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RIAA Supporting Commercial P2P
cgibby98 writes "The AP reports: 'In the last few months, major record labels have signed licensing deals with companies working to field file-swapping services that would block unauthorized files from being traded online.' Most interesting is a service called Peer Impact, which 'can be used to find and purchase tracks from an initial catalog of a half-million songs from all the major labels.... After a user buys a song from Peer Impact, future buyers get it from that member -- or others who have gotten it in the meantime -- instead of from a central server. Users have to pay for each track they download, but sharing songs they've purchased from Peer Impact earns them credits they can spend on the service.'"
I don't actually disagree with the idea (although coming from the RIAA, it certainly feels like Dr. Mengele taking up pediatrics). But I mean, look at the "artists" they propose: Gwen Stefani, Will Smith, 50 cent... I think I'll stay on conventional illegal P2P for now, thank you very much, until they propose music for download.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
So... we pay for the distribution now... the manufacturing has vanished... and still they'll try and DRM it (making less useful than a plain CD) and will probably will charge it at the same or higher rate than CD's.
This isn't a win... it's a lose.
If they drop the prices to reflect that manufacturing and distribution have now been removed... and also to reflect that now we just want the good stuff and not the padded albums... then they might have something.
Actually, with peer impact you have the option of sharing songs after you buy them. By sharing the song though if another user downloads it off of your computer you earn credit toward future purposes. So you can earn credit by sharing your songs for others to use. Of course if you choose not to then users won't be able to download songs from you.
*ahem* RTFA?
It's a file sharing system meant to both supply legal downloads on a p2p basis and encourage sharing. If you have a song, and someone else sees you have a song and they download it, you get some credits toward the service. It's a clever "social networking" kind of way to get music out there to more people than it otherwise might have reached AND it's an embrace of the legitimate power of p2p.
That said, this isn't exactly an ultimate solution and it certainly doesn't do anything to repair the RIAA's image. Baby steps. Baby steps.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
How is it even possible that the RIAA things this is a good idea?! This is quite possibly the stupid thing I've ever heard of. In fact, I think I've heard this buisiness plan before. Does anyone recall the Scour Network? Basically it was a napster-era general use peer to peer service that got taken down and ressurected as a pay service. Basically, users had to pay to use lame content that they hosted themselves for others to download. You're paying a service to use your own connection for them. The idea of being compensated for this with a points system is laughable. People share music on peer to peer services because they love music and they want everyone to enjoy the songs that they have in their collection. People download songs on peer to peer networks because it's free, convenient, and offers a great selection.
What the RIAA has done is taken the bad parts about legitimate music (paying, poor selection, hassle) and merged them with the downsides of Peer to Peer file sharing (slow download speeds, having to upload on an asymmetrical connection). The rewards system seems to be a new concept but overall, they've taken the downsides of two distribution methods and are sure to fail, as others have in the past using this same exact strategy. Sometimes I wonder if they live in their own little magic world where ideas like this sound less retarded, because that's the only logical explanation I can come up with for the creation of this service.
more like..
"You have 20,000,000 credits, which is enough to purchase 3 songs, but only from this list of one hit wonder bands, from their albums that did not contain said hit."
Don't Tread on Me
You buy the song first, and download it. Someone else buys the song, and downloads it from you. Others buy the song, and download it from you and the second guy, etc. The service gets the cash, but without the cost of the bandwidth.
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
My cable ISP has something in their TOS that says I can not use my connection for profit (making money for my bandwidth). According to that, there's no way I can use this P2P legally if I get credits for my bandwidth which can be used to purchase things which normally cost a set amount.
Make your computer faster: rm -rf
Since you get "credits" for letting people download from you, the P2P leech problem simply goes away- *everyone* not on dialup is going to want to be a server. The RIAA/record labels will spend close to 0 on bandwidth- a few seed copies and purchase info is all they need.
Presumeably they'll have some way to make sure only good copies stay on the network, thus removing the whole "I can't get the entire album at a decent bitrate, and Track 3 is all messed up" problem so common in current P2P.
If they get their entire catalog out fast, they could also return to the good old days of having a massive variety of stuff to sample from. This is still the problem with iTunes- obscure stuff just doesn't exist yet for whatever reason. Here you dump off one copy of some wierd goth/emo/trance/metal hybrid from Eastfarkistan and you'll get a few people to host it.
Of course, being the major album labels, they'll probably only seed the latest copies of Jessica Simpson and (insert latest dead rapper) at 64 kbit/second while managing to use 1MB/sec of bandwidth for DRM checks, but we'll see.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
So, I pay for my bandwidth to distribute their song, and I don't get a penny for the distribution?
Oh, I get the worthless credits, right, almost forgot. Remember airmiles and the inflation of them? First it was 1:1 then 1:5. Department store points (Zellers) - same inflation story. First you needed 150 points for the microwave, then when you saved enough, they said 250, and so on. I have to spend a fortune real fast to get that microwave for 'free'. Same with RIAA credits. They are worthless.
You go in line, I'll sit on the fence.
It should be cheaper to buy from a peer on the network than from the central server, because the server adds no value in that case. You aren't using their disk storage and you aren't using their bandwidth. All you should have to pay is a royalty of a few pennies, to go to the coypright holder.
What is really needed is a way to take the RIAA out of the loop and have royalties go directly to the copyright holder (which eventually would be the performer or composer for new works).
What is really needed is a way to take the RIAA out of the loop and have royalties go directly to the copyright holder (which eventually would be the performer or composer for new works).
Well, which is it, the performer or the composer? What about the producer? The recording engineer? Who's tracking all this data? Who's holding the money? (Please don't tell me it's the lead singer, or the code monkey who set up the torrent...)
There is still a business to the distribution of Art, and although the Internet may have made the process "simpler" to the consumer, the accounting and funds disbursement is still a nightmare. There's a reason, beyond the "Look, Ma, I signed with A&M!" appeal that artists sign away rights to Big Businesses: The Big Businesses handle the big business, and that frees up creators to create, and not balance books, write checks, and lick envelopes all day long.
Do many artists sign away too many rights? Are the labels and publishers too greedy? Inarguably. But artists need some middle-ground choice between being a slave and becoming a CPA (I'm not sure there is any genuine substantive difference between either fate, but you get my drift...)
Excuse my ignorance, but how can they be sure someone won't just hack the client into a non paying program? Won't they need some system to validate that the user is legitament and has the appropriate credits? If so, they will need a bunch of servers anyway. If not, sign me up for the cracked client.
lol: You see no door there!
Is part of the alure of P2P and huge p2p networks is not just getting free music. It is the ability to get ANY music you want. You are not limited to what they think might be the top 1 million sellable songs.
I Might want to listen to Croatian rock... I might want to listen to some Russian heavy metal... I might want to listen to some South African Youth Choir... My chances of finding that on iTunes is slim..
Until Ligitimate music services can offer a library of hundreds of millions of songs from every genre, from every language, from evey country of the world... They have work to do and ways to improve.
Not to mention that frequently, the music you buy off iTunes is not FLAC quality, something that when I make my own portalbe music for my own portalbe plays I often use
The typical situation is that the artist signs with the label and then the work that they produce is actually considered "work-for-hire" and the copyright is owned by the label at that point, which the contract then dictates what the artist receives, etc.
Another typical situation would be that the artist creates the work outside the label. Then the artist holds the copyright; however, they have the transfer their rights to a label in exchange for publicity, publishing, etc. (Not that they have to, but the label won't have it any other way more than likely.)
Copyright actually consists of many rights, which include, inter alia, the exclusive right to:
- reproduce the work
- prepare derivative works
- distribute the work
- perform the work publicly (applies to only certain classes)
- display the work publicly (applies to only certain classes)
It is possible to assign only some of these rights to other individuals, which may be another way that the music industry gets things done. The sad truth is that because of the oligopoly of radio stations held by a few media giants, it is difficult or almost impossible to get anything done with major record labels, who are only interested in screwing artists out of every dime they have.
What?
I think the appropriate term for what the RIAA does to artists is "rape".
What?