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RIAA Reversal On 'Work For Hire' Legislation
FatouDust writes: "Wired News reports that the RIAA has reversed its position on copyright law. Last November, the recording industry lobby quietly slipped a passage deep into the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act of 1999, that classified sound recordings as work for hire -- effectively preventing copyright from reverting to the artist after 35 years. After protest from artists such as Sheryl Crow and Don Henley, and Congressional hearings in May, it looks like the RIAA is now ready to recommend to Congress that the revision be stricken from the books by the end of the year." I wonder what changed their minds.
Who is apart of the RIAA? - the major record labels. And who just got themselves sued by the states for price fixing? RIAA is doing this more out of necessity then willingness.
The RIAA knows it's going to have to do something about the artists. The whole Napster issue is opening up some closets that the record executives would rather keep closed. The recording industry may have to be dragged kicking and scraming into a new economic model that does not screw the artist, but they know it will eventually happen.
This is nothing more than a diversionary tactic.
I wonder what changed their minds.
Could it be, could it possibly be, that they are cringing from the public exposure they are getting by alienating their own artists? Maybe when Courtney Love got up in front of God and Everybody and told people that the recording industry was nothing but a bunch of bloodsucking scumbags and decided to dump their promotional and distribution machine in favor of her own website that they actually went shopping for some very expensive guy with a ponytail who actually had a f***ing clue?
Honestly, I don't understand it. If I were the RIAA and I'd gotten away with getting such a completely disgusting abuse of copyright law passed, I'd wave it in everyone's face and scream: "look, the American People don't care anymore! they let me do whatever I want! I can steal and plunder and pretty soon I'm gonna move on to raping and pillaging!".
But some of their big time acts must have (somehow) gotten their message across. Some mentioned in the written statement are Don Henley and Sheryl Crow. Sounds like some really big cash cows were threatening to go the way of Ms. Love and defect. I'd like more information on the "Artists' Coalition" mentioned in the article. It's yet more proof that the RIAA is not to be confused with the interests of recording artists, nor their profits.
The best part is Hillary won't even admit she lost:
RIAA insisted that nothing had changed and, in a written statement, RIAA President Hilary Rosen reiterated that position.
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What happens when you outlaw guns
Grumble... I was trying to come up with a +1 Funny way of saying this, but it's not happening, so I'll just put it straight:
Does it bother anyone that the RIAA (and the MPAA and the SPA and the AARP and the NAACP and the AFL/CIO and lots of other TLA's) are rewriting the laws of this country? I thought only elected representatives could do that.
MSK
Does anyone else find it odd that music copyright ownership provisions are placed in a bill titled, "Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act of 1999?" I know, this is US Law, and has nothing to do with justice. But in a courtroom, an attorney from one side can object if the attorney from the other side is engaging in irrelevancies.
We need the same for our laws.
Of course I'm from Vermont, and our state is the direct beneficiary of this practice, too. We have a thing called "The Northeast Dairy Compact" that is designed to help keep small and family dairy farms afloat in a corporatist (Take that, Katz!) industrialist megafarm environment. The Northeast Dairy Compact always seems to get killed on its own by the big money on the other side. It only makes it through as an unrelated rider. But it keeps our green hills green and our scenery scenic.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
That's correct. Pick up a CD and check the fine print. Or watch the credits at the end of a movie (at the very end of the credits, usually).
That means Metallica does not have the right to sue Napster; they don't currently own the music they're suing over.
Wrong. Metallica somehow managed to sue their record company for the rights to their music, and won. I don't know the details, but as a result of a legal battle, Metallica in fact does own the rights to their music, and therefore can sue Napster.
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I'm the last person to want to side with the record companies, but i gotta admit... anything that keeps George Michael from making albums can't be all bad.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Everyone should keep in mind that the RIAA changing it's position on the law is NOT the same thing as the law being changed! Changes in the law have to be enacted by Congress. Don't go on a CD buying spree, boycotters, until there is actually legislative action. And furthermore, it remains to be seen whether the RIAA will actually take action on its "change of heart."
The labels are basically loan brokers who promote music to ensure returns. If I'm an artist, and i want to make a record, they give me noney, I make the record, then pay them back somehow.
Usually, the company also handles distribution, promotion, touring...you name it. This all costs money. So what they do is handle all the money, take what they payed for out of the artists profits plus their cut, and leave the scraps to the artist. So If they give me a $50 million dollar contract, I may still be making less than a janitor per year, while they get rich.
