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Record Labels Change Minds About Sharing MP3s
Mass Defect writes "While the RIAA continues to sue people for p2p file sharing, the record labels have made an about-face and given their blessing to users sharing MP3s via the social networking site imeem.com. In May this year the site was being sued by Warner for allowing users to upload photos, videos, and music to share. However to everyone's amazement, instead of being flattened, imeem.com managed to convince the label that this free promotion was a good thing. In July imeem.com signed a deal with the label. Since then the site has added Sony, BMG, EMI, and now the biggest fish of them all, Universal. Imeem now has the royal flush of record labels supporting its media-sharing service, each getting a cut of the advertising revenues generated by their catalog. Finally someone has figured out a way to do 'YouTube for MP3s' without getting sued out of existence."
About time! When will they get the point that music sharing will ultimately lead to more exposure for their artists, and thus, more revenue?
***i watched you change into a fly***
Does this mean that the universe is going to end?
Imeem now has the royal flush of record labels supporting its media-sharing service, each getting a cut of the advertising revenues generated by their catalog
gee... i wonder why they agreed to drop legal action against imeem.
"these 30 sec peview are dumb u cant even steal songs from here how is ti possible to download. plus these are intended to have em in our page we can never put dem in our ipods and such ya know. get rid of da 30 sec limit quick or da 50 cent guy below u will be right about losing alot of members"
Clipped right from a song sample page...
"You must be logged in to hear the full song. Click here to create an account."
You can listen to the entire song.. With an account. That is why there is so much Google information of how to cheat the system and download the songs. Nobody wants a bunch of 30 second clips of songs except as ringtones.
The truth shall set you free!
Wow. How amazing that the record companies agreed to this. Low quality streaming with loads of ads and a "download" button that sends you to the iTunes store or amazon. The annoying registration box that pops up after listening to 30 seconds of a song (you must register to hear the rest) is a nice touch.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Imeem's missing the point. One of the biggest positive points of P2P is that the record companies, radio conglomerates, have absolutely no say over the selection and presentation of content.
What we're seeing here is the Record Companies trying to appeal to our better judgement, while making one last effort to maintain an iron grip over their content. And it's just not going to work.
You see.... last year was arguably one of the best years on record for independent artists and labels for this very reason. The amount of *great* content being released by small labels was staggering to say the least, and I'd be pretty certain that more than a few of these artists got their "big break" via P2P.
Meanwhile, the talent on the major labels was.... crap... to say the least, and it has nothing to do with the inevitable backlash that occurs between generations. Most of the "Top-40" artists are untalented, formulaic, and absolute rubbish.
The crackdown on P2P, and the agreement with Imeem is at least in part trying to mask the fact that the RIAA's members have completely lost the ability to identify and sign new talent. On the other hand, the indie labels have gotten quite good at it.
The days of rock stars with million dollar salaries are over. The labels need to accept the fact that music is going to become increasingly diverse over the next several years, and that their old strategy of promoting a very small number number of superstar artists just isn't going to work any more.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I checked this out earlier when CNN pointed it out. While imeem doesn't make it easy for you to download music, they are streaming standard Flash video with MP3 soundtracks, which makes it easily downloadable e.g. using DownloadHelper. The MP3 files can then be extracted using e.g. MPlayer ("mplayer -dumpaudio -dumpfile foo.mp3 foo.flv").
End result: free, often decent quality (128 kbps), legal MP3s of music from major labels (where fair use applies; the usual disclaimer about not being a lawyer also applies).
I agree that file sharing is a problem, but there are plenty of problems in the music industry and these problems have more to do with their lost revenue than file sharing itself. If the record labels had gotten off their ass and got into online music in a big way when it started, we wouldn't have this problem.
My blog
Is this going to stop the RIAA lawsuits at all? This reads like an advertisement for the social site more than that the record companies have done an about face in policy.
Nothing changes in the P2P lawsuits. The RIAA has been solid on a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy being as good as the original copy is a bad bad thing. Making a copyable file and posting it is bad bad bad and we will sue...
This website is not P2P. It is a post and broadcast.. There is no download and pass along a copy.. well not without some google searching on how to D/L a copy in violation of the DMCA. The songs are protected by streaming flash and maybe an identifying watermark.
The site is now a web broadcaster. The site pays royalties out of the advertising revenue. There is no P2P. Copies stolen (copyright violated) may be identified for later lawsuits by watermarking or other identifiers provided at the site to prevent theft (copyright violations). This is probably why there is no listening beyond a 30 second clip without an account. With an account the info may be embeded in the clips so if they show up on Kazaa later, they know who to sue for the violation. How much personal information do you have to give to get an account? If it requires a CC number, you are pretty much a sitting duck if you D/L and post on Kazaa.
The truth shall set you free!
No, the copyright system isn't broken. Copyright has worked well for over 200 years in this country. (The patent system is another story). Now laws like the DMCA that criminalize what would otherwise be legitimate acts...that's broken.
