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Napster Offers $1B For Music-Swapping Rights
An unnamed correspondent writes: "CNET is reporting that Napster has offered to pay the music industry $1 billion over 5 years for the rights to unlimited music swapping. That works out to $1.67/month/user with 50 million users." Here's coverage on FoxNews as well, which says: "Under the proposed settlement, $150 million would be paid each year for the first five years to the major record labels -- Sony, Warner, BMG, EMI and Universal -- with an additional $50 million alloted annually for independent labels."
Plus, there's now an mp3 encoder (LAME) that is open-source, meaning that anyone can compile it and use it; gone are the days of paying Fraunhofer IIS royalties for "their intellectual property".
Fraunhofer Group still owns patents in the United States and other countries on the process of "Overlapped cosine transform plus Fourier transform encoding, followed by psychoacoustic quantization and entropy coding" which is a necessary and irreplaceable part of MP3 encoding. This is why Ogg Vorbis doesn't use a Fourier transform but instead a finer cosine transform.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
First, IANAL, yet.
Artists have never been entitled to say what happens to their works, at least in the USA. Now, they are granted the sole, assignable right to make commercial copies of said work. Similarly, they are granted by law royalties for public performance of their works. That is the extent of their entitlement, to my knowledge.
Copyright, based on the clause in the US Constitution investing Congress with the power to secure a limited monopoly for artists and inventors "to promote the useful arts and sciences", is not an absolute grant nor a property right. It is a limited monopoly, granted by Congress. This stands in contrast to legal systems in other countries (e.g. France) wherein the foundation of Copyright is a "natural right" - a non-assignable (IIRC) right of authors to dispose of their works as they see fit. This is why French directors and authors always get the final cut of their works, if I'm not mistaken.
Our system recognizes different "natural rights" (like freedom of speech, and the press), and the foundation of our copyright system is pragmatic - designed to promote progress and the creation of new works, not to ensure an artist has total control over a work they have created (there are good philosophical reasons for this I won't go into here, but for a start, consider that neither art nor invention exist in a vacuum). I would further argue that the philosophy behind the Constitutional basis for copyright would find the current copyright regime (which rather than encouraging new works, encourages an "everlasting gravy-train" mentality among copyright holders) abhorrent.
I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, blah blah blah.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
It's practically impossible to find the independent labels who, under this scheme, they would owe money to. Also, this assumes that the record labels ARE the law. If one small independent record label didn't want to participate in this deal, could they sue Napster and cause the same contraversy there is now?
A buck 67 is still to much to give to the labels. I'd be happy w/ 10 dollars a month if 95% went to the artists.
Until then opennap it is.
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
Ok, so let's say everything works out as planned. They pay the record companies, et. al., $1 billion over the course of 5 years. What happens after that? Who get's all the money. Does that mean that the Napster people stand to make another $1 billion over the 6-10th year for themselves after that??
If Napster wants to go to a pay-per use method, then what's the point of peer to peer sharing? If I'm paying $2-$10 a month for this service, I expect *quality*. I don't want to have to try to download 10 different versions of the same song to get a download rate faster than 5KBytes/sec. I don't want to search through lists of poorly/incorrectly named song files. If I'm paying for it, I want 30KBytes/sec minimum. I want full 320kbps MP3 files. I want *every* song from *all* of the record labels participating. I don't want to see only what is on the hard drives of the other people who are on the same server as me. The reason Napster succeeds is that it is free, so everybody has a low expectation for the quality of service. If your cable TV only worked certain times of the day, and some of the channels were intermittent, you would not be happy. But for antenna channels? You just keep adjusting those rabbit ears as best as you can and grin and bear it. Why? Because you don't pay for it.
You'd be amazed how many rich suburban kids use Napster for the convenience, not because they don't want to pay. If anything, paying would make them feel better about downloading the music.
Yet another reason the RIAA's artists should be releasing their albums in high-quality MP3 bundles, for a fair price (I'd say, $5-7 per album, with 50% or more going to the artists themselves would be fair to us and fair to the artists).
People will pay if it's CONVENIENT and UNENCUMBERED. If either of those two things fails to exist, they will STEAL. This is why Napster is successful. This is why other similar services will be successful in the future. The RIAA can get it's act together and profit, or keep losing control over their content as they have been.
"And like that
It is a lot cleaner than the older versions!
:)
Get it for OpenNap servers!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
They sort of have a Daffy Duck mentality when it comes to money (Mine! Mine! it's Mine! All Mine!)
Watch them shoot the goose that lays the golden eggs rather then give it up to anyone else. Even tho the goose was never theirs in the first place.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
There are about 270 million people in the US. AOL has 27 million members paying $20/month.
2. What's going to stop people from sharing Napster accounts?
Napster might well cut a deal with AOL where all AOL users become Napster members. AOL would pay Napster around $50 million a month for this and would maybe raise its rates a dollar or two. Remember AOL is now AOL Time Warner one of the Big Five recording companies.
The logical extension of this once Napster does cut a deal with the RIAA similar to the one that Napster proposed for $1Billion, Napster becomes an attractive target for buyout/merger with AOL-Time Warner.
I think you have a good point, but I also think the RIAA may be overplaying their hand. No matter what happens to this particular company, the rise of Napster was a watershed event for the music distribution industry: Millions of people have learned that it is feasible and easy for them to use the internet to move music around.
No matter what happens now, people will still know that. And just as importantly, Napster's size and user volume provided a lab for exploration of how to do it - software, legal issues, pitfalls, hype, arguments pro and con, incentive for copycat technologies, etc.
So whoever starts something new is standing on Napster's shoulders. They don't have to deal with the huge hurdle of explaining to the public what it is and how it works and why it might be fun to use. They don't have to do a lot of the development. They only have to deal with the legal issues.
And there are two ways that can go down. One, someone with a lot of money can make an offer the RIAA can't refuse, and it happens above board. If that happens, okay, well, fair enough. Everybody probably wins, or at least nobody loses too much.
Possibility number two, however, is that it goes underground. Someone comes up with a FreeNet or a Gnutella or an OpenNap that works, that scales, and that doesn't have an address where papers can be served. No other industry has ever faced anything like this before: A ready-made, prepackaged illicit adversary with infrastructure already in place, where millions of educated, well-to-do people have demonstrated that they have no moral problem with lending their participation and support.
If the distributors are smart they'll hedge their bets and sign. If I worked for Napster this would sound like blackmail. As it is, it's just some friendly advice.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
1. Is it likely that they're going to get 50 MILLION people to pay this? How many people are there in the US, like 400 million? Less? (yes, I know the Internet is global, just for perspective)
2. What's going to stop people from sharing Napster accounts?
3. Is subscribing to this new industry-sanctioned Napster going to mean that what was formerly called "pirated" mp3s are now legal to own? Ie, is this buying a license to own MP3s for CDs you didnt' buy because you bought a Napster subscription? Am I allowed to then trade those MP3s via a non-napster (freenet, gnutella, or something else) system?
4. What kind of crazy license/agreement am I gonna have to sign to subscribe? I can't wait to read this agreement. I have a feeling, knowing the RIAA, it will not exactly be equitable, and birthright forfeiture may be included.
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
You'd be amazed how many rich suburban kids use Napster for the convenience, not because they don't want to pay. If anything, paying would make them feel better about downloading the music. I should know, I'm one of them.
Oh, and if it's cracked, the record labels wouldn't go along, even if they initially acquiesce.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Seems the next logical step ;)
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
So, Napster would expect me to pay $4.95-$9.95/month (as the news.com article says) to share the songs I have on my hard drive, using my bandwidth (which I also pay for)! Also, by paying for the service, I'm going to expect a certain quality from the service. I don't think that it is unreasonable for me to expect transfers to always complete (even if someone else wants to log off), for the service to only list complete songs (so I don't download a 4.3MB file to find out that the correct one is 5.2MB and I miss the last minute of the song) and for the service to have the songs I wish to hear.
Don't get me wrong, Napster is a good service, but I'm currently willing to put up with those limitations I listed above because the price is right. If they are not able to fix the service to protect my intrests, then I will find another solution.
Doh!
So in a new age artist aren't intitled to say what happens to their music? That's worse than RIAA... I don't have a problem with tape swapping and file sharing as long as no one is directly profitting off it. At least with gnutella there is no central server owned by corperate garbage making money off someone else's hard work. Napster does. Napster makes money by distributing other artist work and doesn't compensate them for it. Am I the only one that see's a problem with this?
How is Napster selling out... they're buying in. It's a business if you haven't noticed. The main Idea for a business is to make money. Napster is now finally having to "pay" for their product. If they want to make money and stay in business they have no choice.
Now as far as copyright laws and DMCA go, I certainly agree that the copy right laws are in great need of reform (although the last major act aside from the DMCA was the Copyright act of 1978 not the 1700's)
I do think the RIAA has screwed more artists out of royalties than Napster ever will and oppose RIAA collecting internet royalties, much less charging 50% which is outrageous. I'd rather see a nonprofit org collect like ASCAP or BMI who typically charge between 12% and 17%.
I think fair use laws need to be more specific and created to protect the consumer and artist more than the corporations like they do now. The US should aslo work towards breaking the strangle hold that the big 5 have on the music industry.
Napster does to alot of good for the indy idustry and that's fine I won't argue, but if they are going to make money of the indy industry why not give some to the artist? is that too much to ask. I also disagree strongly with RIAA and assorted bands targeting napster users. I'd like to see RIAA kill over dead and napster do the right thing in paying artist there fair share. bottom line, if napster profits, why shouldn't the artist too?
1) Napster doesn't have 50 million users. It's the same thing as the ICQ/AIM or MSN or Yahoo or just about anyone on the web's numbers. Multiple accounts, forgotten accounts, abandoned accounts all take their toll on the real number. Sure, Napster has a lot of users, but no where near 50 million. I myself have 4 from testing the Napster module for perl. I forget the actual numbers, but ICQ has something like only 5-6 million real users for the tens of millions of accounts.
.agrippa.
2) Charging people for what they previously got for free on the internet won't work. It's been proven time and time again. Napster might be able to make this model work to some extent, but not in the sheer quantity needed to even approach payment on their settlement. At $9, they need a little under 2 million monthly subscriptions. At $5, they need a little under 4 million subscriptions. Those are big numbers for an internet subscription service.
3) There are free Napster alternatives. 'Nuff said.
4) Quality of content. If you're going to pay, you expect your download not to time out or mrHaX0r01 to not cut you off in the middle of the download because he's rebooting his machine. We put up with these inconviences now because it's free. If my phone company started disconnecting my calls in the middle of conversations I wouldn't be too happy. There is a level of service expected when you pay for something, and I don't believe they have that level of service to attain the subscriptions necessary.
Enjoy your Napster while you can. This settlement offer shows that Napster knows it lost and knows its royally screwed. There is very little chance that Napster can raise over $200 million a year profit to pay for this, and the record companies know that.
Lets go over this. Who is going to pay the $1B? The users? yup. What users? Well the users who decide to pay the $9/month so they can download mp3's off other people who pay $9/month! Stupid. Wait? I thought the new napster server will be a central server that you can leech off of unlimited? No thats emusic.com , soon to be another casaulty dot bomb. Whose going to pay? Those that are stupid. You can still use napster without a napster server. Napster is a frickin IRC server, The server software is available. Napigator and others will let you use your favourite "pir8" napster-based server for free still. These servers will run in countries where they can exist legally. So whose going to pay this $1B? Well if they are lucky and get 10% of the subscriber base, that would be just fine and dandy. Wait emusic already is trying to do this? They are failing. So why would napster succeed? They won't. Are you going to pay $9/month to leech off others who pay $9/month? Hell no. Better come up with a new business plan , napster. It's not realistic, it's not going to succeed. This is the internet, we aren't going to pay for something that is already free. Why not start charging to read and post at slashdot? Cause it would be out of business in a month.
===sam=== free nessus vulnerability scan = www.vulnerabilities.org
The point is, that deep down, the RIAA is smart. They know that the great percentage of the music traded on Napster wouldn't be purchased anyways. Its not money they're losing, they're just afraid that their loyal purchasing crowd might SOMEDAY drift into that environment and they'll start losing real sales. At least with a monetary figure attached to the service, people will be less inclined to switch over to it over purchasing CD's.
However, the RIAA isn't about to start admitting that napster for the time being probably is generating more cd sales than stealing them, but they would rather lose money and keep a stranglehold on the market rather than let that market drift away from them.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
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