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Kazaa, Verizon Propose Compulsory Music Licensing
akb writes "USA Today is reporting on an interesting new alliance between Kazaa, the dominant file sharing network, and Verizon, a company with revenues of $67 billion. The two companies are floating a proposal to ISPs and the computer and manufacturing industries to lobby to force the music industry to license their music. Royalties would be payed to artists directly, thus circumventing the stranglehold the RIAA has on the music industry."
My first thought: this is far to sane to actually take place. Then I read:
Sooo, let me get this straight: it is riciculous to directly pay the artist who produce the music.
Well, this is very telling. I sincerly hope compulsory license comes to be... it seems about the only way to tame the RIAA beast. Maybe it will even save internet radio.
"Kazaa, Verizon Propose Compulsory Music Listening"
I got an image of being *forced* to listen to whatever music I download...
Recording Industry Association of America president Hilary Rosen calls the proposal "the most disingenuous thing I've ever heard. It's ridiculous." Oh theres a shocker... someone comes up with a decent idea that doesn't involve the RIAA making more money and Rosen calls them disingenuous. Ha, what the hell is the RIAA then? Like they really serve a point by paying the artist pretty much nothing and profiting on other people's work. Yeah whos the insincere bastard here. Ironically this idea, no matter how crazy it is... might just work. I'd be willing to give an extra dollar a month for internet if it meant i could download music without worrying about the RIAA or kazaa using spyware (which I'd hope would dissapear if they actually had real money exchanging hands, that and i'm sure Verizon can spare some change).
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
The paradigm of the music industry for the last 60 years in which there was a high dependence on a middle man "the record company" that promotes and markets your music is now obsolete. With today's technology artists can bypass the middle man completely and sell their music directly to the fans. Problem is the record company is the last to realize they're obsolete. And they will kick, scratch, bite, and play dirty in order the maintain their highly lucrative but irrelevant business model. When you pay $16-20 for CD you're paying the salaries of receptionists, janitors, worthless executives, etc. of the record company- people who have nothing to do with the actual production of the music. I like the new model much better where the music is cheaper and you're directly compensating the artist.
What about independent artists that don't have a label yet? Will they get money? NO. This system seems awfully too selective to me; is every arist with a record deal going to get the same amount? It seems that an awful lot of fraud and embezzlement can result from this.
This still presupposes that the consumers of the above items are going to engage in 'illegal' copying.
I think we should adamantly refuse to support any proposal which presupposes guilt - I think it's a dangerous precedent.
MjM
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XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
What the article doesn't expand on is what computer manufacturers and blank CD makers will contribute. Define computer manufacturers first (Gateway, HP, Dell, et al or does that include the guy slapping clones together in his garage?).
And I'm 100% against taxing blank data CDs to pay artists. We distribute our own software on CD-Rs; why should we have to pay artists for distributing our own software? Or why should someone burning Linux distributions have to pay up too? What about the other myriad non-music CD-R uses?
Artists will be able to make money off albums, but they will have to do it the right way. They will have to make you want to buy the album. Include original artwork etc (take a look at old records, some of the artwork that was on the sleeves of those is probably worth more than the album itself. People also like to have original copies. Artists can make money off albums, but they're going to have to cost a lot less. That's where self recording comes in. The technology availible today should alow most artists to make a record their own albums well enough to get popular, and then be able to use that money to sign the recording company, not the other way arround.
However, I do agree that the real test of artists will be in their performances. That's where they will need to make their money.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
What we have now: "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." -- Hunter S Thompson
Compulsory licensing is a great idea. We have that now with radio play and with some kinds of patents. We would apply directly to the artist, or to the artist's designated representative, for a license. Instead of a band making 2 cents an album, it would get all the money.
...that my ISP will now be on board with tracking what I download and charging me for it? The story sounds a little vague on the details, but an alliance between software, hardware, and bandwidth providers only points to one thing: control of what end users do online.
Encryption to the rescue (I hope)!
This may be a great idea, but there are definite consequences.
The proposal is similar to what's being done with the blank audio cassette levy in the US (see Title 17, section 1004) and the Canadian CD-R Levy (see this random link I found on Google).
But the question is: how does the collected money get back to the artists? There are two ways:
1. Use the BMI or ASCAP system that already exists to pay artists for music rebroadcast.
Of course, this has problems of its own (see ASCAP & BMI -- Protectors of Artists or Shadowy Thieves?). This is unlikely, because the sampling method used to dole out royalties is even less valid for the Internet than it is for rebroadcast and live performances. Additionally, it's unnecessary because they could just...
2. Track actual downloads from the Internet.
Think about it -- to accurately divide a >$2B pie will take a very thorough analysis to get all parties comfortable. It's easy to legislate: either all download sites or sharing systems aggregate their download data in a central database or they will be considered illegally supporting piracy. IMHO this will very shortly be a part of the proposal.
Note that this could use unique IDs, assuring that your actual music listening habits won't be tracked, etc. But do you really believe this will happen, when there's yet another advertising vector to exploit? Think about the metadata that could be gained from this data...the licensing opportunities...the marketing...the potential for privacy intrusion....
Who would control this big usage database in the sky? Who would you trust?
Why would someone who has no interest in downloading more music have to pay a "music tax" for Internet usage? I have not enough interest in music lately to download it. I have had all the music I need for years before in some format or another over the years.
