
American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP) - $1,000, 2/11/2004
Disney Worldwide Services, Inc. - $1,000, 2/9/2004
Disney Worldwide Services, Inc. - $1,000, 9/30/2003
Clear Channel Worldwide - $1,000, 10/2/2003
Microsoft - $2,000, 10/23/2003
Vivendi Universal Entertainment LLP - $2,000, 12/12/2003
Motion Picture Association of America CA PAC (MPAA) - $1,000, 12/15/2003
Paramount Pictures Group - $1,000, 12/10/2003

There were also several telecoms, cable companies, entertainment industry agents, etc. The Recording Artists Coalition (Henley and Frey are members) may or may not be evil; your call.

It takes more work these days for me to find an artist that I like but, when I do, it's a great discovery.

And how has the fact that good music has been ubiquitous and now a scarcity wrt to you hearing about it affected your CD buying frequency? I'll tell you how it affected mine: It dropped to zero.

In fact, being forced to "hunt" for music has allowed me to discover a ton of artists and genres that I would not otherwise be exposed to.

I guess we fundamentally differ here. I don't like being forced into anything, especially not by an incestuous oligopoly of corporations that:

• Suppress independent music and oppress their own artists
• Repeatedly lobbies for self-serving legislation at the expense of both public and artists.
• Repeatedly abuse their oligopoly for price-fixing, i.e. ripping the customer off.
• etc. ad nauseam

save me the lecture on how it's not stealing

Exactly. It's not. Only simple minds who can't deal with the complexities of copyright would call it thus, so they can understand. Well that, and people who want to deceive.

You're stealing.

I'm certainly not. I'm not even P2Ping music any more.

You're taking something for nothing that would otherwise be sold. If you could not steal it, you would buy it.

Wrong, very wrong. That's true in some cases. In other cases, music downloading causes people to buy more music due to P2P sampling. At the time that I was a heavy P2P user, I bought almost twice as many CDs per month than before, and that even though my previous No. 1 source for finding out about my kind of music (the German alternative music TV station "Viva 2") had been shut down for the sake of a more RIAA-friendly third mainstream channel. In last year's fall, the RIAA and others successfully lobbied to make file sharing of (most) music illegal in Germany (can't point out one time too often that it was legal before!). I stopped downloading music and haven't bought a single CD since then. A coincidence?

My hypothesis: There are at least three groups of P2P users:

• The casual user: Makes up the majority of P2P users. Downloads some songs, buys some CDs, doesn't buy others. The net effect of P2P on this user's CD consumption is negligible.
• The cadger: Uses P2P because it's free-as-in-beer and has 1000 excuses for not paying. P2P lets his CD consumption drop to zero. But then, most of these probably have always found a way to get free music. If it wasn't for P2P, they would just record songs from the radio, copy/lend it from friends and whatnot. They have never paid much for music and never will.
• The fan (I would say I belong to this group): P2P and other non-RIAA-controlled distribution channels have been a boon for them. They could conveniently find out about gazillions of non-mainstream bands and sample their music in (cf.) high quality. If they found bands whose music they really like, they would go out and buy their CDs because fans show devotion for their idols. You can't call yourself a fan if all you have are burnt CDs. The net CD consumption of this group would increase (sometimes even greatly) because of P2P.

Now what does this boil down to? Blaming the casual user is ridiculous. They have been average customers wrt sales, and they stay average customers. What about the cadgers? Aren't they stealing? Yes, it's definitely not right what they do.

Patents for an idea makes sense, in part, when an inventor wanted to protect his or her ability to profit or control the result of their effort. Patents and intellectual property protections were designed to prevent people from using your idea or effort to their betterment at your expense.

You're putting the cart before the horse. Patents and Copyright were not introduced in order to protect the business interests of inventors or authors, this was only the means. The ends were to encourage more innovation, as outlined in Section 8 sentence 8 of the US Constitution:

The Congress shall have power (...) To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

These rights (patents, copyright, trademarks and trade secrets, which are only contractual) are now being gathered under the collective, misleading name of intellectual property, in an effort to bypass the original justification of these rights, formerly referred to as exclusivity rights, in order to turn the means into the ends.

