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EMI May Cut Funding To RIAA, IFPI
Teen Bainwolf notes a report that Big Four record label EMI, which is under new ownership, is considering a big cut in its funding for the IFPI and RIAA. Each of the labels reportedly contributed over $132 million per year to fund industry trade groups, and EMI apparently believes that money could be better spent elsewhere. "One of the chief activities of the RIAA is coordinating the Big Four labels' legal campaign, and those thousands of lawsuits have done nothing but generate ill will from record fans, while costing the labels millions of dollars and doing little (if anything) to actually reduce the amount of file-sharing going on."
RIAA is a puppet, paid by the big music companies. It doesn't have much power, and no power over what their masters allow it.
RIAA's power will decrease after this.
How about radio play, talk shows? I think it will be business as usual - if the other big music corporations will ignore this. If they will lobby the radio stations, it might be possible that EMI loses some air time.
I'm not sure why this was tagged funny, since it's true.
"Considering" cutting RIAA funding is nothing more than a slick PR move. Until they actually reduce their contributions, they're just as guilty as any of the other big players in the music biz.
According to the article:
including the close to 30,000 file-sharing lawsuits filed by the record labels in the US alone.
I mean, this is way worse than what I thought it was. I thought it was a handful, you know the ones you hear about in the news. But 30,000 means a lot and a whole lot of work for the legal system (this means that 1 in every 500 lawsuits in the US or 0,2% comes directly from the RIAA). This could be used for other cases we are already overloaded with like drugs, robberies, fraud (identity theft for example), money laundering and other crimes that affect more people than a few copied cd's.
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