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Recording Artists File Brief Against RIAA
Matthew Skala writes: "The Recording Artists' Coalition, which includes such luminaries as Bruce Springsteen, Don Henley, and Sheryl Crow, is still annoyed about the "Work for Hire" legislation we heard about in August 2000. They've filed a brief in the Napster cases, urging the court not to accept the RIAA's copyright registration documents as proof of ownership, because accepting the documents would allow the music cartel to sneakily destroy artists' claims to the music they recorded. They don't take a stand on other issues we might be interested in, but it's still worth thinking about. If the artists are against the RIAA, then whom exactly does the RIAA represent? Some quotes and info are on Siliconvalley.com."
I guess that shold answer your question - the RIAA represents the companies, not the artists. The companies should represent the artists, but they're too busy making a fast buck.
Tom.
Oh arse
RIAA holds the trunk and says music is a tricky snake that might get away if it isn't secured properly. Recording companys hold the legs and say music is a sturdy post that supports the US economy. Broadcasters hold the ears and say music is dish they use to aim what they want to play at who they want to hear it. Artists hold the teat and say music is a kind mother that puts food on their tables.
And we the fan get to hold the ass and say the whole thing just plain stinks.
Its interesting, even among the musicians I know, I can't really think of any that have a very high opinion of the RIAA. Thats not to say they like Napster and the other file sharing groups either.
forma3
One day maybe they will get a clue about who really is dangerous to the consumer. The RIAA is nothing short of really needing a good anti-trust whacking.
They are attempting through the Napster case to establish precedent to do just what the performers fear, and that is to have backing to essentially steal all previous copyrighted works.
They also go out of their way to prevent consumer choice, and to prevent fair exercising of rights to make personal copies.
The RIAAs threat covers more consumers than any software company could dream of, yet they remain totally untouched.
(Hell, the Congress is stepping on Baseball threatening their specific anti-trust protection because they want to close down two teams, why can't they redirect that attention to where its needed)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Well, they represent the record labels. And isn't the RIAA a consortium of record labels, so, therefore, they support themselves.
...and that's it. It doesn't represent artists, or art, or cultural diversity, or musical history. It's there to protect the interests of the recording industry. No insidious evil plot here—that's simply why it was created, and that's what it does.
The emergent behavior of a system, however, can be completely different from the stated purpose. How does a concept like "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", for example, spawn realities like gulags and purges? The same way a concept like intellectual property spawns a group of uncreative lawyers protecting work that they neither create nor understand.
It wasn't that long ago when artists were simply paid by their patrons for works they'd commissioned, and didn't expect to get rich off royalties and licensing fees. It's a relatively new phenomenon, and in the face of technology, it may turn out to be quite short-lived. Just because we've lived with it all our lives doesn't mean it's right, or good, or sustainable.
All along the RIAA has been able to do what they did against mp3.com, Napster, and others because they claimed those services took money away from those poor, starving artists.
Most of us knew all along that they were really protecting the interests of the companies at the artists' expense; now we have firm confirmation.
Most people are willing to support their favorite artists. They buy concert tickets, help with word-of-mouth, buy and wear t-shirts, etc. It's going to be harder now for the RIAA to claim that the consumers are greedy and just want free stuff without giving the artist due compensation.
Hopefully, the government won't fall for it anymore.
Large corporate interests usually have only one interest: themselves.
Of course, they also are interested in legislation since they often times lack a modern-day business model. The RIAA is a cookie cutter example. I'd say that they petro industry is similar.
Keeping
They represent the people who have been exploiting musicians for close to 100 years. They represent the kind of people who would gladly pay someone 500 bucks for "Louie Louie" and make millions of dollars from it without thinking of sharing it with the songwriter. They represent the kind of people who pay radio stations millions of dollars a year to get certain songs played on the airwaves that are supposedly owned by the public. They represent the kind of people who think that paying new bands a wage that could be easily beaten by working at 7-11 is fair. They represent a way of doing business that makes used car salesmen, spammers and morticians blanch at the shamelessness of the bookkeeping and bookcooking. Hollywood, the publishing industry and the Fortune 500, would never consider for a minute some of the crooked gambits that are considered to be business as usual in the music industry.
They do not represent the artists. They do not represent the songwriters. They do not represent the audience of listeners and the people who buy the music. They do not, in any way shape or form, represent or respect American musical culture. When rock and roll came, they tried to bury it. When indy rock came, they tried to bury it and then tried to buy it off. When rap came, they tried to shut it out, and then they perverted it into violent, racial stereotyping. Now that electronica is here, they're doing their damnest to bury it under tons of catchy tunes that are a cross between dance and bubblegum. When home studios became a possibility, they outlawed the cheaper versions of the DATs to make it more expensive for those who wanted to start one - they even tried to get zoning boards in the L.A areas to shut them down for zoning violations. Now that they've waken up to the potential of computers, they are trying to cripple them with copy protection built in to the hardware that will also probably cripple an independent musician's ability to make copies of his OWN music and distribute them.
In short, they are a band of greedy, monopolistic Luddites who are attempting to strangle a new explosion in musical culture before it goes too far.
I think one of the best expressions of how many musicians feel about the industry is Joni Mitchell's "For Free", where she wistfully listens to a guy playing sax on the corner for nothing and wonders if she'll ever feel as happy and pure about her music again.