Some would argue that the current copyright system is broken.
The original system where a copyright:- Had to be registered
- Lasted 14 years
- Provided for an additional 14 year extension if applied for
was far more sane than what we have now."They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
OK. I read your post. I get your logic. But I disagree with what I thought your inferred conclusion was: There will always be artists who want different compensation for their art and allow for different presentation of their art. There will always be record labels. There will always be variation in copyright laws in different countries. Ergo the Status Quo or similar is justifiable.
I don't think the Status Quo is justifiable. I don't think the lawsuits, the intimidation, the harsh penalties, none of this is justifiable against a casual downloader.
I have concluded this, right after I thought a while about the value of music. Live shows have value, just as T-Shirts, Posters, and other physical art has value. A CD without a reasonable media replacement policy has little value and the cover art that comes with CD has almost no value. The actual audio portion of a song I receive from radio has little value.
And thus the Audio portion of a MP3 file has little or no innate value. What gives MP3s greater value are what you can do with them. If you have a collection of MP3's it just as important to have correct & complete ID3 tagging as it is to have the audio portion. This allows you to group, sort, find, and select specific files. Being able to discover new music based on past preference and the current state of the world of music also increases value (you could call this meaningful targeted advertising).
So in my MP3 music collection very little of what has value comes from artists, the record label representing them, or the industry associations that bank role their operations. The ID3 tags are from places like music brainz and LastFM, the manipulation is from applications like iTunes, Song Bird or Media Monkey, the advertising is from blogs, webpages, forums, and torrent trackers.
Where are the labels and industry associates in this?
Why should I pay these people a lot money when I so little of what gives the MP3 value comes from them?
Because this is the legal frame work we find ourselves in? This isn't a very satisfying answer.
Because the Artists deserve money for their art? The current system is designed to prevent the end consumer from paying the artists directly and I'm not giving money to the bankers and advertisers they do business with. Besides, they have plenty of opportunity to get my money when they tour in support of their album. And then I'm buying T-Shirts and Concert Tickets, and the occasional CD.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
From the terms of service page...
"Any audio that you upload to the imeem service will be filtered by an audio fingerprint filtering system that prevents registered audio content from being full-length streamed to any users other than the user that uploaded it. "
This is why some tracks are fully playable without an account and other tracks are 30 seconds. They also frown on uploading content that you didn't create.
"You must not upload or present any media or content in which you do not have the appropriate rights to do so. You may be in violation of copyright laws if you do not have the appropriate rights to the media or content you upload or present on imeem. imeem will not tolerate known infringements or misbehavior by its users."
Most disturbing part of the terms of service is they claim you retain your copyright when you upload, but in uploading you provide an unrevokable license to them.. This is bad.
"Member Content, you agree to and hereby do grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, imeem, its contractors, and the users of the imeem Site an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully sublicensable, fully paid up, worldwide license to use, copy, publicly perform, digitally perform, publicly display, and distribute such content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such Member Content on the imeem Site or Service."
Basicaly you give them a permanant license to use your content in any way they want forever including distribution. They could compile your work and then sell it worldwide and you would get jack for royalties.
The truth shall set you free!
This isn't an outbreak of anything but more crap. Who would use this service? It's like going to a news site where all they do is provide a brief, degraded version of an actual news story...
Badass Resumes
"Copyright infringement is a DIFFERENT THING."
Indeed with stealing you can get away with a mild sentence or some community service when caught. Copyright infringement, on the other hand, will probably put you in debt for the rest of your life.
Uh no, sorry. http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/firsts/copyright/ (with photographic proof) Original copyright law was 14 years, extendable one time for an additional 14 years. The original penalty for violation of the copyright law was, turn over the infringing material to the copyright holder for them to destroy, and pay 50 cents per page you had to turn over. The act was signed by George Washington and went into effect in 1790, and DID NOT CHANGE AT ALL until 1891 when copyright protections were granted to non-citizens. Currently, copyright does not expire until 70 years after the death of the creator. Research has been done to suggest that 12-14 year copyrights are optimal, as it allows the creator to get a bunch of money out of it, and then after it goes out of print due to lack of salability (NES games?), it returns to the public domain relatively quickly so anyone interested can get ahold of it. This is how it should be, but its not.
(A)bort, (R)etry, (I)gnore?_
There are two reasons for a track to be limited to 30 seconds: either you're not logged in (easily corrected; creating an account is quick and free and the personal information required is minimal) or imeem has determined that they lack the rights to distribute the track even to members (in which case only the uploader can hear the full track).
Did we switch to one while I was asleep?
I guess this means Duke Nukem Forever will be coming out next month.
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
That's an entirely different argument, Dave. If someone is running a Web server on port 80 and plugged into the public internet, but doesn't have any authentication methods and just assumes that he didn't give explicit permission for anyone to access, therefore no one has access...well, that's just stupid, now, isn't it?
