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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.'"
Gabriel believes that making the pricing information public would 'implicate [sic] very real antitrust concerns'
Well, if there's one thing record labels have an abundancy of, it's anti-trust.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
If you take a step back and put this into perspective you are able to really get a clear picture of how much money this companies are making on a per track basis. If they are charging .70 to music retailers then consider the following: .99 = iTunes (cheaper if CD is purchased) .93 = CD of 15 songs priced at $16
I recently came across an article suggesting that artists on average get paid around .25 per song. This computes into an estimated profit of roughly .45 per song. Of course compute that into a couple of million songs sold for one major artist and you're looking at $900,000 in profit for the record company. Not to shabby for one major artist.
The point being I still see plenty of reports of artists selling this many records on a regular basis. I would find it difficult to do much complaining about profit loss when I am bringing in something like that from one person. All the smaller artists you have can cover costs.
If they only make $0.70 wouldn't that imply that for the damages of 1.5 trillion from AllOfMP3.com would only be justified if AllOfMP3.com had uploaded over 2 trillion copies of songs to their users?
Personally, I suspect that is the reason they wouldn't want their prices known; it destroys the RIAA's ability to sue for massive damages.
They make 30 cents a song? Ill do it for 5 cents a song. Where do I sign up?
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.
Even at the $0.70 per song mark, you have to consider damages for the pain and suffering of those poor, poor record executives. I mean, honestly: Think about the hours and hours that they spent in their mansions, lying awake on their double-king canopy beds, surrounded by sleeping hookers... and unable to sleep because of the massive injustice being done to their industry.
Or something like that.
In all honesty, it's a hard thing to nail down. If I work in a donut factory, there is SOMEONE, even if that person isn't me, who knows how much that donut costs to make, including materials, equipment, labor, shipping, and pesticides. When it comes to things like music, art, etc., how DO you quantify the cost of the artists' talents, the labels' marketing efforts, the RIAA's... something... etc. Even the most talented singer in the world is useless without distribution... and marketing and distribution channels can sometimes (Britney?) overcome a shallow pool of talent.
That being said, anything that comes out of the multi-mawed beast known as the RIAA is met with instant skepticism. When you spend years upon years intimidating people who may or may not have committed a crime, and many of those that are nominally guilty are in the "OMG, You ate a peanut out of the grocery store bin!" variety, it's hard to find any foothold of remorse in the market. So $0.70 wholesale price might be in the "ballpark." But I don't give a damn.
^ works for Verizon...
<blockquote>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.
</blockquote>
This is not quite correct.
Actual damages are damages proven in court, and are intended to compensate the victim.
Punitive (also "Exemplary") damages are damages intended to "punish" or "make an example" of the victim (largely as a general and specific deterrent), beyond what compensates the victim.
Statutory damages are amounts set in statute law in the absence of proven amounts of actual damages (or when the proven amounts are lower); in some cases they are largely compensatory in purpose, and included on the presumption that the kind of harms the statute seeks to provide a remedy for are prohibitively difficult to prove and quantify, and that substituting a default damage amount is a way to provide a reasonable remedy. In other instances, their intent is somewhat punitive in nature, though they are particularly ineffective in that regard as they tend to be superceded by actual damages rather than on top of actual damages.
<blockquote>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.
</blockquote>
Since the courts have held that punitive damages may only be awarded in a limited proportion to the actual damages proven, this would eliminate the principle role of statutory damages, which is to obviate the need to prove specific actual damages to receive some remedy for certain offenses.
Certainly, there is an argument that substantive due process analysis of the type that constrains <i>punitive</i> damage awards ought also be applied to statutory damage awards beyond what can be reasonably seen as compensatory, and/or that statutory damage amounts in law serving as a rebuttable presumption of actual damages rather than providing an amount that is available in all cases regardless of circumstances.
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!
Of course, only Lawyers may even think about law. Or at least that seems the logical extension of what you are suggesting by telling Slashdot that it should withhold any judgement on the RIAA until there is a firmly grounded case law on the matter. Well, that isn't going to happen anytime soon, or perhaps ever. Copyright law is nebulous and has been for a long time.
Of course Slashdot is not a lawyer, but it is silly to propose that only lawyers and judges can have a valid interest in, and discussion of, legal matters that affect all citizens. In fact many laws are actually written by people who aren't necessarily lawyers. These people who dare insert themselves in the legal arena without the requirement of having a law degree are called "legislators."
While it is true that the UMG_v_Lindor case gets a lot of mentions in Slashdot, it is also the case that it is one of the **only** cases out of the 20,000 or so RIAA lawsuits that is going to trial and where a tough litigator is trying to force the RIAA to back up its claims with more than just the thread of ruinously expensive legal action. It also doesn't hurt that the "Recording Industry vs. the People" blog site provides a rare blow by blow account of a legal action in progress which makes for an exciting, albeit slow, tale of one litigator standing up to a veritable army of corporate lawyers with nearly unlimited funds. The blog is an important way of trying to balance the playing field against an opponent with deep pockets and who will play every trick in or out of the book, full well knowing that they will probably avoid any accountability for their own actions.
More seriously: Of course Slashdot is not a lawyer, but it is silly to propose that only lawyers and judges can have a valid interest in, and discussion of, legal matters that affect all citizens. In fact many laws are actually written by people who aren't necessarily lawyers. These people who dare insert themselves in the legal arena without the requirement of having a law degree are called "legislators." It's also called "public debate," you know that funny thing that the 4th branch of gov't (aka the press) is supposed to engender. But in the modern clutter of divissive politics and the "nobody knows what to do but experts so STFU NEWB" culture that is evolving, we're running for trouble.
A great example of a wonderful U.S. legislator was Benjamin Franklin - He was also the U.S.'s key scientist and one of her great publishers of news and raw data. Technologist should adopt Franklin as their Patron of Thought - because the man delivered for engineering, science, philosophy, theology, and political science. The same brain that can brilliantly explain and master the formation of distributive processing and Wide Area Networks could do a great deal of good for this nation by injecting simple practical knowledge of what the internet, and the future hold in store for law and the U.S.
-GiH
Quite true, and many more costs besides. The artists have to bear the entire cost of creating and selling the album, before they get any royalties.
Fair enough, you say? Perhaps - except they don't get to keep it. That album, that they conceived, wrote, performed, recorded, marketed and paid for in full, is no longer theirs. Copyright for the album is owned by the LABEL, and NOT the artist. That really sucks.
Time to link to Steve Vai's words of experience too, on this and the many other nefarious clauses that appear in a standard label contract.Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
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.
and registered a U.S. domain root. (.com)
.com is not a US domain root, it is an international root mainly used for commerce. The US domain root is .us That's not to say the root servers aren't in the US, only that .com is international and not country specific.
FalconShould there be a Law?
RIAA's name should be changed to MAFIAA. MAFIAA: Music and Film Industry Association of America
And without regulation, Napster would've replaced one cartel with another long ago.
Along with Beareshare, Limewire, Kazza, AllofMP3, Yahoo, Google... It would no longer be a monopoly run by a cartel.
The truth shall set you free!
What does 50 cent think of this knowledge? Maybe he'll sue for the back-owed 20 cent difference? ... sorry, I had to.
You talk better than you fool!