The RIAA is starting to resemble that other paragon of virtue - The Business Software Alliance.
Of course, the BSA thinks they have the authority to search private property looking for license violations.
I could never see the RIAA or the MPAA doing that.
Copyright is an abstract concept.
It is not a technology that can be circumvented by a device anymore than you can travel in time by resetting your watch.
The RIAA represents the 'record industry', ie the record companies. The record companies are all, by law, required to look after their share holder's (financial) interests. So far, so good. They are doing exactly what they are supposed to do. This should surprise no one. However, the manner in which they look after those interests may be up for debate - what would happen if they started interpreting their mission with long-term goals in mind? All of their current tactics are short-term, stop-gap measures, designed to maximize profits right now. Viewed in a long-term perspective, those same measures are counter-productive. They will 'lose', eventually. Suing Napster and Napster-like phenomena will only work for a while. It will not stop Gnutella and it's peers (pun intended) and it will not make J. Random Listener stop downloading MP3s.
The RIAA is scared since they see a future where they don't exist. A future where the artists have all gone independent and is selling their music and other value-added products online through a number of portal sites. That business model is still not viable, but it will be because it has to be. The genie can not be put back in the bottle. Retail sales of CDs will go down. The current distribution channels will collapse. But people will still want to buy and listen to music and musicians will still want to perform.
There will be ways. We'll all find a way. But the RIAA will be roadkill.
Money for nothing, pix for free
It looks like what the Coalition are arguing about is not that the Recording Company own the copyright to the recorded music, but that the Artists should retain the right to be recognised as the Author, and owner of the intellectual rights to the work. This simply means they get to choose who to transfer the copyright to, should the Work appear to have much greater value than the Recording Company initially compensated for.
/. would say, Offtopic.
Basically, if "Tuesday Night Music Club" becomes a much bigger selling album due to some massive increase in demand, Sheryl Crow retains the intellectual rights to the songs, meaning she has a position to renegotiate with A&M from. A&M still own the rights to the recording of the Album, but the Artist can re-record the songs for a different company.
The RIAA's position, which the coalition is attempting to undermine, is that artists who signed work-for-hire contracts have no claim to intellectual property.
I know various instances of the work-for-hire contract from the Comics industry and, basically, the Company own every damn thing.
Unfortunately, I can't see how a bunch of artists, famous or not, can, by telling the court how-it-is-for-an-artist is going to overturn those contracts, as, while not necessarily presented in good faith by the Recording Companies, are legally binding and accepted by the Artist. Citing previous legislation which is relevant to a different contract type, is, as
I wish them luck because I want to see some draconian money-grabbing bunch of RIAA protected scumbags get thier comeuppance for bad faith business practice. Alas I think this particular battle tactic is a lost cause.
Chris.
I think they need to take the I in their name and give it a font size about twice the rest of the letters.
I still have one giant conceptual problem with their "work for hire" clause: If making a record is truely a "work for hire" then why does the artist have to pay back all the costs of creating it? It's like I'll hire you to maintain my house, and it'll only cost you $400 a month to do it. And oh yeah, bring all your tools over and when you're done, they're mine.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
The bargaining leverage of the RIAA is touted repeatedly in this brief, and not as a good thing. This may or may not be true, depending on the "status" of the artist sitting at the negotiating table. By the same token, most artists dont have the bankroll to do their own marketing/publicity. So they do, in effect, get a VC investor when they sign up with an RIAA member. The typical observer may not see the big difference between this relationship, and someone with a good business plan who needs capital to startup another dotcom. We all know what the typical VC wants for their cut.
What they (the artists) dont yet fully realize, is that digital format, and encryption is going to change things. This is their moment. This is ground zero for digital music, and it might be their last chance to assert their own authority over their own works in the digital realm, which will soon be (perhaps already is) the basis of all other realms. There are very few analog distribution channels left out there with any popularity.
I hope that they (artists) take the time to learn how to use crypto/digital to their own advantage. If they (RAC) wanted to, they could (say) make their own CA and start their own distribution network immedietly. Then the RIAA would simply be another purchaser (redistributor) of the digital form of the works.
2) Set up a company (cheap)
3) Set up a bank account
4) Set up a merchant account
5) Sell music online
6) PC with CD burner and CD label printer
You just need $5000 up front to set this up, maybe you could do it for a few bands. Sell entire albums for $5 (a percentage goes to the merchant bank).
Marketing is the problem. Use Napster and the other music distribution mechanisms to put out low-quality snippets and encourage people to visit your site. If the music is naff, then people will not buy, obviously!
Insert all the standard slashdot oriented comments here:
music should be owned by the artists
if they didn't put out crap we'd buy their CD's
CD's are too expensive
i should be able to make a back up copy of anything i own
I bought a CD and its scratched, so i had to buy it twice
the labels are screwing the artists
I only have one thing new to bring to this: yesterday, on CNN, in between terrorism and more terrorism, on the ticker at the bottom, i saw something that said "RIAA reports loss of $5B last year, says mostly attributed to CD burning piracy". I've been all over the RIAA and CNN's websites and can find nothing about it. If you find something, please post below.
And now for some quasi-related links!
