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Copyright Board Lawyer Responds On Pandora's End
mattnyc99 writes "A month ago we talked about the impending death of streaming music site Pandora thanks to a very backwards fight over royalties. PopMech follows up with an article that, besides noting how insane it is that Pandora has to pay record labels for the bad songs that users skip, also gets the (three-member) Copyright Royalty Board to try and defend itself about why the government is determining royalty rates for the music industry. Quoting: 'It was uninvited,' says Richard Strasser, senior attorney for the Copyright Royalty Board. 'I don't think anybody was jumping up and down with joy in the government that they have this responsibility, but the former systems just weren't working out.'" No one seems to be trying to defend or explain why Internet radio is being hit so much harder than satellite or broadcast.
No one seems to be trying to defend or explain why Internet radio is being hit so much harder than satellite or broadcast.
That's an easy one. Cause people use the internet to steal copyrighted material.
It's so nice to see unbiased articles about copyright here on /.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Why doest Pandora just strike up with indie studios and go mono e mono with musicians for play rights?
And if Congress is forcing internet radio companies to pay to some RIAA-hole, countersue them under RICO. After all, they're pooling their money. And isnt payola illegal?
I have been listening to Pandora, discovering new artists, and had begun to buy music again (most of my music collection is CDs bought in the Eighties). Guess I'll just go back to listening to my 'oldies' - I can't be bothered to keep fighting the music industry to accept my money.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
They are just waiting for the net radio enthusiasts to postulate. Then, they label net radio advocates as "extreme and uncooperative" as the excuse for not saying or doing anything.
It's important to remember the RIAA members control distribution. Letting net radio operate at a discount or even the same rates as broadcast is a non-starter. RIAA says, "net radio is cheaper, so give me more money. Well, actually, just give me more money..." And broadcasters are quite happy with that too.
Best stance is to let the lack of an explanation rest as is and use the FOIA, if possible, to get at communications about the issue.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The ISPs are hitting internet radio too with their monthly bandwidth quotas. Once you start to pile up usage, every bit counts:
31 days * 24 hours * 60 minutes * 60 seconds * 128 kbps (16000 bytes) = 42854400000 bytes per month. That's nearly 40 GiB of data, only for radio.
Even if you get real and cut it back to working hours and assume 8 hours of radio per day on weekends, that's still a whopping 13.3 GiB of data only for radio.
It's important to remember the RIAA members control distribution. Letting net radio operate at a discount or even the same rates as broadcast is a non-starter.
It's also important to remember that the RIAA members also own most of the radio stations. The internet is their competition for earlobes, which they could otherwise sell to advertisers.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
RIAA Monthly Ledger
CD Sales....$10,000,000
Internet Royalties....$3,000,000
Perceived Internet Theft......$3,200,000
Lawyer Bill......$7,000,000
Customer Loyalty and Fair Use....Priceless
No one seems to be trying to defend or explain why Internet radio is being hit so much harder than satellite or broadcast.
The explanation is pretty simple. If you follow the history of the battle over internet radio royalties, you'll quickly see that it is all about stream ripping. The music industry is convinced that millions of people are "stealing" music by recording streaming radio with free tools like streamripper.
They initially attempted to get congress to pass legislation to force all internet broadcasters to use DRM in their streams. When this went nowhere, that's when they began the royalty assault. The plan is to simply force internet radio broadcasters out of business with exhorbitant royalties. Looks like it's working, too, with the demise of Pandora.
I read Usenet for the articles.
Why was this insightful? Evilpiper didn't even explain why he believes otherwise!
Anyway, it's a fight between a decentralized system and a centralized system.
Personally, I only occasionally listen to university radios as most of the time I discover music through my friends. I then simply go to youtube to listen to that band or project and youtube proposes other videos that might interest me.
In other words, Youtube IS better than what Pandora was since you have multiple suggestions of videos/songs from the same artists and similar artists. Also, I don't think youtube pays royalties...
As always, if they want to protect their old ways of doing business, they are obviously late.
Won't this just mean that there won't be any U.S. Internet radio stations? They'll either fold up or move off-shore. They won't be able to conduct any "business" in the U.S., but short of the Great Firewall of Comrizon/Vericast, the MAFIAA won't be able to stop U.S. users from streaming.
