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Antitrust Case Against RIAA Reinstated
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "After Starr v. SONY BMG Music Entertainment was dismissed at the District Court level,
the antitrust class action against the RIAA has been reinstated by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In its 25-page opinion (PDF), the Appeals court held the following allegations sufficiently allege antitrust violations: 'First, defendants agreed to launch MusicNet and pressplay, both of which charged unreasonably high prices and contained similar DRMs. Second, none of the defendants dramatically reduced their prices for Internet Music (as compared to CDs), despite the fact that all defendants experienced dramatic cost reductions in producing Internet Music. Third, when defendants began to sell Internet Music through entities they did not own or control, they maintained the same unreasonably high prices and DRMs as MusicNet itself. Fourth, defendants used MFNs [most favored nation clauses] in their licenses that had the effect of guaranteeing that the licensor who signed the MFN received terms no less favorable than terms offered to other licensors. For example, both EMI and UMG used MFN clauses in their licensing agreements with MusicNet. Fifth, defendants used the MFNs to enforce a wholesale price floor of about 70 cents per song. Sixth, all defendants refuse to do business with eMusic, the #2 Internet Music retailer. Seventh, in or about May 2005, all defendants raised wholesale prices from about $0.65 per song to $0.70 per song. This price increase was enforced by MFNs.'"
Its not exactly most favored nation, if there's no advantage to being so.
my band is more brutal techno punk than yours
Good
Echo
Who is going to compensate me for my increased stress level from living in fear of being sued by the RIAA? If I had kids and I wanted them to behave, I'd just tell them stories about the RIAA coming to get them and financially ruin them.
Don't jaywalk kids because the RIAA will come get you.
Eat your vegetables so you can be strong to fight the riaa.
Seriously though, I hate those guys.
--------- I have no signature
Thanks for keeping us in the loop NYCL.
These seem to be serious allegations. I hope there's action taken this time.
These deserve to be kept in mind:
http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/ (Courtney Love Does the Math, from 2000 - looking at it now, oddly prophetic)
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html (The Problem with Music, by Producer Steve Albini - great insight into the process of Major Label music)
This is why we should care. I know that it's clichéd, but these companies care nothing about you, or about music, or about the well-being of the world in which they operate. They are wholly evil, in a way that almost no other business is.
sig?
It is interesting to read the opinion. Conspiracy to fix prices, agreements to not compete against each other, all record companies refusing to do any business with certain companies.
They are acting like a monopoly. This is what led to the breakup of Standard Oil back in the early part of the 20th century and the breakup of the Bell System into Baby Bells.
This most favored nation (MFN) deal they have going and how all prices change in lockstep.
Wow, it reminds me of how they eventually caught Al Capone. Not on running a crime syndicate but on tax evasion.
Tisha Hayes
Speaking as someone who's very close to the RiAA this is what I have to say:
You people have no chance! We own the Congress, we have more lawyers and eventually, NYCL WILL come over to the Darkside - it's only a matter of time.
You little thieves just need to stop stealing our music!
We now have factories in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Africa that produce music - all run by small children that are paid with barely enough food to live. We just hire good looking people to lip synch in videos and "live" shows. And then when they can't work anymore, we sell the little girls into prostitution and the boys are then trained to be our stormtroopers.
So just shut up! I have to go. My stupid idiotic maid made my afternoon cocktail with the blood of kittens when I especially ordered her to make it with the blood of puppies!
Courtney!
Don't jaywalk kids because the RIAA will come get you.
The RIAA announced that they were terminating their practices of filing hundreds of civil lawsuits so your jaywalking children should be okay.
Is this article the evolved version of the RIAA's anti-consumer tactics? It's not clear from the summary, but the way I read this is that the RIAA is evil because mimimium song prices are being raised from $0.65 to $0.70. Can't this increase (approximately 7%) be explained by typical inflation and justifiably be expected every two years? I'm not sure why this story is so evil.
So they're finally calling them on the price fixing of CDs?
I wonder if Hollywood Accounting could save them.
Huh?
Can't [all major labels' simultaneous royalty] increase (approximately 7%) be explained by typical inflation and justifiably be expected every two years?
Why doesn't it decrease as the cost of producing music decreases? Look at how much it cost to record an album in 1980 vs. now.
I don't support the RIAA, but I also don't support anti-RIAA propaganda that I don't understand. The summary was not as clear about why this trial represents the evil motives of the RIAA. I simply asked for clarification of this fact from somebody who might be more knowledgeable.
playback?
You little thieves just need to stop stealing our music!
Your labels also own music publishers, the companies that own copyright in the music and lyrics apart from the recording. If you provide us indie songwriters with an automated way to check any song we've written against these music publishers' catalogs to make sure we didn't screw up like George Harrison ("My Sweet Lord") or Michael Bolton ("Love Is a Wonderful Thing"), we might take you up on this offer.
I've bought hundreds of dollars in music (mostly online) over the last 5 years. If in fact the court rules that they have been fixing prices will I get any of that money back?
Screw these MF's and their MFN's!
It occurs to me that all it takes to break up a 'cartel' like this is one or two successful publishers who are not owned or controlled in any way by the existing publishers, and that such independent publishers are willing to really compete with the other labels to sign talent and publish music. The question is, are there any independent labels right now? I remember seeing a chart sometime ago which showed how a lot of 'independent labels' are really owned by the big music publishers, who just use those other labels to either serve niche markets, or create the illusion of having alternatives to dealing with them.
