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Universal Wants a Slice of Apple's iPod Pie
vought writes "According to a Reuters report, Universal is now taking the precendent set by Microsoft's Zune and moving to force Apple to include a royalty payment with each iPod.
In the words of Universal Music's Doug Morris, 'These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it. So it's time to get paid for it.' Does Microsoft's precedent mean the start of a slippery slope that will add a 'pirate tax' to every piece of hardware that touches digital music?"
God, I hope they do this. Because if I have to pay a Pirate Tax, then doesn't that mean I can pirate all the Universal Stuff I want... since I've already paid the tax?
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
IIRC Canada has a system like this, where part of the purchase price of blank media goes to royalties for stuff that is assumed to be copied to it.
If they charged a fee for each device and let us have free, legal file sharing (since we paid for the content with our device fee) it sounds semi reasonable.
Of course that's not what they are talking about so...
"These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it,. So it's time to get paid for it."
Riiiight. So umm... despite the fact that there's absolutely zero proof, a general assumption is being made... which spreads to ALL digital-music listeners... and say that they want money.
So... going by this theory, cable companies should charge everyone who watches TV because they all steal satellite signals?
YES! Everyone on earth is a digital thief, so let's make a profit off of it!
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
A car can hold stolen merchandise, so can a handbag. A gun can be used in a hold up. You're telling me we all have to pay, they'll have to up the price of iPods, because some one might abuse them? I'm a firm defender of copyrights but this is just nuts. Making everyone pay is no answer. DRM away but don't make me pay because of what some one else might do. That crosses a massive line and makes me want to boycott Universal products. Not that they have anything I want in the first place which makes it doubly insulting.
What kind of environment do you have to be raised in that instills a sense of entitlement so absolute that it reduces onlookers to standing agape in stunned silence?
These people need to be kept away from sharp objects and heavy machinery until they grow up.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
A lot of people are saying 'great a a tax, now I can download for free and not worry about being sued'
Not going to argue with that, but what I will say is I can't but think of the precident in the UK with the BBC. Theoretically I have already paid for all the content the BBC produces. Therefore I should own the copyright to it? Then why the hell are the BBC DVDs I buy copyright BBC Worldwide? Why don't I own the copyright to the BBC DVDs I bought? Is anyone aware of a case of the BBC suing someone for copyright infringement who has a TV license*?
Times like this I try to forget what the law says and ask what is fair. I also remember that the copyright holder has the right to do whatever they like with their product** - I have no need to use it if I am not happy with their terms. i.e. am I actually that worse of because Joe Blogs has released XYZ piece of music under terms that I feel are unacceptable, than I would be if Joe Blogs had never produced that piece of music at all?
Can we have the next slashdot poll as what encourages you to buy music - be it hearing a song on the radio, from an mp3 copied from a friend, from a CD borrowed from a collegue etc. I know I have never bought Music without listening to it via some free method first. To shut down all avenues of free music would stop me dead.
* Yes there were a few cases a while ago, but this was before the BBC had the whole lost Dr Who episode debacle.
** Your own definition of Fair rights of course must stand up in court.
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
Actually I have no problem with paying a small extra "tax" with the purchase of an ipod. BUT only if that means I can then fill my ipod 100% with pirated music...
If I'm paying the "pirate tax" to help them recover the "losses" they have from piracy, there's no problem then, right? If they are still going to sue my guts if I have pirated mp3s on my ipod, then why I am paying extra money with the purchase of an ipod? I'm paying them protection money and they still come after me? If they are going to act like the mob, they should at least do it properly...
This PSA is played on a local College Radio station in my area (wnhu.net). The ext was taken from the creator's website (downhillbattle.org):
PSA #1: Hypocrites
(Approximately 80 seconds)
According to the major record labels, everyone who downloads a song off the internet is a thief. But there's a lot they aren't telling you.
For example:
Did you know that when you buy a major label CD virtually none of your money makes it to the musician? It's true: When you pay $15 for a CD, the artist royalty is about 75 cents.
