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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."
The business plan amounts to $2B in revenue:
Recording Industry Association of America president Hilary Rosen calls the proposal "the most disingenuous thing I've ever heard. It's ridiculous."
The logical statement:
"It would be like me opening a video store, charging 10 times what others were charging and only offering videos in the Beta format," Guerinot says. "In any business, when you have billions of downloads occurring, you don't say we're going to ignore that market and try to create something else. You serve your customers."
Why the hell is Hillary Rosen in charge anyway? Attempting to change an industry that already exists and is going strong into what you want it to be is stupid. This is a great turnabout though, I'm glad to see some heavy hitters start going against the RIAA. I'd gladly pay $1/mo to download music legit. Assuming the majority of that $1 went to the musicians. I'm paying for the network from my own bandwidth and hard drive space, and I'm glad that Guerinot seems to understand that.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
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.
Statements like
Who does the RIAA benefit? themselves?
-and-
however, now it seems that the RIAA doesn't even acknowledge the artists anymore.
only go to show what you don't really know:
That is that the RIAA is a secret Iraqui agency working for Saddam Hussein. What seems to be the RIAA's plan to take over the world is really Saddam trying to take over the world. All that money that supposedly goes to the "artists" is really funneled into an Iraqui weapons program. I mean, what really happens to the artists anyway? Just look at people like Vanilla Ice, Weird Al Yankovic and Marky Mark from Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. THEY were really killed to hide the truth after their money was secretly sent to Saddam. The next thing you know, he'll be commanding all the world's computers using something called "Brilliant Digital Projector..."
Or, it could just be a scheme run by The Brain from Pinky and the Brain.
seriously, why must this always be handled via legislation? We live in a free market society right, if there is a viable business model here it will be found and worked out. It should be obvious to everyone that this genie is out of the bottle.
all this "solution" would do would be to result in a tax on internet use applied to everyone "who benefit(s) from the availability of this content." Essentially this is the same thing as putting a surcharge on blank CDs. Also since it's legislated it would be difficult to change when we discover the bugs.
thus circumventing the stranglehold the RIAA has on the music industry
No! I can not say anything nice about Verizon! I'll seize to be! Curses.. foiled.. gahh.... getting dark...
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Kazaa lobbyist Phil Corwin says a $1-a-month fee per user on Internet providers alone (it's unclear whether costs would be passed along to subscribers) would generate $2 billion yearly: "We're talking about a modest fee on all the parties who benefit from the availability of this content."
I don't like this idea one bit. It's the same principle that would end up letting a whole host of "fees" into the bill that we get from our ISPs at the end of the month.
It also reminds me of the college tuition bill. The tuition, and then the tens of fees tacked onto the bill, that end up summing at nearly $1000.
Don't let people nickel and dime us to death.
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
- the label does promotion for the artist
- the label records the songs
While the labels are almost certainly ripping off the artists, they are doing something, and can't be excluded so easily, I mean no matter what the studio tech has to eat. Of course, all new contracts will simply agree to the label being a "marketing corporation" and getting x% of any revenue generated by the artist anyways.I'd do something interesting, but my server can't handle a slashdotting.
The way I see it, all this garbage will end soon. There is absolutely no way to control media- any encryption scheme will be circumvented in no time flat. My belief is that artists will begin to give their music away for free, understanding that if they do not give it away for free it will be gotten for free anyways. Where they will make money is in live performances. I dont care how fat of a pipe you have, there is nothing that can be done to truly replicate a concert experience- no amount of high tech audio and video will ever be the same as being there at the concert.
Artists will encourage people to download their music and give away promo cd's for free to entice people into becoming fans to get them to pay $45-$80 to see the band live. It will be a revolution in the music industry- everything will have turned upside down, but there is no other way. Artists need to make money somehow- except those who do it just for the love of the music, but I'm sure those artists would enjoy a bit of money and fame too.
Just my prediction- who knows what will really happen.