Courtney Love speaks out against major labels at
The RIAA discusses cost of a CD at
~z
On a side note, its really hard to find news about anything "else" these days. I swear to god, with the 24 hour afghan channels, i have no idea what else is going down in my own country. And its only 5% news. Like jon stewart said, its like they report everything they know, and then they speculate to fill the time, like "what if they had a nuclear weapon, the size of a.... um... doughnut. yeah. and it was shaped like a doughnut... lets talk to the experts... get me dunkin doughnuts!"
sig?
The Recording industry is just being a little slow here, a little stupid. They'll see eventually that they must learn to make their money in ways other than selling records, for example: corporate sponsership of concerts, selling advertising on label-owned artist web sites, stuff like that.
I have this idea: Many, if not most artists, I think I can assume, don't produce more than one albumn or so per year. Maybe the artist's record label could set up a "club" for each artist under their wing. Maybe the club costs you, the consumer, $15-$20 per year to join.
You would enjoy benefits such as:
-one free copy of any albumns produced, and discounts on additional copies (hey, you could steal it anyway, but this way the record company can make people feel like they are getting something cool, and you already paid your 15 bucks).
-the ability to get the albumn before it hits the stores (which really doesn't cost them anything extra, but again, people would feel like they were special)
-access to a hoopty-doo "members only" web site, with exclusive content, maybe interviews, interactive chats, special downloads of music and pics, that sort of crap
-discounts on, or at the very least, advance sales of, concert tickets (which would encourage club members to buy tickets, making everybody involved MORE money)
-exclusive merchandise (which again, encourages club members who may not have bought that shirt to do so if they feel like they are getting something special)
Many other industries have had to change their methods of making profits in our new economy, and the recording industry can do the same, they just need to get their heads out or their collective butts, stop whining, realize that suing people ain't a good way to make a living, and get on with the business of business, which is making lots of money by making consumers think they need some more crap.
The Grateful Dead made lots of their money not thru record sales, but thru merchandising and concerts, why can't that work for others too?
Dave Cooley
"Computers have allowed us to make more mistakes faster than any invention in the history of mankind, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila."
Just then the floating disembodied head of Colonel Sanders started yelling Everything You Know Is Wrong!-Weird Al
then what does that do to the napster case? If the RIAA can not claim to own the copyrights on the music then how can they be filing suit on Copyright infringment? I hope that this gets the case thrown out onthe bases of non-ownership(or what ever the legal term in :-) )
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
The RIAA represents the interests that control PROMOTION AND DISTRIBUTION of music, and NOT the PRODUCTION OR AUTHORING of music. They don't care about music or artists that have not been proven as "mass marketable" because the payoff does not attract lawyers and middlemen.
The RIAA exists to reserve the SCARCITY of good music (keeping music OUT of the hands of consumers) until pent-up demand can generate windfall revenues. Musicians who slowly build up a following simply do not sign bad contracts that give all the windfall to the industry people. The RIAA exists to control the money of one-hit-wonders and fad music that rises quickly out of obscurity into the obsessions of conformity-minded 12-13 year olds.
If you think about Napster vs. RIAA in those terms, you see that the timeless music most heavily traded on Napster threatens the middlemen more than the artists. What would happen to Britney Spears and Puff-Daddy if junior-high aged kids started to think that their parents' old record collection was cooler than the crap being hyped on MTV and department store PA systems?
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
- Recording label scout finds a band he likes
- Scout promotes his band to execs
- Execs decide they like the band and sign them to a contract
- Label offers to loan the band money to record album
- Band records album, usually taking quite some time, because they are new to the recording industry and they may not initially have 45-60 minutes of material
- Band returns to label with finished album
- Band finds that neither scout nor exec nor anyone they've ever seen before still works at label (the turnover in this industry surpasses even the tech sector for some reason)
- No new exec is interested in publishing the band's album
- Band tries to take album to another label, perhaps where the original scout or exec now works, but is unable to because they've signed a contract
- Band still owes recording loan to label
- Band languishes in debt because they cannot do anything with their created music nor start over without breach of contract
- Label starts sending bill collectors for their loan payments
Maybe I should ask you to tell me how it could be possible for the label to fail to make money.Fuck 'im up, Tim! His views are invalid! -Pirate Corp$
While I agree that the RIAA needs to see some anti-trust scrutiny, Major League Baseball is acting just as monopolistic as MS or the RIAA. Your statement above shows that you may not have been following the baseball contraction issue as closely as I have.
The baseball situation is that they want to close down the two teams that are making the least money. Reason? The cities won't submit to paying for new baseball parks for the team to play in. Never mind that a spiffy new ball park like Enron in Houston, or PacBell in San Francisco cost between $500 million and $1 billion to build.
If the taxpayers resist paying for it, the team threatens to move. If they move (or in this case, just disappear) the league always says "you'll have first pick in future expansion opportunities", but any time you bring in expansion baseball, the league demands an "Expansion fee" from the city.
The dillemma these people have is that they can either be extorted for $500 million for a stadium now and keep the team, or get a new team in 10 years when the economy is better, still have to build a stadium for whatever a stadium costs in 2011, and also pay an "expansion fee".
In any other business, this is a shakedown. But it's the worst kind of shakedown, it's a shakedown for TAX money.
Who did what now?
...because accepting the documents would allow the music cartel to sneakily destroy artists' claims to the music they recorded.
It's about time that the labels are described as what they should be. A cartel; a small number of corporate entities acting together to effect a monopoly. And it's illegal in the U.S. (though not in other countries).
I wonder if antitrust legislation will ever be attempted against the labels.
... the RIAA represents the companies, not the artists. The companies should represent the artists, but they're too busy making a fast buck.
No, the RIAA SHOULD NOT represent the artists. It is an organization of, by, and for the labels.
There IS an organization that SHOULD be representing the artists.
It's their UNION.
To which they've been paying dues since they first got on stage.
The Musician's union has accused of been nothing but a scam for quite some time.
Now's the artists' chance to do something about it.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The R.I.A.A was established to protect artists from other artist's. It was a sorta of safety net to protect the lyrics from being used by other artists in derivative works. The R.I.A.A was also a database of song lyrics, that could easily determine if your song was infringing on 'prior art'. It was a service for artists by artists, at least originally. The R.I.A.A sold itself to small upstart music labels, typically the really cool small labels that had limited funds to pay for lawyers. It was good for everyone since infringement issues were not the norm back then. You must realize that the big issue was artists taking the lyrics and making derivative works (aka covers songs, etc...)
Enter onto the scean digital samplers. Once Roland, EMU, Ensoniq, and other started selling good digital samplers for a reasonable price... A whole slew of copyright protection changed...as taking samples (aka perfect clones) of the actual original work was made supper easy. Its true that the artists could simply use the traditional analog technology to do the same, but with the emergence of electronic genre (aka disco, new wave, techno, industrial) the people doing the recordings were exposed to a new art... the manipulation of samples. Other factors are at play here too, but it was in this general time span things were starting to change (80's & 90's)
This new era brought with it an increase of non-lyric infringements, and the R.I.A.A database was not so effective. By this time the R.I.A.A had become a sort of insurance company, who would not only serve as a watch dog group for song writers, but as an entity who purpose was to protect the investments of the record labels, who were acting as middle men for the artists.
It is true that the record labels would typically purchase the rights to the songs from the artists in deals that were typically penned by the recording companies. In this way the R.I.A.A shifted from being an organization that protected the artist, to an organization that protected the rights of the record companies (who assumed the rights of the artists).
This is what got us in our present condition. The record companies think they are the artists... and in fact when a record company exec wants a new hit single... it is not an issue of recruiting a rising star, its about creating the next new hit.... by means of record-for-hire.... hence bands like Nsync, and the likes (no offence Nsync).
You see... the record companies don't have the time to wait for real artists to come up with a hit single... the creative process simple doesn't fit into the cash-revenue cycle. This cycle is out-pacing the creative juices of real artists...
So it is true that the Recording companies are paying for the production of new songs, paying for the lyrics used in those songs, and in general own the entire creative process in many situations, except those coming from the smaller recording companies, who typically represent the real artists.... However... this doesn't stop the recording companies from looking at them all the same. If they can own the entire recording process of their artist, why now have the same ownership rights of the art they acquire via the smaller record companies.
The issues can be quite sticky sometimes. The most common thing I see is a lack of understanding on how far reaching the recording company contracts really are. These things are in favor of the record company, and in turn the R.I.A.A must protect the record companies if they are going to feed the wallets of their highly paid lawyers.
The solution you ask... the best idea would be for the artists to create a coalition that they can directly interface with, and use to protect their lyrics, and their recordings directly. They also need a direct distribution system that pays them, and not the record companies. Online distribution would be good, but what ever that system might be would have to make use of encryption to protect the rights on the artists, and the artist would hold the encryption keys used to decipher the music, and your purchase of the medium would involve an exchange of keys. Obviously this is way too much work for an artist, who cannot be expected to be a crypto expert. Again, recording companies would step in and manage this for the artist... however.. They would probably want the right to the music. But what the artist don't seem to understand is they can still maintain the copy rights on the music while deferring the distribution rights to a 3rd party. It comes clear when you differentiate distribution rights from copyrights..... For example... I give you the right to be the only company to sell my song, but I still own my songs... you just have my permission to duplicate and distribute my works... and only on a limited basis at that.
From the persepective of mp3/ogg trading geeks... its seem to skip our the minds that the R.I.A.A once stood for something good. Despite the open nature of our software community (aka BSD license, and the GNU) the artist are in it for the plesure of writing songs first, and making money second. THe R.I.A.A and the FSF has something in common here.... they protect the rights, and recognition of the original artists. If you steal the lyrics of my songs, and don't at least give me blulb somewhere in the distro... I would sue you.... The FSF does the exact same.... Think about it.
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
They don't take a stand on other issues we might be interested in,
AND??? My God, they're standing up to the RIAA to try and preserve their rights to their livelihood and their art, what more do you want from them?
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
It's not that they have secret super-engines... rather that they stifle research upon such stuff.
Any good concrete evidence of this? Sources?
Are the AFM really doing nothing about Work For Hire?
Tom.
Oh arse
It is in the interest of all of us creative types to have it reinforced that the US Constitution requires that copyright go to authors and not to some faceless corporate behemoth.
fwiw
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
Just a small point or two...
