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RIAA Goes After Satellite Radio
nicholasjay writes "The RIAA is at it again. Now they don't like satellite radio. From the article 'The record industry ... believes the recording capability [of satellite radio receivers] is a clear copyright violation and could take revenue away from paid download music services.' This comes on the heels of both Sirius and XM announcing mp3 enabled players and the ability to record music heard on the radio. Also from the article: 'RIAA may seek $1 billion plus in music rights fees for a new contract covering 2007 to 2012 to replace the current $80 million pact that expires in 2006.'"
If the music labels had a problem, shouldn't they have approached it at the front-end?
I'm sick of this suing customers/pointing the evil finger at them after the point of sale. It's fscking stupid.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
Looks like the RIAA is seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and it's looking more and more like a train.
Obviously they are trying to keep their distribution model valid (read crappy CDs), but everywhere they turn, they're losing... so... they decide to jack up the price of distrubtion rights so high that they will either force the companies to stop distributing anything other than CDs, or will pay the insane prices for the right, and the RIAA will continue to be fat and rich.
Unfortunetly for them, they will eventually fall with this tactic, and fall hard.
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
It's only a matter of time before the RIAA implodes. The more they push, the more people are going to be fed up with their scare tactics, extortion, and blatant abuse of those trying to innovate the way music is broadcasted to the world.
The opportunity is widening for a record company to form that gets *good* music together under a banner that benefits primarily the consumer and the artist, without the pimp and whore attitude the RIAA has.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
The RIAA (and the MPAA and the BSA and all those similar organizations) exist for the very purpose they are acting on in these stories.
If we want to rid ourselves of their existance, we should #1 appeal to their members that they are not acting in the 'industry's best interests' and #2 appeal to the government(s) that these organizations exist to do nothing less than to act a singular means by which large entities are made into a single larger entity by which legal muscle is used to bully and intimidate individual consumers into unfair settlements and otherwise abuse the legal system to their own ends.
These abusive organizations should be striken down completely. If individuals need to protect their interests, they should be required to protect them individually just as individuals are required to defend themselves individually.
I wasn't sure it was right when I heard of anti-cartel legislation being used against RIAA copyright-infringement suits but it sounds now like this industry body is becoming the collective negotiator for the formerly competing record industries
time was, they competed for airplay. Now they threaten those playing - and therefore promoting - their music
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
"the RIAA is starting to overstep its bounds"
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
I really hope XM countersues, saying that the RIAA's FUD is resulting in lost business, and citing examples like this.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The music recording industry has painted itself into a corner by going digital. There was formerly a clear difference between an audio presentation (the sound that goes into people's ears) and the recording of that sound. Digitization of the entire industry has completely removed that difference. If a sound is heard, it has been digitized and stored.
The financial structure of the industry as developed in the 20th century depends on a high price paid by the listener to the music industry for each individual recording. This price is roughly one hour of minimum wage earnings
per fifteen minutes of music recording. This price has been stable throughout the 20th century and has been inflation-proof.
In return, the music industry provides a centralized repository of all the musical styles currently of popular interest, a filtering service of the junk and mediocrity, and exposure to the best of new music performances.
It was successful. There was pure capitalism among the various large and small record companies. There was a separation between the new music presenting services (radio and discos) and the record distribution networks.
Talented people could gain exposure to many new styles from many different parts of the globe. They could create important new musical styles and have a marketplace and a financial structure to successfully present them.
Everything changed by going digital and by corporate consolidation. Three companies own and control a vast percentage of the radio stations of the USA. Four or five corporations control about 80-90% of the music industry in the world. Digitization of the music playback machines means that all music presentation comes from recordings. There is no longer any difference between exposed to new music and having a recording of that music. This plays
havoc with the structure of companies that sell recordings and use the proceeds of the sales to finance the filtering, product distribution, and new music exposure services.
The companies want to return to the old business model, but only in the ways that are most profitable to them. They want their customers to continue to buy recordings at the old price, and also pay again for the new music exposure
, junk filtering, and distribution services that used to be incorporated into the recording's price. As Slashdot readers know, they are meeting resistance from their customers.
With lots of money going to technology development of digital encryption of recordings and payoffs to politicians for custom-tailored laws protecting their interests, they will be successful in reconstructing their old business model in the short run. In the long run (ten years or more) they will cut off their supply of new musical influences. All the people who are shut out of consuming music industry product because they can't afford to buy it will develop new musical alternatives that they will deliberately hide from the music industry. The music industry won't be the center of musical culture and development in the way that it is now. The best musicians now all want record contracts and seek out the music company executives. That means that music industry employees have been the most knowledgeable about the best new music. That will end.
But no one will notice because music is basically a young person's industry and the number of young people in the world continues to grow rapidly each year. So the music industry will continue to grow. But the principle that the music industry is the source of the best music available will pass. There will develop many underground secret music societies.
The real question is whether the music industry will take the position that they 'own' the music created by these secret societies. Will they chose to hunt them down, imprison their musicians and steal their ideas, or simply ignore them as being non-commercially viable and therefore unworthy of investment.