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RIAA Not Sharing Settlement Money With Artists
Klatoo55 writes "Various artists are considering lawsuits in order to press for their share of the estimated hundreds of millions of dollars the RIAA has obtained from settlements with services such as Bolt, KaZaA, and Napster. According to TorrentFreak's report on the potential action, there may not even be much left to pay out after monstrous legal fees are taken care of. The comments from the labels all claim that the money is on its way, and is simply taking longer due to difficulties dividing it all up."
...how difficult it is to divide by one...
I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable
The recent RIAA extortion has never been about the artists, merely keeping the "coke & whores" budget healthy.
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
The RIAA does not exist to serve the artists. It's mission now is to suck all the money it can out of a dying business model.
Don't mind the extra X. Alex
Give me a moment to recover.
"I wish to God these calculations would have been made by steam." -Charles Babbage
Well why should they share the money when a good portion of it was gotten from people that didn't even download music from a copyrighted artist? You don't give money to artists if there was no damage. Logically what should be done is the RIAA should go to hell.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
When the RIAA discovered that they had some money left over after paying the lawyers, they needed some time. They have their best accountants working on it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting.
Once they are done with the proper accounting procedures, they will make sure to give the token penny or two to the "poor, starving artists".
Java has no friends.
.. it means Metallica aren't getting a share. I bet they'e kicking themselves now..
The hefty legal fees are staying in the family so it's all good.
Well....not so good if you're an artist, but any artist who still hasn't figured out what the RIAA is all about probably deserves it.
The only CDs I've paid for in the last couple of years were from places like CDBaby who state exactly how much the artist will receive for each CD sold. Worse, I've bought albums I didn't really like from CDBaby because that artist has made other albums which I did like. The reason was I wanted the artist to have some money but the RIAA had control of the album I liked.
Pissing off your paying customers? Not a good business model.
The main reason I share music these days is just to annoy the RIAA.
No sig today...
Can I kick them instead :-)
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
I believe it works this way. The record companies pay artists royalties and they pay the RIAA as well. I don't think the artists pay the RIAA. It seems to me that IF the RIAA is going to pay anyone it is going to be the record companies. If that happens will the record companies kick any money back to the artists? I doubt it.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
I find this all incredibly amusing. Here you have these pricks like Gene Simmons and Metallica out there fighting the good fight for the record companies, and now, suddenly, they all wake up and realize "Waitta minute! Those fuckers in the boardrooms are still crooks!"
Here's a bit of a friendly nod to all those artists who were retarded enough to believe the record industry was somehow looking out for them:
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And that's why other countries don't have punitive damages. Somehow civil matters got all mixed up in the USA. I guess greed does that.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I wonder how hard it would be to support a decentralized publicity campaign to directly tie these lawsuits, via the RIAA, to the agencies and artists the RIAA supports?
At present, it's largely a free lunch for the record companies - who have a vicious attack dog that uses tactics that shouldn't be legal. The bad PR doesn't do a very good job of reflecting back on them.
If the masses begin to associate these lawsuits with the music they're buying, that's when the pressure would mount.
Do not confuse "Freedom of Choice" with "Free Will".
The problem is the RIAA wants and is getting their cake and eating it too. They want your music purchase to be treated as a product with no liabilities of a license (like discounted upgrades), but they want to restrict what you do with your purchase like a license. They want copyright infringement and its punishments to be considered a crime, but they want the standard of guilt used in civil cases. They want fines and settlements to be thought of as compensatory ("$billions in lost sales justify what we do"), but bring up the idea of sharing those compensatory awards with artists and suddenly it's punitive. Pick one, or the other. Don't flip flop whenever it's convenient to do so.
Who modded parent insightful?
And that's why other countries don't have punitive damages. Somehow civil matters got all mixed up in the USA. I guess
greed does that.
That is not why. Most countries that do not have punitive damage allowances in their laws are usually run by tyrants anyways. The idea of of punitive damages is to punish an entity enough so they think twice before they do it again, it's a civil punishment for a civil case where a criminal punishment should be enacted but cannot be for whatever reason.
You know what happens when tort reform runs rampant and punitive damages are out the window? Companies like Exxon can get away with murder by polluting an entire coastline and having only to pay 2 weeks worth of profit as a fine. This is not greed, this is not tort reform, this is justice gone wrong. Thanks to the tort reform in America Exxon has a punishment that does virtually nothing to a company which committed a criminal act. The amount they have to pay is a drop in the bucket compared to how much the citizens of Alaska have paid with their well-being. So perhaps it is the lack of a real punitive damage which is greedy!
Now I see what you mean when for instance, people who KNEW cigarettes would kill them continue to smoke and now tobacco companies are having to pay out the a** because of some jerk who took a KNOWN risk and then whined about it later but this is a law that needs refining, not a blanket statement that all punitive damages are greedy.
I have a collection of, probably, 1200 CD's. 95% bought from music shops, some from boot-sales, flea-markets etc. NONE, & I repeat none are newer that 2004. You see I stopped buying!. {see the full stop?} after the record companies' agents started calling their customers "criminals".
I still have a considerably large vinyl collection, + a shed-load of commercial (not copied) tapes (mostly dupes of the vinyl - for playing in the car) even though I now don't have a functioning record player.
I looked this evening & for e.g. I have Bat out of Hell on vinyl, tape & CD - bloody three times!!
But if I fire up a p2p client - I'm a criminal.
WTF?
Copyright infringement is not "illegal".
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
Talking about it all the time just helps you with your cognitive dissonance and makes it okay that you steal music.
When will this foolish drivel have run its course?
You can bring the day closer by defining what you mean by "stealing music". No, please do not assume that we are smart. No one is smart enough to figure out a phrase that is intentionally vague and insulting at the same time.
Do we steal music when we make a copy? When we make the first copy? An unauthorized copy? An illegal copy?
Do we "steal" music when we perform it without proper authorization?
Do we "steal" it every time we listen to an illegally made recording? Every time we listen to a recording without compensating someone? And if so, who are we supposed to be compensating?
Are we "stealing" it when we make a copy for a friend who would never find about the artist, if not for us?
Are we "stealing" when we remove DRM? When we digitize? When we shift formats?
Are we "stealing music" when we replace our stolen CD collection by getting it off the Pirate Bay (doesn't cost fat cats a dime)? When we legally download it from a different country? When we obtain a copy of something that is no longer published? When the artist is dead? How about when the artist says that it is OK, even though he does not own the rights? Is it still "stealing"?
You see, we just don't seem to have a good grasp of the meaning of the term you insist on using.
If you want to say "stealing music" on Slashdot, out of all places, even though it makes no legal (or any other kind of) sense, why won't you bloody define it for us? Or may be just say "infringe the copyright" instead, if that is all you mean to say?
The RIAA represents the record companies and it function is to spend as much money as fast as it can and any left over goes back to their clients the record company. The record company represents the artists and it's function is to spend as much money as fast as it can and any left over goes to their clients the artists. Wash rinse repeat, lawyers that can't get hired into the record companies settle for probate law. Do you know what the difference between a vampire and a probate lawyer is? The vampire quits sucking your blood when your dead!
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