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Choruss Pitching Bait and Switch On P2P Music Tax
An anonymous reader writes "A few months back, Warner Music Group started pitching universities on the idea of a new program where they would pay a chunk of money to an organization named Choruss to provide 'covenants not to sue' those students for file sharing, leading many in the press to claim that the record labels are looking to license ISPs to let users file share. Even the EFF has called it a 'promising new approach.' However, the details are quite troubling and suggest that the plan is really a bait-and-switch idea." (More below.)
"The industry still plans to demand three strikes and try to shut down file sharing networks, and it's already giving up on lawsuits. So... it's basically going to keep doing everything the same as before, but force your ISP or your university (who in turn will raise your rates) to just hand over a bunch of money. Oh yeah, also, since the 'covenant not to sue' isn't a license and only covers the rights of the record labels, it means that you can still get sued by the publishers or songwriters whose rights aren't covered by the deal at all. Unfortunately, the press is just repeating the claim that this is a 'file sharing license' when the details show it's anything but that. It's just a way to get people and companies to hand over large chunks of money to the record labels."
lick muh anus!
Sounds to me like a classic mafia protection scheme. /Insert seedy Italian accent/ "You might find your finances in trouble without some.... protection. Pay us and we'll provide that... Else our boss might see to it that you do have an accident."
"If I were bound by all laws everywhere I'm sure I would have committed a capital crime somewhere."
From the article:
[the proposal is] so bad that it can be described accurately as a bait-and-switch program designed to make people (1) pay lots of money (2) believing they're now free to file share and then find out that (3) file sharing systems will still be sued out of existence and (4) the users themselves, despite paying, will still be liable for massive lawsuits. It's basically a plan to give the record labels tons of money, handed over by universities (so users have no chance to opt-out) without actually changing anything.
In fact, this would be the universities giving up-front financing for future legal action against file sharers.
K.
Let me guess: the artists don't get a dime.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
...as far as I can throw a CD and I can throw one pretty far. I just got to remember where I put mine at, I seemed to have "misplaced" them...WAIT, they are on my computer.
Back to topic. I don't trust this at all. Sure, the EFF is a great group but sometimes they get their ideals all in a mess much like this one. I just hope they aren't getting any monetary value from supporting this claim that it is a "promising new approach."
Either way, it sounds like people will still be sued, just by different individuals.
Friends help you move...
REAL Friends help you move dead bodies... ^_^
You know, it's too bad that both political parties in the U.S. are in these scumbags' back pockets (Democrats because they need that Hollywood cash, Republicans because they need that big corporation cash). It would be nice to have at least ONE politician I could vote for who would tell these legalized extortionists where to shove it.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Last I checked, the EFF were in strong favor of collective licensing schemes. In my opinion, that approach is completely misguided - either it will require a big-brother like system in order to track usage so as to fairly apportion the proceeds to the artists, or it will lead to even more stagnation as the little innovative guys, the ones who are ultimately responsible for significant changes in culture many years down the road, will never see a penny and cultural development will become glacial.
Ultimately the entire business model needs to be scrapped. We need something akin to the street-performer protocol or some combination of multiple business models that channel people's natural inclination to share stuff they think is cool rather than attempt to fight against it as the current system does.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Am I naive in thinking that this insanity has to stop at some point? I don't think the **AA can stem the tide of people discovering and using file sharing, so when will they decide to give up, or better yet, focus its efforts on promoting a new business model? It seems like the spend an awful amount of effort trying to subvert the subversives with little or no net gain. I'm not sure that anything they have done thus far as been remotely effective in combating piracy, so assuming we live in a logical world, wouldn't it behoove them to stop pestering people and try something different???
Why don't they try something different like product bundling. Why not pair it with something everyone enjoys like water. Make some deals to include iTunes codes for a 49 cent download of choice when you buy a bottle of Dasani? Or get an album for free when you buy a 24 pack of Pepsi. The subsidy you get from these other product bundlings would surely generate more revenue than some kid downloading it off the net. There are many ways you can give your stuff away for 'free' and still make some hard cash...
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
The RIAA's bag of dirty tricks has been well-documented. Dealing with them is like negotiating a price for an HIV-positive hooker. There is no price that makes it worth it, not even free. Just tell them where they can go f*ck themselves because you're not going to bother with it. As the fees are likely going to be astronomical one way or the other, I know where I would have wanted my tuition to go -- towards a legal defense fund and not to the RIAA.
A cartel is a formal (explicit) agreement among firms. It is a formal organization of producers that agree to coordinate prices and production. [1] Cartels usually occur in an oligopolistic industry, where there is a small number of sellers and usually involve homogeneous products. Cartel members may agree on such matters as price fixing, total industry output, market shares, allocation of customers, allocation of territories, bid rigging, establishment of common sales agencies, and the division of profits or combination of these. The aim of such collusion is to increase individual member's profits by reducing competition. Competition laws forbid cartels. Identifying and breaking up cartels is an important part of the competition policy in most countries, although proving the existence of a cartel is rarely easy, as firms are usually not so careless as to put agreements to collude on paper.[2][3]
This is one of the few crimes a corporation can commit. Do i need to say more?
Shut up Lars! we heard ya already
"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than have to have a frontal lobotomy."
Yet another death rattle from an obsolete industry.
Not really even news unless you actually believe the music industry will be a viable entity a couple years from now.