Yes, but accessing a Web server on port 80 plugged into the public internet without any authentication methods is legal.
Copyright infringement is not.
A better analogy would be reaching in to an open car window and removing something that doesn't belong to you: it's easy, quick, technically and physically possible. And it was made easy and quick because the window was down, and you happened to be in the area. So just because it was possible, enabled, or made easier doesn't mean it's okay.
But wait, in my analogy, someone was "deprived" of something, right? And in copyright infringement no one is "deprived" of anything (except the right to manage the music they create, own, or both, in the ways they and their duly authorized agents see fit under our current system of law, but we'll just ignore that for now).
Ok, then. What if you invent a really nifty contraption that makes it easy, practical, and quick to go into Borders and quickly photograph every page of the selected book in a very low key and unobtrusive way, and then have a mechanism that converts the content to a nicely formatted PDF, so that the final product is as desirable and functional as the original, albeit in electronic form.
Copyright infringement? Check.
Something made easy/quick by a technological improvement? Check.
No deprivation of a physical object? Check.
So how is that right, given the recognition and control that we grant to creators and owners of content (and their agents, etc.)?
That's right, but you also tend to make it sound like the record labels are totally benign and that artists get paid fairly. That's also not the case, as recording artist after recording artist has come out and said. You also make it sound like the RIAA don't try to control what gets played on the airwaves. They have rules, you know, for radio stations that says that if they want to play RIAA content, they can't play it alongside of non-RIAA content -- i.e., indie rock. Some radio stations have even expressed this view as completely ridiculous, but abide by it because they feel they have no choice. Doesn't this sound like the tactics of another big monopoly? One that starts with an 'M', ends with a 't' and has a Vista in the middle?
That's right, but you also tend to make it sound like the artists were forced into signing contracts with record labels. If they did so because they believed it was the best thing to do, that was THEIR CHOICE. There is ALWAYS a choice. And any organized framework for managing media content, distribution, and sales, will inevitably involve organizations or groups, no matter how informal or loosely organized, that act on the behalf of their artists. They'll take something for this. Whether it's "too much" is completely subjective, not to mention irrelevant to the discussion. I don't care of the label takes 99% and the artists gets 1% for the purposes of this argument: it doesn't matter, because that is the arrangement THEY entered into of their own free will, and THEY granted the right for their label and the industry trade organizations to vigorously protect the content that they essentially now legally co-own.
As a particular indie gets more popular, they'll realize they can't do it all themselves, and they'll have their own labels and proxy representation. And if someone doesn't care about how their content is distributed or shared, maybe they'll be able to find labels and trade groups who share this philosophy.
The game may change because of the digital realm. It is changing. But it's not going to happen overnight, and the persons and organization that OWN THE RIGHTS to content under the current system of laws have ever
"in almost every other industry does this occur".
There, fixed that for ya.
Unless you really believe that direct producers get something above a very very small cut of the wealth in some other capitalist industry. wich you don't, do you?
entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
The difference between stealing music and infringing copyright
If I go to WalMart and shoplift a CD, that's stealing. WalMart no longer has the item; it's gone. If I get caught stealing that $25 CD, I'll be arrested for misdemeanor retail theift, released on my own recognnisance (which I can't spel and don't care to look up) and will have to go to court and pay at most a couple hundred bucks in fines.
If I infringe copyright the copyright holder still has copyright, and still has his music. He hasn't lost anything. If I get caught I'll either pay a $4,000 extortion fee or get hauled to court in a civil suit and pay up to $150,000.
THAT'S the difference between stealing music and copyright infringement.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
The DMCA prevents me from bypassing DRM so that music I legally purchased on iTunes can be played on a non-Apple media player.
The list goes on. I'm sorry, but if I pay for something, I should be able to use it on any device of my choosing in the manner it was intended to be used.
My blog
The DMCA, generally speaking, is a bad law. It grants too much power to individuals at the expense of the people, and it allows for the revocation of rights by a small minority.
Then the artists should stop signing work for hire contracts.
If the artists don't like record companies making the majority of the money then maybe they should stop agreeing to terms where the record company gets the majority of the money.
If you can find people stupid enough to sign their right over for you to make money on then that's just capitalism. The artists are most of the problem.
I find being offended by me offensive.
...
i agree with you. the point is that that phenomenon is hardly exclusive to the music industry.
Who makes nike shoes? some chinese laborman. Let's say he makes a couple hundred pair of shoes a month. His salary is nowhere near the 12.5% of the cost of a couple hundred pair of nike shoes.
I know, i't s a tricky analogy, but give it a spin: how many cents does the original designer that worked in any given pair of nike shoes get for each shoe sold? i bet is much much much less than 12%, or whatever.
Yes, musicians are under-paid. But in capitalism, EVERYBODY that does not own his own bussiness is under paid, and that includes a vast vast vast majority of people, specially in other countries (other than the us, that is).
entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem