The RIAA Doesn't Like Paying Lyricists

baptiste writes "I came across a story in Wired News that on first glance had to be a joke. The scary part is, its not. The RIAA is looking to start their own MP3 streaming services, but they are also trying to stiff the song writers who hold copyrights on the lyrics. The RIAA doesn't want to pay the songwriters royalties on streamed copies of songs and has petitioned the U.S. Copyright Office to settle the matter. I highly recommend you read the petition - if you didn't know better, you'd think it was from Napster or MP3.com. The irony is almost too much."

Comments

Read the DOCUMENT

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the note. The RIAA will pay copyright holders, it's asking which versions of copyright law apply to digital music downloads and broadcasts. Apparently, there are several subversions of copyright laws, including ones that deal with performances, recordings, recordings sent by electronic means, etc etc. The problem is, that under some of them, if interpreted strictly, they'd have to pay the copyright holders money for even incidental copies that never reach a consumer, such as copies cached in multiple servers that are there to facilitate downloads and broadcasting, but not necessarily meant to be a product in and of themselves. For such 'incidental' copies, the RIAA is asking the US Copyright Office to issue a ruling to either develop a new area for copyright, or determine under what area that digital broadcasts and DLs fall. It is the current legal grey area WRT to royalties that is holding up music delivery by the industry. Lord knows, if you assume one thing, and then it's later ruled to be different, you face lawsuits. So the RIAA is not moving forward with digital broadcast plans over the internet till the USPTO rules. Geez, READ people.

Give 'em hell. er, feedback.

[griffjon]

Contact the RIAA
I sent them:
"
I read your petition to the Copyright office requesting that streaming music not require royalty payments to the artists.

I find this unfathomably hypocritical, after your lawsuits against MP3.com and Napster, Inc.

I will never buy another CD from an RIAA-associated artist or label for myself or as a gift until such time as the RIAA mends its ways, supports its artists and embraces the advantages of digital distribution with proceeds from tours.

Learn from history. Read Jack Valenti's arguments against Betamax, and notice the Blockbuster video rental store(s) on your commute home. I don't think the video industry was ruined.
"

Promotional Aspects

[augustz]

The RIAA's role as a "producer" of music is no longer usefull. CD's can be pressed cheaply, and with the advent of MP3's the marginal costs decrease even more. What they still over is promotion, on a huge scale.

Songs don't make it big because they are good, the make it because they are promoted. Technology has addressed everything else the RIAA does, with the promotion piece solved they'd go the way of the Dodo.

Unfortunatly, so far it has been other commercial companies that want to come in and replace them (Napster) which I'm not convinced gains us huge amounts. The infrastructure of music should be free, just as the infrastructure of a computer (OS). What's the next step to make it so?

Re:Promotional Aspects

[aonifer]

Songs don't make it big because they are good, the make it because they are promoted. Technology has addressed everything else the RIAA does, with the promotion piece solved they'd go the way of the Dodo.

Actually the RIAA (the member corporations, really) don't even do promotion. They pay other people to do that. The business model of a major record label resembles that of the worst dot-coms in existence, only record companies are subsidized by taxpayers.

This probably won't happen

[jpowers]

The RIAA and ASCAP/BMI - the songwriters' organizations, have had this strange relationship forever. A lot of what we know as the concept of intellectual property came from them dealing with each other and with broadcasters and such. Each has a sort of domain over which it has near-caveat authority to set prices and pay artists: When you buy a record at the store, the money goes back to whoever made the record, but not the songwriter or lyricist (unless they performed on the album and are owed a piece of the retail net). In the case of the recording artist/company, the important intellectual property is the performance placed on the album, that's the copyright that they sell to make money.

For ASCAP/BMI/(I forget the third), the important copyright is the sheet music and lyrics. They gained power in the early 1900s with the advent of radio, since songwriters wanted to be paid per broadcast. Anyway, they didn't have computers then, so they just have a flat fee for each radio station, bar w/jukebox, nightclub, elevator, etc. They just listen to a station for 6 hours, then multiply that over a year, and that's how they determine how much to pay an artist. So the little bands you liked in college never make a dime, but Britney's songwriters a rolling in it.

