Slashdot Mirror
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."
Will it really be the musicians getting paid or the Labels?? If it's like CDs than it will be mostly the labels making the money.
Evolution or ID?
Artists need to be compensated for their work
(except the ones that show you how hard they live on cribs , the show that rubs the consumers face in how much they fleeced you for)
The premise that you could get a significant number of file traders who already know and understand that they are in violation of copyright law to voluntarily cough up five dollars to pay for the 'right' to file share, when not paying has no consequence except the user's guilty conscience, seems to me to be a little more than optimistic.
It is a good step in the right direction to show the record labels new and interesting ways to make money, but in the end any solution must rely on the power of the law to enforce the payment of artists.
I have been pwned because my
What's the problem with these guys? The music industry should support the online music services that already work, such as iTunes and Napster 2.0 . Suing people left and right will not help, on the contrary, sooner or later everybody will be so fed up with lawsuits against kids that the rights of the music industry will be curtailed. Wait till the first annoyed judge throws out a case as frivolous.
The music industry decides what licensing scheme to choose. And they'll surely take the one with which they can squeeze out a maximum of profit out of the hip-hop and goth kids.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
as with ASCAP, etc in the radio market, I'd say it wasn't possible. With that precedent in mind, I think it (or something similar) will happen, just not very quickly because of the politics involved.
1. RIAA is busy [over]reacting to file-sharing
2. RIAA will never be able to stop file-sharing
3. There's gotta be a compromise. Maybe this is it.
Considering their real problem with file sharing is not the loss of money but loss of control over music distribution, anything that tries to tackle their public complaint whilst not addresing their real beef is bound to be rejected. Kudos to the EFF for trying but I think this is still 12 to 24 months ahead of its time. Congressman Boucher and Congresswoman Lofgren to the white courtesy phone please...
iTunes and it's imitators work. They are popular, past any analyst's imagining. What possible percentage is there for the RIAA to climb back up atop that great hill they only recently cleared just to piss in the well?
You know as well as I that for every existing P2P client system that goes legit, two more "rogue" systems will pop up because "Music Must Be Free!"
Through intense marketing, clever user interfaces, relatively lax DRM, and brutal scare tactics and legislative knuckle-dusting, the RIAA has begun to put the genie back in the bottle. You think they're ging to throw in with their ol' friends the EFF now? Sh'yeah...
That is the $64,000 question. Right now it can't be answered and the RIAA is determined it won't be, since of course loss of control over distribution is their real problem with P2P, not the potential monetary losees. If P2P were completely legal and say industry-sponsored download sites emerged, we'd probably see swapping not so much of the music itself but playlists. A lot more effective than admittedly useful practice of linking to independent/unsigned artists' web sites? This IMO is where the RIAA companies COULD go if they chose - there's the problem you touch on of of too much music available for everyone to plough through. There's a golden opportunity for a Google-like service to index all this music - whilst the function of the record companies that truly is obsolete is distribution, the function they might still usefully perform is filtering the vast array of music sources down to a user's persoanl preferences.
"If you stop paying, do you lose the rights to the music you downloaded?"
Well if you canceled your service then they wouldn't know wether you had the music still or not. If they came after you and said you still had it then there would be an invasion of privacy if they knew for a fact. If they just came after figureing you would have kept it then that would not only deter anyone from using the service but also would have legal ramifications for going after someone like that.
Evolution or ID?
The premise for any proposal that promises musicians be paid for every download, seems missplaced. It's the Digital Age, stupid - - - - a mantra that must be repeated 1000 times anyone thinks BMI/ASCAP offer even a remotely legitimate role in our society.
Performance rights can easily be handled through Digital Age Fan Clubs, who better, right? Time for ASCAP/BMI/RIAA/MPAA to disappear. Musicians are doing just fine, thank you.
The Internet is the independent musicians' radio. Why take it away by imposing old business models on it?
Tom
Your problem is better known in economics as "The Labor Theory of Value". Karl Marx was a huge proponent of the same. Predictably, Adam Smith & other capitalists totally disagree with it.
:( My labor has value because the market wants the end product. Your labor has value only to yourself. Deal with it.
You ask "Why should a quick tinkle on a xylophone be better rewarded than months of work on an orchestral masterpiece? "
Why ? Because that's the way the world is. If you spend 8 hours a day building a highly creative straw statue in your backyard while I spend same 8 hours mindlessly slogging in a corporate IT outfit, guess who gets paid at the end of the month ? Your creative impulses are fine, but nobody wants your straw statue
Rules must be internalized - they always are. When's the last time the EFF composed a song, or signed up an artist ? The only rules that'll get accepted in any industry are ones that emerge from within that industry - not from outside. Now if a bunch of EFF folks join RIAA as management, and then propose these rules, that's different...
