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Colleges Secretly Test Music-Industry Project
An anonymous reader writes "The music industry is still pushing Choruss, a controversial blanket-licensing scheme, but it is far less innovative than first described. Six colleges are setting it up now, but they refuse to have their names released because the issue is a political landmine — and who wants to be associated with the recording industry?"
The Canadians have their blank CD tax ostensibly because blank CDs are used to copy music. Great. But is it then legal to copy music in Canada? No. How does that even work?!
Doing this other blanket licensing stuff will enjoy similar respect in that anything acquired will be decidedly illegal until proven otherwise and even with proof, there is little doubt in my mind the recording industry will respect it as legal.
Won't most of the students get sued the day after graduation, when they are no longer associated with the college and haven't deleted their music collections?
And music was supposed to be entertainment..
Whether they have some kind of intrusive metering software or not, what I'm wondering is how they think they can pull off paying out per-play royalties to artists from a flat-fee, unlimited-download subscription model. The maths, they don't add up.
If we had a free market and sane copyright terms I would agree with you. The way I usually end any argument about "artists rights" and the *.A.As is this-
Steamboat Willie is STILL under copyright. The man has been worm food (or a Popsicle, depending on whom you believe) for going on half a century but one of his FIRST works, one made when airplanes were made out of cloth and antibiotics were still but a dream, is STILL under copyright.
If we hadn't had the public domain stolen from us thanks to treasonous bribery we all could go to a nice public domain website and download all the music up to the mid 70s for absolutely free. Artists could use that material to create new and exciting works by remixing, sampling, and using snippets in their original compositions. Instead thanks to treasonous bribery in all likelihood your grandchildren, if they are very lucky and live to be VERY old, might actually one day see the music of Jimi Hendrix and the Stones make it into the public domain. That is of course if that damned mouse doesn't cause copyrights to simply be extended forever, again thanks to bribery.
So while I haven't heard shit from an RIAA artist I would bother even stealing, I say if you like it please steal the fuckers. After all they have stolen from you, me, our children, our families, by robbing our public domain from us to fill their greedy pockets. The copyright system was a CONTRACT nothing more. In return for a LIMITED copyright We, The People, got a richer public domain. But the contract has been broken, and until We, The People, are again allowed a place at the bargaining table all rights granted by that contract should be ignored. Considering they are ignoring our end of the contract, why shouldn't we do the same?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Part of it is that we look around and see silly things like roads, so apparently some of the money is being spent on the things they say it is being spent on.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
What's retarded is that is secret? Why is this secret? Why is the copyright treaty secret? The only conclusion I can come up with is that they're up to no good.
What about this:
The most unusual feature of Choruss is that users would be able to download any song in the collection to their own computers, with no restrictions. Unlike Apple's iTunes, which charges about a dollar per song for unrestricted downloads, this would be an all-you-can-grab song buffet. Want to make CD's? Sure.
What if they want to make CDs, and then they want to sell those CDs? Copyright only governs the creation of a copy, but once a copy is created you're generally allowed to sell it. Does the license forbid such reselling? Is it enforceable?
Read the parent comment again (and your own apparently), it is a screed against taxes of any form, not against the Canadian cd tax.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Six colleges are setting it up now, but they refuse to have their names released
The music industry says there are six colleges, but the six won't let their names out? How are they supposed to keep a service used by all their students secret?
I call bullshit on these lying bastards. Everything the RIAA labels do is based on a lie, starting with the lie that P2P costs sales when every study says "pirates" spend more on music than anybody. Well, P2P does cost RIAA labels sales; if you buy two or three indie CDs, that's money you don't have to buy an RIAA CD.
And thank you, reverendbeer, for pointing out that these lying bastards DON'T own rights to all music. They don't. We need to call these lying sociopaths out at every opportunity.
Free Martian Whores!
What do I want from them?
a) No suing or prosecuting of non-commercial pirates.
b) No DRM, No laws forbidding circumvention tools.
c) Copyright terms that last no more than 30 years.
d) Don't attempt to shakedown or otherwise control radio in any form (terrestrial, sat or net).
Don't give me the impression that I am building my own gallows if I give them my money.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
So go beat the crap out of your city councilmen; what the hell are you telling us for?
It is a benefit for students who want to pay for their music. Rather than pay for every track on iTunes or Amazon, they instead get unlimited downloads from Choruss instead. Whether that's a better deal or not depends on how much music they download. The students who would have preferred not to pay still get the benefit of a central location to get presumably consistent quality files, and the peace of mind that they won't be one of the unlucky ones the RIAA goes after.
No problem. Even after students stop paying the Choruss subscription fee, they will be able to keep all the songs they have downloaded. "They get to keep them the rest of their lives," as Mr. Griffin put it. That differs from some subscription music services, which allow access only while users are active members of the service. What's to stop students from paying for one month and downloading the whole collection? "Nothing," said Mr. Griffin.
Other folks at other companies considering similar models even go on to say:
"We're not going to stop file sharing—it's probably going to happen in one form or another, and it's probably folly to try and stop it," said Charlie Moore, a Noank official who has traveled to campuses in the past few months to drum up interest. "If we're able to use consumption data to compensate the rights holders of a particular recording, then we think we've got a handle on a fair and equitable model for rights going forward."
That is a beautiful bit of reality right there and a much improved level of insight regarding the file sharing world by recording industry insiders. This may not be the best solution yet, I don't know, but at least these folks are trying to do something productive for both their business and their customer base (college students) rather than attempting to bankrupt the latter while clinging to an outdated version of the former. I find the attitude quite refreshing myself.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Another substantial change from the early days of the proj ect is that the licenses now would be with individual students rather than with colleges—although on some campuses, student governments or other groups may agree to pay the fee on behalf of students.
It's not a direct answer, but could be relevant. If the licensing scheme is with individual students now, I would bet that the students have to sign or agree to something in order to participate. Thus, if they don't want to participate, ideally they just could avoid that license agreement. But you are right, the article is scant on details regarding that particular aspect and it wouldn't surprise me if any opt-out option that was there got mired and intertwined with some other form of student registration contracts and agreements that make it very difficult/near impossible to opt out.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Interesting thought, but you just come right back to a record company model. Let's say you're a financial institution in the business of giving out loans. An artist comes to you saying that they want to shoot a music video to promote their debut album. You are likely not going to give this artist any money unless you can be convinced that this artist will be profitable and be able to repay the loan. So what determines whether or not an artist will be profitable? Ideally whether their music is any good, or in line with public tastes. So now the financial institution of scouting artists. This is exactly what a record company does. They scout artists and provide financial backing, but offer zero liability to the artist. With a loan, the artist is on the hook to pay it back. Which would you choose?
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson