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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
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
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?
Is there any means for artists to claim the companies colluded on contracts, royalties, etc.? I don't know any information there so it may be they were competitive enough to avoid any claims being able to stick, but knowing how bad it is for the artist I'm more concerned about fixing that before we make things better for the consumer.
My webcomic
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?
They don't need Hollywood Accounting. Ask any musician how much money a record release actually makes them these days. It's clearly not a profitable business!
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The whole process of watching the internet route around content protection in a matter of minutes, in an article about the RIAA getting sued.
It's like my birthday suddenly was Christmas, and then suddenly both were today.
I love you slashdot.
It's interesting to note the different trends here.
Over time, the actual cost of making recordings comparable to those made by major recording companies has dropped, and the quality level you can expect has increased. You don't really need that much in the way of specialist hardware these days, since most of it can be done with inexpensive (sometimes free) software. High-end consumer sound cards are probably good enough, when paired with decent microphones, but even professional low-latency sound recording hardware isn't that expensive. The only thing that's even slightly expensive is studio time, but it's not really that difficult or expensive to adequately soundproof a room if you're going to be needing it often.
You can certainly match the quality of professional recordings from the early '90s without too much trouble or expense.
On the flip side, "professional" recording has become more expensive, rather than less expensive. They use an insane amount of specialist hardware and software, specially built recording studios, and small armies of people
The difference is probably something like a 5 or 10% quality improvement, while costing 1000 times as much (note - numbers made up on the spot). The quality improvement hardly matters anyway - it's barely noticeable with CD quality output, it's certainly not noticeable once it's been run through a lossy audio codec, and they tend to wipe out any quality improvement they may have had by mixing everything far too loud, resulting in horrible distortion.
My guess is that they're just carrying on doing things they way they used to. I don't doubt that, in the '80s, producing a sound recording to go on a CD would have been incredibly difficult, and required a great deal of expensive hardware. Since they've had no real incentive to reduce costs, they've just kept on doing things the same way.
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)
Don't bet on it. They can only get away with that shit once. It isn't the court that decided that last time, it was a negotiated settlement between the various state DAs offices and the RIAA. The DAs just didn't realize what sharks they were dealing with. I know this because an ex of mine was a junior DA from one of the smaller states on that case and she even got herself quoted in their local paper saying something to the effect of, "I'm sure the senior DAs from around the country will not allow the RIAA to wiggle out of this settlement." Its about 10 years later and that newspaper interview is still one of the funniest things I have to give her shit about.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I like how this works in the US (but aparently nowhere else), but the same video by Sony is blocked in the US. At least, I am assuming that is the same video.
The summary was entirely factual, and didn't contain any "anti-RIAA propaganda". Your quote was for a reader comment, not from the original summary. Read the Starr vs Sony decision linked in the summary and you'll discover that the appeals judges found the evidence is strong that RIAA members have been colluding using illegal (under antitrust law) methods such as price fixing [wikipedia.org]. E.g., they ask why RIAA members raised the wholesale price from $0.65/song to $0.70/song while the second largest distributor of music, eMusic, was wholesaling at $0.25/song. In the stereotypical "normal free market", competition as well as decreased production costs would lead to lower prices.
I love people who actually read the stuff. Thank you.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful