EFF Lawyer Argues For Compulsory Music Licenses

An anonymous reader submits "Fred von Lohmann, lead intellectual property lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote an op-ed in the Daily Princetonian urging compulsory licensing of copyrighted music. The system would allow internet users to copy music freely and legally, in exchange for a flat monthly fee to be shared by artists and record labels. He says schools like Princeton might be a good place to test the approach."

Comments

Biggest issue with this pipe dream

[Anonymous Coward]

Every label/artist would not get a cut of the pie, how many people are going to pay this, how much will it be, and how many thousands of indie artists plus the mainstreamers will get this, perfectly split and then of course its a matter of the big labels ever thinking this is fair to them, which they never will. Maybe if all the labels started releasing cheaper CD's and legit non-propritary formatted online distributed versions that where not so overpriced as to be affordable to everyone, then we'd get somewhere. I don't mind them keeping track of what track i just downloaded from an official site and having me pay for that track or the whole album, but make it easy to pay, make it cheap and yet profitable within reason to the band/label and its all good. And screw the idea of having each track keep tabs on how many times you listen to it with your windows/mac only player that is a piece of crap and invades every privacy oriface of yours to satisfy greedy labels.

-meh-

Re:Biggest issue with this pipe dream

[RussGarrett]

OK, I hate doing things like this, but let's do some sums.

Let's say the studio and engineer time required to record an album costs $20,000 - that's about 2 weeks of 9-hour days in a decent studio. As a sound engineer myself, I think that's overpriced. A talented and non-tempremental artist shouldn't need as much studio time - 4 hours' studio time to record a 4-minute track is plenty IMHO.

Glass mastering is $500, and printing/pressing is $1.00 per CD. These are deliberately inflated - if you're doing a million CDs they're going to be much cheaper. So for 10,000 copies, the cost per CD is $3.05. For 100,000 copies, it's $1.20. For a million copies, it's $1.

So that means for even the smallest run, you've got a MINIMUM of $8.95 profit on the recording to play with, per CD. That's $89,500 on 10k CDs, $895,000 on 100k, or more than $9 million on 1m CDs. That goes to the publicity, the record companies' pockets, to other production (yes, videos are expensive. I think music videos are a waste of time. I also think you can make a decent video on $10k), and to the artist, and remember it's a minimum. Now, personally, I cannot see how they can eat up that much money. But somehow 90% of that disappears by the time it gets to the artist. Explain me that one.

It won�t change me!

[TheMerk]

If I hear something good, I'll look it up and dl a couple of tracks. If I like it I go pick up the disk. So, I rip it and send it to my laptop and my MD player. I still will always want a hard copy.

But that's just me.

Merk

Wrong answer

[slashd'oh]

"The problem is that artists are not getting paid."

I doubt that the artists are the major driving force behind these lawsuits. Indeed, it's the people who own the copyrights who are behind this.

While he mentions there are "many options," I disagree with von Lohmann's "obvious" "right" "answer." (Can you see I'm making bunny ears with my hands?) Frankly, I'm surprised a representative of the EFF would advocate a flat fee to be applied by ISP's to all users - especially universities where many students receive aid to utilize campus equipment and services. How does one justify these fees on a scholorship application?

I can see the Ask Slashdot discussion now.

I think universities are an ideal location for social initiatives, such as the importance of paying for the goods and services you acquire.

Re:It cant be free forever but

[stanmann]

IF the RIAA owns you, and you sell 10,000 CDs for $5 each,
you actually just lost between $50-100,000 since the RIAA requires that you buy your CDs from their distro channels at $10-15 each. Unless you of course are suggesting that we get rid of all the middlemen, then people who don't go to concerts wouldn't get to buy music.

No.

[mlknowle]

Quite simply, this is a terrible idea - the idea of forcing everyone to buy something just because some people 'steal' it is crazy. The economic inefficiency of forced consumption is rediculous - all this will due is make internet use more expensive, and those users who have no interest in digital music will have to sholder the burdon for the rest of us. Moreover, this program will dramaticalyl reduce the incentive for artists to produce quality records - if they get paid either way...

How about....?

[haplo21112]

I don't think this is the answer...not by a long shot...

A better way would be to reduce the price of CD's so more people will by them...and not care what the hell they do with them after the sale.

The prices for CD's are insane these days and they don't have to be. Places like Newbury Comics in New England where CD's are deeply discounted prove it...

a little Compare for prices:

At the large Music chains the latest Linkin Park disc "Meteora(Special Edition)" is approx $26.99 sale price since it was just released (observed this past weekend at Stawberries, Sam Goody, and HMV)
At Best Buy it was $19.99 a bit better...
At Newbury Comics $16.99 a $10 discount! Which by the way is still $3.00 less than the majors are charging for the standard edition of the disc.

I digress...

The Point is that I firmly believe that the high price of CD's is part of the probelm, and a firm solution will only come from a lower per unit cost. CD's are product, file sharing is advirtising, I'd much rather own a perfect copy that hasn't been distorted in the ripping process(although .ogg helps to avoid distortion for the real music fan) I also believe that CD's are an advirtisement of a sort as well the final product is the concert, which I don't think musicians take in its proper context these days...but thats a whole other discussion.

Re:This is corperate welfare.

[stiggle]

Bands do sell at their concerts, however - the band has to buy the CDS off the record company in order to sell them at the gig. (Those that are with record companies).
Sometimes the company might setup a stall and sell them themselves.
In the end, the only way round this is to remove the record companies. After all, they are basically venture capitalists who specialise in entertainment.

Too easy to rig

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you're a struggling artist, or the fan of an obscure artist, or, just a scumbag record exec (is there any other kind?) and you want a bigger slice of the compulsory license pie to go to a particular artist (maybe yourself).

So, what to do? Write a little virus, worm, or maybe a trojan P2P app to invade the P2P networks and swap your songs like mad, driving up the popularity in the proposed traffic-monitoring Neilsen-like ratings system, increasing your share of the pie.

If done right, such a scheme could be pretty difficult to distinguish from ordinary human-driven P2P file swapping.

So, in conclusion,

Worst Idea Ever.

Reasonable. Right.

[Xebikr]

I don't know where you are buying CDs, but they are very reasonably priced.

Let's see...
Picking a store at random...
Picking the first movie that popped into my head...
DVD is $20.24
VHS is $9.94
Soundtrack on CD is $18.98

What exactly do you consider to be reasonable? For just the music from the movie you pay twice as much as the entire movie on VHS, or for $1.26 more you can get the DVD. We must have different definitions of the word reasonable. Personally, I'd go for the DVD over the cd everytime.

He's trying to corner the RIAA

[siskbc]

Mr. von Lohman doesn't know what he's talking about. The issue is not that musicians aren't getting paid. Record companies have been ripping off musicians for years and the RIAA couldn't care less. The issue is that the record companies see file sharing as a threat to their profits (it's not) and their monopoly (it is).

I think von Lohman is a bit more savvy than you're giving him credit for. He knows there's know way in hell the RIAA will go for this, he's with the freaking EFF for God's sake. What I believe he's attempting is two things, both of which you address:

Artists vs. Labels

monetary losses vs. loss of monopoly

Under the first point, he tries to divide the artists and the labels, which have somehow united on this issue after being at each other's throats forever. He says we'll make sure we pay both camps, and while he doesn't specify, I have a feeling that he intends a split that is more artist-rich than the typical deal (I'm going off of his comments in the article). This would, ostensibly, bring support of artists around to the side of the artist-sympathetic P2P user. That would be good.

Under the second point, his method would pay the labels back without allowing them to maintain a bit of control of distribution of the music, as you point out. We would have all the freedom we do now, save financial, stealing the record company's ability to concentrate sales in a few low-risk, cookie-cutter artists as they do now. You are correct in pointing out the monopoly angle - people have to consider this issue in the greater context of what the RIAA has done lately, including their destruction of streaming 'net radio. That was all about control - at the time, stream-ripping software wasn't being used all that widely. They didn't want to have to offer payola to a massive group of stations, and that instinct overwhelmed the massive free advertising they would have gotten. Think about that, people, and this issue is clearly not about the money.

If you were to get von Lohman off the record, I guarantee you he knows that the RIAA will never go for this. But he wants them to have to abandon the profit/loss argument so the artists and public (and, God forbid, Congresscritters) realize that this isn't about money - it's about control over artists and over distribution. Getting the artists on board would be key - right now they're the most dim-witted, unwitting shills ever. And I imagine they're more successful than Hillary Rosen was.