But most major label artists don't even get that--musicians don't get any royalties until they pay back all the costs of recording and promotion. That means they don't get anything until they sell at least 500,000 or a million CDs! Here's another way to look at it: for most CDs at the record store, NONE of the money goes to the musician.
So when the major label CEOs tell you that sharing music is "stealing from musicians", they're
A) Lying through their teeth
and
B) Hypocrites
The real thieves are the corporate record labels, and giving them your money just perpetuates a system where musicians get screwed and independent music gets locked out of the mainstream.
The best part of all this is that--thanks to filesharing--the corporate record companies are dying off, while independent labels are thriving. Musicians, radio DJs, everybody. We finally have a chance to change the music business.
Don't buy major label CDs. Support independent musicians. Take back music.
Yes, we do, and thanks to it the courts told the CRIA (RIAA of Canada) to screw off when they tried to start the same litigation idiocy that is going on in the states right now. It's funny, the industry lobbied really hard to get the levy passed in the 1990's when no one had yet realised how the internet would change things. Now they are lobbying as hard as they can to get it removed so they can start suing people. Not having any luck so far from what I can tell.
The record industry is interesting. It is so powerful, that it can make change and introduce new products and formats (like CD), yet ultimately it has a product that people can do without.
And they are 'doing without' in droves. People are buying Wiis and DVDs and getting cable TV and video off YouTube. They are loosing market share and blaming piracy. Blaming the unnameable is truly the last bastion of an industry that is dying. It means that, at AGMs, the directors will have an excuse for bad
profitability, when inaction is their only excuse. If you hold shares in a large music company, time to ask them what product they plan on releasing when they have become irrelevant due to their inaction.
Years ago, they could have made a cheap, effective, simple service. Instead - everyone copied music, found what they like and bought CDs because they felt like they should support the artist. Record sales went up. Then Napster got a sued, Audiogalaxy got shutdown, and the punters should no longer try before they buy.
RIAA continues to sue... people continue not to buy.
It's time to wake up record companies. It's not too difficult. iTunes will save your ass. If you leave it 2 more years - iTunes will own you ass. You will have to bend over and lick Apple's boots. Do you realise that you are 1 freakin step away from having someone like Apple set up a service to post produce 100000 punters Garage Band files and then release them? The only thing you have is radio stations who you collaborate with. The advertising revenues for these are not going too well. Do you feel you owe it to them to ensure they join you in a symbiotic slide into oblivion?
I have bought my last 2 years worth of music though iTunes. I don't need a CD. I don't need all
the wasted plastic and paper. I don't need to waste resources to have music. I don't need the stores,
the transport, the manufacturers. Sound only needs to be touched and felt in 1 way - through bass
pounding in your chest... not through yet another breaking CD container.
In my next incarnation, I hope to come back as a code monkey.
This demand has legal trouble stamped all over it.
For starters this seems like a violation of the anti-trust statutes. Universal knows they have no legal means to compel apple to pay them money for every iPod sold so instead they are trying to blackmail them into doing so by threatening to stop selling apple their songs. Whether or not the iPod is used to play/possess illegal songs is totally irrelevant. Refusing to let apple sell their songs on iTunes won't stop ipods from being used for illegal music, in fact it would likely increase it. This is nothing but a clear cut case of a company using it's monopolistic practices to extort money, exactly the sort of thing the anti-trust laws were designed to prevent. At least MS could come up with a non-laughable (just a bit of a snicker) claim that their bundling practices were for the consumer's benefit, Universal has no such case.
More interestingly what happens when the RIAA sues someone who had illegal music on their ipod and they argue in court that the ipod surcharge gives them the right to do so? While I'm skeptical that such a claim could succeed one never knows. Also, even if the poor victim of the lawsuit loses this point it puts Universal in an interesting position. In order to successfully sue people using their ipods to play illegal music they must admit apple wasn't purchasing *anything* with the surcharge. That makes it even harder to claim that the surcharge was part of a valid business deal rather than something they coerced using monopolistic power.
