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President Trump Signs Music Modernization Act Into Law (billboard.com)
President Donald Trump signed the Music Modernization Act (MMA) into law Thursday, officially passing what is arguably the most sweeping reform to copyright law in decades. From a report: The bill revamps Section 115 of the U.S. Copyright Act and aims to bring copyright law up to speed for the streaming era. These are the act's three main pieces of legislation:
1. The Music Modernization Act, which streamlines the music-licensing process to make it easier for rights holders to get paid when their music is streamed online.
2. The Compensating Legacy Artists for their Songs, Service, & Important Contributions to Society (CLASSICS) Act for pre-1972 recordings.
3. The Allocation for Music Producers (AMP) Act, which improves royalty payouts for producers and engineers from SoundExchange when their recordings are used on satellite and online radio (Notably, this is the first time producers have ever been mentioned in copyright law.).
What does all this mean? First, songwriters and artists will receive royalties on songs recorded before 1972. Second, the MMA will improve how songwriters are paid by streaming services with a single mechanical licensing database overseen by music publishers and songwriters. The cost of creating and maintaining this database will be paid for by digital streaming services. Third, the act will take unclaimed royalties due to music professionals and provide a consistent legal process to receive them. Further reading: Billboard.
1. The Music Modernization Act, which streamlines the music-licensing process to make it easier for rights holders to get paid when their music is streamed online.
2. The Compensating Legacy Artists for their Songs, Service, & Important Contributions to Society (CLASSICS) Act for pre-1972 recordings.
3. The Allocation for Music Producers (AMP) Act, which improves royalty payouts for producers and engineers from SoundExchange when their recordings are used on satellite and online radio (Notably, this is the first time producers have ever been mentioned in copyright law.).
What does all this mean? First, songwriters and artists will receive royalties on songs recorded before 1972. Second, the MMA will improve how songwriters are paid by streaming services with a single mechanical licensing database overseen by music publishers and songwriters. The cost of creating and maintaining this database will be paid for by digital streaming services. Third, the act will take unclaimed royalties due to music professionals and provide a consistent legal process to receive them. Further reading: Billboard.
the original music on WKRP will be restored?
Life plus 70 years sure is great isn't it?
So Glad he is finally fulfilling that campaign promise. I heard he has been working into the late hours every night for weeks to get this bill language perfect, and using his polite and positive personality working with congress to get it approved.
Not mentioned in the synopsis is that Copyright and royalties are extended a ridiculous length of time beyond the life of the artist.
Why respect copyright, when nothing will ever enter the public domain any more? There was supposed to be a balance where copyright would be enforced until a work became old enough where upon it would enter the public domain. It now stands that upon your grave, works you enjoyed as a child and possibly paid for many times over throughout your life will still not be free when you die.
It seems the entire premise of this legislation is to enrich record companies more.
Congress owes Disney royalties for stealing it's copyrighted ideology on extending copyrights. RIP "Public Domain"
Never is the truth of the fact there are not really different political parties more evident than in a bill like this.
The headline here said "President Trump Signs" but who among you would claim it would be any different had Hillary been elected?
This kind of unstoppable ratcheting down of government power is what really turns people off from getting involved in politics, because it doesn't matter who you support there will be no real difference in results of things that matter.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Too old.
Luvs trump because he just made him richer. People suck, rich people suck more.
better deal for music artists
In all fairness, this bill has been worked on since Bush II days, around 2006-ish. The current President has done literally little to secure the passage of this outside his signature. In fact, both Bush and Obama have done little for this as well. This whole effort has mostly been decided between private parties and a few key congressional representatives.
It's almost like people forget that important law takes years, compromises between a multitude of interested parties, and bipartisanship. But yeah, forget all that, let's wax superiority on how my team is better than yours. *eyeroll*
The day that taking a song that somebody else made, putting it on the copier, and then charging both the artist and the recipient money, as if you had worked for it and made a song, and sue everyone who doesn’t "buy" a copy, and call him a sea-faring rapist thief, ...
is the day that I get to take somebody else's hard-earned $10,000 (you know, with actual work!), put them on the copier, and then make both that somebody and the one getting the funny money work hard for me, as if I had actually paid them, and sue everyone who doesn't throw himself at me to work for me for free, and call him a land-lubbing rapist thief! ... I have worked in the entire media Mafia, from music to TV to movies to games, and if you did too, you’d also know, that the entire madness stems from a shitload of cocaine, making them both super-over-confident, as empathically dead as a psychopath, and extremely paranoid. The entire set of "industries" is just an organized crime of leeches.
because Trump did it.
Fact: Hollowood (that was a typo but it amused me so I left it) generally hates Republicans.
So all of your facts are true, and my fact is true - would anything would be any different if Democrats were in charge of anything you mentioned? No.
If anything they would be even MORE favorable to the recording industry. As it was Republicans gave them everything they wanted in terms of horrific copyright extension.
I think you are confused that I am some kind of Hillary supporter; I am a for-real independent who is just sad there's not an actual party difference. Trump is only somewhat different because he's not really a Republican or a Democrat.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have AdBlock turned on, so why am I seeing this story?
Maybe this is the Slashdot equivalent of the Presidential Emergency Alert and the Manchurian Cantaloupe gets to push stories right to the top if he thinks it's something positive.
Don't anyone tell him that this is a terrible new law that pretty much puts the last nail in anything like public domain. After this, we'll never see another video game with music like that in the Fallout series. Trump is "making music great again", as evidenced by today's free-style session with a severely brain-damaged Kanye West impersonator (it might have been Andy Kaufman or Sasha Baron Cohen in a Kanye mask, though). We'll be paying royalties for music when every single human being involved in the creation of that music has died, and now for longer.
You are welcome on my lawn.
So, Trump isn't going to use music illegally at his rally's or has he built in a way to get around that?
With the improved economy, more jobs for all, and better deal for music artists
Now on top of everyone who doesn't honor copyright law, there will be even more people not honoring copyright law.
Piracy will go way up and artists will make less, both the scam artists AND the legit artists alike.
That doesn't sound like a better deal to me.
A pity consumers are never considered one of the "interested parties".
In fairness, Congress is suppose to be the representatives of consumers while listening to the input from interested third party experts.
The Compensating Legacy Artists for their Songs, Service, & Important Contributions to Society (CLASSICS) Act for pre-1972 recordings.
Hopefully they put as much thought into the legislation as they put into devising a clever acronym.
(from EFF July 26, 2018 post)
> January 1, 2019 will be the first time in twenty years that works in the United States will once again join the public domain through copyright expiration. A growing public domain means more access to works and the ability of other artists to build on what came before. And as we get closer and closer to finally growing the public domain, big content holders are going to push harder and harder to lock it all down again. CLASSICS is the first step in that direction.
> CLASSICS is a very bad bill that has been bundled with the largely-good Music Modernization Act (MMA).
> The situation is this: sound recordings didn’t used to be protected by federal copyright law. As a result, states came up with their own laws, creating a patchwork. Congress did eventually get around to bringing sound recordings under federal copyright law, but only for recordings made in 1972 and later. Older recordings remained under the old crazy quilt of state law. This meant they did not enter the public domain when they should have. State laws continue to govern the pre-1972 sound recordings until 2067. Music from World War I is locked under copyright until nearly the 150th anniversary of the war.
> CLASSICS doesn’t fix the problem of sound recordings being kept out of the public domain. What it does do is create a way for music labels—and some lucky recording artists—to collect money from streaming services for these recordings.
(EFF May 14, 2018 article)
> With this new law, for the first time, recordings made between 1923 and 1972 couldn’t be streamed on digital music services or Internet radio without a license, and failing to get one could leave the streamer liable for massive, unpredictable statutory damages. This makes it harder to archive older music and harder for fans of older music to stream it. It also doesn’t create any new incentives for artists to create new work.
(back to the first EFF article)
> CLASSICS leaves the current state copyrights in place, some lasting more than 144 years, while simultaneously creating a federal system to collect money that federal copyright might not entitle them to.
In fairness, Congress is suppose to be the representatives of consumers while listening to the input from interested third party experts.
s/consumers/CITIZENS/
Bullshit. He flew off with aliens in a pink UFO with tail fins.
TFS (and, undoubtedly, TFA from which it's cribbed) quotes some music industry flack thusly:
better deal for music artists
Prompting slack_justyb to point out:
In all fairness, this bill has been worked on since Bush II days, around 2006-ish. This whole effort has mostly been decided between private parties and a few key congressional representatives.
It's almost like people forget that important law takes years, compromises between a multitude of interested parties, and bipartisanship.
The fact is that this law is a better deal for artists.
