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RIAA Forgets to Make Royalty Payments
theodp writes "NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer agreed with the RIAA on one point - artists WERE being deprived of money that was rightfully theirs. But Spitzer managed to find $50 million for performers without shaking down grandmothers. Spitzer's culprits? A Who's Who of the nation's top recording companies - members of the RIAA - who failed to maintain contact with artists and stopped making required royalty payments."
From the Article ( bold emphasis added):
While this will be great for a lot of artists I question the motive. I doubt that Eliot Spitzer is doing this for artists. I'm sure New York state will benefit from the interest revenue from "hold[ing] these monies. It won't hurt his career to have his name in the paper either.
Of course, I didn't bother to look up his record. Maybe he really is just doing his job, protecting the citizens of New York State.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
I am as anti-RIAA as the next guy, but this doesn't seem all that bad.
The RIAA is going out of there way to correct a royalty problem that may/may not have entirely been their fault. And the article makes it seem that it was the idea of an RIAA lawyer.
Just my 2 cents...
Friggin' corporate pirates should be MADE to pay their proper dues!
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Another question would be WHY the RIAA lost touch with these artists. Was it on purpose or accident?
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
Forgive my oversimplification of the RIAA (and Anti-RIAA) tactics, but it seems to me like this is such a cat and mouse game. Someone points out problems with the RIAA, the RIAA points out problems with filesharing. One-Up to P2P, One-Up to RIAA. I'm waiting to see if politics, technology and common sense can elicit some sort of resolution to this perpetual nonsense. I won't hold my breath.
coming to terms with the fact that the new-yacht-a-month club is going to have to tone down and make with what they already have.
A digital robin hood am I, and through my uploading I give to the poor.
And they couldn't find Regis Philbin!?
Host of one of the more popular syndicated shows which regularly runs write-in and call-in contests. And they COULDN'T FIND HIM?
Right.
The RIAA has sued what, 3000 people so far? With an average "catch" of $2500 each? If these numbers are correct, that's $7.5 million. Versus $50 million that RIAA cheated their own artists out of!
"He who throws mud, loses ground." - proverb
...paid...they should be paid with interest plus fined/sued for compensation. This is a perfect opportunity to point out that there shouldn't be one rule for consumers and one rule for the conglomerates.
I am NaN
According to CNN, sales dropped about 7.5% from 2002 levels of 32.2 billion to 2003 sales of 32.0 billion. RIAA blames "rampant piracy" for this.
I'd love to see a comparison of all the years between 1999 and 2003 for sales decreases, number of releases, average age of the buyer, and the cost of a CD. Then, I'd like to see that cross-referenced with the recession in the economy, including such factors as unemployment rates, average income per household, etc. After you have all that, cross-reference all that with what the RIAA claims it's lost from file sharing. I can almost guarantee you it's nothing even near what they're claiming, and any decrease in sales has been just as drastic as any other major industry in the country.
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
This assumes that the artists know they are owed money. If the artists were contacted on a semi-regular basis about payments and the companies occasionally "forgot" about some money it may not be obvious for the artists to ask for the money. IE a check for $2500 could be only half of what they owe but the artist don't know any better since the artist hasn't asked exactly what their debt is; they just know they're owed something.
/. this is wild speculation.
Of course as things usually are on
So, I wake up from a five year coma. I go looking for my royalty checks, and am told that they are being held by the state.
So, I go down to the Comptroller's office in Lincoln and ask where my money is. They tell me it must be some other state. Well, my brother is in Florida... I'll call there. Nope. Oh, yeah, my mom in Arizona, maybe it's that state. Nope.
Why would my money be in New York? Why not California where a "marginal" majority of these contracts are signed? It's great that the proceeds from this money will go to benefit the people of New York, but what if I don't live there?
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
Sure you do, in New York, at least. Only a little earlier I was reading how the well-known "email marketing mogul", Scott Richter, is "agreeing to abide by a new federal anti-spam law" as a part of a settlement with A.G. Spitzer. Nice to see he's making these naughty people promise to be good in future.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
Who says they haven't? You are making the assumption that the government believes that the rules apply equally to everyone. If that were the case, then Oprah Winfrey would have been fined or taken off the air for indecency. Microsoft would have been punished under anti-trust laws and for illegally maintaining a monopoly. There are many many many other examples, these are just some of the more high profile ones.
The rules do not apply equally to everyone.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Many artists probably don't know the money is owed to them and no doubt the RIAA doesn't make it easy for artists to keep track of their royalties. Also, many successful artists aren't very educated and don't understand all the "legalese" in their contracts. The RIAA probably depends upon a lot of artists' naivete and/or ignorance. I remember when Tupac Shakur died his mother found out that he was penniless and that somehow all the money that he got were someohow "loans" from the record company. Artists can easily be taken advantage of by the record companies, especially if they directly deal with the company without a lawyer or agent. It's the same kind of game that the IRS plays. Many people who don't use HR Block or have someone knowledgeble do their taxes, file a short form and pay much more in tax than they should. The IRS isn't going to go out of their way to educate these people. The RIAA probably has the same attitude --"...your ignorance is our profit...".Kudos to Spitzer for successfully getting the RIAA to "do the right thing" even though one could easily argue that they did nothing illegal. Hypocrisy is annoying, but it's not illegal :)
I gotta say that it sure sounds like Sptizer has been sticking it to THA MAN and has been dealing out the asswhuppin where it needs to go. I am personally in the "anti-corp" camp. Senator Disney, RIAA / MPAA, infinite copyright etc. - screw 'em all! With a flaming telephone pole!
4 /f eature_thompson_mayjun04.html
But you look at the tool that Eliot Sptizer is using to lay all this smack down with and from what I've heard it's totally outta control. The way Sptizer is using it is cool, but what if Spitzer was an asshole? DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!
http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/May-June-200
I love music, and used to spend a lot on buying new CDs before this RIAA shakedown started. Stories like this, however, have made me change my ways, and now I buy exactly $0's worth from any label that supports the RIAA.
It's appalling to think that this is all done defending artists from file sharers when their watchdog is either this clueless or dishonest...with the RIAA, it's hard to tell which.
Artists might fare better if they could see an alternative to this corporate mire. Perhaps if they understood that consumers would be more supportive of the music if there was some reasonable guarantee that money would actually get to the artist rather than a conglomerate?
Granted I have no guarantee of that with my current label selections, but I feel better knowing that my cash isn't feeding the anti-piracy machine.
- Jack
If this law only applies to NY, and is worth $50million, how much unpaid royalties exist that should be directed to the other states?
NY = 1 state = 50million "lost"
Other = 49 States = 50 * 49 = 2.45 billion?
Even if the percentage is lower, this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Note: I'm not american, but doesn't this sound at least reasonable?
liqbase
The Canadian wing of the RIAA, the CRIA, convinced our lame government to put a levy on blank CD media. Their argument was that people were using the media to rip CDs and thus the every day musician was getting short changed for his/her hard work. The gov't agreed and the funds collected through this levy were assigned to the CRIA to be redistributed to artists as compensation.
In reality, the CRIA has only redistributed a microscopic portion of the fund to the artists - the rest has been going right into the CRIA's coffers. How's that for compensation....
For example, I've forgotten that I need to be bothered with buying overpriced CDs for the past 8 years. Instead, I've been spending my cash on video games, DVDs, live entertainment and socializing with my friends.
And sometimes I also forget that I don't need to buy a CD in order to determine whether I like the music. P2P has been gracious enough to keep reminding me of this whenever I feel the urge to go to the nearest Virgin Megastore..........
Not at all. Your missing dollars are added to the "loss of sales due to piracy" column.
Fair points. I'll add a couple more things to consider.
A centralized system like Napster is far more effective than what exists now. When Napster got squashed, it certainly created a market of sorts for all these distributed, decentralized P2P applications. However, that decentralized has an averse affect on the selection and efficiency of the system. Although it is likely that one will still find the latest diva or boyband fairly easy.
Industry polls show that the number of file traders are decreasing. They claim this is due to "education" efforts. I haven't bothered to bounce those numbers against the estimates for Napster. But it could prove interesting.
NY DA Spitzer is doing a far better job at
protecting citizen's rights from crooked
corporations and corporate executives than
the US DoJ, which appears to be unenthusiastic
about corporate fraud or monopolistic actions.
(No big surprise here, huh?)
A recent interview with Spitzer on the
"Charlie Rose" program gave me a new level
of respect for this crusader. He has no
stated political ambitions (or agenda)
beyond doing a great job as DA for the
citizens of NY and the USA.
I would really like to see him run for
President: he reminds me (historically)
of Teddy Roosevelt, a populist AND
conservative (in it's best definition)!