While I find the RIAA practices despicable to say the least, I can't exactly bring myself to trust Verizon or Kazaa, especially the latter.
Im not sure of whether a case of the lesser evil is really going to change things in the music industry.
The RIAA doesn't want the music control being handled by someone else, for obvious reasons. At the same time, they afraid to go into the online market properly for the fear of competition, thus they think that by suing the living crap out of anything online, it will eventually go away.
But trusting Kazaa to provide a music service? The same guys that have done a deal with brilliant digital entertainment?
Why can't a group of artists, group together, make their own online service, and provide it a lower cost than the RIAA? By being legal, this will literally force the RIAA to react with an online service thats cheaper, and thats good for consumers.
But until the RIAA have competition from the artist's themselves (and popular ones), they will continue to fight in the courts. The Kazaa/Verizon idea is a bad idea from the getgo.
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
Can someone explain to me how the Kazaa/Verizon deal would not eventually end up being RIAA with a different name? I'd wager that that the artist does not see the $1/month that gets charged, because a processing/admin/overhead fee would get applied against that $1/month, and each year (because of additional compliance costs, infrastructure costs, billing costs etc.) that fee would get just a bit bigger.
Sounds like a take-over bid to me.
Fast, cheap & reliable. Pick two.
Kazaa lobbyist Phil Corwin says a $1-a-month fee per user on Internet providers alone (it's unclear whether costs would be passed along to subscribers) would generate $2 billion yearly: "We're talking about a modest fee on all the parties who benefit from the availability of this content."
Uh, NO, you charge the people who are using the service. Why the hell should my grandmother, who has no idea what an MP3 is, pay this fee? Make it $1 per month per file-sharing user. Hell, you could set it up like adult-check, where every P2P app queries the same database before allowing you to login. You pay a buck a month to the database administrators and they distribute the funds where appropriate.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
Um. Let's just remember who we're talking about here...Verizon isn't any better than the RIAA when it comes to corporate citizenship...I vaguely recall them suing 2600 for registering verizonsucks.com, and they refused to install DSL in my apartment when they found out one of my computers was running Linux.
I don't think the music industry could be described as "free market". The scarcity of its product is artificial, determined by copyright law which is the result of a bargain struck by the stakeholders. The major labels have manipulated the current bargain to gain a strangelhold on the industry.
Now that we have new technology that will change the way the bargain works the major labels are looking to tighten their grip and kill off the potential of new competition. Read some Larry Lessig, he refers to them as the dinosaurs looking to kill off the mammals.
The important thing to remember is that this is a bargain between all members of society. Don't believe free market drivel that tells you that you aren't a stakeholder.
I'm an ex-musician and, in case you con't guess, I HATE the parasite, dog-scum, suckin' xxAAs with a passion.
Jack Valenti and Hilary Rosen can find a nice place in Hell and burn there in agony for all eternity like the creativity deprived fuck-wited Luddites they are.
God. Just thinking about 'em makes me reach for Piperazine.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
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.
Legislation is what makes Intellectual Property exist in the first place. It makes sense that changing the legislation could solve the problems with Intellectual Property law enforcement.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Touring doesn't HAVE to cost that much money. What really costs money is when tours include crazy pyrotechnics, excessive stage props, backup dancers and singers, etc. Most all of that doesn't matter if you're a real musician. I want to see talented musicians playing intstruments or spinning the turnbtables when I go to concerts. I don't need nor want to see Brittany and her enterouge of 20 backup dancers. I've seen better shows with a guy, his acoustic guitar, and a mic. If you're good enough, they will come. I listen to a ton of jam bands like Phish, and Phil Lesh. Their concerts had special tapers sections for god sakes. Phil Lesh has even released entire tours in .shn and .mp3 formats for FREE. Does this hurt him or his band? Hell no. People come to be live in the crowd of a one in a kind performance. People tour with the bands for whole summers, seeing upwards of 15 or more concerts in a row. These bands get payed because they're are talented and know how to put on a show, as well as how to treat their fans right.
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"