It's also a better deal - a much better deal - for record companies, and "rights holders" (which includes both "descendents who had nothing to do with writing or recording the works on which they're going to be paid royalties," and "people who bought the publishing rights to dead artists' back catalogues" and their descendents, etc.). But that's a baby/bathwater thing. Pay the actual artists more than a tiny fraction of a cent for their work, and those other folks will, inevitably, also get paid.
What this legislation does - beside the copyright extensions that got tacked onto it - is to increase royalties for digitally-streamed music significantly. That's a way-overdue acknowledgement that the method by which popular music is ephemerally distributed to consumers has drastically changed since the days when the only choices were AM or FM. Those 20th-century distribution technologies are increasingly obsolete, and I wouldn't bet on them still being around a decade or two from now (because RF bandwidth is increasingly precious).
Under the old legal framework, radio stations paid a per-play royalty on every song they broadcast - to the performing rights organization which represents the songwriter(s) and publisher of those songs. Performers got zilch (unless they were performing live, and the radio station was broadcasting their performance - it's all very messy and complicated). Each PRO (the two bigs are BMI and ASCAP) calculates its own formula for distributing them, and each PRO takes a rake-off, which, theoretically, pays for its direct expenses to collect, administer, and distribute those royalties.
Now a new administering body will be created to collect and distribute royalties for streaming plays. (Yay?) But - and this really is new and improved - the organization that collects and distributes royalties for which no payee can be located will be controlled by artists, not PROs. That means no more giant, largely-unaccountable slush funds which generally benefit only those PROs. In the new regime, that slush fund will belong to (and, at least theoretically, be accountable to) the artists themselves.
So - just maybe - this will mean a better deal for artists, because (again, in the absence of a functionting administrative body - which has yet to be created), in theory, it will mean the end of the kind of "Hollywood accounting" that for decades has routinely screwed so many working songwriters out of any significant payout for recordings of the music they wrote.
(Full disclosure: I am a songwriter, and a member of ASCAP. I have never seen a dime in royalties for my work, though - and, at this point, I probably never will. Nonetheless, I think this is an improvement over the previous system. I do not, however, approve of the Disney-authored extension of copyright term to the life of the artist plus 90 years. I think it's reasonable that an artist's surviving spouse benefit from his/her work for a relatively-short period after he/she dies, because it is routinely the case that sales of a popular artist's work see a significant - most often short-term - post-mortem boost. If you've ever known or been the spouse of a professional musician, you'll understand the sacrifices that relationship entails, and that loyalty deserves to be rewarded. Without it, there's many a songwriter who would have had to give it up, and get a "real" job, instead ... )
Check out my novel.
It is dumb that this is even legislation. I can see legislation for things like "You can't use people's work without their permission", but it's weird that we have legislation determining things like how you communicate and track things. If the industry can't work that out amongst themselves, then the industry shouldn't be able to operate.
For the past century, the copyright term is supposed to reflect the lifetime of those heirs who knew the artist personally. The article "The Copyright Term Red Herring" attributes the extension to updating the formula based on the fact that people are living longer and reproducing later.
Your president signed this bill into law. Like seriously, why do you Trump cultists always try to find an excuse for messed up shit he does? Like any shitty policy he endorses and personally pushes is always somehow Ovamas fault. Obama hasn't been presdent for a few years now and Republicans have controlled Congress and the Senate for close to a decade.
Why is it so hard to accept that none of these people represent your real interests? Oh yeah that's right because they and their propaganda keep telling you they are the White mans candidates.
Maybe one day you will realize Brown innigrants stent the enemy, poor Black people aren't the enemy, Gay men and Women are not the enemy -. The people fucking you up the ass are the wealthy and they will continue to make you think it is everyone else as they have since the beginning of time.
Before recordings, artists were paid for the performance. Technology gave a "middleman" some $, and then they got greedy. Now everyone is greedy. REcording and Streaming = ADVERTISING, nothing more. If the artist is good, go pay $ to see them. That is how the industry should work. All this crap about royalties is just that: crap.
99.9% of musicians DO retain their full rights, and don't sign over anything to record companies.
Of course, record companies aren't going to spend millions of dollars promoting an album they don't own / can't sell exclusively. Heck they won't even spend a million producing an album that they don't have exclusive rights to.
Therefore, 99.9% of artists can be found on Myspace and YouTube, not in the Columbia rack at Best Buy.
In fact, both Bush and Obama have done little for this as well.
You mean they both refused to sign it since it is so obviously corrupt?