Pandra exposes me to music I would otherwise not
not hear. Pandora has inspired me to purchase CDs which I would otherwise not have known about.
Silly, stupid, foolish RIAA
That's very nice of Pandora to cease its activities for the arrival of the Pandora UMPC/console. Helps clear the confusion out.
You just got troll'd!
Maybe it's because that same government is who declares that compulsory licensing must happen in the first place?
It wouldn't make sense to have compulsory licensing if the price could then be negotiated. The copyright holder could just say, "Ok, $1 million per play if you want access to my song," and then no one would be able to license it.
Either get rid of compulsory licensing, or deal with the fact that the associated rates are legitimately within the scope of government. The whole point of this type of licensing is that people didn't want to deal with a free market.
Flame 'em for the rates being absurd; don't flame 'em for being Big Bad Government poking their nose where they aren't wanted. Their involvement was wanted; the licensees (internet "radio") depend on it.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
... the former systems just weren't working out.
Weren't working out for who, exactly? More than likely it was pressure from radio stations, bars, et cetera for regulation on an increasingly out of control royalty scheme put forth by the cartel of the Big Four. So what did this government do? Regulated it for the labels, not for the people who are getting gouged to hell and back on what, in my opinion, is backward and stupid anyway. Royalties simply for playing a song? Hell, why doesn't Penguin start charging people every time they read the books they publish? Because that would be insane and nobody would deal with it for long. So why do we still deal with the same shit from this government-sponsored cartel?
"We may face a scorched and lifeless earth, but they're accountable to their shareholders first."
I'm sure if Pandora went to a flat $15/month subscription and kept half of the 16 million years, the industry would still try to regulate them out of business so OTA radio (and payola) still reigns supreme. IIRC, iTunes had quite a rough patch with the industry, and that's friggin' iTunes. How the hell can the industry give iTunes a hard time? It's scary that how corporations have enough pull that they can almost literally make their own laws just to keep things the way they've always been.
It'll be a sad day when my absolute favorite music listening method dies. To add another anecdotal reference, I've found SO much music, so many artists, even an entire genre, since I've started listening to Pandora about half a year ago. I'd subscribe to them in a heartbeat.
"No one seems to be trying to defend or explain why Internet radio is being hit so much harder than satellite or broadcast."
Why do either, when all that would serve to do is draw attention to the disparity, and invite enough consideration that the real aim become apparent? Which is to strangle a nascent medium in order to have control over it.
Consider FIOS. Massive pipes to the doorstep, geeks rejoice. If anyone had said at that time that Verizon would be getting into the television business most would have snickered, but isn't that what Verizon is now advertising? And AT&T, didn't they run off all the small to medium DSL colocation, only to finally birth U[gh!]-Verse?
Could this be a reason net neutrality be such a hot button issue with the lobbyist set?
This isn't about "paying the artists", it's about supporting dinosaurian business models, control, and another round of vertical integration, with a "Clear Channel of the Web" as the end result.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Why doesn't Pandora move to a place where there are no such regulations?
Am I the only spod in the universe that for ages has thought that radio sucks ass anyhow?
Seriously, the only thing I've chosen to listen to on the radio was the Mark and Lard show on Radio 1 when I was about 14.
Picture this proposal:
"How about you flip on your radio and we'll play you music that you may or may not like, followed by advertisements, bullshit interviews, more advertisements, and more music that you may or may not like. How's that?"
Compared to:
"Fire up your MP3 player/ocremix.org/shoutcast/last.fm/google with "index of" "parent directory" thingiwannalistento.mp3/whatever else and you can hear whatever YOU WANT TO HEAR ad free, bullshit free etc."
The very definition of a no brainer.
I understand that the last one of my suggestions in the second proposal is effectively illegal since no money ends up in the relavent shitface's pocket, but still, how hard is that question to answer?
Jesus, even before the internet I didn't listen to radio music because I had no control over it.
Why should I?
I don't know, I'm pretty sure YouTube pays royalties on material... at least, as long as it's been identified.
I think I'm in the opposite camp from you, I prefer Pandora because it's much more likely to feed me artists I don't know. Most of the music I play on Pandora ends up having, for related videos, more by the same artist, amateur covers of those tracks, or other tracks from the same record label. And such as it is, I'm usually the friend who introduces everybody else to new music.
"No one seems to be trying to defend or explain why Internet radio is being hit so much harder than satellite or broadcast."
Two words - "no payola"
Sometimes something truly sucks, and there is no way to put it in a positive light.
The recording industry grinding independent internet radio stations to paste being one good example.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Thanks to Soundexchange.
You have to pay royalties to the RIAA for any music you broadcast. Even if the artists you are playing are not RIAA members. They can, however, become RIAA members and get their precollected royalties, of course.
And no, I'm not bullshitting you. It's actually law. Here's the original Slashdot thread about it.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I think many people are a little unclear on how compulsory licenses work. Once that is understood, a lot becomes clearer.
For most things you might want to do that require permission of the copyright owner, how much that costs you, if anything is entirely up to whatever agreement you and the copyright own make. If you are unable to come to an agreement, you can't go ahead with your proposed use of the copyrighted material.
For some particular uses of some kinds of work, copyright law provides a different default. If you and the copyright holder can't agree to terms, you can pay an amount determined by the Copyright Royalty Board, and go ahead with your proposed use, even if the copyright owner does not want to give you a license.
The Board generally sets these rates higher than what the market rate would be. In most cases, the party that wants to use the work and the copyright owner comes to terms, and agree on a rate well below the compulsory rate.
It is quite sensible that the compulsory rate is set high, as its a rate of last resort, for the case where the copyright owner is going to be forced against their will to license the work. Also, it would probably not be possible for the Board to set a rate that is close to market rate, even if they wanted to, as market rate would vary quite a bit from work to work. At best, they could approximate the average market rate for the type of work in question, but then that would greatly mess up the market, as for about half the works, the compulsory rate would be lower than the market rate!
In the Pandora case, we have that rare situation where the copyright owners and the party that wants a license are not able to agree to terms, leaving Pandora with the choice of stopping, or taking the expensive compulsory license.
I think your point about initial investment costs is valid.
However, I call shenanigans on the idea that people steal copyrighted material from satellite and broadcast. Do you honestly think that people passing around material recorded via their TV antenna can compare with the piracy that happens through people sucking down songs from m3u threads or Live365 and the like?
It would be more sophisticated to respond that people use the Internet once they made the copy, however they get the copy. But still, making a copy of a digital source is so much more likely! I think it's disingenuous and UNHELPFUL to deny the issue.
You can't be serious, are you?
A number of times I had gone to youtube to hear a friend's music suggestion.
What an insult to the ear. Over-compressed, clipped, sampled at only 22KHz, and streamed at 64Kb/s. Why even bother? Posting a MIDI to be played over a 1st generation soundblaster would have sounded better.
Alas, youtube seems to be the place new music is frequently "auditioned" - and I use the word in the same sense that a kid uses "baked" after playing with their easy-bake oven.
That I Didn't Buy A Squeezebox...
If you go to the SoundExchange website, they have a list of thousands of musicians for whom they collected revenue but have not contacted them for payment. Their right to those funds expires after a certain period of time, and SoundExchange would keep 50% in any case.
In most case musicians would prefer to have their music broadcast as widely as possible. It is possible to opt out of representation by SoundExchange, but then the guidelines are written so that they have to waive ALL rights to revenue from that track. They can also make exceptions for particular webcast sites, which is made quite difficult and challenged aggressively.
One exception is polka music, a group representing American polka music negotiated a broad agreement with SoundExchange that polka stations don't have to pay any revenues.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
The way the CRB and SoundExchange are structured make it very difficult for copyright owners to negotiate anything besides the default rate.
Try this: record yourself humming your own tune, get a fictitious recording business name with your state government, file with the Copyright Royalty Board and then tell them you want no revenues collected on your "song" for webcast. You should be able to do all that from your laptop in under an hour. They'll tell you can't opt out. They will bully, resist and ignore you. I think it can be done, but I lack the persistence to do it.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
No one seems to be trying to defend or explain why Internet radio is being hit so much harder than satellite or broadcast.
Defend? No thanks. Explain? Sure - that's easy.
It is being hit so much harder because the RIAA gives a lot of money to politicians, and because politicians need money to get reelected, and because that money at the very least buys meme transmission time, and at the worst buys votes outright. In turn, the RIAA is asking for it to be hit harder because they fear it, do not understand it, and believe they will harvest more monetary wealth with less effort by hindering its growth. Finally, John Q. Public is a mix of those who do not care, those who do not understand, those who believe that DRM is a feature not a bug, those who believe that the current state of copyright fosters science and the useful arts, those who believe more property is good even if it does not foster science and the useful arts, and a very small number of people who do not hold any of those positions.