The artists may be lucky to get a dollar per record, however: They get fronted money to record - cheapest you're looking at is around 70 thousand pounds in this country for an entire album start to finish, they get free PR plus the contacts to have their music distributed to DJ's, played on the radio, put in the shops. They get Tours organised for them (which virtually always lose money, by the way) plus living money etc etc. So the reason they get so little from the actual record sale is because the record company will have fronted god knows how much money from them and needs to get it back.
Don't kid yourself that the recording companies make all the money from a 15 quid CD either. Most of it (over 50 percent in some cases) goes to the retailer.
Before you rubbish me, I've been there and done it, so I know.
I'm not coming out in support of record companies either, I think Pete Waterman is the human incarnation of Satan in particular, but please try to make the story a little more accurate. I'd love to see the artists get more money. I'd love to steal CD's from a shop and send the artist five quid for every one I take, but I'm allergic to prison.
Be realistic in what you wish for... Life without record companies is possible for bands, but a hell of a lot harder.
Now you can flame me...
-Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience-
...profit-hungry recording companies. The artists are, for the most part, getting ripped off by RIAA companies, but some of what they do doesn't sound all that out of the ordinary to me.
First, the bad: RIAA companies that contract musicians under the "works for hire" type contracts really try hard to screw musicians out of ownership of their songs. Heck, even HBO claimed that they owned Tenacious D's songs that were made for the one and only season of their cable television show. To me, that sounds like the argument many academic institutions have used to claim patents/credit for innovations: "If you hadn't been using our resources, you wouldn't have come up with the result."
Now, the "not out of the ordinary". I remember reading Courtney Love's rather well-written tirade about the behavior of RIAA companies and they way they (the companies) spend money in advance on recording, promotion, touring, etc and expect to be paid back. I don't really see that as a problem. The recording company is, in effect, an investor in an artist. The company will spend the money on all the aforementioned things in an effort to sell a product and make a profit. Sure, I wish people weren't greedy and they didn't expect to make so much of a profit, but humans will be humans. Love explains that after all the bills are paid back, many artists don't make much money. Well, Courtney, most working people in the world don't have much money left after the bills are all paid, this applies perhaps even more so to those in the arts. Contracted musicians aren't a special social class who deserve to earn a 6-figure-plus salary. I'd be willing to bet that the figures are more or less proportionate. Artists who sell a lot earn a lot. Artists who sell relatively little get paid relatively little.
Just as an example, one of my best friends was actually a performing musician in Nashville for a while. He wrote a song that was recorded on an album by a contracted, professional pop/rock group. The album, consequently, went platinum. Just royalties on that song along made my friend just over $50k that year. I would hope the recording artists receive much more compensation than that, given live performances, t-shirt sales, etc.
So, yeah, I've heard it all before and I agree with most of it. The RIAA is evil, tramples on personal property rights, is clueless when it comes to protecting intellectual property, bought lawmakers, persecuted the Christians, sold crack to kids, broke my lawnmower, yada, yada , yada. They are a business and like any other business, they are struggling to protect their paradigm. Some of the ways they do it are just normal for business. Too many, though, are just brutal.
My sigs always suck.
There was a back-referenced /. article about RIAA reversing it's desire for "Work for hire" as part of some legislation. At the time there was speculation that it was due to pressure from artists, and fear of looking like a bunch of thieving bandits.
But we can concoct a more sinister reason, thanks to Sonny Bono.
If a work is copyrighted as "Work for hire", it get 95 years of protection. OTOH, if it's copyrighted under the artist's name(s) and rights assigned to the recording label, it gets life-of-the-artist plus 75 years protection. Most pop artists that generate the CD churn appear to have >20 years of lifetime left, if they can control their overstimulation habits. So for those folks, it's a better deal for the label to leave the copyright in the artist's name.
Somehow I doubt it would be worth the effort to have age-based policies on "work for hire", because it would probably raise more questions and lawsuits than it would gain in back-end revenue. Besides, the target audience may well be age-clustered with the artist, so the back-end revenue loss would be minimal.
Or maybe they're hoping that in about 15 years Disney's next piece of legislation will extend copyright "until the Sun goes out", arguing that that is limit enough to meet constitutional tests.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Hey, my contract as a programmer at work means that my employer owns the stuff I program. This is entirely reasonable. So why is it that music artists, employed by their employer (RIAA member) get so upset at losing the ownership of the work they do?
They get paid more than adequate wages for what they do (if they are any good). Many of them do not write the words or the music, they just look nice and can vaguely sing. These people are not $1m/year musicians, and they earn under $100k. S-Club 7 (annoying teeny pop band in the UK) are well known, but only get this sort of wage, plus sponsorship (BT mainly at the moment). Plus they don't have to work in an office and their deadlines are measured to the nearest year, not the nearest week or day.
Here's what renowned cryptography guru Bruce Schneier has to say about the DMCA (emphasis mine):
---
[...] Dmitry Sklyarov (age 27) landed in jail because the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes publishing critical research on this technology a more serious offense than publishing nuclear weapon designs. Just how did the United States of America end up with a law protecting the entertainment industry at the expense of freedom of speech? And how did the entertainment industry end up with stronger laws protecting their content than the information on constructing nuclear weapons?
[...]
Welcome to 21st century America, where the profits of the major record labels, movie houses, and publishing companies are more important than First Amendment rights or nuclear weapons information. (The more you look at the problem, the weirder it becomes. "The New York Times" has the legal right to publish secret government documents, unless they are protected by a digital copy-protection scheme, in which case publishing them would lead to an FBI raid.)
[...]
The entertainment industry is behaving the same way. The DMCA is unconstitutional, but they don't care. Until it's ruled unconstitutional, they've won. The charges against Sklyarov won't stick, but the chilling effect it will have on other researchers will. If they can scare software companies, ISPs, programmers, and T-shirt manufacturers (Hollywood has sued CopyLeft for publishing the DeCSS code on a T-shirt) into submission, they've won for another day. The entertainment industry is fighting a holding action, and fear, uncertainty, and doubt are their weapons. We need to win this, and we need to win it quickly. Please support those who are fighting these cases in the courts: the EFF and others. Every day we don't win is a loss.
---
Read the full text here.
Raymond
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
We didn't, but the RIAA has been claiming that the reason they're against Napster et al is due to the harm done to the artists. Possibly they're thinking that the average person in the street would have more sympathy for the artists than the price fixing consortium.
Oh, absolutely... and I think this illustrates part of the larger problem. Everyone is pointing the finger at the other party as the problem, because they're all in it for the money.
It's hard for me to look at a musician with a straight face when they rant against the RIAA in one breath, and then turn around and denounce MP3 file sharing networks in the next.
If the musician was truly creating music as art, his/her primary goal would be getting as many people as possible to become fans and listen to/enjoy his/her work. That means it's counterproductive to attack Napster.
Instead, musicians want to see music as property, and want to stomp out every organization that does anything with said "property" without their express permission.
As long as a musician clings to the idea that his/her music directly equates with X number of $'s owed him/her, he/she has a pretty hard time convincing me that he/she is any different than the businesspeople at the RIAA.
As a recording artist, I do not receive a fee for making an album. I may receive an advance to cover the costs of the recording process, which I am responsible for paying back in full. The costs are deducted from or recouped from my share of the royalties. I do not receive a dime from the sale of my albums until I have paid for all costs incurred during the production. I pay for the record - not the label.
-- Sheryl Crow
I like that woman...
http://kered.org
What happens in the music industry is that the reocrding company (Party A) "lends" money to the artist to make a recording. This money must be paid back by the artist before they get anything.
It's most definitely NOT the true definition of "work for hire"
"Work Made For Hire" is a specific legal term, with a specific definition, specified in Section 101 of the Copyright Law. A good resource is gigalaw.com.
In brief, "Work Made For Hire" includes: "work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a sound recording,..." (From the site).
For the artists, their work is a "Work for Hire" because they signed a contract agreeing so, and because the law says it is.
Should this be the case? No, but the artists knew what they were getting in to (or should have) and shouldn't have agreed to it.
Well, please tell your musician friends from this extremely heavy consumer of recorded music (I have been known to buy over 100 CDs a year) that they should *love* Napster and they should figure out ways to sell mp3s or oggs or some other fairly public/standard format files of their music online. Please suggest they investigate the approaches used by Mordam record distributors who sell individual digitized tracks from numerous artists for 50 to 80 cents on average.
Please also be sure to mention that I love to get my hot little hands on actual CDs and LPs and that I am a *lot* more likely to buy one (or the whole discography in some cases) when having a good idea what it sounds like. Sure, I've downloaded some stuff from Napster that I'm not likely to buy the album of, but it's stuff I wouldn't have been able to hear on the radio either (even if I did listen to the radio) and couldn't possibly have known much about without a prehear.
As an example, Sleater-Kinney is a band people I know have said they liked. And I'm familiar with the genre, but hadn't heard any specific S-K songs, after a couple of Napster downloads I proceeded to buy every CD of theirs I could find within a very short period of time. Another good example would be Negativland, while I owned a couple of their albums from back in the early 90's, once I found their U2 sendups on their web site for free, that renewed my interest and I picked up at least six or seven of their newer CDs.
I do not have a signature
they dont like the RIAA because they think everything should be shared and free... oh wait wrong group...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Well, Clearly the RIAA does not represent artists; one need only examine the title for which the acronym stands to know that.
The major 'non-profits' that represent the artist interests would be the PRO's such as ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, etc. These are the groups that sell blanket liscenses for broadcasting to the major networks, cable, radio, as well as bars, restaurants, and stores. Unfortunately for the artists, the PRO's are run primarily by boards whose members have significant stakes elsewhere in the recording industry... Hence the need for groups like the RAC.
Monopolies (and therefore probabably cartels) aren't in much danger from the current administration. It's hard to see how near this future is.
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
Torn... between hate... for three lame "artists"... and evil megacorp coalition... uggh... which to hate... which to root for...
BRAIN... EXPLODING...
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
but at least in comic books, it makes sence, you have a character, that can and has been drawn by many artists, at least the CB artists can go out (if they are good enough) and start up their own comic with their own characters (Todd McFarlane is a good example, he used Spiderman and Ghost Rider to advance his career)
Musician on the otherhand are stuck in recording contracts that force them to produce music for the man while the remain popular
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Actually, the story of what happened here is worse than you think. What happened is that, after he gained popularity, he decided to leave the recording contract he was in because it was draconian. However, the label pursued (and won) the rights to the stage name "Prince", so he couldn't record under that name for anyone else. Hence, he changed his name to a symbol (to get around legal issues as much as any other reason), wrote the word "slave" on his forehead and finished out his contract. When it was done he started his own label and became The Artist Formerly Known as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.