A law takes time to push through, but you only have to succeed once to get it to stay forever.
I don't see it as an important enough issue to change votes. I'd like to think that the large number of anti-consumer, pro-corporate laws that keep getting passed (arbitration, tax cuts for the 1%, cuts to Medicare/Medicaid, etc) would have an impact but so far it hasn't. As it stands most of the incumbents are going to win. Ted Cruz, for example, is 9 points ahead in polls. Pelosi won her primary challenge hands down and doesn't have a credible opponent. Folks vote their "gut", not issues.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
we need to start voting for candidates that refuse corporate money. There's a wing of the Democratic party that does (called "Justice Democrats"). I don't know of a GOP equivalent, but if somebody does feel free to chime in.
We can stop this any time we want, and the answer is simple: If you take corporate money then you don't get elected. Period.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
People fail to grasp that the vast majority of the world's population is either deluded in part out of ignorance or is in a cycle of abuse no different than a women whose in an abusive relationship that moves from one abuser to another constantly making excuses for why they can't leave there partner(s).
The first part of the problem has been slow in the making and why people don't recognize the abusive situation. At first the government only stole a small amount from them so nobody complained. As the years have progressed people have been deceived into paying more and more knowingly or otherwise. Hidden fees that have resulted in increased costs of goods rather than a direct tax for example. Half of the taxes if not more that you pay don't even show up on your pay stub. As an employer I know that my employees are deprived of half of there earned income despite only half of that being advertised on the pay stub as a tax.
If people were free to spend the money they earn without the deception everybody would be better off. But as things stand people perceive the situation as though there employer doesn't pay them enough and so they demand socialism. Unfortunately socialism largely redirects money from your pocket into the pocket of another entity but unlike in a free market you have no choice in the matter. I'm blown away by the fact people in some socialists countries demand the government take care of there kids because they can't afford to do so themselves. This wouldn't be so shocking if not for the fact we're talking about people in the middle class.
Copyrights and patents undermine the free market and are part of the problem. It's basically socialism for the wealthy. The only solution to the problem that has any hope of succeeding is one where like-minded people migrate to a single area for the purpose of developing a free society and solutions to there being a lack of big/strong government.
Those guys really take copyrights seriously.
Anyone remember when the Doobies were on What's Happening and Rerun was caught taping their concert?
Patrick Simmons: I thought you guys were our friends
Michael McDonald: How could you guys do this to us?
.... ... ...
Dwayne: Are we gonna go to jail?
John Hartman: Man, how do I know? What would you do if you were in our shoes?
Rerun: Well, I'd just send us home and laugh it off.
Bobby La Kind: It's not funny!
Yeah, it's serious business.
---
And since I've already wandered a bit off topic, this is my favorite concert-taping story:
back in 81, robert fripp was doing his first frippertronic
tour and was playing at the u. of pennsylvania in philly...we knew we had to
tape it, but knowing how quirky fripp is on this issue and the small size of
the venue, we had to resort to unconventional means...so we went to a medical
supply house, rented a wheelchair, taped the mics to the arm rests, and had my
buddy sitting in the thing with a blanket covering the deck...fripp, who was
tuning up and checking his decks, graciously requested that our suddenly
wheelchair bound buddy be placed right in front of him...at the end of a nice
60 minute set, and after fripp takes his bows, my buddy, who was being fed
margaritas via a straw the whole time, starts screaming: "fripp healed me...i
feel my legs...hallelujah...fripp is god", jumps outta the chair and runs
outta the place...pandemonium ensues of course, and fripp is flabergasted...the
story does not end though...next day, fripp is doing promo signing at a record
store, and i walk in with a j-card and ask him to sign it for the guy he had
healed yesterday, becuz the tape of the gig would be incomplete without it...
needless to say, fripp went ballistic, spewing obscenities left and right...
i had a good laugh...
https://groups.google.com/foru...
This is evil. Just plain evil. Principles no longer exist when it comes to the US congress or president. It doesn't matter which party they are from. Both are evil and actively working against the people's interests.
Trump takes credit for all sorts of things he has literally nothing to do with. For instance lately he took credit for the economy recovering and the record low unemployment figures, neither of which he has done anything to affect, it takes literally years and years for changes made to affect things like that. It's more 8 years of Obama that we're seeing the effects of now, not 2 years of pussy-grabber.
#PIRATE4LIFE
Whores STEALING from our Public Domain you say? Making America Guilded Again!!
When a worker does some work, they get paid once.
When a record company does some work they get paid forever.
Go well
It sure would be nice if licensing were more streamlined.
Music licensing today is what game engine licensing was 20 years ago where the barrier to entry was ridiculous and you were stuck forking over thousands of dollars, minimum, just to open a dialog. Don't even get me started on console development.
Now AAA game engines are available for a song and dance. UE4 is pretty much everywhere.
I was able to become an XNA developer on Xbox 360 in 2007. I had a lot of fun with that.
And, on top of that, Nintendo allowed me to become a third-party Wii U developer a few years ago instead of just sending me a head-patting form-letter.
Granted, I didn't go anywhere with the Wii U thing because nobody bought one, but Nintendo opening up like that was jarring.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
You must be new to how politics work. Presidents have been taking credit for things they didn't accomplish for generations. They also blame the last guy for everything that goes wrong if they think they can get away with. Obama was no different in that regard. The only difference was that he had one additional thing to blame things on, people being racist. Anything he proposed that didn't get the support he wanted was because people where racist. It worked for him, sadly.
So, the politicians caved into the pressure from the music industry and now pre 1972 recordings have been retroactively given Federal copyright status, taking away a lot of public domain songs. Great, just f***ing great. From the EFF's page on this:
The new bill also brings older recordings into the public domain sooner. Recordings made before 1923 will exit from all copyright protection after a 3-year grace period. Recordings made from 1923 to 1956 will enter the public domain over the next several decades. And recordings from 1957 onward will continue under copyright until 2067, as before. These terms are still ridiculously long—up to 110 years from first publication, which is longer than any other U.S. copyright..
EFF on Music Modernization Act
Public Domain is becoming a joke worldwide. Why do they need copyright life +90 years? Especially with a lot of the rights are owned by mega-corporations (Looking at you, UMG ) who keep fighting to get copyright extended and NEVER DIE like people. Corporation goes under, the assets, especially IP, get sold off to somebody else. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Also from that EFF page I quoted:
But our musical heritage will leave the exclusive control of the major record labels sooner than it would have otherwise.
Yeah, not much consolation there. They just keep on getting away with pushing the dates further and further back since they keep getting away with it. It is just how most, if not all politicians work. Money walks, bulls(*t walks.
Now I can't wait to see what they ram through Congress before the end of the year to keep Steamboat Willie and Mickey Mouse out of the Public Domain. (p.s.: sarcasm there) That one is gonna make the Sony Bono Act jealous.
And don't blame the just the President. BOTH Parties have their pockets lined by the music mega-corporations (still looking at you, UMG ). It would have happened no matter WHO won the election (please, no party faction followups on this), because Congress would have overridden any theoretical and practically impossible chance of a veto ANY President would have put up. So I'm blaming all sides of the political spectrum on this one, even those few politicians I like.
Guess I'm gonna have to delete my music videos of 40s to 60s music on YouTube soon since they are gonna fold even more to the "rights holders". Damn shame too, because I did all the work copying them from the original LPs and cleaning up the audio since nobody is printing CDs of them. But, hey, it will make UMG(told you I was still looking at you, UMG a crap-ton more money!
Thanks, Congress, for selling us all out yet again. So much for all of them serving the public trust.
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
She's got a bill currently languishing in committee that would be a big hit to the revolving door of "become senator/become lobbyist".
Again though, you have to put the kinds of folks in power who will support it. Right now that appears to be the Justice Democrats. If it's not, we need to vote them out. But they at least a) refuse corporate PAC money, b) support laws like Liz Warren's that make it illegal to lobby after serving in Congress and c) have a populist, pro-consumer, pro-worker platform.
One thing you will never do is get rid of big government. The rich and powerful like it that way, and if you try to solve the problem by eliminating the strong central government the wealthy will just build those power structures on their own and without your input. The only solution is to take part in the system and make it what you want it to be.
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About 1,500 artists currently have active contracts with record labels in the US.
About 15 million artists are listed on Myspace.
You seem to be thinking that only artists advertised by a major label are worth listening too. Most artists featured in marketing campaigns by major labels are signed to the labels that market them, yes. The question is, are you looking for marketing, or for music? The labels provide most of the marketing, and 0.0001% of the music.
