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CEO of RIAA Speaks at P2P Conference
Sarcasmo writes: "Hillary Rosen, CEO of the RIAA ? , spoke at length (PDF of Speech) yesterday, during the 'O'Reilly Peer to Peer and Web Services conference'. " Update: 11/08 02:15 GMT by H : Yeah, I removed the Rosen text. Sorry.
Call me pedantic but I hate how the RIAA keeps calling the downloading of music files via p2p software piracy. It is copyright infringement. Period. It is closer to piracy what the RIAA does to "its" artists.
I know there are some artists trying to buck RIAA stranglehold but I'm waiting for the day when big artists (remember The Offspring's attempt to make _Conspiracy of One_ available for download?) get out from under the big studios and the RIAA.
There's a bit of a chicken and egg thing, though. Most rock musicians (I am one, so I can say this) just aren't very bright folks.
:)
I remember reading a story about how Lynyrd Skynyrd got screwed out of their royalties. They were all high school dropouts (they were named after the principal of their high school, who threw/pushed them out, Leonard Skinner) and when they were presented with the contract, they could not read. They signed it anyway (without going to a lawyer to interpret it for them) on the side of some interstate in Florida.
So who's worse - the band for being too dumb to know the value of education or to cover their ass, or the record companies for taking advantage of that? In their case, it's about equal, coming from their background. However, there are some artists that have never had a chance for an education, but they have this raw talent, and the record company just rapes them and tosses them out when they get old/fat/non-trendy. It's really a case-by-case thing.
For the record, Lars is an idiot, too
(Please save your flames until you've read the whole post)
She does have some legitimate points. Personally, as a musician, and one who plans to make music a career, I want to be able to have the same opportunity to make money as anyone else. I don't want to be rich, I just want to be able to live comfortably.
However, the foundation of her argument is flawed. Artists get a ridiculously small percentage of CD sales, and this isn't changing even as CD prices close on the twenty dollar mark.
Artists get most of their money from concerts. Albums are basically just advertising. File-sharing programs are more effective advertising (People like free things). If more people are listening to their music because the price barrier isn't there, then more people will go to their concerts, putting more money in the artists' pockets. This is a good thing.
The only artists who are speaking out against file sharing programs are artists that A) don't need any more money, and B) don't understand that this actually helps less mainstream artists.
Basically, what it comes down to for me is this: If I'm dinking around on Limewire, Napster, Morpheus, or any other music-swapping program and I come an mp3 of one of my songs, I'm not disappointed. I'm not feeling the money fly out of my wallet. I'm elated. I'm absolutely ecstatic that someone would take the time to download my music and keep it on their hard drive. They've done this because they like it, not because of money or any other impetus. That's half the reason that I want to be a musician (Incidentally, the other half is that I hate/suck at everything else): to create something that people like - that touches people. It's a wonderful thing when this can occur outside of a corporate environment, outside of the store. If my music was flying all over the 'net and I was living in the street, that would be a different matter, but that's just not how it works.
Anyway, that's just what I think...
(Does anyone else find the Gates-esque overuse of the word innovation and derivations thereof rather disturbing?)
Two wrongs dont make a right.
Neither does simply allowing the original wrong to stand. I love how the crooks of the world always hold this up as a defense when the hammer is finally about to fall.
Actually, even though it probably won't help a bit, what we should also be doing is protesting to the government to change the damn laws that were obviously paid for by the entertainment industry. Extending copyright until it lasts longer than an average human lifetime just defeats the purpose of the "limited times" clause on copyright. What good is it if Disney and the others can just buy an extension every time their copyrights are about to expire?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I know some of you are going to *really* hate me for this post. Mod me down if you feel like it but I think the point remains.
I think it is obvious that Rosen would have a bias for the RIAA's stance. Slashdotters have a strong bias against the RIAA's stance.
Is there any sort of remotely middle ground reporting anywhere?
Basically Slashdot discussing the RIAA or the RIAA discussing Slashdot is going to have a lot of blood involved, each side is going talk from such an incredibly biased viewpoint that there is an increasingly diminishing chance to pick out the truth among the propaganda. It is much like political parties talking about each other. They might all agree on a private level about something but simply disagree because they hate each other.
To me, it is obvious to me that a person commenting a Rosen speach as being about "rolling around in cash naked" has to be taken with a grain of salt.
Geez, what an insightful, informative writeup.
Taco, I've been reading since the site was run off the server you were adminning at work, and had expectations consistent with your scale of operations. But if you're implementing paid subscriptions, you might also want to apply some of the standards normally expected of professional journalism. In this case, that would involve a writeup that doesn't rate a -1 Flamebait and filing the story under Music, which I have blocked because I simply can't stop myself by flaming every one of these hypocritical file sharing stories, rather than The Almighty Buck.
(Yes, I understand the difference between the submitter's text and the editor's additions. An editor's job involves -- get this! -- editing!)
In the music industry, Artists get paid sweet FA, they obviously don't have a union, and they don't go on strike to get a better deal when they are being done over.
Ao what Artists need to do is form a union, and unite against their employers, the recording industry. If they don't do this, then they don't deserve any more money.
The fact is, P2P music copying:
1) Gets music spread around more - increasing the chance of it being purchased legitimately
2) Doesn't mean that without the P2P the music would have been bought
3) or that a sale was lost as a result of the P2P download
4) Sure, some people will download music and not buy CDs as a result. These people are a significant minority who previously recorded their friends' CDs onto tape anyway
The fact is, the RIAA exist for the artists for several reasons - to provide recording facilities, and to advertise the artist. P2P does the advertising, and thus takes away one of the reasons for artists to use a major record label. The other one is less necessary as computer technology improves to the state where a personal music studio is a few thousand dollars, and can match a professional music studio from a few years ago for features.
The RIAA really need DVD Audio, with videos to differentiate their products from P2P. P2P is a competitor, and they want this competition legislated out of existence. For example, the Static X song, Black and White (kicks ass) is available on DVD with the (kick ass) video, and other videos of the band. This is worth buying as a reasonable price.
Maybe it really wouldn't make a difference -- but I don't really think that these high-profile executives are really all that hard-skinned. They revel in the attention. Confronting such a public figure with your distaste for them is an important political statement. And they don't deserve to feel good about themselves.
And there's something comforting -- as in a passion play -- when a group of people can agree and express their common opinion of who is good and who is bad.
Why'd they remove that part from my submission?
For one main reason: it is not possible to correctly determine the worth of a musical work until those who might pay for it have had a chance to react to it. That's why artists get a percentage of their music sales rather than just a lump sum after their work is completed. I may discover a musical work tomorrow that I think is really nice sounding. The artist should get paid because *I* like it, not because he finished writing it.
You should also include inventors in your category of people who get paid over a long period of time.
You signed up for your 'gravy train' when you signed your employment contract. If you want a percentage of the profits from your work, renegotiate your contract. I wouldn't, if I were you. Works of engineering tend to become obsolete quickly, but art does not.
So instead of whining about it, the RIAA should play by the rules of capitalism and figure out a way to capitalize on it. The P2P networks are not defeatable in a meaningful way. They will always be ahead of the RIAA, which will hire squadrons of monkeys to track everybody's IP addresses and file complaints with ISPs until stealth P2P comes around, etc.etc.etc.
This is just stupid. Napster did the RIAA a HUGE service. They showed them where the market is. So open a god-damned for-subscription service where I can share music in the same way I did with Napster. I'd be willing to pay a subscription fee, say 10 dollars a month, plus say 25 to 50 cents per song I download in order to reward artists for making music I like. That's what it's worth to me, and I think a lot of others who like downloading and controlling the music they listen to would feel the same way. It's really no different from radio, except the money is coming from me instead of from advertisers and I have control rather than the station managers.
If you don't like this business model, come up with another one that's palatable. But don't try to sue us back to the Stone Age or to put the genie back in the bottle. He won't go back in. The internet isn't going away. Deal with it. Furthermore, though two wrongs don't make a right, the reality is that the second wrong here is not screwing anybody out of any money. CD sales have generally been up, and people will still buy CDs especially of lesser known artists to support them.
I'm sorry, but while in the abstract it may not be "right" for me to download lots of MP3s, it's not "right" for me to pay 15 dollars for a CD with one song I might or might not want, and it's not "right" that 30-40 cents of every CD goes to the artists who make the music, and as I said above, this is a capitalist world and a capitalist society, and if you aren't selling something, somebody else will come up with a way to provide it, and if they can provide it for free, people will take it. And if you try to use the legal system to suppress that, the technology will improve until it's unregulatable - these aren't physical goods, and they can't be thought of as such.
Agreed.
Correct me if Im wrong, but isnt it illegal in the US to fix prices, collude to rig the market and agree to non-competiton pacts in a given market?
Isnt the very existance of the RIAA (and MPAA for that matter) practically evidence of law-breaking?
Its like gas stations calling one another and pushing the price up...
Basically, during the "negotiating" phase of a recording contract, the artist/band is taken out to a nice dinner complete with refreshing drinks. The label rep then scratches out on a napkin or small scrap of paper a tentative agreement to sign a contract. This agreement works out to "if we give you this, that, and the-other-thing - you, the artist/band, agree to sign the recording contract. The artist/band is then asked to sign the napkin/scrap paper and the rep will have those "evil lawyer types" write up the contract. All through this the rep is playing best buddy - who would never do anything against the artist/band's best interests.
Then the artist/band sobers up and receives the contract. They go to a lawyer (if at least a bit bright) and review it first. They find all sorts of ugly conditions in it, and tell the rep "no, can't do this". The rep "works" with them, changing a word here or there, but the essence of the contract terms remain unchanged (this is what you refer to as standardized among all labels). The artist/band says "sorry, I/we'll look elsewhere". The rep then pulls out that napkin/scrap paper and says "Sorry, you said if we gave you 'this', 'that', and 'the-other-thing', you'd sign with us. You didn't say we couldn't add conditions to them, just that you required them... and you signed a legally binding agreement.
The game goes around until the artist/band does one of two things. 1) Caves in and signs the deal. 2) Breaks up and doesn't pursue a contract with another label (essentially going out of business).
Most artists/bands at this point will opt for #1 and hope for the best. Often times, after the first record is completed and even if it does well, the artist/band will still break up and disappear once they realize how bad it really is. This is what generates all of those One-Hit-Wonders. They do a single record and file bankruptcy never again to record professionally.
So, you might say there's a bit of a gun held to their head. It's called a binding agreement even though it's just scribbling on a napkin.
I AM, therefore I THINK!
Unfortunately for your argument, not all publishers are members of the music industry cartel:
http://www.nitrorecords.com/
http://www.gashed.com/
http://www.metropolis-records.com/
http://www.fatwreck.com/
http://www.victoryrecords.com/
http://www.dependent.de/
Just to name a few of the bigger ones with more popular bands...there's literally thousands of smaller ones.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
You have to look at what she says in context with what the RIAA does. She says she wants to improve access to smaller artists. The RIAA has worked hard to make sure this never happens. But, let me be clear: they're all for access to smaller artists as long as they continue to be able to manufacture "#1" artists at will. They want to keep the cake they have while eating it.
She also says that the people writing such things as Gnutella don't understand that they have the choice to make money or not on software, but music is just "stolen" (infringed to the rest of us). Of course this ignores the decades of warez precident and the BCA's role. This is a totally hollow argument. We write software. We sell it. We get paid. Some poeple will never be willing to pay. We know. None of that means a damn when Microsoft starts alienating their own customers with tactics like the licensing of XP. Even good, faithful customers look for an out in another product. The RIAA has the same problem.
She comments that she's excited about the possibilities of P2P. Heh, even in the client-server model of digital music, the RIAA freaked out when artists started putting their own music up for download (members did, that is).
Bottom line: read my lips, music sharing will happen. Movie sharing will happen. People will continue to share what they believe (rightly or wrongly) to be theirs. What the RIAA should be doing is coming up with a better way to take advantage of that momentum. Create a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. The corollary to that is that if you just stand around yelling at the manufacturers of poor mousetraps, you eventually get ignored.