TechDirt's Masnick Responds To Warner's Jim Griffin On Choruss

newtley writes "TechDirt's Mike Masnick writes that the Warner Music Choruss licensing scheme amounts to a Bait-And-Switch operation. Not so, says Jim Griffin, the man charged to put it together. Masnick's story is 'factually incorrect in every respect,' he states. But Griffin 'refused to name a single factual mistake,' Masnick says, noting, 'He fails to address the key problems that we outlined: 1. Why is this program even needed when plenty of musicians are coming up with business models that work today and don't need a new mandatory license (er... 'covenant not to sue') plan? 2. Why do we need a new bureaucracy and won't that divert funds? 3. Will the industry continue to try to shut down file sharing sites? 4. Will the industry continue to push a 3 strikes plan?'"

Comments

Re:Who Says What?

[broken_chaos]

Wow! There are so many "says" and "states" that I almost lost track of what's going on.

No kidding. I actually had to read/skim the articles (!!) to understand the summary.

Re:Who Says What?

[nine-times]

So I guess the question is, will this kind of covenant work? If it will, why not extend to other rightholders?

I think the right question might just be "huh?" As in, what are these people even talking about?

Why should universities or ISPs be asked to pay some kind of license fee or buy into any kind of "covenant"? It's... hell, I don't know, like Coca Cola asking a toll road to pay them part of the toll on the chance that someone might be smuggling cola from Mexico on that road. No, I don't think what I said made sense, but it makes as much sense as this plan.

I understand the record industry is in favor of plans that require other people pay them money. I'd like to propose that ISPs charge everyone a fee on top of the monthly service and then pay that money to me. That'd be great as far as I'm concerned, but why should anyone else go for it?

Re:Three strikes plan?

[Kethinov]

YOU DON'T HAVE TO SHOUT, WE CAN HEAR YOU JUST FINE! :(

Who cares about the philosophical question of whether or not "professional" music (whatever that is) is such a life necessity that everyone should be taxed to subsidize it?

The bottom line here is the subsidization is fundamentally untenable because it's too inefficient and fraud prone. As for the three strikes alternative, that's just practically unenforceable.

So we're left with your original conclusion, but with more pragmatic reasoning. The content industry is going to have to stop clamoring "you can't compete with free" and start doing just that.