I am an aggressive progressive and guess where I just moved?? See you at the ballot box in November :D :D :D :D
The fact that you keep repeatedly imploring the readers to ignore and otherwise not respond to your post with politics is a clear indicator that you, yourself, know that your party did this, it is wrong, and you should be ashamed but you aren't. Furthermore, in typical conservative fashion, you've shown your hypocrisy multiple times. The worst being how you don't like a law so it's ok to break it (your youtube videos you're whining about) but your party is always screaming "RULE OF LAW" and I'd wager you usually do too.
What your long post is REALLY bitching about is that you're pissed you have to lay in the bed you demanded we buy. You voted for the fucker. We, the unashamed liberals (so get over it), told you what you'd get. You decided spite was the better choice. You can fuck right off. "Suck it up buttercup" I think is what you guys tell us.
Garbage. Under the old system if I bought a record I could play it over and over until the groves wore out. With the streaming you're supposed to pay each time you listen to it. If this is a better deal for the artists (dubious) it's only because the price has been jacked up for the benefit of all the parasites.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I'm okay with Trump being blamed for this, but that's just because I dislike him. Honestly if you dug I bet you'd find more Democrat influence than Republican, because it's usually the Democrats bowing to the media companies.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
If copyright was designed to encourage artists to produce more art for the enrichment of the people, how did it ever start being applied after an artist's death. You can't get more art from the dead. I mean, I know greed explains it, but what's the justification?
... with the musician industry.
They are direct enemies.
More precisely, the former tries to leech on the latter for cocaine money too. But any part of the latter, used this way, by definition dies and becomes part of the former.
What you describe, is part of the former.
Hint: There are usually no artists in the mass-media, nor are they hyped.
You need to look for music in better places. Not the radio, for starters.
Try those who play the bars and clubs and streets every day, and dont care about copying, since tickets and merchandising are their only incomes. Or look on YouTube if you know how to find those who do it privately and for the love of it.
Just be wary of and avoid the risk of becoming a hipster. ;)
Now a new administering body will be created
Hooray for small government!! Hip, hip, hooray!!
AC
Yep Trump had nothing to do with the economy recovering. It's just a coincidence that the recovery started the day after he was elected.
Or it could be that the economy often runs on a combination of the reality of the economic engine and the hopes and aspirations of all those involved in the economy, from consumers to business owners to stock owners, and all of those people suddenly became hopeful now that they knew the economy crushing policies of the Democratic party were at an end.
So you're right Trump alone did not cause the economy to recover. The ouster of Obama. The failure to elect Clinton. The loss of both houses of congress by the Democrats. These are what caused the economy to initially recover. The subsequent loosening of regulations by Trump appointees are what sustained most of the recovery.
Had Clinton been elected and the Democrats controlled Congress I have no doubt the economy would still be in a malaise and unemployment among all groups, particularly minorities would still be at an all time high.
If you want to erect an ironclad separation between corporations and politics, then there's one further step you need to take. Do you believe in "no taxation without representation?" Most Americans do. If you do, and you also believe in taxing corporations, then you also believe corporations are entitled to representation in government. Since corporations can't vote, the only form of representation they have is (drumroll)... campaign contributions.
So to completely separate corporations and politics requires (1) not voting for anyone who accepts campaign contributions from a corporation, and (2) eliminating corporate taxes.
If you're gonna argue that corporations are made up of people, who can vote, then congratulations - you've half figured it out. Yes corporations are made up of people. And corporate taxes are paid for by those same people - via higher prices, lower wages, and lower dividends. So it doesn't really matter whether you tax corporations, or instead tax the people buying corporate products, working at corporations, and receiving dividends from corporate stock. The same people end up paying the taxes either way. Corporations are just pass-through paper entities, a facade for the people behind them - both in terms of representation and for taxation. The cleanest way to accomplish what you want still remains eliminating corporate taxes and removing the ability of corporations to donate to campaigns.
Music and movie industries are out of control. I think it's time everybody stopped paying for any music or movies. Everybody needs to either boycott both, or pirate everything until they get a clue and come back to reality. All these big corporations, not just music and movie, are making tons of money, and yet they still keep tightening their grip on everything. I have no problem with companies making money, but I hate the attitude that many of these companies are exhibiting. It's only going to get worse of we don't hit them where it hurts.
Feel free to add to the list of corporations that need to come back to reality. I'll add some now.
Comcast
AT&T
Verizon
Microsoft
Then there is the government that needs fixing.