Am I missing something, or is that not really the question you were asking?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Although Pandora is often seen as the little guy fighting the big bad music industry, Pandora just repackages the output of that industry, so it's feeding the monster and helping to ensure that the money-grabbing evil continues. If we want the monster to die, we need to stop feeding it. Pandora doesn't want the monster to die, it merely wants it to eat less.
So it's make-your-mind-up time, if you want to influence the evolution of music.
If you really want a sea change to occur, try listening to Creative Commons music instead of commercial output. The immense repositories at Jamendo (11,955 albums) and at Archive.org (53,088 concerts, 310,685 recordings) should be enough to keep you busy for the rest of your life, but there's lots more out there.
It's hard work, because there is nobody around to tell you what you must like, as the industry has been doing to us through radio and TV all these years. The diversity and sheer scale of Commons music is astounding, and exploring its uncharted vastness isn't quick nor easy, but ultimately your voyage will be very rewarding. Mine has been.
But you have to take that first step yourself, nobody can help you, short of handing you a few links.
The future really is in your hands. If everyone were to stop buying label output today, the Big 4 and the RIAA would disappear as soon as their coffers dry up, and the small labels would adapt perfectly happily because they're agile. You *can* drop your favourite chart bands if you try --- the discomfort doesn't last long, because there is no shortage of very high quality replacements. The Commons is vast, and the creativity amazing.
The future really is in your hands.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
From the initial story:
Even if you do own the copyright to your own recording of your own song, SoundExchange will collect Internet radio royalties for your song even if you don't want them to do so.
If you could please provide a citation where a contract overrides Soundexchange's legalized extortion? If it exists I'd like to see it.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Category:Casestudy
Go compete everyone, I've got 3CDs worth of 90's Electronic Noise on legal torrents, let's just cut out the greedy *AA-holes.
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
I found a site here:
http://pandorafm.real-ity.com/login.php
that lets you feed your Pandora stuff into last.fm -- I haven't been able to test how it works on the last.fm side, I've always found it fairly annoying in the past, but I figured it was worth a shot.
The real goal of all this nonsense is not to compensate the artists, but to guarantee the MAFIAA's continued monopoly over Intellectual Property in the USA, to the detriment of authors, inventors, artists, fans, and industry.
Andy Out!
Translation: "Why are they providing what the users want? Are they morons who don't want to make money? Why can't they do things our way?"
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
I'd just like to say "Fudge Buckets". The RIAA has something against my enjoyment of music.
When Napster used to exist in its file sharing state, I used to by 10-20 CDs a month. Why? Because I was able to browse the music. I could find something I had never heard before, and hear a large sampling of the artist without investment. More often than not I would end up with a large list of CDs to buy. (Radio stations don't cut it for me, they play things I already know / own, or the fad of the month).
Pandora, for me, filled the hole left by Napster. I am able to customize the type of music I am browsing through, hear artists I don't know, and come away with a large list of music that I would like to buy. If they go under, I'll probably do what I did for the gap between Napster and Pandora. Not buy CDs (with the exception of some local bands at their concerts or small-label bands I follow).
Makes me sad.
I mentioned tinker-toys once in a post - now I'm modded down for life.
Most of my listening hours are, by necessity, devoted to recordings I've made myself, consisting of my own work and that of my collaborators.
Of what time remains, I generally listen to music that has been recorded by musicians I know personally, who have personally provided it.
For the rest, my preference is for unedited recordings of concerts, and only those that the artist has allowed to be distributed free.
I work very hard to experience live music, and I am much more interested in performance standards than commercial appeal.
There is no time left when I could find myself "listening to the radio" or "playing CDs." It simply doesn't happen. I am *constantly* listening to music, but almost never listening to anything that any corporation or establishment wants me to pay to listen to. Basically if it hits my ear, it's because the artist really wants me to hear it, and oftentimes, that artist is a personal friend who I *know* really wants me to hear it.
It is really a puzzle to me that that others find the music listening experience to be one characterize as "producer consumer" since that's a choice one can make.