So first there were exclusivity rights, which were meant to serve the public, and whose benefits to the inventor/author (or rather, the patent or copyright owner) are merely incidental. Now justification and means are to be reversed. Intellectual property is meant to serve the rights holders, and benefits to society are merely incidental. More importantly, it does not even matter if society as a whole suffers from IP legislation. Logic patents and copyright are or are now intended to be perfect instruments of power for corporations. Large stashes of patents allow large software companies to lock out competition by smaller companies, and monopolize markets. Likewise, large music labels, which now are the copyright holders to almost all songs they release, are successfully lobbying for ever more severe copyright laws in an effort to shut down alternative promotion channels like P2P and independent internet radio stations. The big labels are afraid that, while airwaves are scarce and can easily be controlled by payola, Internet traffic is basically unlimited in range. You cannot have 500 national radio stations since the frequency bands are limited, but you can easily operate 5000 Internet radio stations without any bandwidth collisions. Incidentally, while the RIAA claims to have suffered massive losses due to Internet "piracy", many independent labels have experienced benefits from increased promotion of their music via P2P and other channels such as (the former) mp3.com and independent internet radio.

I see the intellectual property movement as part of a general neoliberal self-referential justification of capitalism, where the original goal of improving living conditions for the population is increasingly irrelevant. Today's capitalism is intended to be implemented for capitalism's sake, not because it would make lives of men better as compared to marketplace economies with a stronger balance between public and private property. The manipulations of the Californian power market, or the privatization of water supplies into monopolists' hands in South America are just two examples of many.

Uh... how about the fact that nothing even remotely like that is in the statute?

You're right and I noticed after posting this. Since the german copyright explicitely contains such a provision (par. 53(1) UrhG), I assumed that Americans had the same freedom. Obviously they don't.

Copies, yes. Perfect digital reproductions, no.

Actually, the fair use clause doesn't even guarantee the right to make analog copies. Neither does it explicitely prohibit perfect reproductions so it all boils down to a matter of interpretation.

Yes, that's right: it's a big conspiracy.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you. Now that digital broadcasting is gaining momentum, they want legislation to make hometaping technically impossible. The copyright flag is just one step among others. E.g., the DMCA (1201 k) already requires manufacturers of analog recording devices to obey to copy control (i.e. prevention) mechanisms. The ultimate aim is that there will be no way to record a digital TV/radio broadcast if it has the copy control bit set, apart from building your own recorder. Note that the RIAA is lying again: Digital radio is - for bandwidth reasons - far from CD quality[1]. VCRs will go extinct and be replaced with devices like DVD players which aren't capable of any recording, and can be subjected to any DRM scheme from region code over expiring keys to the right to unilaterally terminate your license upon any activity which the MPAA disapproves of (this will probably be used rarely, but not be unheard of). Just take a look at the legislation, the RIAA and MPAA have pushed through in the recent years, and are now trying to establish. Here's an incomplete list:

Succeeded:

• The underestimated NET Act
• DMCA
• Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (of course this name obscures the involvement of The Walt Disney Company a little)

In progress:

• PIRATE Act
• INDUCE Act

More laws are waiting where these are coming from (well, that would be Hell, I guess). The goal is to give copyright holders (which are only rarely nowadays the actual artists) enormous power even beyond that which they already wield. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people that are too lazy, gullible or indifferent to defend their freedom.

Nonsense. Macrovision doesn't even come close to meeting the definition of "access control mechanism" given in Title 17. The courts have so held, despite civil suits alleging differently.

You haven't got references? I have.

Before you can "recompress" you must "decompress," which is the same as making a perfect digital copy of the original work.

Yes, that's why even viewing a DVD is illegal. D'oh! Seriously though, at least German courts have ruled that making a transient copy of copyrighted material in order to exercise fair use rights is fair use itself. So of course this is a BS argument.

But ideally they're representing artists rights, put to that position by artists...

That is not correct. The *RI* organizations represent the recording industry, not artists. Recording artists are represented by organizations like the Recording Acadamy and the Recording Artists Coalition --organizations which are often at odds with the RIAA.

Inevetably? You mean this happens in 100% of the cases? Can you give some examples?

Talk to these guys about it. Read some articles. This isn't just made up.

Inevetably? You mean this happens in 100% of the cases? Can you give some examples?

Talk to these guys about it. Read some articles. This isn't just made up.

This would officially make record companies the world's largest distributors of "pirated" tracks. Boy would I love to see an enforcement team from the Recording Artists Coalition sweep down on RIAA headquarters wearing police-style jackets and baseball caps with "RAC" emplazoned on them, demanding that all member record companies cough up years of unpaid royalties for these pirated tracks.