No one wants to pay a middleman anymore.No news there. Obsolete business practices and outright lies don't qualify the industry as a "pay here" cash box anymore.
Music is free. Get over it,get a haircut and get a REAL job. The industries mewling is just like all the Buggywhip manufacturers that cried unfair when the automobile came.
Don't pay for music unless it's live in front of you and the artist gets the money(less any overhead). To the artists rooted into the industry, get out now while you still can. To every artist not in the industry, stay away it's a con game you can never win complete with extortion, swindling and theft.
Lets hear it for the powerful new future of music now that the industry lies bleeding!
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Seems somewhat like the blank CD media tax we have in Canada. Supposedly this tax on blank CDs (which is about equal to the price of the blank CD), goes to musicians to compensate them for piracy. The RIAA still considers piracy illegal, but once something is taxed it essentially becomes legal since the government has recognized it as such.
Was just to track those who download a song, and add a bit of money on to their bill.
Why not create official clients and make deals with ISPs that way?
I'd sure prefer this way rather than having to have accounts and card details be entered into a site.
This is also many times more secure too.
How great it would be to have all internet payments just done through the ISP, it would save companies around the world billions.
But all you privacy nuts ruined that idea!
Screw all of you.
Bait and switch is where you advertise product A for low low dollar, then when the customer arrives you tell him it's out of stock, and try to get them to buy B at more more dollar.
Selling an empty box - which is much closer to what TFA describes - is not the same thing.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Stop sharing music over P2P networks. If you engage in piracy, you're part of the problem and you're giving organizations like the RIAA justification to do what they do. If you people could simply resist the urge to download music that you haven't paid for, all of the "problems" would go away. If the record labels really suck so much, then stop demanding their products. If you want their products, then pay what they want you to pay. Otherwise, suck it up and deal with the consiquences for not doing so. The "opt out" solution is the best solution. They can't prosecute you if you aren't consuming their content.
Warner is asking universities to give money to prevent students being sued.
This only protects against being sued by Warner.
Why would anybody have thought any differently?
No private organisation could EVER promise full protection against being sued since there is no legal obligation for copyright holders to be a member of such an organisation. Such an organisation can only promise protection against it's own members.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Chorus helps hide the fact that a singer is of key. Seems very appropriate.
Squirrel!
This is the perfect scenario for the Record Labels. Not only do they make money by not doing anything, they don't have to pay out a dime to any of the artists whose songs are being downloaded since no one is actually 'licensing' these songs. Its an instant money tree with absolutely no cost for Warner. They'll never have to pay their artists a dime, just soak up all the money from Choruss.
The RIAA gathers license fees, and distributes them among the record companies and artists.. after taking out an administrative fee (100% in some cases).
The payments for "covenants not to sue" are not license fees.
No doubt some small fraction will be treated as a license fee, just to put a veneer of legitimacy on the scheme. But I've no doubt that the RIAA will use the extra layers of administration to make reduce the amount and skew the payout distribution to record companies that play the game.
The SGAE (Spanish RIAA) has gone further. Since last year the IP law establishes a tax on any electronic device or medium able to store material protected by IP, no matter what their actual use is - for instance, you may store content produced by you or simply data on CDs, hard disks, etc. but you still have to pay the tax when you buy them. Fortunately the proposal to tax broadband connections was not passed.
Definitely sucks. Specially if you just want to back up all your digital photos. At least technology stays ahead. They passed the law on CDs and haven't got around to extending it to blank DVDs fortunately. Now we have a minority government so hopefully things will stay deadlocked.
So, let me get this straight. Students who do not buy record industry music because they believe that the record industry is evil and should not be supported cannot do so because their universities will charge them in place of the record industry. Even if such a fee covered all music downloads, individuals could still not choose not to pay, not to contribute to an organized cartel that takes people's life savings for keeping a CD or two on their hard drive. And remember folks, the RIAA has never sued a single person for downloading (even though that is what they claim to the press). It appears that these students are being forced to pay for something they would not even be sued for in the first place and forced to support an anti-social organisation profiting at the expense of the public and of Freedom.
It is nice to hear that college students get so much for their tuition these days!
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
The RIAA and others seem unable to realize that when something is technologically possible, and becomes known and embraced, it is de facto the new reality and no amount of scheming or prohibitions will bring back the old.
I do remember vinyl LPs, and how the advent of CDs shut down my favorite record stores on Melrose in short order. Nowadays we have P2Ps and other filesharing methods. Nowadays a talented musician can easily obtain equipment and create music away from studios, right there in her living room.
No amount of lawsuits or tricks such as the one under discussion can ever turn the clock back, and I sure hope the distribution companies decide to bow to the inevitable. It is not clear what the new equilibrium is going to be, but I believe they will have at best a small part in it while the artists a much bigger one. Oh, and cost and prices will go down... down... down. The days of huge profits are gone forever.
The sooner they come to terms with reality, the better.
Using unlicensed investigators in Texas.
Criminal John Doe suits dropped and the names used in civil suits.
Falsification of evidence.
Lying to the court.
etc.
I could be mistaken here, but it sounds like this is actually a step from **AA to the direction of acknowledging that "file sharing" isn't gonna go away. Then again, for over 10 years I've been hearing how the Internet enables artists to distribute their stuff directly to customers without the 'industry'. Why isn't this happening?
The traditional model is still going. If a considerable portion of the artists refused to work with record labels, this would have changed a long time ago, but it seems that there really is no viable alternative to the traditional model that everyone hates so much!