Record Labels May Have to Pay Double Royalties

douglips writes "News.com.com.com brings us this article explaining how record labels may be bitten by CD copy protection. At issue is the mechanism that places duplicate WMA tracks on the CD. The labels are thus selling two copies of each song, and may be required to pay twice as much to music publishers. So not only is the DRM ineffective, it also could be a huge legal liability for labels."

Comments

FNORD

[virgo cluster]

Might this be the lame excuse for the shift to Digital Restriction only CDs? Because it serves the customer because it doesn't have to be twice as expansive?

Let me see if I understand this...

[Copperhead]

Customer : I should be able to rip music off the CD I just purchased for my own personal use without having to pay for a new "license". I bought this CD with the understand that I was purchasing the music for my personal use, and don't need to purchase a license for each new copy.

Record Labels : No way... just because you bought the CD does not give you the right to all the contents to do with as you wish. However, just to be nice, we will give you a low-quality, non-transferable rip of the song.

Artists : Wait... aren't you making another copy of the song? Since are selling two different copies of the song for every CD you sell, we're going to charge you twice the royalty.

Record Labels : No, we purchased the song from you for a particular customer, not for an individual copy of the song. As long as a single customer uses the song, we can do whatever we want with it.

Customer : Wait... isn't that what I just said?

What about the lyrics?

[Nakito]

Consider this: on almost every album since Sgt. Pepper, the record labels have included printed lyrics along with the album itself. Lyrics are, of course, copyrighted. So the copyrighted lyrics are provided twice, in two different formats: once printed and once sung. Does this mean that lyricists have been cheated for 35 years?