Slashdot Mirror
RIAA Admits 70 Cent Price is 'In the Range'
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In its professed battle to protect the 'confidentiality' of its 70-cents-per-download wholesale price, the RIAA has now publicly filed papers in UMG v. Lindor in which it admits that the 70-cents-per-download price claimed by the defendant is 'in the range'.(pdf) From the article: 'The pricing data really may not be all that secret. Late in 2005, former New York Attorney General (and current Governor) Eliot Spitzer launched an investigation into price fixing by the record labels, alleging collusion between the major labels in their dealings with the online music industry. Gabriel believes that making the pricing information public would 'implicate [sic] very real antitrust concerns' as the labels are not supposed to share contract information with one another ... Beckerman argues in a letter to the judge that the only reason the labels want to keep this information confidential is to 'serve their strategic objectives for other cases,' which he says does not rise to the legal threshold necessary for a protective order. The proposed order would force the labels to turn over contracts with their 12 largest customers. Most details--such as the identities of the parties--would be kept confidential, but pricing information and volume would not.'"
There is a difference between actual damages and statutory damages. Actual damages are an attempt to compensate the victim. Statutory damages are an attempt to include punitive damage in statute law.
Whether or not this is wise law-making is debatable. I suspect that it would be better to force the victim to sue directly for punitive damages, thus leaving the matter to a judge to determine of the punishment fits the offense.
The basic structure of the modern music industry was that Music Labels would promote and distribute and Artist's work in exchange for the lion's share of the physical Album's revinue while the artist would still collect the revinue from merchandise, touring and radio play; this (at the time) was a remarkably fair dead because it was expensive to promote and distribute an Artist's work in the pre-internet era.
...
The internet has changed everything
The cost to distribute music is no longer significant and a (hard-working) individual can promote themself to a reasonably successful level with very little work; you probably won't sell out stadiums, but you can make a decent living for the rest of your life as an Artist which (from all the Artists I have met) is the dream. Now, Labels exploit artists they do not help them.
The "Cost" of an Artist's work is a lifetime of developing a skillset that very few people have; it is priceless. The price of an Artist's work per song with how little it costs to distribute the song should be (roughly) the ammount of money the artist is getting.
An unregulated market quickly becomes a cartel. Only regulated markets remain free.
You have that backwards. The music distribution business is highly regulated by copyright law. That has allowed the RIAA cartel to exist. Without the regulation, Napster would have finished the cartel long ago.
The truth shall set you free!
Slashdot posturing aside, there's plenty of "common sense" (aka nonsense - but judges and jurries do consider how things look to them) in favor of the argument that AllOfMp3 was pretty blatantly using Russian law as a shield and attempting to circumvent U.S. Law by creating host drives (thus, not sending files directly into the U.S.). At the end of the day, they drove business toward the U.S., offered their prices in U.S. dollars, and registered a U.S. domain root. (.com) Standing up for these guys is a little hard.. when they're basically just telling the U.S. companies that paid to produce this music that they have no say in the pricing, or distribution of their material.
-GiH
good time to link this again-
The Problem With Music
by Steve Albini
http://negativland.com/albini.html
------ hi mom
All of MP3 charges about a dime a song. That's paying there server costs and making them a profit. Let's add on 20 cents for an artist profit.
That means a profitable bussiness that had no promotional and production costs for the artist could operate at 30 cents a song. Presumably with higher volume then that could be even lower and still make a profit.
Thus there's a 40 cent gap here. Surely the cost of promotion and production when ammortized over all artisits (proficable ones and not profitable ones) could not be that large could it? I reallt don't know but this seems strange to me cause I really don't see the effects of such promotion. If it's there then it must be more bhind the scenes payola for product placement or something.
of course the artists share is grossly inflated. I doubt artists actually recieve 20 cents at all until pay-back for production to the studio has occurred. Maybe brittany gets 20 cents.
So my guess is that something like 20 to 30 cents is really the ammortized cost per song including the cost of electronic distribution and that atill would make a profit.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
That makes no sense. How does an unregulated market become a cartel? I would say the RIAA, in it's highly-regulated marketplace, is cartel-like.
I make my living as a photographer. Photography, like many artforms, is a completely unregulated market. There are absolutely no government controls over this industry, besides general trade (contract) law and criminal law. No license, besides a local business license, is required to open a photography business. There are no controls over education, equipment or qualifications. Essentially, if you have a point and shoot camera and a phone number, you can be a professional photographer. I don't really know any other service industries like that. You have to have a license to cut hair, and a medallion to drive a cab.
I'm not aware of any photography cartel. There are thousands upon thousands of small, independent operators, at all price and skill levels operating in every state, competing for business from consumers and businesses alike. Without regulation in this industry, it's far more like the wild west than a tightly-run cartel.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Except where exactly is the transaction taking place? Is it in the purchaser's home, or where AllOfMP3's server's are located? This sounds like something that needs to be defined by international treaties, and not US law [but of course US judges would never think of that].
From the sounds of it, it would be legal to purchase from AllOfMP3 if you are physically located within Russia. Maybe it break's some internation agreement or some US law for someone physically located within the US to download from AllOfMP3, so maybe the RIAA needs to go after all the downloaders... Or maybe that's just too expensive for them..
What about 'regular' criminal law? You live in State A, which outlaws perfoming or possessing the depiction of some specific sexual act. You order a DVD containing said depiction from Company B located in State C, which does NOT outlaw said depiction. Which party is committing the criminal act, you, Company B, or the shipping company? As a non-lawyer, assuming the police legally 'find' you with it, I would imagine you would be the one charged with the crime. Now, instead of ordering the physical DVD, you download the video over the internet.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!