Anyone know of any labels which really, truly, are independent, with which bands and music lovers might do business?
Thanks for bringing this to our attention NYC, but if you'll excuse the pun, we've heard this tune before. Suppose that the RIAA loses and is ordered to pay restitution, but instead of cash the court allows the RIAA and its members to "pay" by donating a selection of CDs or downloads of their choice (i.e. their choice of the worst selling items) while valuing them, for the purposes of the settlement, at "full retail" (even though almost none of them actually sell at that price in the real world). What will prevent them from offering an equally "useless" settlement payment, as they have been allowed to do in the past, again this time?
Try here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEmTbpvj9fM
I assume that your link is to this song, "Don't download this song" by Weird Al.. The song is quite heavy and very obvious critic against RIAA and it's scare tactics of destroying lives because of a few downloaded songs and about how they have the whole legal system (lawyers, judges the police) under their control. The irony of not being able to legally watch the video outside USA is overwhelming.
That is very common, however. For example many TV shows can't be watched online from Europe anymore. Southpark and The Daily Show being two of the many series that you used to be able to watch online for free (and see some commercials) but now need to download from bittorrent. I could of course just use VPN to some host in USA but really... If I need to go through the trouble of circumventing the protections anyway, my interest to pay for a good VPN and watch the ads isn't that high.
that is the fact that the canadian arm of the R.I.A.A. up here called the CRIA hasnt paid 300,000 artists since 1980.
BOY oh boy thats a bomb to say in court eh?
if they are commercially pirating up in canada , are they doing it in the USA and other countries and does that mean that record breaking profit year really mean profit to the riaa OR is it fraudulently stolen monies.
The link in the article points to a framed view of the PDF. The PDF itself is here. Let's post bare links please? ...ank
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
Its not "MFN" any more than buying protection from gangsters is "Insurance". It is akin to extortion.
Considering you can probably make a duplicate copy and deliver it for like a penny or so, some very small figure like that, plus the lock step price increases, this shows blatant price gouging plus cartel collusion to maintain universal high level price gouging for digital "products".
When cost goes down, it's just profit for them.
Until competition for customers pushes the price down. Ideally, for a customer A seeking service, multiple providers P1, P2, and P3 compete over providing a better service at a better price. In the case of publishing contracts, A is the artist and P1, P2, and P3 are labels, who compete over providing production, distribution, and promotion to recording artists at a better royalty rate. So why doesn't this competition happen in practice?
They've gone way out of their way to destroy ubiquitous use of replicator technology, lobbying and working for a legal precedent to enshrine on purpose artificial scarcity as akin to or equal to natural scarcity.
Digital copies are our first credible true replicator tech. Part of the 24th century got here early. The actual true cost of copies of digital products has dropped to almost zero. Instead of being hailed as one of mankind's greatest achievements, and extended across the globe so that all of humanity may share in bounty, they want to restrict, make illegal, hinder, repress and demonize this amazing scientific and engineering breakthrough. This is a hideous blow to the future, a simply terrible legal and societal precedent, for when we have tangible replicators.
What they have so far succeeded in doing is similar to if after Gutenberg's contributions, that all copies of books had to still reflect in price and access at the previous cost and access of hand scribed copies.
That would have been a terrible legal precedent..I think we are all glad it didn't happen.
We have a much more profound situation today, a total game changer, modern tech has made "expensive" copies of digital products obsolete, but the laws have carved in stone much earlier tech's pricing and access structures.
Why? How long will the hand scribers labors and prices be maintained, when there simply is no need, and they, in fact, no longer scribe? Why restrict it artificially that way, just because the older tech existed? Doesn't time move forward? Where is the endgame there? This is the clichéd buggywhip industry made to be supreme law, it must be maintained? Again, why?
I call that artificial restriction evil, basically a crime against future humanity, a serious crime against our progeny, we are inflicting this on them, to restrict simply wonderful tech advances like that, not only for now, but in the future when we have much better tangible replicators.
We already have some good beginnings in that field, but what happens when we really can eliminate "want" in a number of tangible areas technically, but legally restrict it? If this legal precedent is allowed to stand..eventually our progress as a technological civilization will slow to a crawl and then become locked in a "legal" time frame limbo, that every year thereafter falls further and further behind reality.
Evolution is very popular on this site. Shouldn't we be embracing societal and legal evolution to reflect and harmonize more with modern scientific and engineering advances? Shouldn't there be more of a balance?
The only change we have had is a change to make it *worse*, to go back in time, to make restrictions on digital copies be of much longer duration, and to be more onerous, and to devote more of our legal system in maintaining this "artificial scarcity" model, to maintain the holy guild of the hand scribers even when they no longer scribe, to maintain the illusion that this is somehow still hard or expensive, instead of just naturally embracing it and evolving along with it.
Ha! At least some one read it! Had some more pieces over the weekend that I think are still virgins. I am afflicted with a bad case of "amateur futurist" with a side dressing of keyboard sadism, I love to write, which means type, and suck really bad at the typing part, I demolish the poor things. I even killed a Model M. So I appreciate it when I get read, it gets to be a lot like work for me...luckily this past weekend was cold wet and rainy so I had some spare time inside where I could write. I do farming, and this time of year just isn't all that much work for me besides getting in the firewood for next year and taking care of some beefers. Spring/summer/fall though..a lot more work.
I checked out your journals, you need to catch up some!