Apple, the RIAA, and Ringtones

pilsner.urquell writes "Apple's interest in defending the rights of the consumer has cost them a lot of grief in the ringtone market. 'John Gruber of the Daring Fireball cites Engadget, which reported that the RIAA wanted to be able to distribute ringtones of its artists without having to pay them big money to do so. It won a decision last year before the Copyright Office saying that ringtones weren't derivative works, meaning they didn't infringe on the copyright of the songwriter.' The piece goes on to explain the tense relationship between Apple content holders regarding ringtones and other pieces of IP, such as in the recent withdrawal of NBC."

Comments

Re:I never knew copyright law was THIS broken

[gravos]

Something pretty similar to that was tried a while ago but it was a severe market failure.

To get the people to "support" something like that you have to trick them into it. You can't sell it as a new product like those guys tried to.

Re:Weird, that

[thosf]

These people (RIAA) and the recording labels have audio CDs made in Chin-a by slave labor for 10-cents per unit, sell the CDs at retail level for over $20 and pay the artist about 5-cents per unit. I'm beginning to see who the real "pirates" are!