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RIAA Loses Case Against Launch Media
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's claim that personalized internet radio stations were 'interactive services' was flatly rejected 'as a matter of law' by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Arista Records v. Launch Media. In affirming the jury's verdict in favor of the defendant, Launch Media — acquired during the lawsuit by Yahoo! — the Court said it did not even need to concern itself with possible errors in the jury instructions, since the trial judge should have directed a verdict for defendant 'as a matter of law' on the question of whether the radio stations were 'interactive services.' At pages 23-42 of its 42-page opinion (PDF), the appeals court carefully analyzed how Launch Media's personalized internet radio stations worked, and noted that the users could neither obtain and play on demand a particular song, nor obtain the transmission of a particular program, thus rendering the RIAA's claim of 'interactivity' meritless."
I can't wait for the day that headline becomes so commonplace I get bored of it.
My webcomic
Hurry up and die already. You're clogging the tubes!
It reacts to input from its users. It is interactive.
Don't let the evil actions of the RIAA cloud reality. It's interactive. Most people would claim that monkeys are luminous if it somehow hurt the RIAA.
Does this mean that Pandora does not have to pay per performance interactive service royalty rates anymore? Isn't this huge for Pandora type services?
Will this lead to lower rates for Pandora? From the summary they sound like a similar service, yet the fact they aren't being sued implies to me that they've "paid up" at the higher, interactive rate.
I give Pandora referrer credit for every song I buy from Amazon or iTunes, but since Pandora can't track referrer income to particular uses, I still get hit up to pay their RIAA-tax subscription money or GTFO their service each month. I know Pandora has to do it to survive, but if this ruling lowers their rates maybe they can do away with the audio ads or raise the monthly cap.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Does this mean I don't have to pay for music anymore?
What does "as a matter of law" really mean?
How does it differ from "as a matter of fact"?
IANAL - nor can I afford one to answer this question.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
The last line of the ruling says: The district court's judgment of May 16, 2007 in favor 15 of Appellee is hereby AFFIRMED with costs.
Does this mean the RIAA pays the victim's court costs?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Something like "Redundant Without Prejudice", that would lower a comment's score without affecting karma. Clearly the Parent was being composed as its predecessor was was submitted. It would be nice to mod it down for the benefit of people reading at 1, but I won't penalize somebody for something like this. If it were submitted 20 minutes later, that would be a different story,.
This may or may not impact Pandora, but the service at the center of this dispute was eliminated last spring by Yahoo.
Grooveshark allows you to search for individual songs, play them, make playlists, etc. Is grooveshark doomed to become RIAA fodder?
I'm a lawyer, but this isn't legal advice. If you get your legal advice here, you may as well just sign away your house, children, and car now and savve on legal fees . . .
Anyway . . .
That's not quite right; the facts as alleged by that party do matter. "As a matter of law" means that the evidence doesn't matter. Such a ruling means that even if they could prove everything that they alleged, they would still lose.
In this case, they found that the judge did indeed err--but not by giving the wrong instructions, as the RIAA alleged, but by even letting the jury hear the case, as no reasonable jury could have found for the RIAA. (Yeah, and here we get a bit murky with two overlapping "as a matter of law" usages, one on the allegations, and one on the strength of the evidence. Life's rough :)
hawk, esq
Don't you think he'd know that?
Although, yes, I can see how that may come in handy should he ever forget.
You know, I've seen this a couple times before. About a decade ago I was a a Linux con and SGI was there. They were talking about how all their new SGI stuff was going to be Windows NT based and they were getting into storage and stuff. If I were a meaner fellow I'd have asked the guy why I should buy his stuff rather than IBM or Sun, who did exactly the same stuff and who I knew would be around in a couple years. They went bankrupt not much later.
Sun likewise lost their relevance. I actually did some contract work for them a few years back and as far as I could tell most of what went on inside the company involved process black-belts talking about how they worked and engineers scoffing at the design of the Linux kernel. As far as I could tell the corporate philosophy was that they'd build cool stuff and people would buy it because it was cool. Except they hadn't built cool stuff at that point in years.
So now here we are with IBM. They used to have a pretty solid business focus -- some news would come out about a new trend in the market and IBM would be right there almost immediately. Near as I can tell now they just push people around to whatever country happens to be cheapest at the moment and assume that you can replaced experienced employees with cheap guys with no loss of momentum.
Meanwhile Google's right there doing all the cool stuff like Sun used to do and they're got their thumb on the industry kind of like IBM used to do. If I had to place a bet on the industry in a decade, my money would be on Google and Apple as the big winners and IBM as the next company acquired by Oracle.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If this is indeed the case, that an internet station is just like a "regular" station, then how many can someone have? I am picturing this:
"This is all The Beatles 'Strawberry Fields Forever', all the time!"
"This is the Foo Fighters 'The Pretender', all day and all night!"
One station playing the same song over and over. Or even just the same album. Actual over-the-air radio stations couldn't afford to do this, but with the Internet, it would be fairly easy. You could "tune in" to the station, record it once and have the song/album. And since it's "just like a radio station", no worries, right?
Letter of the law vs. spirit of the law?
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
I just wanted to rant a bit, so sorry if I come off a little bit off topic... The way the RIAA's idea of "performance royalties" is undoubtedly flawed, and it really ends up hurting both the little guys and the listeners. Under the current law, the US Office of Copyright has authorized the RIAA (also known as SoundExchange) to collect royalties on the performance of any copyrighted material. Problem is, the (meager) portion of money that the RIAA pays out to these artists & labels is limited ONLY to RIAA member labels.... But wait, they're ALLOWED to collect for ALL copyrighted recordings - RIAA member or NOT! Now think about how this impacts underground music - an artist copyrights his work, and he wants to get it played on underground web radio stations. Even if said artist provides his music to a web radio station without any expectation of royalties, the RIAA can still levy their fees on the station. Personally, I own a web radio station which plays one style of underground electronic music - we make enough money basically to keep the station running, but nothing more... In an attempt to bring in an extra buck or two (we all have day jobs), we've started a record label with the intention of selling music directly from our site... Now hilariously enough, under the current regime, we'd be paying the RIAA royalties even on the RECORDINGS THAT WE OWN!
Honestly the RIAA is a good for nothing turd hanger-on of the music industry. It costed them BILLIONS in overhead just to develop some sort of cohesive infrastructure...... Yet they only take in millions of dollars per year (which rarely do any artists see shit!)
How bout this... I'm going to start the Hamburger Industry Association of America... And every hamburger, whether it is sold, eaten, or it just appears on TV, will require that I'm paid my cut! I will represent the Hamburger Industry, yet most of the money I take in will go to paying me and a few other fatcats. So I suggest all you hamburger eaters out there - get ready to pony up! Oh yeah, and if you dare contest me, I'll take you to court (on the hamburger industry's dime of course - this is their crusade as much as it is ours)!!