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How to Legally Infuriate the RIAA?
An anonymous reader shot us off a link to an article discussing how to use the RIAA's System to Broadcast Music Legally. Now, I'm no lawyer, but if the facts are correct in this article, we're talking about a price point that makes streaming radio extremely inexpensive. There's a lot of worthless spite in this article, but if you can look past that, you might see something worth thinking about.
So if I understand this correctly, music will be streamed to "cache sites" which will than be available for streaming to end users and the cache sites will pay the use fee. IANAL but that places the cache sites in the same boat as file swappers today, distributing music without a license. What am I missing that makes this legal?
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
Can somebody come up with a practical idea that informs the public of the evils of RIAA and the true virtues and benefits of P2P and why RIAA must be stopped in their campaign to destroy the technology.
It would be more constructive if someone devised a new model that would allow both immediate distribution of music, like P2P provides, and the artists to be paid as well.
The core problem with the RIAA is not really that they are greedy and heavy-handed, the real problem is that they are the promoter of a dying kind of business, that of distributing music on a physical media. Their entire model is based on 1 medium == 1 copy of the material on the CD. That model has been overturned by the internet, and they struggle like a drowning man to save the old system.
The reality is that the RIAA will disappear eventually, the only question is how much damage they will do before they die. The other question is this : it's all well and good that music can be distributed digitally, and that the RIAA is on the go, but nobody has come up with a good distribution model that would allow the artists to be paid without the RIAA. As long as someone doesn't find a solution to that problem, the RIAA will continue to survive, annoy the living hell out of everybody, listeners and artists alike, and P2P users will continue to be thieves (yes they are, for most artists).
The key is a new distribution/paying scheme. There is some breakthrough to be done in that area. When people can download a piece of music immediately and the artist get paid the second later in a totally reliable, trustworthy and non-big-brotherish fashion, the middle-man RIAA will disappear naturally and in no time flat.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
This is the main reason why we are losing this battle. People like Charlie Demerjian, so vehemently oppose the [RI|MP]AA, their words and ideas are poisoned to the point it does nothing but turn off the casual reader and make us look like a pack of bloody savages.
While he may have a good point (donation to the EFF), this reads like a 17 year old who just got punished and is now lashing out at his/her parents.
We need THOROUGH research into ideas and solutions and then we can practice them. And believe me, when the solution which is right and true (as well as easy and quick) DOES come out, it will be accepted and adopted by all (references: Napster, KaZaa, et. al.).
When modding "Informative", please make sure it both has a source and IS actually informative.
Sheesh, the article author doesn't understand the RIAA rules. Here they are in an easy to read format...
t ml
http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/webcasting.h
His idea of tiny, one-song webcasters won't fly. However, the idea could be modified to 100-song webcasters and you might make it work, for an end user cost of about 10 cents for the 100 songs.
Well, than it's back to what I've been saying for ages. Quit buying RIAA music, tell your friends, and ask they tell their friends. When RIAA members see their sales go down by even 30%, I suspect that they would start putting pressure on RIAA to tone it down.
Nah, they'll just blame the 30% decrease on P2P file sharing and legislate a tax on computer equipment to make up the difference.
You *do* realize that by coming out and saying that this illegal behaviour is an anticipated or "beneficial" outcome of the scheme you propose, you're making it all that much harder to defend it in court as legit?
Problem with your argument chief:
/. articles, there has been loads of proof posted on this and I am too lazy to reproduce it here.
/. stopped buying albums, the RIAA would see a loss of about, Im guessing, less than 10% overall sales. This they could quickly blame on piracy, makes some apperances on local news broadcasts to drum up anti-piracy support and jack the prices even further. Joe six-pack will then blame the tech crowd for stealing usic and forcing him to pay an extra $5 on that new Creed CD he wants.
Most artists will continue to make money the way they do now, without the RIAA overhead: they will tour and sell band merchandise
This would be nice if it was true. Some artists, the Eminems and the JLos of the world make a lot of money touring, but most artists do not. Check the last couple days worth of
Boycotting could be an effective means of driving a point home, except that most people do not care. If every person on
Now a total boycott, that would hit them in the sack, but I don't have a clue how to get everybody to back it, and you need everybody, not just one demographic.
Where the blow needs to be struck, is by the artists themselves. We are not far from the day (if not there already) when an artist will be able to produce an album without a studio, and distribute it direct to fans via the web. No middle man. The RIAA's recent actions are especially going to encourage acts to start doing this. If the RIAA no longer controls the goods, then nobody is going to need to patronize them. They shirvel up like a slug caught out in the sun...
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
Yeah, but if it is legal, you won't have to defend it, you can most likely get it thrown out. Remember, this is an excercise in obeying the letter of the law, not the spirit. The letter is what is enforced, much to the chagrin of people trying to do the right thing, but getting constantly screwed for it.
If you have a clever lawyer when setting something like this up, and you do your homework, you should be untouchable. Using the law to do wrong is a time honored tradition in the US, just look at our government. When was the last time you heard Bush say Enron, or Chaney say Haliburon?
-Charlie
I don't know what internet that guy is on, but here on Earth's internet, if you have 100k listeners to a song, you ain't a small broadcaster!
For a more realistic look at the small broadcaster, go take a look at Live365. A plan with 100 simultaneous listeners for your station (way more realistic than 100k listeners) starts at $8/month, and that includes the royalties.