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RIAA Denies Hypocrisy in Royalties Dustup
Hairless ape writes "The RIAA is reacting to a story pointing out the group's hypocrisy in its attempts to have songwriter royalties lowered. The issue stems from attempts to get webcasters to pay fixed royalty rates. 'In short, the contention was that the RIAA wanted to pay a percentage of its revenue to songwriters as its profits have fallen, but pushed for a fixed per-stream when it came to earning money from webcasters.' The RIAA says that's not so, and that SoundExchange offered a similar model to webcasters. Either way, the rates sought by the two groups would have bankrupted many webcasters. 'Now you know; it wasn't about hypocrisy, but one of the seven deadly sins may still have been involved.'"
Even if it isn't fair - at least it is legal. The RIAA sometimes has problems with that, too.
#1, genetic modification. We will jail all who grow roses and all who have fruit orchards?
#2, human experimentation. What's wrong with medical research, psychological research, etc.?
#3, #4, #5 need definition
#6, punish success and all suffer
#7, only the drugs you don't happen to like. Does everyone agree on which drugs are bad?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Actually at least six of these new seven deadly sins apply to the RIAA, starting with "polluting the environment".
:P
A little off topic, but why am I suddenly reminded of all those AOL CD's?
Stupidity, alas, is too often a virtue, and not a sin.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
...that everyone knows what we already know, people like my mother who think most artists make millions from CD sales will get the picture: the RIAA doesn't care about artists' profit- just its own.
Because it's legal and the government gets their cut?
Post anonymously - For when your opinion embarrasses even you!
I came into this thread with 10 shiny new mod points hoping to find someone insightful, but found not a single comment in the entire thread worth promotion. What's happened to slashdot? A story on a hot subject, and I see nothing but off-topic trolls and insipid banter about deadly sins taken out of context from the description at the top of the page. Not a single comment on the actual article.
Anyway, the RIAA's attempt to dodge the charge of hypocrisy is equally lame. First the new deal gives ridiculous profit to SoundExchange (30% of gross). And even though they do have a 'plan' to share with artists (an inequitable one, albeit), the lack of expediency is directly adding to the profit of the RIAA through this process. The artists are clearly an afterthought. The RIAA can't come close to hiding their real motivation: profit for its members at all costs, regardless of artists rights/needs.
Gah. It still is hypocrisy.
From their argument, they are implying that consumers are only buying individual songs, but that they, the overly generous music labels are paying songwriters and musicians as if we bought the whole album.
Revenue may be down, but payouts are down as well. The music industry hasn't been lowering the price of CD's OR lowing the price of individual songs on iTunes or Amazon. If anything, the majors 'profit margin' has increased, because they have significantly lower expenses AND get significantly higher revenue [as a percentage of the retail price] of digital downloads.
This 'proposal' is just a straight money grab, plain and simple.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!