If the recording is a work for hire, then they need to hire and pay me to do it. They also need to hire me to perform it on tour. In this context, they would need to pay the artist a fixed, promised amount, and that's the end of it. They can't loan me money and take more than they give anymore. No more smoke and mirrors eating away at an artist's profits. Artists didn't see this oppurtunity to sue for back wages and profit, but the recording industry did and is trying to save it's ass.
In short then:
Artist: "You hired me to make a recording in exchange for $n, where's the money you promised, beotch...I'm calling my lawyer"
RIAA: "I would've gotten away with it if it weren't for them meddling kids!"
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
I wonder what changed their minds.
If they didn't change their minds, then they would probably lose any sympathy they are getting from artists at this point.
The extent to which the RIAA makes things better for the artists who sign with them is the extent to which the artists will agree with them.
Turn artists into wage-slaves, and kiss your coalition good-bye.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
We did... for a very brief period, we had the "Line Item Veto", which allowed the president to strike portions of laws, thus preventing congress from passing a bill that contained the meat of a law, while tacking on unrelated "pork barrel" projects to it that the president may not agree with.
I happen to agree with the Republicans that challenged the Line Iten Veto (and won) as well as the democrats in congress who (successfully) buried the attempt to amend our constitution to allow the Line Item Veto.
What we need is a constitutional amendment disallowing unrelated riders from being attached to legislation. This would put the power to nullify inappropriate portions of the law where it belongs, in the judiciary .
The Line Item Veto IMHO puts far too much power in the hands of the president, be he Republican or Democrat.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
"... it looks like the RIAA is now ready to recommend to Congress that the revision be stricken from the books by the end of the year."
Isn't anyone bothered by the fact that the RIAA is in a position to recommend such things to Congress? It makes the government look like a corporatist puppet without a mind of its own and without any pretence of representing the wishes of non-corporate citizens. Are things really that bad?
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
You are confused on several fronts here; let's see if I can help you out.
Firstly, let me point out that this copyright law only covers US artists. Secondly, since the rewriting of the Copyright Act in 1976, the US has *not* been in compliance with the Berne Convention regarding international copyright: copyright terms are far too long. Thirdly, you are actually talking about *2* different kinds of copyright: artist's copyright and performer's copyright.
Copyright was originally established as a government-granted monopoly of *limited* duration (28 years + one-time renewal of same for another 28 years). The idea was that, after a period of time for the author to gain monies from the sale of the copyrighted material, it would go into the public domain and anyone could then freely make a copy, sell it, etc.
Up until 1976, this was the case and the US was in compliance with the Berne Convention, which assured conformity with copyright law around the world. So, regarding pre-twentieth classical composers, you are, in a certain sense, correct. Those composers have now lost their copyright -- as artists. You could sit down, play on your keyboard your own version of, say, the 1812 Overture, rip it into a MP3, and sell it over the net.
BUT: a recording from, say 1964, of Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic playing that same piece is still protected by *performer's copyright*. You could not, for example, take a CD of that work, rip it, and post it for sale without inccurring the wrath of the copyright gods.
Now, in 1976, things changed. The Disney corporation realized that Mickey Mouse was about to go out of copyright (I am not making this up) and pressured the House of Representatives to rewrite the copyright laws so as to extend the term limit, to the term of creator's life plus 50 years. Since Walt Disney died in 1968, Mickey Mouse was now safe until 2018. Besides badly abusing the original intent of copyright laws, the US fell out of compliance with the Berne Convention, causing a rift with Europe.
Things actually got worse in 1996, when the Copyright laws were again rewritten. Besides extending copyrights to life of creator plus *75* years (MM safe until 2043), the law tightened up the "fair use" provision. ("Fair use" enabled, for example, reviewers to quote part of a work without being prosecuted under copyright laws.) Another thing that the rewrite did was to *illegalize* reverse engineering -- a common software practice. Plus it tilted the playing field in the direction of copyright owners in a number of other ways.
The bottom line, from your perspective is this: It's probably OK to trade classical music that was *recorded* before about 1920 -- that's out of both artists' and performer's copyright. Anything *since* then, however, *might* still be in performer's copyright, or had its copyright extended. Up to about 1950, there is probably a fair amount of music that *did not* have its copyright renewed. You're probably OK with that, but tread carefully. After 1950, your safest course, if you're not sure, is *don't*.
There are clearinghouses -- ASCAP and BMI come to mind -- whose sole job it is to collect royalties on recorded music. They would be able to tell you if a given piece by a given artist is still within copyright or not. You might also check with the Library of Congress, which is the official copyright depository for the United States.
Good luck!
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.