The worst part about this is that when he said he wanted out of his contract, his label actually decided that the best course of action was to take away his right to his own stage name, which I found to serve no purpose except spite. I must admit that after hearing this I have a lot more respect for him than when I thought he did it just to be eccentric (which I found out was just the way the recording industry spun it to keep them from looking bad).
Virg
Please keep in mind that a remarkably puny fraction of working artists make anything more than a living wage. The superstars get all the press, but there is a large army of one-hit wonders, session pros and weekend warriors out there; make no mention of all the adolescent strivers.
illegitimii non ingravare
> Can anyone explain to me how a court of law can find a giant
> monopolistic music/entertainment/whatever it's bought recently company
> can be granted the rights to music over the artist who wrote it?
If the court is presented with a document stating that the artist signs over rights to the work created, the court has no choice. Most, if not all, recording contracts have a clause like this. This is not to say that it's fair, but the court has to assume that the contract was willingly entered by both parties (in the absence of proof of coercion). Since the artist signs (and then does not successfully press coercion charges), the law is clear.
The question that you must ask now is why so many artists sign contracts that give rights to their works to these companies. There are many other posts that address this issue, and I lack the time to approach this now, but the simple answer to your question is that the court finds for the company because the artist gave the rights to the company.
Virg
So, what will come of all of this? I think that some of these major artist who, in spite of the RIAA, have been able to get rich off of their talents will form a new record company. This company must follow the credo: "Don't screw the artist; don't screw the customer"
The contracts for the artist would specifically state that the artist recordings are NOT "work for hire", the contract would specifically state that the publishing rights for the music remain with the artist (as Disipline Mobile Group records already does), and the contract would give the artist $1 to $2 per CD. And finally, they would give away at least one song of every album as an MP3 on the record company's web site
On the customer side it's even easier. Set a policy that the suggested retail price of every CD is $10.
Can such a company exist and make money? Absolutly! The only real problem is distribution. The major labels have every square foot of bin space at Tower, Sam Goody etc. reserved and accounted for. It's next to impossible for a new record company to get bin space if they don't crack and join up with the RIAA. So what's the solution?
Remember, the internet changes everything. This is one of the "new economy" concepts that actually works. For the first couple of years the CD will be sold only via the record company's web site as well as other none brick & morter sites like Amazon. If the RIAA is blocking the distribution of ethically produced reasonably priced CDs then use the internet to do an end run around them. The customers are already wired. Look at the number of Napster users, Bear Share users and so on. These are your customers and by definition they already have 'net access. Instead of fearing the web as a tool of "pirates" USE THE WEB to avoid the RIAA cartel completly.
This is a plan that can seriously work. Just as a packet on the internet sees a broken router as damage and routes around it we need to form ethical record companies that see the RIAA as damage so we can route around that mess.
Somebody needs to use this situation as an opportunity to make a LOT of money in a completly ethical manner. The artist will support them, the consumers will support them, the 'net community will support them. All we need is the investment cash and a leader and the recording industry will change forever.
The Milli Vanilli debacle was only embarassing to the recording industry because they got caught. The proliferation of dancing boy bands and jiggling girl bands is just the continuation of a cookie-cutter process that's become the RIAA's wet dream. Now that technology can assure that you don't actually have to hire musicians to perform music, they've gone overboard. And they're about to be bowled over by the backlash. Every musical movement engenders a backlash. I remember the "disco sucks" revolt. Hundreds of teenagers at my school smashing records in the playground. Literally thousands of records were smashed, angrily. It was years before disco artists resurfaced. The backlash against Britney and 'N'Sync is going to make that look tame. Those people won't be able to go out in public until they're fifty . . .
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
That's an interesting assertion, I wonder where they get the numbers to back that up?
Having been a part of the local music scene of a fairly small town for about 10 years now, I would estimate it at more like 50-60% based on the evidence available to me. It's very easy to produce your own CD. If you've got a day job that pays more than your rent you can pull it off. Of course, they could be defining "legitimate" as "stuff that makes us money"...
And "create"? Please! "Manufacture" I'll give them, but "create"? I think not.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
That's what managers are for. Too bad so many managers are only in it for their 10-15%.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Check this out:
$6.2B/488.7M = $12.69/Unit (last year)
$5.9B/442.7M = $13.33/Unit (this year)
They are charging more per unit, and selling less. Go figure.
Remember when the RIAA got the amendment passed the first time, turning all recordings into works for hire? At the time, they said several times that they were just trying to clarify current law. And, of course, we all thought, "who are you trying to fool?". And Sheryl Crow thought that, and a ton of other artists thought that, and Congress thought that, and repealed the stupid thing (if you've forgotten any of this, it's nicely summarized in part 1, interest of amicus curiae).
But now we see that the RIAA was serious-- they are going to press for this being interpreted as the way the law works currently. However, it seems that their own greedy contracts may have come back to bite them in the ass. As it says in the brief, "in order to qualify as a work for hire... a work created by an independent contractor must... have been created at the commissioning party's 'instance and expense'" (loosely quoted, read it yourself if you want more context). And this is where it gets interesting-- the label doesn't pay for the album to get made. They advance money to the artist, who has to pay it all back. So it's made at the artist's expense. And if the artist's footing the bill, it's not a work for hire under current law, or any common sense definition.