Please go read the artcile yourself.
The 3 billion is overstated through, as it does not include lost sales via other sales channels like cd's etc., nor does it include the investments that the record companies need to make to produce the music.
The other reason I think it will not work is because it is very disruptive for the established industry. It directly states that it aims to cut out the middle men like record companies and retailers. These people will not like to be pushed out of the way/job, and will defend the status quo with hand and tooth.
On the other hand: it would be cool, as plain cd's will fall out of the market, they will have to offer something tangible that can not be shared over p2p networks instead. Record stores will transform into clothesshops?
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
"Is it Fred's turn to pay this month, or are you the one who is downloading this month? I have a few songs I'd like to get, if you've got time right now."
The EFF is treading on thin ice. What have they produced to qualify them as participants in the discussion?
---
When it starts carrying music I'm after. To me the whole point of this electronic format thing is trying to hunt down music that I can't get in stores because the stuff is out of print. Beyond that, I'd rather have CDs since I can't afford an MP3 player and I like to listen to music when I'm not at the computer, too. As it stands, I spend about an hour trying to find something I want every time I get a winning Pepsi cap. I'd try finding new musicians, but the samples they provide are so short there's no way to tell if I'm going to like the song or not - even if it's 2 minutes long and meant for the radio, at least give me a verse and not just a little bit of the hook.
Then again, I'm the kind of musical reject who actually buys Klezmatics CDs and has never actually heard "Hey Ya" all the way through (not through any effort of my own, it's just that I don't listen to the radio that much). I guess I'm really not their target market. But God Forbid I download MP3s of music they haven't published since the 1970s, because somehow copying something they aren't selling is stealing their profits!
The numbers they toss around in the article are the stuff of high-school freshman fantasy. They figure that 60 million Americans use file-sharing software (yeah, right), and that all of them would sign up for $5 a month (yeah, right), and that it would cost nothing for the music industry to set this scheme up, run it, and market it (yeah, right), netting $3 billion in annual profit to the music biz.
I hope these guys don't do their own taxes!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
1) In regards to getting artists on board, their solution for people who don't want to participate says to me: don't join, and don't get money while people take your music, and fellow artists get paid for your work. That's harsh. What if the artist has an issue with the collection agency?
But the music/record/distribution world that we knew before, is gone. People are downloading their stuff for free anyway right now. For better or worse, the consumer has them over a barrel now for the first time, and they (artists, record companies) are no longer in a position to dictate. They don't really have a choice anymore, and that may not seem fair to them in comparison to what they were used to before.
The lawsuits are fleas on a dog. Temporary annoyance, but nothing more.
There will no longer be a "buy a CD, listen to a CD". There is never going to be, "Oh, I like one song on that CD but I have to spend my only $15 on it," which is what they liked. I can't predict have everything will shake out, but I know it is going to be very messy.
And about your number 2, isn't the difference with New Napster that with this there is no licensing agreement with only certain artists or record companies? I don't get just a choice of Britney and Eminem, I can download Minor Threat, Berlioz, or whatever.
About 3. That concerns me as well. It sounded to me like you got to keep it, but it sure didn't make that clear.
- I like pudding.
It's not enought to say "we have an alternative scheme." It's probably not even enough to say "we have an alternative scheme by which you can make equivalent money." Instead, you need to credibly be able to say "we have an alternative scheme by which you can make superior money." If you can't do that, you got nuttin.
I doubt it's about the money, it's about control for the RIAA and its members.
So the only way to get them to use this scheme is to say "we have an alternative scheme by which you can make superior money and have more control over the music distribution than for CDs."
And that isn't going to happen with free (as in beer and as in freedom) file formats that the EFF is proposing.
Two Worlds - One Sun [Spirit]
I must say, I'm not particularly impressed by this proposal. It strikes me
there are two major problems, both related to the fact that the system is
voluntary.
First, how do you make the majors join the collective society? Those with the
most popular catalogue have the least incentives. I cannot image a major
label releasing a major act under such a license unless it's fairly clear
that the collective society has real money to distribute. But if the most
popular acts are not included, users could face the problem of having paid
their fees and still being sued.
The second question is: How do you get users to pay? The EFF suggests that all
the 60 million people now using p2p networks will pay. This is, to put it
mildly, very optimistic. Because, really, what's the incentive to pay? Users
can still download, regardless whether they pay or not, and if a user doesn't
share his music files, then the RIAA will never know what he have on his hard
drive. In other words, a few 10 thousand people willing to share their large
collections would make it possible for a few millions to simply download and
then disconnect, gaining all the advantages from the network without paying,
and, importantly, without risk of being sued.
