EFF's New File-Sharing Scheme

carpoolio writes "Wednesday at the Future of Music's Music Law Summit, the Electronic Frontier Foundation proposed a new licensing plan so file-sharing sites can operate, and musicians can get paid. The idea is based on the ASCAP/BMI radio music licensing schemes. But still, the RIAA seems happy to continue suing, and wait for iTunes and Napster to catch on more."

Comments

Well, the RIAA has already responded...

[robslimo]

[the RIAA]summarily dismissed the EFF's proposal as too "drastic"

Article here

Re:No sir, I don't like it.

[squiggleslash]

FWIW, the RIAA has been suing two groups (WRT to MP3 redistribution, anyway) - the operators of P2P systems, and (when that started to falter) those who place music online (via P2P systems or otherwise) to be downloaded (whether because of deliberate action on their part, or because their P2P client automatically puts downloaded files up for downloading by others.)

End users who have MP3s and have not passed them on to others have been left alone, regardless of whether those MP3s were obtained legitimately or not. There's little to reason to believe the RIAA would change tack on that.

Re:Orders of magnitude: Incorrect

[LuYu]

There are orders of magnitude diffence in what the artists and the **aas can realistically make under the current scheme compared to what they can make under the EFF scheme.

What the RIAA/MPAA stand to make and what the artists stand to make are two entirely different things. The RIAA/MPAA do not represent the artists. They never have, and they never will. They are greedy middlemen gouging the consumer with monopoly rents and ripping off artists with cryptic contracts and questionable legal tactics.

Seen in this light, if the artists were to make a quarter of the money that the RIAA/MPAA makes off of the artists, they would probably see a massive increase in their finances.

Remember, 100% of 8 dollars is better than 5% of 12.

Re:No sir, I don't like it.

[Alsee]

3) Wait a minute...If you stop paying, do you lose the rights to the music you downloaded?

You're buying into an RIAA fiction here. According to US copyright law there are six rights avaiable for licencing, but they really only amount to three different rights:

(1) A licence to make reproductions
(2) and derivatives

(3) A licence to distribute

(4) A licence to public display
(5) or public performance
(6) including Digital Audio

A licence to create reproductions, a licence to distribute, a licence to public display, period. A licence does not exist unless someone is licencing you one or more of those rights. There is no such thing as a licence to use.

Once you have a copy, you own that copy. You have every right to play it as much as you like whenever you like. You have every right to create a back-up of it, or to play it backwards, or to use it in a school project, and on and on and on.

So if you stop paying then you can keep playing whatever you already own, but you can no longer create/distribute new copies of them by sharing them on P2P.

P.S.
According to another clause of another clause of US copyright law, when you buy a box of software you also have every right to install and run that software without any licence whatsoever. EULA's are not in fact licences unless they are granting you reproduction, distribution, and/or public display rights as listed above. EULA's are in fact an attempt to impose a contract. You have the right to decline a contract at will, but if you decline it you obviously do not gain any benefits offered by that contract. Of cource most EULA's offer you nothing you'd want anyway - you already have the right to install/run the software.

Any attempt to enforce EULA's rests entirely on arguing that the buyer somehow willingly chose to agree to that contract. While courts generally bend over backwards to allow people to willingly create contracts, claims that merely buying a box indicates agreement to a contract are legally very questionable. The very purpose of the UCITA bill floating around is to turn all EULA's into valid enforcable contracts.

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