It gets real dicey in nightclubs: who owns the performance? ASCAP charges the nightclub a flat fee and then pays the bands using the same proportional setup they use for radio broadcasts. Again, no computers, and no exact counts of who gets played how much. It's all statistics, and the low end gets cut out consistently. The bands at a little club like the Middle East probably never see a dime from the songwriter's fee. They get paid for the performance, though, which belongs to them (any record made from it is their copyright).

This streaming media stuff is a real problem for us as webmasters/computer filesharing types as well as for the courts. If you stream the music, you're broadcasting a written song, but if you transmit it for HD storage, you're distributing a copyrighted recording. Thus you are going to get billed twice, and the RIAA and ASCAP/BMI are going to try to bill each other.

Like Clay said in his interview here the other day, the likely long-term outcome is that bands that write their own music will hire engineers to produce their records and then just let ASCAP deal with the licensing, cutting the RIAA out of the licensing business altogether (ASCAP would manage both copyrights, the song as written and performed).

In the short, term, though, these record companies (who are the RIAA) aren't going to give up so easily, and this is just them starting to open their eyes to the internet's potential re: their products. They'll probably lose this case because of the quasi-broadcasting nature of music file distribution, but ASCAP's fee isn't so high, and the RIAA will certainly find a way to leverage what they have while they still have it.

-jpowers

This sucks! I've had it!

[nublord]

You know, this is pathetic. We are going to spend the next few decades arguing with these morons over rights, money, good vs. bad, consumer wishes, markets forces, etc. The one thing that strikes me funny is that us, the consumer, have had to defend and explain our reasons for copyright infringement. We've had to justify to the RIAA why we pirate music - we own the music, the artists make enough, the market demands it, etc.

And then I read the RIAA's reason for wanting to 'pirate' the same music - doing it the right way (the lawful way) would cost to much.

Well folks, that about raps it up for me. I'm going to continue to pirate music for one simple reason - it costs less. And that's all I'm gonna say.

For those of you who feel I'm stomping on the rights of artists - tough. If they're dumb enough to sign up with this two faced laughing pile of dogshit called the RIAA then they deserve it.

city of industry

[deran9ed]

But despite the united front against Napster, behind closed doors the relationship appears to have chilled. The argument is over what the recording industry should pay publishers for the right to stream MP3 files.

Actually its ASCAP thats one of the biggest companies that pays monies to lyricists, composers, etc., so RIAA would have to deal with them before anything is even created.

On March 9, the copyright office responded to the petitions by opening a public comment period on the question of what kind of licensing digital streaming and downloading of music files should require. Once the office settles the dispute over whether a digital stream is really the same thing as selling someone a CD, then it may arbitrate what the royalty on a digital file delivery should be.

One can argue all day and night over the ethics of RIAA's actions, but most will fail when it all comes down to rights. RIAA has the rights to their controlled assets (music) and can do as they wish with it. Sure its ethically wrong, but has anyone seen any business that was fair? shittt... even the Catholic religion is shaky

Goldsmith thinks the industry's take-no-prisoners strategy may backfire. "They're pissing off the artists," he said. "If they piss off online radio too, what's to prevent a system that doesn't involve the recording industry at all? They're encouraging the development of an alternative relationship between producers and radio stations."

This may be the ultimate solution for artists and online stations to go about. Some artists should think about releasing an online version of their songs prior to committing to anyone like RIAA, ASCAP, etc., this way their songs become more popular, people enjoy their music before its been monopolized, and artists can then leverage more rights from RIAA, and the others, and if those agencies don't like it, the artist (now popular from releasing a net based song) can then press and distribute records on their own, which many successful artists have done.

L. Ron Hubbard's FBI files a la FOIA