A number of studies have shown that p2p networks are, indeed, not all that
p2p, because a small number of nodes serves the vast majority of content. But
if only that small number of people are actually paying, it will make majors
even more reluctant to release their content.
But, on a somewhat more positive note, the failure of such a voluntary
proposal would make the case of a compulsory license more stringent (which
also the EFF sees as a possibility).
"As long as someone besides the person who writes and performs music is making money from that music I will not pay a half a cent for it."
And what about those who tapes and films?
You do realize that this is pretty stupid?
I guess you don't buy food, because someone else than the producer is making money of it. You must be making your own then.
I guess you produce your own clothes, or did you prefer to live naked?
I also guess you have a computer, but your must have built yourself, every single part from scratch, because someone else than the constructor made some money out of it.
And while you're at it, I guess we should screw all those Suse and Red hat companies, because they make money out of something that most other people have been producing.
Pretty much anything that you get to have went throught at least one intermediate.
Even the day music will be available on the web, intermediates will be there. You won't perhaps see them, but their costs will be reflected.
Intermediates are necessary. That's part of the way products are delivered to the masses. Maybe if you are 10 years old and the only music you've been knowing is coming from the Internet, then I can accept such comment. But you have to know that before it ended up digitalized, it was a hard product, which required distribution. It's not because this business model starts being obsolete (*) that you have to become some kind of anarchist.
And that's modded 4?
(*) I would also like to remind you that there are many places in the world where people buy CDs, even tapes!
Sneak teach kids Algebra using a game
Microsoft threatening modchip distributors, system locked out of Xbox Live if a mod is detected, Nintendo using a proprietary disc format (the streaming method is not a viable way to pirate).
Once again, Sony has the system that's the easiest to pirate. Doesn't seem to hurt them though.
Another contributing factor is that games have a much better entertainment value to cost ratio.
I'm on top of my game like I'm standin' on Xbox.
Of course the RIAA is happy with the situation. The new webcasting licenses, which the Copyright Office just finally installed this month, puts all webcasting license administration in the hands of SoundScan, which is an RIAA spinoff. They have completely screwed BMI, ASCAP, every artist, and (of course) you: they get to charge a toll on every passage of a copyrighted work across the Internet. And most important, they get to control the entire IP world, not just collect the money. The structure of the fees means that the RIAA member companies remain an exclusive club of publishers, with no threat from DIY publishers on the more level playing field of the Net. So the rich get richer, and the content-holders get more content (pun intended). This is the most monstrous monopoly yet, with the RIAA owning the rights to control and profit from every IP exchange across any network. The bad guys have won. Unless, perhaps, this EFF proposal (or one like it) can bring power back to the people while keeping content makers (artists) adequately represented in the compensation loop. Send a postal letter to your Congressmember/MP/second-cousin-Prince/UN-minister supporting a fair share plan, before you have to buy RIAA stamps.
--
make install -not war
I've been systematically ripped off by the music industry practically all my life. For years, I built a CD collection that was overpriced, and like so many others, I was a victim of price-fixing. $13.86 just doesn't cover all the CD's I've bought.
Then, they tell us that those CD's aren't actually our property, to dispose of as we wish, but really licenses to listen to the CD. Fine - So where's my free replacement when I scratch my disc? Or if its stolen, like so many were from my college dorm?
And, if it is a license, why do I have to buy a new copy of Dark Side of the Moon every 5 years? If I bought one, shouldn't I get the remastered free?
These are all legitimate, albeit beaten into the ground, points. The music industry can't have it both ways. They can't use bigchampagne to data mine P2P networks for sales promotions (hence, generating income) at the same time that they say every person who downloads a song is costing them money. This breaks a fundamental law of economics - some people will only 'buy' something when the cost is substantially lower than what they're charging.
So, f*ck the RIAA. F*ck them in their stupid asses. F*ck radiohead, f*ck pink floyd, f*ck metallica, f*ck dr. dre, f*ck them all!
I'll support the artists in the best way possible - buy their concert tickets!
They are, after all, 'performing artists' aren't they?
I'm not quite sure why so many people are runing around trying to resolve the leaking ship that is the music industries business model. Surely I'm not the only one who thinks that the burden is upon the music industry to produce a new model that is to the liking of it's customers whom they wish to part from their cash.
People got used to saying "vote with your wallet" as some sort of wise-crack. Guess it came as a shock when millions did just that.
*shrug* I think the idea of trying to persuade the music industry to patch its leaks and to offer 101 different ways in which it might patch its leaks is odd... it is however crazy while said industry acts in such a petulant fashion.
Let the music industry worry about it's own leaks. The music industries lost billions is not something that should cause the EFF sleepness nights, and there are frankly better things it could concern itself with than where Popstar X is going to get their next gold plated toilet seat from.