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Napster Finally Gets a Break
jark writes "Wired News is reporting that 9th District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled that the five major record labels must prove they own thousands of music copyrights as well as prove those copyrights were not used to monopolize and stifle the distribution of digital music. " Definitely a twist
in this ongoing saga.
If so, as much as I dislike this tax, then this isn't much of an argument. Very few mp3s end up on Audio CDRs, and even fewer on Audio DATs (unfortunately, as good as DATs are, they never really took off.) Why? Because, IF it's burned onto a CD at all, it's burned to Data CDs, which have no such tax. Audio CDRs cost several times as much as Data CDRs exactly because of this tax, therefore the only people who use them are typically those who must -- those who have audio burners (NOT computers!) that require them.
I imagine that there's a few people who downloaded music with Napster and then played it via their sound card and then recorded that with an Audio CDR device, but this number is almost certainly dwarfed by those who burned it directly on their computer -- it's cheaper, uses more common hardware, and delivers better quality.
The argument that the Napster lawyers are making is that the labels don't actually hold the copyrights anyway since the artists were essentially working under contract as freelancers. If this is the case then the copyrights would revert back to the artists.
my understanding of the matter is that the "artist" owns the rights to the song itself (i.e. the lyrics and notes and arrangement of them) but the record company owns the rights to the recording itself. that is, the copy that is on the cd. they are suing over the use of that particular recording because, in most cases, the files traded were ripped from CD recordings. if, however, it is a recorded live bootleg or something along those lines, the record company (to my knowledge) has no control over it.
"I can't understand why people are frightened by new ideas. I'm frightened of old ones."
I will note that since the heyday of Napster, the diversity of available files has gone down. More obscure/fringe acts aren't as available as they used to be, and this actually means a reduction in my CD buying patterns - previously, I had used Napster as a method of discovery for new and unusual music, often by browsing the collections of people who had music that I liked. I would say the RIAA had shot itself in the foot, except that they never represented those less mainstream acts to begin with: they just want to maximize the number of people who buy Brittney Spears and Garth Brooks CD's.