The biggest flaw in this idea is that it is yet another attempt to solve the wrong problem: how to build a life support system for record companies. I wish these pundits would read and understand what musicians are saying increasingly in their writings : that the whole music piracy brouhaha is not about musicians, it's only about record companies, and that we really don't need record companies.

Most musicians by far make a living with paying gigs, not CD sales. Recording contracts are carefully structured so that all expenses come out of the artist's share, which ends up being zero. CD sales benefit musicians by giving them exposure which translates into gigs. A musician gets this same exposure whether someone buys a CD, listens to a song on the radio or downloads it from Kazaa.

Replacing the entire record industry with free distribution wouldn't deprive musicians of anything except the opportunity to let the record companies control their careers. And as an added bonus, it would mean one less source of big-money whispering into the ears of lawmakers.

Well ... Zappa, or at least his widow, is hardly indifferent to copyright. I think you may be seriously misinterpreting those lyrics.

Re the Sonny Bono Act, his widow: "I'm all for copyright term extension, to maintain the integrity of the artists' intentions," says Gail Zappa, widow of recording artist/composer Frank Zappa, "even though for most it's an uphill fight to get control." Frank Zappa got ownership of his masters before he died; his widow owns them but has sold the distribution rights to Rykodisc"

And a recent lawsuit.

There's a difference between the death of expression and the death of copyright.

• You have to agree to buy another 5 cars from GM over the next 10 years?
• You're not allowed to buy a car from any other manufacturer or they can sue you??
• You can't get any warranty that the car won't break down even driving it off the lot???
• You're not even allowed to test drive the car????

The Recording Artists Coalition is an organization of about 140 mostly major label artists who protested unfair record contracts in the days before the Grammy Awards this year. Led by big names such as Don Henley and Sheryl Crow, the coalition sucessfully convinced Congress to repeal a 1998 amendment to the Copyright Act of 1978 (which Courtney Love eloquently criticized) that made musicians' recordings "work-for-hire," meaning that the copyright would remain with the record company forever instead of reverting back to the artist after 35 years.

The other issues they're campaigning about are the length of contracts and payola, among other things.

By the way, Salon writer Eric Boehlert should win the fucking Pulitzer Prize for writing about the sorry state of radio. He's writing great stuff, and as far as I can tell, he's the only paying any attention to it.

The record industry tried to stiff the artists a few years ago by having musical recordings declared "works for hire." The mechanical reprodcution rights then reverted to the label instead of the artist after 26 years. For more information, check out http://www.recordingartistscoalition.com

... my wife is going to get really mad at me for all the CDs i buy after listening to Radio Paradise. i think this site has caused more havoc in my checking account than any other music-related stimulus since the advent of the CD player!

as several posters mentioned, we can't view this as a victory - not yet, probably not ever. the RAC has many fights ahead, and anyone who listens to internet radio should try to help: details here.

The only people whose ox is getting gored from "the culture of CD burning" are the Five Families of the Record Business and the RIAA. The artists already get it up the butt, with no vaseline and definitely no reach-around.

If Sheryl Crow and Elvis Costello want to see more return from their music, then they should go indie and set up a site where people can download their music legally for a fair price. Unfortunately it's not so easy to get out of a record contract...it really is like indentured servitude at the moment.

So yeah, let Hilary Rosen, Vivendi, Sony, AOL-TW/WEA, Bertlesmann and EMI weep in their beer all they want. I have no sympathy for those bastards.

I will continue to buy my music used because I don't want them to make money off my musical tastes. If I want to rip my own mix CDs from CDs I bought, then that's my own damn business. I don't do P2P...I am naturally paranoid about my network and am not into opening up holes in it lightly.

Until artists get the fair shake they deserve, I do not see my actions as hurting them. They are suffering enough as it is at the hands of the same people who cry buckets of crocodile tears about "the poor artists" in the media.

The issue here is will the artist actually get anything from this, the current music distribution systems being implemented in the states don't actually give anything direct to the performer. And moreso, recording contracts are now loaded with clauses to cover "future distribution technology"

I disagree. Now consumes have an alternative free outlet to find what music they like, as opposed to the same old same ol the record companies pay the radio stations to play.

I see internet music downloads as more of an interactive radio system rather than a direct competitor to CD's. We can now be choosy in what we listen to, and what we think is worth spending money on will change, because nobody likes to get an album of 'filler' with only one or two decent songs (the singles). Will this force the labels, artists, and producers to create better work? We can only hope.