Captcha = struggle
HiThere snorted:
Garbage. Under the old system if I bought a record I could play it over and over until the groves wore out. With the streaming you're supposed to pay each time you listen to it. If this is a better deal for the artists (dubious) it's only because the price has been jacked up for the benefit of all the parasites.
Did you even bother to read my post?
This new authority and royalty structure has nothing to do with music-for-purchase. If you want to buy music for your own collection, you can still do that from a number of sources: CDs, digital download services (as opposed to digital streaming services, which is what TFS and my post address), or, in many cases, direct from the artists themselves. This legislation imposes no barriers whatsoever to your purchase, nor does it have anything to do with purchased music. Full stop.
What it does accomplish is to put the collection and administration of songwriter royalties from streaming service plays on a more equal basis with the existing royalty structure for broadcast radio. Full stop.
Tell me: do you rail about how listening to the fucking radio deprives you of the right to own the music it broadcasts?
No?
Then you have zero basis to complain about this new legislation somehow depriving you of that right. It doesn't.
Full stop.
Check out my novel.
Trollololol.
blah blah blah HILLARY blah blah blah OBAMA blah blah blah DEMOCRATS blah blah blah
You idiots are like a broken record. Eat a bag of dicks.
Perhaps I'm cynical, but it used to be that when I bought a computer game I didn't need to have a server active to play it. Now, even single user play, when available, requires activation which can be disabled whenever the vendor gets tired of supporting the game. To me this looks like setting up music to work the same way.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
How does this affect the RIAA's soundexchange scam?
HiThere insisted:
Perhaps I'm cynical, but it used to be that when I bought a computer game I didn't need to have a server active to play it. Now, even single user play, when available, requires activation which can be disabled whenever the vendor gets tired of supporting the game. To me this looks like setting up music to work the same way.
Perhaps that's because you don't understand - and apparently don't wish to understand - that this has nothing whatever to do with controlling where you, as a consumer, get your music. And, since you're not a songwriter, you don't grasp the economics of songwriting as a profession - and appear to be resistant to learning anything about the subject.
I say that, because I've already twice explained what this legislation does and does not do from a consumer perspective, and yet you insist on changing the subject, while pretending that we're talking about the same issue.
We're not. We haven't been. And I'm unwilling to continue to discuss this "threat" you claim to perceive that has nothing whatever to do with the legislation about which TFS and my original post were concerned.
Do the record companies wish they could do away with the illusion of consumers "owning the music" they purchase copies of? I'm sure they do. But they haven't managed to do so in more than 100 years of recorded music's history, and I see no signs that they'll succeed in doing so any time soon, regardless of how much money Disney bestows on politicians around the globe. I say that, both because the music industry's major players aren't making any effort to impose such a model on their customers, and because those major players are not the only players in the marketplace.
There are indie labels, artist-owned labels, and collectives aplenty out there, too. And they know better than to try - because attempting to take the music they "own" away from their own customers is an excellent way to drive those customers away. (The fact that those customers own copies of the music those players' artists produce, doesn't in any way mean they own the music itself. That has always firmly remained the property of the labels, publishers, and artists themselves - or rather, it's theirs until their copyrights expire and it enters the public domain. That's what "copyright" means: the right to make and sell copies. And, just as you can own and enjoy the right to resell a copy of a work - including a musical recording - doesn't mean you have any rights whatsoever to the actual music itself.)
The underlying composition belongs jointly to the songwriter(s) and his/her/their publishing company. That's a legacy of the 19th century, when the only way music was or could be distributed to consumers was in the form of sheet music and/or player piano rolls. Then commercial radio came along, and new legislation was adopted to ensure that songwriters and their publishers continued to be able to make money from their work, even as sheet music sales declined to the point of near-irrelevance. In the 21st century, the distribution models have changed again - but the central problem remains: how to ensure that songwriters will continue to be paid for their work, so that they can afford to continue to write songs for a living.
Royalties for public performance and recording are still the solution to that problem. The question then became: how to collect and distribute those royalties in the new age of streaming, where broadcast radio is in steep decline, because Internet-based streaming has siphoned off its customers. This legislation attempts to answer that question in a way that's fairer than the previous attempt turned out to be. It does not in any way affect the actual ownership of the songs themselves, because that hasn't changed. All it does is create a legal framework for a mechanism to ensure that songwriters, publishers - and now producers, as well - get paid for their work.
One thing I'm pretty sure you don't understand at al
Check out my novel.
Butthurt much, NPC?
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