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MPAA, RIAA Seek Permanent Antitrust Exemption
Devistater writes "Webcasters sued RIAA two months ago in an antitrust case for anti-competitive behavior. The response? An exemption from antitrust laws. Today's Register tells about RIAA/MPAA's efforts to get just such an exemption written into law. They could become permanently exempt from such a suit, if the bill passes. They snuck it into a bill sponsored by Orrin Hatch called EnFORCE Act (Enhancing Federal Obscenity Reporting and Copyright Enforcement Act of 2003). Orrin Hatch says this bill contains "First... an antitrust exemption in the Copyright Act [for] record companies and music publishers" Why? Because of 'market realities.' Which ones? The 12-year-old girl? The 15-year-old girl? Or the 66-year-old Grandma with a Mac?"
Exactly how much the RIAA pays off chumps like Orrin Hatch.
Must be nice having a senator in your pocket....
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
I have faith that SOMEONE in the government will see the absurdity of this request and will stop it before it gets too far.
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
to have Orrin Hatch as my congressional representative. I have never voted for him and after several news stories like this will never vote for him in the future. When will the people of Utah wake up and see that he does our state no good and harms our nation as well. Anti-trust laws are there for a reason. To keep companies from running rampant and having ultimate power to do as they will without regard. Nice move Orrin how much money did you take to get this law written? I suggest everyone write a letter to Senator Hatch and tell him what you think of this law. Utahans especially but it helps if anyone sends a letter in.
*Ok rant's over, flame on!
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
Great. This is what we need. More power to those who hold the purse strings. Give more power to big business and less to consumers.
The thing that concerns me is that the RIAA is trying to circumvent a diplomatic process. I always thought that, while not completely effective, challenging an organizations actions (even in court) kept what organizations do in check - that the could not overstep their boundries. Now, the RIAA is trying to be immune from it's actions, while suing consumers for their actions.
This could start a dangerous precident - allowing corporations immunity from their own actions. Hope SCO isn't watching.
It is not our abilities that show what we truly are... it is our choices.
Are politicians so dependent on positive media spin that they dare not refuse such laws? So many questions.
Ianal, but I believe this would violate the 14th amendment. This would give unequal protection under the law.
Hatch is trying to pull this off at the same time Congress is debating whether the BCS violates antitrust laws. The NCAA doesn't have an antitrust exemption, and neither does the NFL. To my knowledge, Major League Baseball is the only group of that sort to have an antitrust exemption, and even that's come up for debate during all those strikes.
A simple public awareness campaign should put an end to the madness. In the context of other "market realities," it simply doesn't make sense. In fact, Congress has taken an active interest in limiting those other "market realities." Seriously, what's the difference between one group controlling all access to recorded music and one group controlling all access to pro football?
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Something cleverNext logical step is to make any music's copyright automatically go to RIAA so they can protect the artists rights against evil pirates.
And this eventually leads to you not being allowed to play your own music without paying RIAA, since they own the copyright...
Oh, and whistling is also music, so any whistler is liable for up to 5 years of prison and $25000000 fine if caught in the act without proper RIAA license...
Major league baseball is exempt from anti trust laws. So are many power companies (witness the fuss made over deregulation, deregulation from monopoly status)
I don't like this development any more than you do, but to carte blanche say that "monopolies" are evil demonstrates ignorance about the issues involved, which is what you are blasting sen hatch for.
1) it shows how scared the industry is... that they realize they cannot continue to abuse their customers and survive... they need protection from new and disruptive technologies. This cycle has been seen many many times and signals a major overhaul is well under way whether they like it or not.
2) gives us another avenue to the Supreme Court to challenge copyright law. 'Protection by Law', whether it be an exemption to anti-trust law or perpetual copyright extensions, does not serve the interest of the people.
Isn't this simply the music industry grasping at straws to save itself?
The simple fact is that no legislation can force individuals to buy their music from any specific source, and if people start getting their music some other way, there's very little the music industry can do to stop it.
When some other music distribution system finally takes away most of the RIAA's customers, an exemption from anti-trust lawsuits will be useless to them. Noone will be suing them for anti-trust when they are no longer a monopoly!
Free your ecomony and enact the FairTax
Senator Hatch is a songwriter, who stands to benefit from legislation like this. In 2002 he made $18,000 in songwriting royalties. He stands to benefit directly financially from any copyright legislation,
Imagine the outcry from Jack Valenti or Cary Sherman if Wayne Rosso or Anne Gabriel were writing the legislation. The screams of the MPAA and RIAA would be heard around the world. The mainstream press would be doing their normal reporting by press release and Wayne and Anne would be run out of town on a rail..
Wow, that's right out of 'Atlas Shrugged'. Crazy.
