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RIAA Wants Songwriter Royalty Lowered
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Lest there be anyone left who believes the RIAA's propaganda that its litigation campaign is intended to benefit the 'creators' of the music, Hollywood Reporter reports that the RIAA is asking the Copyright Royalty Board to lower songwriter royalties on song file downloads, from the present rate of 9 cents per song — about 13% of the wholesale price — down to 8% of wholesale. Meanwhile, the big digital music companies, such as Apple, want the royalty rate lowered even more, to something like 4% of wholesale. So any representations by any of these companies that they are concerned for the 'creators' of the music must henceforth be taken with a boxcar-load of salt."
I eagerly await the insightful words of Lars Ulrich, Dr. Dre, et al to explain to me why pissing off the people who were perfectly willing to pony up good money for concerts, T-shirts and, yes, full retail priced CDs was worth it in the end.
why? forty-two.
This is too funny they want more money in compensation for each illegaly downloaded file yet want to give less to the artists that make it...
RIAA: Recording Industrialists Against Artists.
How ya like dat?
The H1B issue is the same way: lobbyists squirm and wiggle to bend statistics and magnify (or make up) anecdotes to sell the idea that there are not enough citizen programmers or not good enough citizen programmers and therefore the industry needs H1B's in order to prevent an economic collapse. It is all just a ploy to get cheaper labor. This is what happens when business lobbyists have more power over legislators than voters. It's that simple.
Table-ized A.I.
Aren't they supposed to be on the artists' side?
Yes, just not the artist you thought. They are really on the side of the con artists (I.E. the corp backers).
If they actually use the "Save the Artists" thing then maybe someone should sue them for _fraud_ just to publicise the issue and drop the case quietly before it goes to court ;).
Trust me: the industry can find a thousand people to write crap like this: Oh baby, baby
Oh baby, baby
Oh baby, baby
How was I supposed to know
That something wasn't right here
Oh baby baby This blatant money-grab is just one more nail in their coffin. Yes, but you didn't kill the bastard before putting him in the coffin! Duh! He's banging and screaming and pissing & shitting himself senseless - because he knows, unless someone rescues him, he'll die soon.
For the record, one of my all time fav artists does this. Ayria. She's cute, too! or form their own collectives with their own interests at heart. ooh, goodie! How long until they become just as bad - or worse - than the RIAA? Seriously, this tendency of people to group themselves.. is boring... and annoying. Of course, that's how the RIAA started, Wait, hold on! You KNOW that has happened in the past and you want to repeat it?!
What?! Should we try Communism ONE MORE TIME because THIS TIME we'll "do it right"? Ha. Come on.
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
For This Reason, New Media Players (Apple, Yahoo, Napster, etc) argue that the "mechanical royalty for copyright" should be lowered significantly on digital downloads (specifically, to 4%).
RIAA etc argue the fee should be dropped only slightly (specifically, only to 8%).
RIAA are arguing to maintain profits for their (arguably, exceedingly dinosaur-like) "distribution model".
"While record companies have been forced to drastically cut costs and employees, music publisher catalogs have increased in value due to
The New Media crew are arguing the way of sanity and intelligence. (ie trying to push the 'downloads are effectively performances, because there's no way to differentiate' argument)
New-media companies want the rate to go even lower, contending that it should disappear when music is digitally streamed.
Every time you hear something new from the RIAA it boils down to "someone needs to shovel more money into our bank accounts, without any additional effort or contribution on our part. Our business model dictates an infinitely increasing profit margin, for infinitely decreasing effort, ad-infinitum."
And the same can be said of those ISPs who intend to violate the concept of "net-neutrality". ("someone's making money , and the bits cross our network. Ignore the fact we already billed someone for those bits, I want to directly bill BOTH the producer AND the consumer of those bits, even though they have NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with me").
That's not a business-model, that's a fantasy.
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