--
I know one thing for sure though. The second I find myself paying a surcharge on a device I purchase to the RIAA I will make a point of not purchasing music for that device. At the moment I buy songs from itunes not too infrequently but if I've already paid $5 to the RIAA I will always search for an illegal copy first. Maybe in the long run they will realize people have an innate sense of fair play. If you don't insist on DRM and sell songs for a reasonable price people will choose to pay money so the artists are compensated but the second you pick someone's pocket claiming you need to be paid for what you were going to steal people will stop feeling bad about stealing from you.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
No no, the Canadian recordable media levy is *not* related to copyright infringement at all.
The levy is a fee paid to the recording industry to subsidise the industry for the loss of revenue taken from duplicate media sales to compensate the industry for *fair-use* backups of media for personal use. Really a coup for the music industry because they're getting paid every time you exercise your rights, and they still get to take you to court if they can fake enough evidence about your downloading.
But this new one is fantastic, because if Apple accedes to the music industry's wish (and I personally hope they will as quickly as possible), it hopefully (IANAL) creates an circumstance where you have already paid damages to the music industry, and hopefully double jeopardy means they can now not take you to court and say "well you took our music but we weren't compensated" because they will have been (for any music published by Universal at least). Thus making their entire catalog free for download by anyone, anywhere, who owns an iPod.
This is different from the Zune, which pays money to the publisher simply as a gratuity for the favour of their songs being available on the Zune music purchasing outlet. The establishment in this case is not being compensated for copyright infringement.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
No, it's more of a grey area. It's still copyright infringement, and technically against the civil laws. It is more of a recognition that people are going to do it anyway and it is easier all around to do some minimal compensation up front. It like driving a little over the speed limit on a road where EVERYONE does it. Not technically legal, but not not something that will be enforced unless you take it to ridiculous levels.
"If the music cartels start charging me for music that I haven't downloaded, ripped, or otherwise pirated, then I'm going to have to stop spending money at iTMS and my local funky CD shop, and treat that "royalty charge" as a blanket license to their entire library."
FWIW I was in a band signed to a UK indie label during the 80's which was had licensing deals with pretty much every major label around the World. Then came the 90's and slowly but surely the CD's started disappearing off Tower Records' shelves. Then came the 00's and we get our own section on iTunes.
Needless to say if I'd bought my first MP3 player in the 00's I would have gone straight to iTunes and bought my albums from there, but instead I bought my first MP3 player in the late 90's and had to resort to grabbing un-licensed MP3's of my songs from wherever I could find them, basically because I didn't have the orginal CD's (my entire record collection is just that, records, and stored back in the UK) and I couldn't find CD's in used record stores.
If the record labels had got their shit together to build their own kickass online record store, and made their own kickass players so people could listen to them, Apple wouldn't have seen an opportunity and created iTunes and the iPod.
So FUCK YOU Universal, and every other label that starts crying about lost revenue.
And who's going to lead the lawsuit?
Actually, Apple should lead it. After all...
That sounds more like he's defaming Apple than he's defaming iPod owners, although that comment leaves plenty of room for both. And, of course, Apple makes a pretty stupid target for this kind of statement, having developed the most successful legal music download service there is. (I'm putting iTMS ahead of eMusic, AllofMP3 and the like because iTMS successfully charges more per song, has better selection (than eMusic), and is of unquestioned legality (compared to AllofMP3).)
Or maybe, instead of a lawsuit, Apple should just reconsider whether they want iTMS to sell music released by a record company that defames them and their customers. How much does Universal make from iTMS, I wonder?
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
Other possible RIAA plants (this story only):
- #17043086 (User: Man in Spandex)
- #17043272 (User: LO0G)
- #17042814 (User: seriv)
- #17043858 (User: j-beda)
- #17043038 (User: Jerry Rivers)
- #17043474, #17043550 (User: pandrijeczko)
On a side note, the quote in the summary, "These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it,. So it's time to get paid for it," is not from the Reuters press release. It originally appeared in the Billboard article announcing the Zune launch, and was discussed on slashdot.