Throughout history, governments have been subject to corruption and all too often have sold the rights of their citizens away to the highest bidder. The US now faces such a time, as it has before. Therefore, I offer this proposal to solve the problems of rule by the highest bidder.

Now, before I am labelled as an anti-establishment hippie, allow me to present my case to you. I will outline the historic case of government corruption in the United States as well as offering a method to ensure that such corruption will never happen again. Hear me out before you make your decisions. The Historic Case: America in the Gilded Age (1870-1930) The years following the Civil War in the US, often called Reconstruction, are also known as the Gilded Age. During this period, political parties, using political machines like Tammany Hall, they were able to harass, threaten, and force people to vote in the manner the party wanted. All government actions were in control of the party. Appointments, elections, campaigns, etc were all controlled by corrupt party bosses. Voters were often gathered together like a flock of sheep on Election Day, taken to local bars, intoxicated, and then taken around to vote at several different polling stations under the lead of party bosses. Edgar Allan Poe died because of these party bosses, who filled him with liquor (which he was allergic to), took him around to get him to vote five or six times, and then left him for dead.

Such concern for the public is touching, is it not?

Also, during this period, Big Business, fueled by the Industrial Revolution, grew more and more powerful and more and more corrupt. Standard Oil, the Rockefellers, Carnagie, the RailRoads; all of these businesses used a system of bribery and quid pro quo to keep the government from investigating their illegal and immoral practices. The Railroads changed rates, gouged customers, impoverished farmers, all to make a profit. The meat factories in the cities exploited their workers. Upton Sinclair, in his book The Jungle, described the unsafe and unsanitary conditions under which meat was packaged. The American Federation of Labor lobbied for workers' rights and protection against the abuse of Big Business.

Finally, under Theodore Roosevelt, Big Business was muzzled. The FDA, the Pure Food and Drug Act, and other Progressive legislation were all passed. Big Business had a standard to live up to. Workers had rights and dignity guarenteed to them. Finally, the evils of the Gilded Age seemed to be at an end. Will We Never Learn? America in the Second Gilded Age (1950-2002) Now America faces a new Gilded Age. Money is considered a form of Free Speech. Corporations are allowed the rights of citizens (except that a corporation doesn't have to pay taxes and can't be tried for criminal conduct). Once again, industries are trying to enslave their workers and their consumers, all for the Almighty Dollar.

The Recording Industry Artists Association, a group of distributers who can't play Mary Had A Little Lamb on the piano, are now legally allowed to hold the copyright on any work they distribute in perpetuity. The Satellite Home Viewing Act of 1999 has a clause that makes all sound recordings works-for-hire. Courtney Love has spoken out against the RIAA and its illegal actions at Salon.com. This bill was altered after all the arguments and debates were settled. There was no chance for a revisiting of this issue before it was sent off to the President. A boy who only had the authority to spellcheck the bill altered it at the request of the RIAA, in such a way as that no one had a chance to fight the alteration.

The RIAA, the MPAA, Disney, and other Hollywood industries are now trying to force another bill through the Senate. The Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA), a bill that outlaws all fair use rights of the consumer as well as outlawing innovation in technology has been proposed by Senator Fritz Hollings of South Carolina. This Senator recieved over $300,000.00 in campaign contributions from Disney alone. Tell me there is no quid pro quo going on now.

As bad as the RIAA is with its desire to enslave musicians in contracts illegal under California law, Disney is worse.

Disney has stolen and made its fortune from the public domain without giving one thing back to the very people they have stolen from. Where would Disney be without Snow White? Without Cinderella? Without Pocahontas? Without the Little Mermaid? Disney has raped the public domain and not given one whit in return. Every time the trademark on Mickey Mouse gets ready to expire, Disney lobbies to have the trademark law extended. Sorry, uncle Walt, you can't have your cake and eat it too. You raped the people, and they demand the Mouse and His Furry Friends for sacrifice.

And Einser, the CEO of Disney, is the chief backer of the CBDTPA.

Let me tell you what will happen if this bill passes:

1. It will be illegal to record anything off of your TV.

2. It will be illegal to listen to CDs you've bought on your computer.

3. It will be illegal to own an MP3 player.

4. The computer you are currently using will be illegal since it's not fitted with Copy Protection.

5. It will be illegal to innovate, to create, or to even write without the blessing of the Entertainment industry.

I've already spoken at length about this here. The Solution Since we can't outlaw soft money altogether to get rid of the quid pro quo going on right now, we'll have to regulate it. I propose that all campaign contributions over $5 be forced to be anonymous. Claims can't be made for tax write-offs on campaign contributions.

Think it over. If all donations are anonymous, there can be no quid pro quo. That way, it doesn't matter how much Disney et al give. With no quid pro quo, Congressmen can't be bought as they can now. They will have to face the people who elected them and do their will.

Does this seem too simple? Well, maybe it is. Maybe only the firebombing of California off of the map of the US will stop this garbage. But, a girl can dream can't she?

Phoenix

The musicians are so dumb, they'll whore for the record companies for fifteen cents. Yet they give away millions to the same company. It staggers the immagination just how stupid these guys are.

An artist wants to get their music heard by as many people as possible. That requires radio. The RIAA controls what goes on the radio. Ergo, an artist must deal with the RIAA companies.

Does this mean they're happy about it? Heck no. But right now there's no other game in town.

I notice one name conspicously lacking... Metallica How interesting!

This is why many artists are taking a stand:

Recording Artists Coalition

(take a look, you'll be suprized who's there)

ps. I think I did hear one person boo... I'm sure he/she got to enjoy the remainder of the grammays outside. :/

So as far as I can tell, unless content providers (or their representatives) try to prevent massive distribution of illegal content they will all go out of business, and that's what all want, isn't it?

The problem with the music industry at the moment is before the possibility of file sharing, artists and the labels were on the same page. The labels worked for the artists and made money. And while they were making money, they really talked it up as if they were doing it all for the artists. The fact is, the best interest of the label at the time was to support the artists rights. Now, times have changed, and because of that, the record label is changing to continue doing what is best for them...however, this happens NOT to be best for the artists anymore, AND it goes against what the labels have promised to the artists.

Check out the RAC for more. Don Henley and tons of other artists are doing some really good work for artists rights.

Now, this may appear off topic because the article is about the movie industry, but if you take away the artists as the variable and leave the same effect on the industry and the public, it's just the same as the movie industry. Record companies are doing everything they can to maximize profits in the short-run...movie companies are doing the same.

If the industry would work with this, then eventually they would have the control they want over it. They would also have more profits. True, the industry would be more profitable if piracy didn't exist at all, but the industry (both movie and music) refuses to accept this. The example of artists just goes to prove my point...they're willing to damage the relationship with the very thing that makes them money to begin with just because they are too stubborn to accept the fact that times are changing.

Like I saw someone post on /. a few weeks ago, they need to stop crying to the courts everytime they lose a penny...the laws protect the rights of the industry, but it never had the right to protect profitability...it's a free market. However, with practices that the RIAA and others have been doing lately (there's some good articles in Rolling Stone that describe the RIAA paying congressmen to slip in laws with big bills that support the industry, but basically go unnoticed...things like preventing artists from buying back their own works) they may actually be able to buy that full protection. Congressmen need to get more educated on the matter...lawyers are winning cases (same with computer issues) because the courts don't understand it. That is ridiculous. Okay, enough rambling...

This is exactly the people that need to be doing this, they are the ones with the clout to make changes. These are the people who make the labels the most money. For a list of the members of the Recording Artists Coalition, it can be found here.

As for starting their own label, most are currently under contract and the contracts generally have exclusivity clauses. Sure you can quit, but until we get our 7 or 10 albums from you, or the end of your contract (10 years) you can't release on another label even if it's your own. This is what happened to the group Boston, with Columbia records. After "Don't Look Back" Columbia told the band that they needed to change their sound. The band said no, we record our music our way, or we dont play. Columbia said fine then you can't play until the expiration of your contract. 8 years later, their contract was up, the band reformed (most had left the business) did "Third Stage" which went platinum before it hit the stores. 22 years later their first two albums are still available, in lord knows what pressing, and the band members are fighting over royalties, and the albums are still selling in impressive numbers, that most artists never reach.

The bottom line is that it take a lot of time effort and energy to run a label, even a small indie label, and getting the distrbution is a nightmare. Even Ani Defranco's label, "Righteous Babe Records" is a member of the RIAA. Part of the reason is that Gold and Platinum records are issued by guess who? The RIAA. I've had several conversations with people from smaller labels who had their name added, without their knowledge, to the RIAA membership list, simply because one of their artists earned a gold or platinum record.