All you gotta do is change Orren Hatch to Orren Boyle...
In fact I can't think of a better definition of a second-hander than the RIAA. Except maybe the RIAA's lawyers...
Pixie
don't mess with those geekgrrls
Why?
Money is power, right? That's what it's for. In an unrestricted (i.e. "Free") market, the more power you have, the easier it is to gain more (a la Microsoft), ending in a monopoly. This is inevitable, 2+2=4. The only remedy is anti-monopoly legislation (i.e. "State intervention"). If the U.S. gov't-for-rent did roll back all laws prohibiting monopolies, they would be reducing state intervention, and making the market more free to follow it's own natural tendancies (i.e. implode to an attractor state - plutocracy).
The trouble is, the notion of the free market, just like communism, makes a beautiful theoretical system, and people get so attached to their ideology that they are unable to accept that neither of these two extremes actually work in the real world.
P.S. - some friendly advice so you don't get burned - you may want to compare total per-capita health care spending between say Canada and the U.S., and level of coverage after all that money is spent, before you use the health care system as an example of how well the market works...
Again, Slashdot, in a tact of classic propoganda, latches onto a few examples. A 12 year old girl! A 66 year old man!
You do know they just sent out notices to a whole bunch of people they saw sharing illegally, right? Do you expect them to go through all tens of thousands of people?
Get over yourselves...they're within their legal right to protect their copyrighted works. I don't get why Slashdot advocates the piracy of music while in general decrying, say, software piracy. Actually, I do--one is just more convenient than the other, so they're used to it to the point where it's been justified in their minds so that they don't feel guilty. I think that explains the passionately reactive nature of a lot of people's opinions on the matter--it's all self-justification to avoid guilt.
I'm sure they did.
... well, Dean's the horse I'm putting my money on.
... well, what the hell, that's happened before. And even if that does happen, odds are he'll still be better for the country I love -- and served proudly for most of my adult life to date, and for which I am now desperately afraid -- than any of the alternatives.
But his record as governor of Vermont does indicate that, at least on occasion, he's willing to take unpopular stands when he feels it's the right thing to do. And his policy statements -- whether or not he intends to live up to them -- are more in accordance with my personal beliefs than those of any other politician, of any party, at any level, I can remember. He might be just another sellout schmuck with good PR. He might also, just possibly, be another Lincoln or Roosevelt (either one) or Truman. And given that the rest of the field that has any chance of winning is composed of people I know to be sellout schmucks with good PR
Don't assume that everyone who disagrees with you, or doesn't share your reflexive cynicism about all politicians, is ill-informed. Skepticism is valuable; so is hope. Dean gives me at least some hope, and considering the direction the country's headed right now, that's a precious thing. If he wins, and turns out to be a letdown
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Those are very interesting points and they go along with the interesting comment made, I guess by Timothy, that said
"From the watch-people-blame-the-free-market dept."
I think the problem is that people use terms like "free-market" or "competition" as though they were magic spells that could solve all problems and have some mystical, sublime and transcedental meaning. Being for or against "free-markets" is totally irrelvant.
This a case of a logical problem created by the sloppy use of language to patch over complex ideas with simple catch phrases.
There is no such thing as a "free-market." There never was such a thing and there never will be. So baiting people about attacking this mythical beast is nothing more than a kind of bizarre political statement akin to saying --I'm on the right. Such spatial metaphors are next to meaningless without a very specific context.
So, this AC post is right on the money. American capitalism has always been regulated and deregulated to varying degrees. There is no one-hundred percent and it is quite possible that the RIAA could be exempted. It is also quite possible that the NET Act could be ammended to make all digital P2P fair use.
They're both possible and neither would have much influence on the cult icon referred to as the "free-market."
what happens to the independent record companies who want to persue a marketing model outside of the RIAA?
Or even the indie film companies who are now suing the MPAA?
I mean, they're not a government body. They only have power because they say they have power. If everyone ignored them, there is nothing they can do about it.
It's time to forget them. They are the past. The genie is out of the bottle, and they can't ever put it back in. It's time to look for a new business model I'm afraid. They want to only hold on to what they had and not pursue what is the future.
Remember, they only have power because everyone believes they have power. They were not voted on, we didn't elect them. The President didn't appoint them.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Campaigns take money these days. Lots of it. If you don't have name recognition, it takes even more. I live in a county with a population of 17,000 and we just had a well constested Sheriff's race. The winner (and - thank goodness - the best man for the job) spent over $8,000, and he was pretty cash strapped. I would guess he did about 1/2 the advertising as the other two top candiates, and I know he painted some of his own signs to save money. He probably talked to more than half the residents in the county face to face, door to door. There are no radio or television stations which cater to this county, and there is single weekly newspaper, so there was no big $$$ media.
Why are candidates so dependent on cash? VOTER APATHY! Yes, it's still our fault. We don't do research, we vote by name recognition and the "message" which has been tested and massaged by the political machine. Now, I'm not foolish enough to believe that I'll get a chance to talk one-on-one with the next presidential candidates, but I'll be doing a little legwork prior to the democratic primary elections.
I already know that Dubya is not a man I can trust to protect my values. IMHO, his eye's are bigger than his stomach, and his mouth is faster than his brain - I probably wouldn't vote for him if we mostly agreed on how the country should be run.
I don't know much about Dean, yet, but I will. He doesn't carry the baggage a congresman usually carries, but he's got a record to follow. I find looking at the "other" sides literature is a good starting point. Find out why they think he shouldn't be in office. Once you know how he handles his missteps, then look at his purported successes. Look at how he's handles problems, then judge his actions based on intent and available data. When you invest money in mutual funds, do you take a look at the historical data or do you look at the methods and values of the manager? Most folks who choose based on the former are sorely disappointed in their investments over time - you're constantly moving money into last year's great performer.
Now, I'm nearly as lazy as the next guy, so I won't even look at the candiates until a moth or so before the primary, when I'm stuck with four or five lousy choices from the original field of fifteen or so. But hey, at least that's manageable.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It comes to this, without legislative exemption from anti-competitive laws, the **AA can't compete. And they know it.
The RIAA has been a bit hysterical and made some cruicial blunders. They first went to court instead of to Washington, and their scorched earth campagin isn't working out too well. The various challenges to their subpoenas may invalidate the "shoot first and ask questions later" provisions of the DMCA. I think the MPAA is not amused or appreciative. What they are is scared. This weekend one of the pre-movie commercials at my local Cineplex was an MPAA thingy showing a real working stiff in the movie business to make the point that movie trading hurts real people. Unlike their music buddies, the MPAA has used the courts sparingly and put most of their effort into Washington lobbying. But even that's not gone well. Fritz Holling's bill was a PR disaster. Orrin Hatch's remarks earlier this year that copyright holders should be able to invade people's computers was worse. Even the senate big-wigs felt compelled to issue statements disagreeing.
And now this. They need the Government's protection to survive. They need exemption from anti-trust laws, no matter what the political consequences, or they're toast. Even if you believe all politicians are dishonest bastards, its hard to see how Hatch's little trick will work. One thing politicians really don't like is political headaches. And most are quite willing to toast contributors if there is a need for expediency. Can you imagine the furor if this got passed? Every representative would be flooded with requests by other industries for a similar exemption. All would demand that if it could be done for the movie and music businesses, it could damn well be done for them. And that's a headache no senator or congressman wants to get. Look for a lot of senators suddenly being too busy to answer Hatch's phone calls.
+1 Informative
Maybe they pulled strings to get his wife a board of directors position somewhere or his nephew a cushy job in the entertainment industry.
Not to be too cynical about this, but I'm sure Hatch got his quid (maybe just more in the sense of "quid pro quo" than pound sterling). I'm sure there are lots of covert ways the RIAA can scratch Hatch's back in return.
Good idea though, as long as the spending towards the RIAA stops, no matter how much you like the artist. I've had to stop listening to a number of artists since I stopped several years ago. I don't really regret it either. I've found entire new genres that appeal to me as a result.
V
...occurs whether or not I buy the music defended by the RIAA. Even if we manage to drag the music companies into their well-deserved graves, the restrictions that the legislators they bought and paid for will still be there. The material they copyrighted will never become public domain as the law intended because the copy protection they intend to force can't be broken legally - when they die it dies. The laws that altered copyright to make this possible will still exist, ready to be used by another generation of (soon-to-be) failed businesses.
The widespread disregard for property rights you attribute to infringers is not limited to them. The music industry has "copy protected" CDs, making them harder or impossible for their legal purchasers to use while not impeding the ability of commercial infringers to copy. The DMCA manages not only to withdraw a host of Bill of Rights protections, but also effectively negates a large portion of copyright law - rights explicitly given or requiring explicit denial in law. The RIAA and its component labels have not shown respect for these rights - considering their actions (raising CD prices while denigrating content and making it harder to use) they haven't shown much respect for their customers either. It's hard to expect respect from your customers (or potential customers) for your rights when your business has shown either utter disregard or contempt for the similar rights of others.
The laws that the RIAA has bought or paid for will last long after they are dead, and we will pay for them, regardless of whether we cease buying their products. Complaining to and through the government to prevent these laws is necessary so that we can get back to the main entertainment of watch the music industry rot.