Any Pay-per-stuff method should be charged according to how much stuff I want to get - not whether I have an internet connection or not.
Since a lot of people read Newspapers on the internet, would we add an "average subscription price" (whatever that is) to the ISP charge instead of subscribing to the newpaper sites on an individual basis?
does nobody know what ASCAP is? This is what happens when you cut funding to music programs in public schools.
Yeah, this is exactly what the industry needs: price controls and mandatory redistribution of wealth according to government policy. That has just worked so very well in the past.
Yeah, but it is a little bit late to post this since that's how RIAA is taxing everyone's purchases of items such as CD burners, blank CDs, tapes, etc. I guess the proposition in the article would create a similar taxation system by "artists".
I agree that this is wrong since you cannot charge everyone their adequate share of downloaded or shared music; much less distribute the money fairly to these "artists". But what's wrong here is the principle, not the plan.
Since the principle says people who share or download have to pay somehow no matter what. While it is true that if you are hosting several terabytes of copyrighted content solely for the purposes of redistribution and financial gain can be considered stealing, I do not think running a Gnutella client casually comes to anything close to it. Just because the distribution is cheaper due to improvements in technology does not validate the older distributors' right to their old distribution model.
Courts have said that size and quantity matters when distributing or setting up a system that eases distribution of copyrighted content. So while Napster was found to be out of bounds, again, casual sharing will not. And, in general, the numbers have so far shown that casual sharing does promote the industry growth, innovation, and other good things.
Labeling this activity as pirating or stealing is just a dumbfounded response from "old guys". And asking for the legislation to require copy-protected hardware everywhere will do nothing but stall the industry.
So, the solution is for RIAA and MPAA to stop pointing fingers and lobbying for legislation, only go after blatant copyright violators. It will benefit them in the short and mid term by raising their revenues and profits while they rip off the "artists". In the long term, please solve the distribution problem that will be antiquated pretty soon. That means offer *more* at a lower cost, not the other way around, like they want to at present.
Who remembers the DAT tax? Before doing digital audio on computers was made practical by mp3 and cd-r there was DAT. And the music industry clamped down hard to prevent it from becoming a consumer product. So they got a tax placed on DAT media and devices and had a chip implanted in every DAT device to prevent copying.
;)
Thought it was relevant to this, but didn't think the slashdotters would let me do a feature
Anyhoo, here's some reference links
The right way to tax dat by RMS
Phillip Greenspun comments and gave testimony before the Senate.
What happens to the money that the Library of Congress collects.
Its about making fans pay for access to new music. why shouldnt a musician be able to take a box to their concert and like a vending machine people download mp3s into their portible players from these boxes.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Now they will be made to pay for downloading music that they never download nor ever listen????
The real problem is that the smart artists would then all setup beowulf clusters on OC-3's to pipe their own songs in massive parallel to
.
What's the best way to tame the best? Revoke its corporate charter. I am certainly no proponent of a generalized corporate death penalty, but the courts should have the Supreme Courts should have the discresionary power to summarily revoke not-for-profit corporate charters based on the history of the organization. The RIAA has a history of legal terrorism against any potential threat. It wields state force as a weapon via the courts in order to maintain the status quo, a strategy irreconsilably at odds with free market capitalism.
What should terrify the RIAA is the possibility that the USSC will pull a Roe v Wade re copyright law; that suddenly out of no where it will take a fish hook to copyright law and essentially disembowl it. That is what Roe v Wade did to abortion laws. There is far more constitutional ground to oppose the DMCA than old anti-abortion laws.....
That ruling on virtual child pornography should have been a wake up call for the RIAA and MPAA because it shows that there is a hardline utilitarian streak to the current USSC. That ruling showed the public that utility matters to most of the justices, especially ones like Scalia that typically rule against big government (which is what the DMCA really is, an excuse to increase police powers).
A good legal argument to use before the USSC against the DMCA is that it violates the first amendment. The bill of rights was ratified AFTER the body of the Constitution. Therefore federal copyright law must be restricted by the first amendment since it came AFTER the clause in Article I, Section 8 establishing IP enforcement powers. Since the provision that "Congress shall pass no law abridging freedom of speech" came after said section, it naturally follows that said section cannot restrict freedom of speech.
(Now what would really be nasty is if the USSC ruled that because local governments and corporations are both chartered by state governments, the states can legally hold not for profits like the RIAA to the provisions of the bill of rights)
Compulsory licensing, where the copyright holder has to license on statutory terms, is reasonable. But taxing the Internet to support the music industry is not. It's important to distinguish between the two.
Interesting comment - especially since this seems to be how a lot of the rest of the world works.
Heard a report on NPR the other day about the Egyptian record industry - turns out that piracy has become a fact of life there - such that when an album is released, the record company expects about two weeks of sales before the pirates hit, and legit sales trickle to zero. Records are much less profitable there. Thus, bands tend to release new albums every six months, and support themselves through touring.
Personally, I've always thought it to be the measure of an artist if they sound better live than on the album. Those are always my favorites. For example, take Lenny Kravitz. Every album he puts out is OK, but I've never bought one. I do go see him every time he comes into town tho, because live he is fscking magic. Really lights up the stage.
Ever heard Axel Rose actually try to sing live? Don't get me started about Brittany...point is, if you can't really play it, you shouldn't try to sell it.