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Rockers Sue Sony Over Download Royalties
Ohreally_factor writes "According to an AP article, groups Cheap Trick and The Allman Brothers allege that Sony is paying them less than what they deserve for music downloaded from popular download sites such as iTunes. Because Sony counts such sales as the equivalent of a physical phonorecording sale, they deduct costs for packaging (20%) and breakage (15%) from the artists' royalties, just as they would if they were selling CDs through more traditional means. Seeing as how there is no physical packaging, nor physical inventory that might suffer breakage, one wonders how Sony will defend against these charges."
I want you to want me. I need you to need me.
What a tasty irony one of the first incidents of the artists awakening to the double-edged sword that is the music industry's abuse is from a band named Cheap Trick!
From the article, assuming it's accurate and correct, what a staggering number each 99 cent sale of a Cheap Trick song nets Cheap Trick a paltry $.045. That's internet highway robbery.
I never thought about it this way before, but maybe a to date unreckoned force that could be brought to bear is the ire of scorned artists. Maybe, just maybe, in its seemingly infinite greed the record industry finally goes a bit (or bits) too far and the slumbering artists wake up and smell the corruption. Probably a bit of a pipe dream, but I'm pulling for Cheap Trick.
Such it Blue!... errr Suck it Sony!
Granted we shouldn't be taking pleasure in the legal issues of such a large company... it is nice to see their business model faltering even more.
First the rootkit now this, the question in my mind is now: "What will be next?"
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
"One wonders how Sony will defend against these charges"
With a well placed root-kit!
They're trying to cover for the cost of DRM packaging, and the possible breakage of the product when a listener tries to play it, forcing them to ship a fixed version? ;-)
...neither Sony nor any other major music label is going to get much sympathy from anyone on this.
Regardless of the merits of the case, I think Sony is not going to get much more than a shrug from the well-informed of the world.
Is this an example of karma? A cosmic balance? Maybe it's too early to say that until more lawsuits are initiated against the other side. Yes, that's right... more lawsuits against RIAA-affiliated companies, regardless of their merits. Sound familiar?
Blame it on piracy?
"We have altered the bargain. Pray we do not alter it any further."
Probably by counting online music sales in the way they account for MP3 downloading? To a RIAA weasel, online music in any form is indistinguishable from shoplifting, and the artists should be thankful that Sony's also not deducting costs for inventory shrinkage (100%).
one wonders how Sony will defend against these charges.
The Chewbacca(tm) defense?
You bet it is a PITA to change, that would mean the bands get more money! How painful!!!!
Read the article (I did - just when I submitted the story someone else's submission of it hit the front page)....
The suit seeks class-action status for all artists who signed between 1962 and 2002. That's not chump-change.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
...what a cheap trick by Sony!
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
Shocked, Shocked I tell you Shocked, a large corporation not knowing how to properly do it's accounting.
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
The "breakage" charge has been bogus for quite some time. It really applied in the days of actual records, a lot of which wouldn't survive shipment. How many CD's (or tapes for that matter) end up broken per shipment? Definitely not 15%. So far they have been able to make this stick regardless. Now it's just completely ridiculous, versus just mostly.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
Seeing as how there is no physical packaging, nor physical inventory that might suffer breakage, one wonders how Sony will defend against these charges.
How? The same way they do it with CDs. You don't really think 15% of CDs break in shipment, do you?
The history of the breakage clause that exists in pretty much every modern royalties contract is a sad one. See, it originated back when music was distributed on records made of shellac, before the advent of vinyl. Shellac records were very brittle and very fragile, and when you packed a bunch of them in a box and shipped them to a store, it was pretty much guaranteed that some of them would arrive broken. At first the store owners and distributors tried to actually count how many were broken and adjust the invoices appropriately, but that was just too hard, and allowed merchants to take advantage by claiming a higher level of breakage than actually occurred. So they compromised and set an arbitrary percentage reduction of every invoice to cover broken records. The number chosen was about right, and it worked for everyone.
Obviously, since the record company wasn't being paid by the stores for that percentage of theoretically-broken records, the same amount was likewise deducted from the net proceeds before calculating artist royalties.
When vinyl came onto the scene, broken records became a rarity, rather than the norm, but the royalty deduction stayed.
When eight track tapes and cassettes came into being, and then CDs packed in protective jewel boxes, actual breakage became nonexistent except in cases of egregious abuse by the shippers, which the shippers were actually to cover. So the net effect of breakage on distributors is and has been zero for a long time. But the royalty deduction stayed.
So how is it any different that the copies are bits now? It's not like the CD breakage was any more real. Sony's response to that part of the complaint, at least, will be "It's a standard contract term, and they agreed to it."
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Yep, here's what Sony should be charging:
20% - rootkit licensing and bundling
10% - spoilage from Sharpie pirates
15% - DMA key registration of Sony electronics division so their products can play said music
12% - legal fees for eventually suing customers who download music
5% - payoff fees to Wesbter and Oxford to redefine English words
(Oh wait, but Sony didn't license the rootkit code, they PIRATED IT!)
I highly suspect that Sony was following the contracts with these artist to the letter, so the artists are attempting to say that their contracts (clearly written before the advent of mp3's and itunes) are no longer valid in light of new technology.
The artists will most likely not win here and Sony will continue to make money.
Is a bummer to have an old contract though..
poor elvis
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
My guess: they'll use lawyers.
My second guess is clowns, but we'll see which way it goes.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I would be angry too at cd breakage clause.
This is definitely a worthwhile lawsuit.
Watch now as the record companies try to get Itune prices increased because of this. Reason for the increase ? Rockers asking for more jack.
RIAA: Oh, sorry about that! We'll be glad to add those back in. Oh, by the way, did you get the memo about the new 40% deduction to "assist in combating piracy"? Hm? Yes, we realise that this is higher than the 35% we just added back in, but it's going to HELP you get more sales! Oh, and it's going to be on all sales, not just downloads. Have a nice day!
15% for breakage? WTF?
If 15% of potential revenue is lost from physical media not making the trip from factory to customer in useable form, regular musicians need to put together a class action suit addressing Sony's gross incompetence.
Sony...home of One Sigma Quality.
RTFC (Read the fuckin' contract) and note your signature at the bottom, guys. You agreed to this. Should've thought about that before signing yourselves away to a corporate babylonian whore like Sony.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Seeing as how there is no physical packaging, nor physical inventory that might suffer breakage, one wonders how Sony will defend against these charges.
It's pretty simple. Sony will simply claim that there are marketing costs, server costs, bandwidth costs, and so on that amount to the same thing. To say otherwise would be to admit that they could be selling the downloads at lower cost to the consumer than the equivalent CD.
Sony may even capitulate so far as to actually update the contracts, so that it spells out, for online sales, how much money goes to marketing, bandwidth, etc. At the end of the day, however, I highly doubt that the artist will see a larger percentage of the sales than they did before. Nor will the consumer see any kind of savings.
It's unfortunate, too, because a reasonable pricing model for online downloads of music could have been arranged where:
1. The consumer pays less per track than for the equivalent physical media (which is fair, considering compression losses and lack of a physical object).
2. The artist gets slightly more per sale than before.
3. The label gets slightly more per sale (because of savings due to lack of packaging, etc.).
However (and not too surprisingly), the labels have decided that any savings that arise should all be kept by themselves. As we are starting to see, this strategy will lead to losses instead, as both artists and consumers seek out better strategies... maybe even business models without so many middle-men.
...one wonders how Sony will defend against these charges. The same way crew managers on the Alaska pipeline defended getting paid for 25-hour days: it's in the contract! Sony should know, they wrote the contract. Until artists wise up and stop signing contracts that allow the record companies to screw them any time they please, artists are going to keep getting screwed. Granted, in this case the contract was written before any such thing as internet downloads existed, but since Sony owns the copyrights and not the bands, they are in a very poor position to renegotiate.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Given that "breakage" is a bullshit accounting scam of the record companies to extort more money from people, I'm wondering why its taken "online" sales for artists to get pissy about it.
For those who don't know, "breakage" derives from the old days where music came on records, which were prone to break during shipping. I assume that the rate of breakage was around 15% of those shipped.
Of course for CDs its highly unlikely that any of them break in shipping, barring a container full falling off the ship, so this "breakage" value is a completely false piece of accounting these days.
Aren't there laws against these things?
"We're doing it for the artist! It's the artist that suffers when you pirate music, and we protect the artist!"
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
i have never understood these costs as meaningful in the real world to begin with.
1 packaging is somethign that can be deducted from the final product, and the publisher, not the artist should bear this cost. besides paper, cellophane and plastic do ont amount to 20% of a royalty fee. this is just a cash clawback from a captive, underprivilidged, undereducated business partner, too many artists rely on that deal in the sky, hoping a record label will make them big and happy. but many end up not to well off when u factoer in touring, equipment costs etc... if the artists were smart, they would start a co-operative record company, that works for non profit, run by volunteer artists, and soem paid low lvl staff. integrate this with a bunch of radio stations, and some shitty tv programming and you have the formula to sell amost any cd. if a conglomerate like this were to gain popular the big greedy record labels would get very competative very fast...
2 how in any way shape or for is an artist responsible for breakage? do they have anything to do with shipping? does this mean that 1.5 out of every 10 cd's are broken? this figure has been around for a long time, you would think they could get their shit together and learn how to package cd's the right way, for the modest 20% fee they are charging.
this reminds me of a show i used to watch whn i was little, called dukes of hazard. there was a crooked mayor of hazard who would always cut his crooked (but mentally challenged) nephew sherrif in on 50 % of the profits of whatever scam they were working on at the time. as the episode progressed, the sherrif would get another 50%, meaning one half of his original cut. if he did well he would be rewarded with this 50% bonus several times in one show. to make it simple artists= roscoe P coltrane (challenged lackey sherrif) and record industry= boss hog (mayor and business man, more like baronet of hazaard county)
"Breakages" - These are completely outdated anyway. CDs are a lot more robust than vinyl, and even then, it's a little dubious that the royalties were worked out the way they were rather than a fixed fee per record sold (after advances were repaid).
But it will only cover those songs sold electronically, yes?
Let's look at iTunes. $0.99 per download. One billion songs downloaded. I dunno, 33% of these are sony, or 300 million. Sony gets $.070 of each sale. $210 million. Artists claim they've been screwed out of $0.255 per sale. $76.5 million.
That is chump change to Sony.
The only people who will see any serious monrey froma settlment like this will be (like always) the class-action attorneys.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
OK, all kidding aside, my guess is that they deduct these costs because that's how their accounting system is set up and aside from the loss of free money, it's significant $$$ and a major PITA to change
Are you trying to tell me that each album produced can't be assigned a different packaging,breakage, etc cost? If so, just assign a cost of $0.00 to packaging and breakage.
I think it's pretty obvious the record companies are trying to screw the artists. I find it extremely hard to believe that this is some dumb accounting limitation.
AccountKiller
Right?!
I find it extremely hard to believe that this is some dumb accounting limitation.
Then you lack an appreciation of how inertia works in large organizations.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Sony has been ripping off all of their artists, and it took 3 years before Cheap Trick realized they were getting screwed? I find this a little bit surprising!
For record companies, every imaginable expense is billed to the artist. If you go on tour, ALL the expenses are billed to you including expenses like this one that are just ridiculous. The bottom line is that the record company tries to take zero risk. All the risk is moved over to the artists. You can have a hit record and end up owing the record company money.
It is sort of the same for movies where actors are paid a percentage of the profits. The idea here is to make sure there are no profits so that the actors don't have to be paid.
The fat cats make darn sure they get their share though. It's an expense after all.
The silver lining is that, unless you are one of the really big name artists, you're much better off promoting your own career on-line. Once the majority of artists realize that, the record companies are toast.
"one wonders how Sony will defend against these charges"
Easy... Sony will do what all major labels and the RIAA do... They will allot some people-crushing money to their lawyers, file countersuits, and keep the legal battle going on long enough that the artists run out of money and are forced to accept a settlement out-of-court for a paltry amount that probably doesn't even cover their legal fees.
Meanwhile, Sony keeps collecting 94.5 cents of every 99 cent Cheap Trick song and puts it into a special account labeled 'Cheap Trick Settlement Fund'...
That, my friends, is the glory of controlling the distribution channel!
Self-referential Sigs are cool on /. these days...
54
You've edited my submission, and my submission was thereby improved! This is (almost) causing me to question all my notions about slashdot and the slashdot editors! Maybe you guys really do do some work around here? =)
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Them's fightin' words! The Allman Brothers' Live at the Fillmore East remains one of the best live rock albums, ever.
Are you trying to tell me that each album produced can't be assigned a different packaging,breakage, etc cost?
It's possible that they don't work this out on a per album basis. They just get all the royalties, deduct a fixed amount for their cut, breakages etc, and then dish it out to the artists again in proportion to earnings.
I think it's pretty obvious the record companies are trying to screw the artists. I find it extremely hard to believe that this is some dumb accounting limitation
I don't disagree here. The accouning system can be changed. It's just not in the record company's to change it.
A spokesman for the Allman Bros. stated that he feels like he's been "tied to the whippin' post".
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
Dude, she was right on the mark. I'm going to format and go install windows right now!
I just wanted to mention here about lala. It is like an online used-record store. Each album costs only a dollar and 20% of the proceeds of every trade goes to the artist. It is a much cheaper way to find music *and* pay artists instead of these record-companies.
Isn't this just a contract dispute?
Slow news day?
It would shatter if dropped, so a breakage overhead was factored in. The packaging improved, breakage went down, fees stayed. CD's came about, breakage dropped again, fees remained. Now with digital, there's no breakage and still fees. Of course, with digital, the whole duplication, distribution, production and publicity thing is best done by cheap devices connected to interconnected routers, and the monolithic scammers are sure to fade away. Reminds me of having to keep my nothing insured for fire and theft when I stopped driving (without insurance my premiums would go back to rates of when I was a new driver, when I drive again). I'm comforted by the knowledge that if the laws of physics suddenly change and my nothing explodes I'll only have to cover the deductible. Perhaps I should file a claim just to have them have to try to disprove physics.
Whenever I hear someone reaching for a revolver because they heard the word 'activist' I reach for my glock and start spraying.
Whoever modded this as flamebait is wrong. Music at this level is a *business*, nothing more, nothing less. If the bands want their revenue, they should stick with self-produced albums and not have gone with a label.
Anyone who's even thought about the possibility of signing with a label knows this: you *will* get boned. How badly just depends on the skill of your attorney and what other labels are bidding for you. You have GOT to read your contract so you're not shocked when your first royalty check comes in the amount of $0.97
That is the nature of contracts, they don't change automagically when new technology comes along. Had they read the fine print, they would know this. Actually, I'm sure they DO know this, this seems like more of a "moral outrage" lawsuit than anything.
Sony ha
It would seem to me that inflating such "expenses" would reduce the reported profits considerably.
I would expect the IRS to be going all medieval on them, but for the satanic protection of lobbyists.
I would also hazard a guess that such exaggerated "expenses" are a standard practive in the music distribution business, not just a practice at Sony.
Front row tickets? Then you'll have to buy them through a ticket broker, like Ticketmaster, for 5-10x the actual cost.
There's another abusive system at work in the music industry that I wish would get resolved.
Hey, after they win this lawsuit and get the breakage and packaging deductions removed from online music sales, do you think they could then remove the touch-tone fee from my telephone bill? Thanks.
More like Packaging to "DRM" and Breakage to "incase the hard drive on the iTunes servers crashes".
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I think I have a 3rd solution, but it would take a rather savvy band to pull off. And I'm not sure of the details of how they sign contracts, so it might not work in some situations.
Ask for a soft-copy of the contract. (Make up some BS story about wanting to send it to your lawyer ahead of time, and they're a "paperless office" or something.) Then modify the contract, and sign it before you give it back to the record company. As long as the contract visually looks the same, it's probably unlikely that the record executives would think to re-read it -- they've read it hundreds of times.
Be sure to have them make you a photocopy of the contract with their signatures on it!
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
I know it takes lot of resources to record an album, but as iTunes become more popular, wouldn't the artists sooner or later wise up and just skip the recording companies altogether?
Hire a PR/Event firm instead for PR and concert calendar, but record music go straight to iTunes. Then they get to keep majority of that $.99 and by pass all that silliness with the record companies.
I guess Sony has rights to the music that they helped publish, but can't the artist revoke some of that?
the %15 is actually breakage & comps. Who pays when they send the new album to a radio station? It comes out of that %15.
Using the fee for breakage made sense back in the day, but then remember, back in the day there weren't many comp albums either. Now you have to send them to everyone -- radio, press, anyone who worked on the album, contests, etc. It's actually not an entirely unfair charge.
Sony ha
I'm working on a download system for karaoke music in winamp. I've asked myself this question when concerning karaoke, but the same thing applies to regular music.
Our system downloads a XML catalog of karaoke songs through an RSS feed. Why don't artists sell downloads themselves?
Webhosting with a little PHP IPN & RSS= $5@mo? Less even?
Paypal fee's = $0.30 @ song
Domain Name = $35 @ year
I've tried contacting several artists about selling karaoke downloads of their music, but most of the managers i've talked to are kind of dipshits. Why give someone else such a big cut of your sales when you could just as easily setup a system yourself?
LOL... Ok so I read your comment and got a chuckle out of the horrible pun.. don't worry it was horrible but I still laughed. :)
Then I got to singing "Wwhipping post" and started thinking about the lyrics and how appriopriate they are even though written years prior to this... so here they are in case anyone else is interested: "She" changed to They/Them just for reaction.
WHIPPING POST -- The Allman Borthers Band:
I've been run down and I've been lied to
And I don't know why, I let that mean woman make me a fool
They took all my money, wrecks my new car
Now they're with one of my good time buddies
They're drinkin in some cross-town bar
Sometimes I feel, sometimes I feel
Like I been tied to the whippin post
Tied to the whippin post, tied to the whippin post
Good Lord, I feel like I'm dying
My friends tell me, that I've been such a fool
But I had to stand by and take it baby, all for lovin you
Drown myself in sorrow as I look at what you've done.
But nothing seemed to change, the bad times stayed the same
And I can't run
Ok so I was a bit bored this morning.... sue me
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
for one, the arctic monkey's didn't.
s tm
Who?
"The first album from indie band Arctic Monkeys has become the fastest-selling debut album in UK chart history."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4660394.
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
Charging for storage media and breakables. Sad thing is that it is probably in the contract they signed and there is nothing they can do about it.
A creative lawyer may well be able to make something of this. The band agreed to pay for damage and packaging. The deduction is for this exact purpose, and no other. The record company is claiming for this damage and packaging, even though there isn't any. There was no need for the record company to do so. Surely they're making fraudulent claims.
Domain Name = $35 @ year
Are you seriously playing $35/year for your domain names?
Sony ha
I know you are just kidding, but the Allman Brothers have been a very successful band. They have one of the most popular live rock albums ever created.
How are they going to resolve this with their claims that illegal downloading hurts the artists? It sounds like legal downloading hurts them more.
Being that Cheap Trick likely signed a contract with Sony in the early 90's (and SONY has changed management how many times since then?) couldn't it be argued that the organization Cheap Trick signed their contracts with no longer exists?
Some food for thought...
--I*Love*Green*Olives
There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls. --George Carlin
as the popularity of Itunes and other online stores increases, why don't apple and others start charging the Music Industry for the right to use their (Apple's, etc...) distribution channel?
Nice idea if you can get past the contracts, but in the case of the Allman Brothers Duane Allman and Berry Oakly are dead. I have heard the band since, they are not same, still good, but no one really played like Duane Allman (for those who don't know who he is, he actually did the much of guitar work on the famous "Laya" by Eric Clapton.
HPC for Primates. Read Cluster Monkey
They won't.
..one wonders how Sony will defend against these charges.
Sounds Like A Good Excuse For multitiered pricing.... Ok, Cheap Trick, we will start paying you the 30% we owe you.
Dear Apple,
We have recently restructured our contract with our artists to properly credit them for the music they create. In doing so, we so no choice but to increase the fee's you charge for songs. All songs from Cheap Trick will now be priced at $3.99 a piece and the rest of our catalog will be $2.49.
Thank you for complying,
The Evil Empire II
PS Arbitrators are standing by to discuss this price increase. However, should you decide to use them, the prices will be $4.99 and $3.99. We suggest you take the first option. Mmmkay? Buh Bye Now....
RTFG - Read The F#$%ing Google!
Sony doesn't pay any of the server or bandwidth costs, Apple does. With traditonal distribution, Sony does foot the bill for CD production. They pay to have them pressed and glassed, they pay to have them shipped and so on, and retailers charge back any that are damaged. With iTunes, Sony just sells Apple the right to distribute the music. Apple themselves foots the bill for all the actual distribution and associated hardware to amke it happen.
Make it much harder to claim that the fee is justified. Even if it excessive, there is SOME justification in physical media since CDs do break and stores charge back Sony for. Remember the whole thing doesn't have to break, the case just has to be damaged to the point the retailer determines to to be unsellable, which is usually any visible damage.
And Apple's lawyers reply back to Sony "Let's talk about this 'DRM Application' money you have been holding onto, we think it may have something to do with us and FairPlay."
I bet their mailmonkeys have never seen an audiocasette tape. Next time, may I suggest a (rootkit optional) demo disc?
Man, you really need that seminar!
Lots of bands don't have the rights to redistribute their music. The two bands mentioned in the article, Cheap Trick and Allman Brothers probably can't legally resell their music through another site without the label getting their cut. They would have to record new songs, which isn't what's selling.
Find coupons in Greeley
that Cheap Trick and The Allmans get their fair due because they really need the money. Their attempt at hip-hop rap albums failed miserably and crystal meth ain't free.
Presumably the contracts already contained language for licensing agreements. So for example if Sony licensed a track for use in a car ad, or a film, the band would get 1/2 the net. This seems to be what the article is saying. Sony's point will be that a license licenses the use of the track (ie the "mechanicals"), and that the sale of a track to a customer for 99c does not include such a license, so its a sale of media not a license of rights. The bands will argue that the agreement with the vendor is a licensing of the rights since it gives the vendor the right to manufacture and distribute copies of the track (here, manufacture = transmit over an internet connection). Note that, according to the article, Sony is not distributing directly to the end user - there is a middle man. If Sony does the manufacturing itself (ie, you always get the tune from a Sony server) on the surface it seems they would prevail. If the vendor does so, it seems the bands should prevail. However there is also the doctrine of "unfair surprise" and internet distribution being so very different from the modes of distribution in place when these contracts were signed, having the contracts ruled inapplicable seems a possible outcome. That would probably be best for the bands - otherwise it might be possible for Sony to adopt a narrow technical solution that would limit how much the bands get. Clearly, given that Sony appears to be trousering around 60c after all costs, having the bands get a mere 4.5c seems quite unfair. [note - this is all speculative, since I have not seen the contracts, the article is not totally clear, and I am not a lawyer - nor do I play one on TV. I have however, as an occasional musician, done a certain amount of reading on contract law applying to the music industry]
Squirrel!
Sony Records makes less revenue than you'd think. They'd definitely be limping for a while after 76.5 million. The mothership might be able to shrug it off, but they don't really have any money to spare - Sony's having troubles staying profitable.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Remember, Sony had no part of those old contracts - that was CBS Records originally. Obviously Sony has a legal obligation to fufill, nonetheless, CBS ran things differently I suspect. I wonder if that argument will have any pull. It didn't work for George Michael or Prince.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
It's not necessarily bullshit.
One could consider the DRM as a form of packaging. It is not the song itself, but something placed around the song. The DRM costs Apple money (CPU usage, initial and ongoing development), and Apple surely pass that cost onto Sony.
Similarly, when Apple changes the number of CDs a user can burn from 10 to 7, AFTER that user has already purchased the song, that could be considered a breakage from the point of view of a user, despite the fact that it was intentional. Surely Apple are forced to hand out some refunds to users because of a change like this, and so the "breakage" might also cost Sony money.
Sony, the parent, has $7 billion cash on their balance sheet.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I hadn't done the math, but I had imagined it would be some relatively small dollar amount.
I assume that Sony is going to fight this on principle. They don't want artists to get the idea that they can renegotiate contracts.
In the long term, iTunes is effectively free money for them and Sony will probably never stop trying to force Apple into raising prices.
Think $0.25 per download over the next ten years. With 1 Billion downloads over ~2 years, is Sony going to give up without a fight?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Here we are, talking about a lawsuit between Sony and some musicians, and you bring up Chewbacca. Chewbacca was neither a musician nor a large corporation. Chewbacca was a wookie. That does not make sense.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
specifically, assert that the major labels have NO right to distribute songs electronically. Prior to 2002, electronic distribution wasn't a blip on the radar screen. If the artists can argue that it is impossible to sign over distribution rights for a method that didn't exist when the contract is signed, then the rights devolve to the original copyright holder. that means the artists could cut deals with Apple directly and cut the RIAA members out completely.
If they can get a legal team with big enough balls, and the right judge, it could happen.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Apple is making the Record Labels obsolete. Why should sony get ANY money from an iTunes sale? They didn't produce anything. The musicians made the music, Apples runs the servers, and music publicity should be free (radio/touring). They just aren't needed any more.
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
If it's Sony, they'll probably be paid off in Root-Kitted CD's.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Now that consumers have engaged in the world wide boycott of Sony,
for it's rootkit 'issues', it's about time Artists and performers boycott Sony.
Why sign on with Sony, then have them go through iTunes?
Just work out a deal directly with Apple to be their music distributor.
iTunes is available virtually world wide, and they don't need to charge
packaging and breakage fees.
iTunes should become the next big 'record' company, the next 'HBO', the next publisher of everything.
The old publishers are obsolete.
Same way as usual. Buy off a couple friendly legislators to define digital downloads as equivalent to physical media sales.
Or even worse, get an aide to change an existing bill to under the guise of correcting punctuation errors (Yes, this has been done before!) to accomplish this.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"Aren't there laws against these things?"
Did you lobby politicians with large amounts of money for a law against this?
No?
Well then there isn't one.
The breakage fee is to cover the costs of breaking the legs of all those 50 year old women computerless women who have been pirating their music online.
The packaging fee is to cover the costs of disguising their steaming piles of shit as music.
It all adds up...
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
The only people who will see any serious monrey froma settlment like this will be (like always) the class-action attorneys.
While the affected musicians will each receive eletronic coupons good for 100 free downloads from iTunes...
Once you invalidate these fees on online music, why not go after other formats as well? I believe there hasn't been these breakage costs around since vinyl records. That would make it more significant deal for all record companies around.
My wife spilled a whole bucket of mp3 in the living room, about 8 gigs worth.
I was picking 1s and 0s out of the rug for months, no to mention they would stick to your feet when you walked barefoot, my cat would eat them and then cough up stupid 1980s guitar riffs all over the place.
Theres still one spot when you step you can hear 2 words from a boy george song.
I think im just gonna move.
Ummm, did the contract specify Breakage applies to Digital Downloads? I doubt that. It will easily be argued that the clause obviously applied to physical phonorecordings, of which a digital download is not.
Truth is, this is a gray area, and the court is being called in to draw a Bright Line across it.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
in general, cash on the balance sheet just makes a corporation easier to acquire; it's not a statement of the health of the company.
It looks like Sony specifically has less than $4B in cash now, and more than $9B in debt. Sony had some tough times a few years ago. Even today, earnings per share are low and Sony is struggling to make it all work. You know they thought they were in trouble and needed to shake things up when they chose a foreigner as CEO.
Paying out $76M would hit them for almost 8 cents in EPS. Investors would not be amused, and Sony records would *not* be the favored son after such a stunt. Which, actually, might be for the best for all concerned!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You bring up a fascinating point here. Would it be different if the label itself was selling the downloads, rather than licensing them to iTunes? I'll bet some lawyers would try to make that so.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
How about the Breakage your root-kit did to my computer?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You beat me to pointing that out. :(
The other thing I'd nention is this:
Because the contract covers defined methods of distribution, and online distribution is not allowed by the license from the copyright holders, this means that the labels themselves are guilty of copyright infringement, and are doing so willfully, for profit, and by levying fees against the artists and mailing checks which are baased on the fraudulent fees, they are adding mail fraud on top of the simple copyright infringement (of which there would be 1.000,000,000 individual counts if files). This is a felony actiity, and obviously piracy (if we accept the new term piracy).
This is obviously not within fair use (simple trading of mix tapes for free, which is essentially what is done on P2P networks) but criminal activity, and as we all know, piracy funds terr'rists. Therefore, homeland security and the NSA should be closely scrutinizing the big labels (and their subsidiary "Indie (but not so Independent" labels) for terr'rist funding.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
ooops... that was March '05, not March '06
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
...sony can expect $1,000,000,000,000 in damages.
oh, and at least one wry smile from the jury box.
"Marketing", "manufacturing", "distribution", "breakage", etc evidently are RIAA-speak for "Armani suits", "nose candy", "villas in the South of France" and "blowjobs in the backs of limousines".
For those who never read the speech Courtney Love gave at the Digital Hollywood Online Entertainment Conference a few years ago it's worth a read. Most noteworthy was the position she held that the record labels are the real pirates.
l ove/
Sony, (once again) continues to make her position tenable.
Courtney Love does the math:
http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
"Seeing as how there is no physical packaging"... I expected that users of Slashdot would criticize 8th grade level grammar mistakes.
RIAA binds the recording companies into one group that has clout. The internet's role isn't that the recording companies won't get it, but that other people will, and in turn not needing the recording companies quite so much. That in turn, will make the RIAA smaller, and before you can have clout you have to be a certain size.
Bandwidth however has gotten to the point where I can think nothing of goig ahead and getting a streamed videos of any sort, and expect it now and in reasonable quality. Earlier today I followed two video links from replies on digg. That changes the importance of TV and radio had, even with the web being around before this amount of bandwidth was available. I seem to be getting 4Mb downstream.
claiming things like breakage sounds a lot more like the anus defence in terms of "getting off" with the artists' money.
Subverting legal agreements seems to be too acceptable to these types.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
This, to me, it actually the worst thing about DRM. Not that it does nothing to stop the real pirates, the people making hundreds of copies and selling them. Not that it prevents fair use. Not the fact that the record and movie industries are buying dodgy laws to protect their business model. All of these suck incredibly, but there's something worse.
It's that the record companies think DRM is the answer to the internet, and so no-one is trying to think of the ways that we will pay artists in the 21st century.
Look, I admire and respect creative artists and I want to pay them money so that they can put groceries on the table and keep making cool stuff. But no-one is trying to invent a way that I can do that in the internet age that doesn't involve breaking my TV and my laptop and my iPod. They're all running about pretending that their business model hasn't just been fucked by the internet.
I mean, what exactly does a record company do? They make loans to pay for making the album, and they press and distribute CDs. Oh, and they only do this for people they expect will sell a lot. Whoops, those just became obsolete.
Take my current favorite recording artist; she doesn't have a record contract, presumably because the record company don't think she'll sell a lot. I still managed to buy her last record, though, because she can afford a home studio to make them in, and she can burn CD-Rs of the material, and photocopy a cover, and run a website to sell the albums from.
Now, this is all cool - I get what I want, she doesn't have to pay for a lot of useless wankers in a record company. I'm more than happy with the current arrangement, but this mechanism does not scale well, and I have a nagging suspicion that if she hadn't written a song that was #1 in the UK for 8 weeks a while back I would never have found her music, and I also have a suspicion that people like me are not paying her grocery bills.
This needs clever people thinking about it. And there's money here; not only did I buy her album, but I'll buy her next album, and I bought an album she recommended on her web site and I'll buy his next album, and I went to see her play last year in London and I'll go see her play if she's ever back in the UK. Hell, I just bought an album she was on years ago that I probably already have on casette somewhere, so I can have it on my ipod.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
Breakfast served all day!
35 % of cost for developing the iTunes version of rootkit that they also deduct the artists.
Breakfast served all day!
The 15% breakage charge is not a bunch of crap now that music downloads have come along. It has been crap for at least a good 40 years. The days that 15% of a shipment were broken predates even VINYL records. When was the last time you dropped a vinyl record and it shattered? Wait. When was the last time you saw, let alone touched, a vinyl record? (Note: DJs need not reply.)
It's amazing that breakage percentages based on a technology that was non-existent before a lot of artists were even born is still included in contracts. It's less amazing that these artists still sign the contracts, though. If you disagree, then what? Go to another label? All the major labels have this. The artists is starving and really, really wants that contract. It's unfair to begin with. The record companies have no intention of playing fair either.
This kind of unfair practice dates back a while, but it wasn't always that way. Way back, artists were actually HAPPY that they could actually make money off of something other than a live performance. That people could also listen to their music without needing to leave the comfort of their home. Artists were happy that they could actually make a living doing what they liked best. And the record companies were happy that they could get a medium out that would help sell their physical players. (Remember, most of these big labels started out selling record players, the records were a secondary, marketing means of selling the record players themselves, which was the obvious target of the manufacturing company.)
Then more and more people bought records, and the record selling business was... heeeeey, this is sorta profitable! Not only was it profitable, but it was getting in the way of the main business, which was manufacturing and selling record players. Time to spin off the record sales division to an independent entity. Let them focus on selling records. Now that the records themselves were the main butter and bread of the company, greed started settling in. Then, as most people know, tapes came along. Car tape players came along, and a wider number of playing devices were available, while the general economic standing of the average person was also increasing, allowing them to spend more money on leisurely activities and products, including.... records. Lots of money. But the contracts stayed pretty much the same. If I were a business executive, I wouldn't change those contracts either unless there was sufficient reason to do so. Like a lot of law suits, a really bad name (bad publicity) and so on. Hmmm. Maybe Sony should change their contracts. (And for those shouting "shareholders!" let me just say that "acting ethically" is a justifiable reason to do something that MIGHT decrease share prices. Shareholder maximization is maximization within reasonable constraints, it's not about being an exploiting fuckwad.)
Anyhow, breakage aside, my understanding of the issue is that the artists in question are NOT trying to remove the 15% breakage clause, but instead are trying to change the terms entirely. That is, they're saying that "this is not a record sales" to the digital downloads. "You don't produce physical records that are being distributed." And they have a point. What they're saying is "see this clause here that discusses royalties regarding music licensing? Yep. Apple is essentially being LICENSED to produce and sell our music. The royalties for licensing must apply."
Whether this is a good idea or not (I would feel much better if they'd try to attack the entire contract terms, rather than finding loopholes that would in essence legitimize the rest of the contract) they have a good point. Records used to be a physical medium. It was hard to reproduce or distribute without a certain level of production facilities. Not only has that been a bit different in the last 25 years (casette recorders, CD-R, etc.) but now we're finally seeing music without a physical medium. The contracts themselves have been outdated for ages, b
It's a good thing you were named $sysR00TK1T and not $sys$R00TK1T and especially that you sent them a tape rather than a CD, because otherwise they might've been unable to see the files on the CD due to their own rootkit hiding all files with $sys$ at the front of them :-)
- Mr. Pedant
How do four guys with absolutely no knowledge of the music industry get to become "known bands"?
Sure, maybe they can beg, borrow and steal enough from relatives to finance a limited tour, maybe buy a couple of local cable ad spots and record a pretty crappy album that's semi popular in the local underground scene and sells maybe 2,000-3,000 copies.
Assuming they're incredibly lucky and have multi millionaire relatives who can fund everything, you think the relatives will be happy with the discovery that, no matter how well you invest, near 9 out of 10 acts still fail to ever break even.
Record companies provide a hell of a lot of services to get a band in to the public eye and to put out the best (commercially speaking) version of that band's work that they can. Without any one of those pieces, the imagined wealth and success never comes. That's what the label provides.
The label also sucks up 9 out of 10 bands never making their money back and, yes, has to fund all ten attempts from one successful band. Bands then bitch they don't see the money they should - missing out that they were quite happy to sign that deal when they were nearly ten times as likely to lose the record company's money as make it.
Sure, once bands are successful, they'd love to take all the money. By that point, it's true, they don't need anywhere near so one sided a contract with the record companies and, with a level playing field, could dictate the terms.
The record companies, knowing that's going to happen down the line, ensure they lock artists in to contracts that last well beyond their first success - otherwise they'd never be able to keep funding those 1-in-10 shots.
If you look at the industry on a per-successful-band basis, it's daylight robbery.
If you look at the industry as something that has to take a 1 in 10 chance even with the best A&R men, has to fund a massive amount before any investment, has to supply a huge number of contacts and has to bribe Clear Channel - it stops looking quite so abusive.
At the end of the day, if there's a better way, the artists should go an do it without signing up to such contracts in the first place. Problem is, there isn't. Evidently, from the way they keep doing it, record labels may be demonized but evidently do still provide a service.
The problem is, they just pay out more in the beginning and recoup it all at the end and people only look at the end part when judging.
"If you see a company using Linux, it may be that they have not paid for this software. Report them to the Business Software Alliance who have the legal authority to inspect any company's computers for illegal programs like Linux. Finally, remember to include Linux users in your prayers tonight. As individuals we may not be able to change people's minds, but the Bible teaches that God can make any sinner repent."
Problem is they dont own the rights to their OWN WORK.
Its part of the contract.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Ok, I can MAYBE understand 20% for packaging on a traditional CD, although it seems hard to justify $2 (based on a $10 CD price) to pay for a piece of 1 cent cardboard for the liner and a 20 cent plastic case. Maybe they pay someone $1.79 to put the CD in the package? lol
What I don't understand is the 15% for 'breakage' - how can that be justifiable? Do 3 out of every 20 CDs mysteriously implode? I caqn't remember EVER breaking a CD accidentally or otherwise and I am rather abusive with them - I sracth the heck out of them because I don't put them inot their cases a lot.
Maybe the musicians should expand the lawsuit for the extortionist charges they are paying on their CDs too for 'packaging' and 'breakage'.
Honestly, maybe we should start blaming the IDIOT musicians who sign these recording contracts for agreeing to such inane charges for THEIR content.
I seriously think the big record labels are on borrowed time -- all they have left is American Idol type garbage that no one with a brain takes seriously.
That, and the major record labels' strategic alliances with major music publishers. After Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music (in re "My Sweet Lord") and Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton (in re "Love Is a Wonderful Thing"), I'm guessing that singer-songwriters on major labels get access to forensic musicologists to help them figure out whether or not they have subconsciously infringed a copyright.
so, when the labels sell the customer something...
the labels consider it a license.
but, for artist contract negotiation purposes...
the item is considered to be tangible, not a license, and subject to breakage, etc...
the name of the machine that converts tangible items taken from artist and converts them to licenses sold to customers, all in less than a blink fo an eye, is code named...
you guess it...
hypocrisy.
keep in mind, it is people just like this who tirelessly lobby congress. and congress wh*res us out w/o kneepads.
You see breakage and think of broken records. It's not really that way.
If a product is manufactured, but it isn't suitable for sale (defective), and destroyed at the factory, it is fallout.
If a product is manufactured, sold wholesale, shipped out but doesn't set sold to a retailer, it is breakage.
If a product is manufactured, sold wholesale, shipped out and purchased by a retailer but the retailer never sells it to a customer, it is shrink.
So, basically, if a Teamster steals, loses or destroys something on the way from the factory to the retailer, it is breakage. If it gets lost on the shelves, shoplifted or becomes unsellable in the store for other reasons, it is shrink.
So, there still could be breakage, if there were fraud/theft in the digital delivery chain. For example, every sale through allofmp3 could in a way be considered breakage, since the record labels aren't getting paid for it.
But I have to say, a 15% charge seems ridiculously high. If the fraud level is that high, then it could only be because the labels want it to be so for some reason. Cause most of the fraud/theft during delivery can be stopped in the digital domain.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Of course, with digital, the whole duplication, distribution, production and publicity thing is best done by cheap devices connected to interconnected routers
Let's see if you're right:
Wait a friggin' minute. Do you mean to say that Sony BMG ain't a bunch of care bears on a crussade to save our beloved artists from the paws of their evil mp3 sharing fans and imminent bankrupt, but a bunch or ruthless speculators manipulating the people for their own commercial benefit??
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
What's next, poorly written Big Brother software sneaking on my computer from music CD-s and opening my OS to wanna-be hackers? Wait...
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!......
OMG teh RIAA funds terr0rists!1!!!
Granted the majority of my studies were based upon audio engineering, I was required to take a lot of music biz courses to get a firm grasp on things.
Essentially, labels have been and currently are writing in these contracts a clause that goes something like "and the right to distribute, or reproduce under any medium, current or future, forseen or unforseen, usurping any technology invented or not yet invented".
It is a CYA clause of course, but they Industry isn't (completely) stupid. They knew that technology would change, even though they tended to underestimate when, and how, but they wanted to ensure that they could have the mechanical rights for any of their catalog on any medium that would come about.
Libertas in infinitum
They're just figuring the cost of losing will be less than what they can rake in while the case grinds its way through court and appeals. If it looks bad they'll try to settle, but I'm sure they don't have any delusions about actually winning.
There's always a chance lightning will strike in court but mainly they're just dragging their feet as long as possible. Scumbags.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
wtf
Clearly no one can see that the entire reason behind the progress from shellac, to vinyl, to cassettes, to CDs, to electronic distribution has been the result of free market pressures and the "15%" breakage clause.
As highlighted, there has been the progression of music techology from a time where breakage was very high (Shellac) to digital electronic distribution.
Even making the (extremely generous) assumption that the 15% damage rate was a genuine amount at the time the shellac records were produced, that 15% expense reduction that the record companies claimed clearly provided an economic incentive to try and improve the medium. After all, if they could reduce the amount of damage that occurred, the could ship fewer records and actually keep the difference themselves. In comes vinyl - now the companies can reduce their shipment volumes (since they can reduce the 15% to record stores to a lower amount, but retain the charge to licence holders) - presto - lower shipping costs, less damaged goods handling for record shops - and even consumers benefit too - because their own records were now sturdier and less likely to break (hmm question - did the increased sturdiness of records result in lower customer sales due to fewer replacements being needed).
Fastforward to cassette tapes. Similar motivations again - even lower breakage than records, but with the added benefit of occaisionally being chewed up (repeat sales anyone?). Plus, more versatility being a smaller, less temperamental device in areas experiencing shock, and sales go up. Even more of the 15% now goes to the record companies, and innovation continues. Problem is that due to the moving parts, these are still expensive to produce.
Fast forward to CDs. Cheaper to produce, similar packaging volumes to tapes, next to no breakage, still some scope for repeat purchases. And a bit more of that 15% is retained by the record companies.
Time moves on. And the earlier conspiring of the record labels and secret R&D proves fruitful. Thats right - The Internet. Unlike common belief, Al Gore did not create the internet, nor was it those scientists out at DARPA - it was a secret R&D project by the music industry, designed to maximise their profits by eliminating all distribution breakage, allowing them to retain the 15% breakage charge they levy on licence holders.
It now becomes a broader question though - how long do we let the conspiracy continue to reap the economic rewards for their improvement? Clearly, in a free-market situation, competitors would have entered the industry, used the technology but paid more to licence holders - resulting in the licence holders (who in some ways are also an economic entity that wishes to realise the maximum revue possible) flocking to those companies offering lower breakage restrictions, and hence making those companies more profitable through offering more music to music consumers.
The frequency with which these events are appearing in the media suggests that there has not been such a shift of licence holders to other record companies
Some thoughts on why this could be the case are:
What did you just say?
song publishes it with they copyright? obviously?
Wasn't Sony the company so concerned with the rights of their artists that went so far as putting a rootkit on the CDs???
Didn't they did in the best interest of their artists, as they said?
Now someone shows that they are stealing money from the same artists? I can't understand! How can that be possible? They are not even using P2P to steal!!!!
God! It's a crazy world!
We must be speaking different Englishes because nor can I understand what exactly you're asking about..
A couple things that I wanna get off my chest:
,Slipknot, and [insert any random metal band here]" Without fail NONE of the groups mentioned every sound anything like Silent Hill at all. The games are more about creepy ambient and not in your face distored guitar wailing. People are so ignorant they simply don't even know how to answer the question, the worst part is they don't even realize how ignorant they are.
1)
People bitch about the RIAA constantly, they also bitch about how much music sucks these days and how much they chessy pop music and crappy bling bling hiphop
Know what though? They you people STILL buy the crap, you still listen to the radio, you still watch MTV/VH1. One of my friends hates the RIAA with a passion, yet he is foaming at the mouth to go buy the latest Tool CD, which will give more money to the RIAA.
There are dozens of sites full of independent artists that have nothing to do with the RIAA at all, in almost any genre of music, and many of them are extremely talented.
Put your money where your mouth is. Stop buying mainstream music from bands supported by the RIAA or quit bitching.
2)
The fact that most people will never hear anything but rock, rap, and country means people end up saying extremely stupid things.
Here is one example, on every forum for the game Silent Hill, a thread will usually come around that says "What kind of music reminds you of Silent Hill" or "Any groups that sound like Silent Hill music?"
To those who aren't familiar with the games, the Silent Hill series uses a lot of extremely harsh grating noises and some minimal backroudn sounds. The most common term is "post-industrial noise" though in my opinion it is dark ambient. If someone wanted to hear music like Silent Hill then the ambient genre would be the place to look, groups like Lustmord and the like.
However wihout fail morons always say "I think that Korn,
Oh how sweet! You mean all those members of the xxAA could be prosecuted under the very same Draconian law (The Digital Millenium Copyright Act) they fought so hard to get Congress to pass, despite no outcry from the public?
... this is too freaking sweet.
OMG
DO IT. NOW.
whine about sony and in the end stupid consumers still hand them money. u just watch as 500 dollar ps3's fly off the shelf. sony=riaa/mpaa, they do what they believe they can get away with
..but this is fucking priceless.
o pean-threat-to-our-computers.html
http://shelleytherepublican.com/2006/04/linux-eur
No, that is scary.
I thought it was a troll. It had to be a troll. But then I read the rest of the site and OMFG it wasn't a troll.
OMFG I don't even know what to say. These people will round us all up and put us in camps someday. I will probably have a nightmare of these people going Pol Pot on us tonight and ol' shelly will showing up at my door with a machete.
Note to self: tomorrow, BUY GUN.
There are several things that usually happen in major label contracts, one of them being the re-recording clause which usually specifies that the artist is not allowed to put out any other recordings of the same song for xxx years (where xxx
As far as the 'mechanical' side, no one can prevent you from re-recording a musical composition if it has already been published (been released) as long as you are willing to pay the minimum Statuatory Mechanical Royalty Rateto the song's publisher, which rate is set and decided by congress. No one can prevent an artist from re-recording their own songs unless
as always, YMMV(TM)
Z.
Because Apple aren't distributing, nor are Sony, the downloader is the one making the copy. Apple have just made it available.
The bands don't hold the copyright, or at least not the relevant part. Contracts all require the musicians to sign the copyright in the recording (not the music) over to the label. So there's nowhere for them to devolve.
(They do keep the copyright in the music itself, which comes into play for new recordings of the same thing, like live recordings and covers and sheet music. Also, there are some exceptions to the recording copyright changing hands on smaller labels.)
If you go to some of the big internet casual games portals selling puzzle agmes, you will find that the developers royalty is around 20% to 25%.
Thats for a video game. Just bits and bytes. Same situation, no breakages, no packaging etc.
So yes, musicians are getting screwed by their publishers. But self-funded game developers get screwed even worse, and in many cases the 'portal' wont even mention the name of the developer. Thats like saying theres a new song called 'Billie Jean' made by Sony Records, and not mentioning michael jackson.
Moral of the story -> Middle men suck. If you can possibly purchase content direct from the people that make it, do so. Thats why I bought GalCiv2 direct from stardock
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
These guys...
4 001559688
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=915143524
You forgot running a protection racket the likes of which would make mafia enforcers envious. I mean as long as we're dreaming we may as well add in racketeering and extortion charges for all the lawsuits and threats of lawsuits leading to settlements that they've put private citizens not party to the original contracts through.
Despite being funny, it's quite a valid point.
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
Do business with theives and you get ripped off.
Does it really take that much brains?
If these lost lil boys could muster the synapses to run their own show,I bet they would.
I also bet that they are so used to having their hands held and all done for them,they will just fade away like all other music industry babies.
Good idea to brush up on opensource,gnu and other music licensing.
Well,theyve always got drugs anyway!
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
I actually talked about this very thing with a relitive of one of the band members I know! I can't believe they actually did it!
Obviously the recording industry thinks they should be the only 'pirates' in their industry.
Sue the consumers, and cheat the artists.
Stash a major portion of the proceeds into a political contribution fund, and use it to influence the lawmakers to pass legislation to give you Orwellian powers to spy on, harass, and penalize anyone and everyone, whether they have done anything wrong or not, and toss those 'Fair Use' laws out the window.
Now there's a business model for you!
Differences between how you act when some one is watching, and how you act when no one is watching, define who you are
The artists don't pay for fallout. I'm not sure why. The artists don't pay for shrink either, but that's probably because the record labels have rigged it so they don't have to pay for shrink either. The retailer pays for shrink, because if a retailer accepts a CD from the distributor/labels, they must pay for it or return it within a certain time (60 days I think). If shrink were to occur, the retailer could not return it, and the retailer would be left holding the bag, and actually the artist (and label) get paid for the shrink as if the copy were sold.
To be honest, the primary reason artists pay for breakage is because the labels can get away with it. They hold most of the power during the contract negotiations and so they stick the artists with plenty of fees/costs. Yeah, the labels have some excuse about not paying royalties to artists for stuff that isn't actually sold, but it's an excuse. Breakage is just a cost of doing business. In a rational system, the label would end up paying for it.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
This one's tagged as both "greed" and "greedy". Sony must suck.
Have you ever wondered How to Take Over
If you look at all of the RIAA/P2P cases, they always go for the person distributing (uploading) the files. Therefore, by definition, making the files available for downloading is considered distribution.
Libertas in infinitum