So why is the RIAA trying this again? They probably thought they could slip it through in the morass of legal proceedings, no one would notice, then they could point at it in future cases. Unless they have some ruling or law up their sleeve that the Coalition didn't know about, I'm guessing the judge will ask them to amend the submissions. But IANAL; maybe their brief is a lot less convincing than it looks to me.
'NSync represents nothing more than the ability to sing lyrics written by somebody else to a tune composed by somebody else and to look pretty in the process.
:).
It's a misunderstanding to think of N'Sync as musicians. They're an entertainment act who use music as part of the package. So I think you underestimate them a bit. The "looking pretty" bit is obviously part image-constulting and camera effects, but if they really are singing at the same time they do all their dancing, it's reasonably impressive. That's not easy to do. And dancing well in time with music can be particularly powerful in creating and image/mood.
It's part of the whole entertainer thing.
And really, just like music can be part of the entertainer's bag of tricks, so can entertaining skills (stage presence, storytelling, etc) be part of a genuine musician's performance. Not always... especially as you get more and more into what people consider art music, the presentation has less and less window dressing.
But anyway, don't confuse musicians with entertainers.... show choirs with chamber choirs, britney with sting, janet jackson with natalie merchant, gwar with U2, etc
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
What I've come to realize is that for the majority of artists, this so-called piracy may have actually been working in their favor," testified alternative rock star Alanis Morissette. RAC also says artists who want to put their music on free sites like Napster should have that right -- something they don't now have.
That's from a Business Week article referenced from the Artist's Coalition site -- which, curiously enough, has the domain name "artistsagainstpiracy.com". Either they're missing something, or they've correctly realized that music sharing is not the biggest "piracy" going on here.
Anyway, as another artist put it in a senate field hearing:
"You give something to your audience, and it always seems to come back somehow."
Of course, the difference between the record industry and the artist is that the artist receives the goodwill and interest. So the record industry has to secure their return by other means...
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
They admit "Of course, the most important component of a CD is the artist's effort in developing that music." But they carefully avoid citing actual numbers, so as not to mention that the artist only gets about 10% of the retail price. The artist is really important, and they pay him almost as much as the janitor...
My best guess at the numbers they didn't list:
Stores & distributors: 50%
CD production: 5%
Royalties: 10%
Profits, advertising, fancy offices & big salaries for the record company execs, bribing disk jockeys, bailing their stars out of jail, and covering their losses on bad music: 35%
Finally, "Each year, of the approximately 27,000 new releases that hit the market, the major labels release about 7,000 new CD titles and after production, recording, promotion and distribution costs, most never sell enough to recover these costs, let alone make a profit. In the end, less than 10% are profitable, and in effect, it's these recordings that finance all the rest."
Let's see, the major labels bring out 7,000 new CD's and less than 700 are profitable. On the other hand, small labels generally don't get the big stars (or can't afford to create synthetic stars through advertising), but somehow can afford to put out 20,000 CD's. Do the major-label guys have a serious lack of taste, or what?
As someone else pointed out, Britney and 'NSync are not primarily musicians; they are entertainers. They become mega-stars precisely because their rudimentary musicianship facilitates the creation of product that is easily digestible by a large public, most of whom are interested in the cult of personality, not music per se.
There are plenty of great musicians out there. Most are totally underpaid. And we'll never get to hear them because the recording industry is about selling product, not about promoting music.
Hmm, stretch my imagination as far as I can and I still don't see the connection between committing genocide and lobbying for copyright law.
That's because he wasn't trying to make such a connection. The connection was that an idea can be distorted to the point where it becomes practically the opposite of what it was intended to be. He never compared genocide to lobbying for copyright law at all.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Yeah.. too bad mp3.com is now owned by Vivendi and has begun tightening the screws on the artists there. Many smaller artists are leaving because mp3.com is cutting their percentages down to practically nothing. They can't even make back what mp3.com charges them to participate in their "pay for play" system. It will probably soon become just another marketing vehicle for Vivendi-owned artists.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
If Plaintiffs were to rely on such amended certificates accurately describing any ownership interest Plaintiffs hold, the Coalition's concerns regarding the ownership issues in this case will be abated. If Plaintiffs refuse, this Court should dismiss this case on the ground that it lacks jurisdiction as the invalid, work for hire copyright registrations are the only evidence presented by Plaintiff supporting their claim of authorship and ownership.
I think you're right, and I think this quote illustrates the coalition's strategy quite well. They are basically saying that the industry needs to decide real quick which way it's going to be. Either they can go after Napster and others or they can try to screw the artists, but they can't do both. I'm very eager to find out how this will play out.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Most of the musicians I know actually are pretty heavy Napster/fs users.
Of course, I don't know any signed musicians. :)
This is one of the things that drives me crazy: most musicians get no benefit at all from the RIAA, because most musicians do not have record contracts. (Of course, it can be argued that even the musicians who do have record contracts, most of them would be better off without them: see e.g. Hole, Concrete Blonde, TLC...)
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
And I notice the original poster limits it specifically to "sound recordings."
Artists under contract to the RIAA produce less than 10% of all music, I would wager. You've got to remember garage bands. They're out there.
The RIAA may not care, but they're still out there.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.