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Future of Music Summit
DotcomScoop writes: "We were provided with a copy of the letter sent by Congressman Rick Boucher to RIAA head Hilary Rosen and IFPI head Jay Berman questioning the legality of copy-protecting CDs. 'I am particularly concerned that some of these technologies may prevent or inhibit consumer home recording using recorders and media covered by the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 (AHRA),' Boucher writes. We've summarized the letter in a story and CNET also has coverage. Monday is the kick-off of the two-day Future Of Music Policy Summit, which includes keynotes or panels from Boucher, Rosen, Napster CEO Konrad Hilbers, Nirvana's Krist Novoselic, Fugazi's Ian MacKaye and the National Writer Union's Jonathan Tasini, among others." We already posted a story about the Boucher letter, but it can't hurt to mention it again.
I've always like the idea to let recording ass. a few cents from a potentially made copy. Now if I can't even do a copy I'm excited to pay a few cents for my own backups of my work.
Just my two cents has now a new innovative meaning...
Either the record companies will say "Keep you pittance you collect on the blank media" or they will simply start a smear campaign on the senator and all others that bring this up to discredit them or to try and direct the public's focus away from the issue.
The record companies know what they are doing is wrong... hell they helped write the law.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
No matter what they do, it will be cracked -- therefore copy protection does not hurt software and music pirates. They will figure out a way to do it. No, the people it hurts is the legitimate users that just want a backup copy in case the cd gets broken, which is their legal right. The people who want to put the songs on their MP3 player so they can listen to it while jogging without experiencing CD skipping. Thats who is hurt by the copy protection. Honest people who have paid for the product are being robbed by the publishing companies. This is true for both software and music. It *will* be pirated. That cannot be stopped. Only law abiding citizens follow the law.
I would honestly bet, that the people in the cyrstal palace of RIAA forget that there is this "tax" on black media, or they knew about it, and now want to have a more effective way of increasing it without huge public backlash (we will return your right to have clean cds, but we can pull this stunt again if we want more money). Imagine if the RIAA wanted to increase the "tax" to 50c/media, without going through this effort first. People would revolt, now they are saying, well if I get access to all my CD's again, maybe its worth it
`find / -name "*your_base*" -exec chown us:us {} \;`
2. Based upon your knowledge and upon any consumer contact received by your member companies, have any discs entered the U.S. market that may not be copied on a device or on media for which a royalty has been paid under the AHRA?
This is really the point of his question. The AHRA allows the collection of a royalty on recording media, but this comes in exchange for the priviledge of the consumer to make these copies. By making copy protected originals, the priviledge is removed. Congressman Boucher's questions are pulling tight the noose the RIAA has made for itself out of all that rope.
Very funny indeed.
As you know from your personal involvement in its drafting, the AHRA clearly requires content owners to code their material appropriately to implement a basic compromise: in return for the receipt of royalties on compliant recorders and media, copyright owners may not preclude consumers from making a first-generation, digital-to-digital copy of an album on a compliant device using royalty-paid media. Under the AHRA, any deliberate change to a CD by a content owner that makes one generation of digital recording from the CD on covered devices no longer possible would appear to violate the content owner's obligations under the statute.
And how much of a royalty does the RIAA get on the sale of hard drives/MP3 encoders/iPods/Nomads? I'm sure Ms. Rosen will gleefully point out to our well-intentioned friend in Congress that she's more concerned about CD-to-MP3 copying than CD-to-CD, which might, unfortunately, render Rep. Boucher's argument moot.
One thing that slays me about all this is the attitude that if I record something to a CD it MUST be material that was created by someone else. The folks pushing this battle and demanding taxes on blank media assume that the common man is not capable of creating his own music, documents, movies, etc.
I got a taste of this during the discussion of Napster at http://www.tednugent.com where they were insisting that if I made my own MP3 file it was copyrighted and illegal for me to offer for free. Never mind if I wrote and performed my own music, recorded it myself, and chose to give it away to the world. The attitude seems to be that even if a moron like myself is capable of such a thing, I'm not as wise as the RIAA and should be protected from myself and not allowed to give it for free.
But of course.....the RIAA wants a chunk of "the action" and if I give it away there isn't any action.
I understand that some places (Canadia?) already have a tax on blank media under the assumption that you are going to use that media to copy copyrighted material. They don't seem to take into account that the same media can be used to save files of any type. Maybe you just wanted to save your family photos to CD, or your letters to your girlfriend. Oh well, you pay the tax anyway.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
Let the RIAA mofos do what they want, let them waste their money, I couldn't care less.
My thoughts exactly. Until they came after me and willfully broke not some lame country soundtrack album, but a cd I was genuinely interested in. Just wait till that happens to you: you'll find you're very pissed off at not being able to play your lovely new purchase any way you want to.
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
According to the 1992 Act people are entitled to produce a copy of purchased music for their own, private use. Ergo, CD copy-prevention software takes away that right; and therefore record companies should be banned from using it.
However, I also noticed that a representative from Napster is to speak at this conference. Although there are legitimate uses for these P2P file sharing networks, Napster and its peers have the legal and ethical responsibility to make sure that their networks are used only for legal purposes. If rampant trading of copyrighted music is the norm for these networks (as I believe it is), then indeed they should be forced to shut down.
Purchasing a CD does not give one the right to distribute copies of the music to anyone he wishes. However, by law if someone wants to make a cassette tape (or MP3 file) for his own personal consumption, he does have that right; and the RIAA should not be allowed to nullify that right without very strong evidence that it is being abused by a large portion of the consuming public.
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I found the congressman's letter concise and powerful. The language was matter-of-fact and keeps the focus on the legal issues. Hopefully his actions will result in a balanced out come. Now if only the congressman would take up the cause of the DMCA and find an equally effective legal approach to repealing the law.
The reason these "cowardly" artists have typically signed adverse contracts is generally because there has never been an alternative. A bad contract is better than no contract if those are the only two options.
Record companies have traditionally controlled both the production and distribution channels. Without the help of a major label, the odds of an artist creating his or her own content and seeing widespread distribution have until very recently been essentially nil.
While the recent technology developments and widespread internet access are changing that rapidly, I think it's a little early to consider anyone who has signed a record deal with a major label a whore. Even now, recording and distributing your own music would require a non-trivial amount of cash and some insider knowledge that is beyond the reach of the "average" starving artist. Everybody needs to eat, and the record labels have a long history of catching an artist at a time when they are negotiating from a weak position and bullying them into signing an unfavorable contract.
It's interesting that you compare a record deal to a software development contract, because I believe there is a much greater market and reward potential for an average programmer than there is for an average musician.
You do realize that you're paying royalties twice for the same music, don't you? That's like buying two licenses to use one program. No thanks. And with RIAA-endorsed copy protection, you would effectively have to buy THREE licenses -- one for work, one for the car, and one for your music CDRs.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
The classical example of someone actually standing up to the record companies is Frank Zappa. He discovered that Warner Brothers was pulling one of the standard record company tricks to avoid paying royalties, which involves pressing more copies than they record in the books, typically twice as many. I believe this was with Freak Out, his first album, circa 1965. He sued Warner Brothers and won. Part of the settlement was for him to get his own sublabel Bizarre under Warner/Reprise. Even then, he didn't get completely out from under Warner Brothers' thumb until the mid-to-late 1970's, with the Lather fiasco. After that, he sold records under his own separate Barking Pumpkin label and CD's, at first, under Rykodisc.
I think there are two lessons from this: