Canadian Recording Industry Ass'n Lets DJs use MP3s

Yannick writes "Wired is reporting that Canadian [mobile] DJs are now (legally) permitted to use MP3s in their 'performances'. Seems that there's CA$200 cover charge (and further fees per additional hard disk). The whole thing has some interesting implications for the music industry in general..."

Comments

Stupid law

[crow]

Uck.

Why do they need some special law for this? If they own the CDs, they should be able to repackage the data anyway they want, as long as they're only using it the way they would use the original media.

In the United States, a DJ can already do this, and he won't have to pay any special licensing fees. It's only illegal if he distributes copies, or if he doesn't retain the originals.

RIAA & MP3s

[Chemical Serenity]

The RIAA doesn't have a problem with mp3's per se, just what people are doing with them.

I'm working on a project right now to stream .mp3s while remaining in RIAA guidelines (quite a steaming pile of some nasty-ass legalese... I've been on the phone with them and my contractor's lawyer more than a few times trying to get it all straight).

What appears to be the RIAA's biggest worry (as evidenced by thier legal stuffies) is not that people have .mp3s, or even that they're broadcasting them over the net (or at a party or dance or whatever), but that their use is allowing people to bypass buying CDs. Take, for example, this snippit from the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (one of the documents one must adhere to for compliance), which states:

Sound recording performance complement. A Webcaster may not play in any three-hour period (1) more than three songs from a particular album, including no more than two consecutively, or (2) four songs by a particular artist or from a boxed set, including no more than three consecutively.

This is designed so that people can't simply set up a recording device of some sort and 'recreate' an album just by tuning in an pushing the button with the red dot. Other entries in there also seem geared towards non-copying things (some outright, others more hidden).

Under the circumstances, it seems pretty unlikely that DJs using mp3s in the field are going to be doing so for copying/trading purposes, so the RIAA probably wouldn't really give much of a care... and even if they did, the ability to police every kegger, rave and school dance is an impracticality of enormous proportions.

BTW - The site is at www.quicktracks.com. Please note that in its current incarnation we're *not* compliant. I'm working on that software right now, so the beastie will be up and down a bit over the next week or so as I poke at it.

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rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)

Hold on a minute...

[Denor]

It's nice to see that there's at least some company that's not completely in the dark about MP3s (*cough*RIAA*cough*). But if I were a DJ in this situation, I'd hardly be happy. In fact, I'd probably see it as yet another way for the rather greedy record industry to line their pockets. Why? Some quotes from the article:

DJs can buy a license giving them the right to burn their own compilation CDs of "useable tracks," ... The license allows them to reproduce music as MP3s to be used at their gigs

and...

The CN$200 fee gives DJs a blanket license to make one reproduction of music released by most of the major record companies.

In other words, the AVLA is charging you for the priveledge of copying onto your hard drive songs that you already own!
It's a step forward for recognition of MP3s as not-just-pirated-material, but it's not exactly a great thing altogether.

Hrrrm

[Signal 11]

You may read, view, or otherwise observe the contents of this post. You are also granted the non-exclusive right to copy this post to a information storage device such as a 'PC', however at no time may there be more than one copy of this post be viewable from the information storage device through any medium. Reader is further warned that poster hereby disclaims any responsibility that will result from reading this pseudo-legalise. Author of this post does not offer any warranty, either implied or otherwise....

Any fool can create legalise and obscure things, and any fool will mind it. Information has been, and always will be... free. The RIAA would spend it's resources better trying to make water run uphill.

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Red flags, trains, cars, horses and evolution

[Morgaine]

You've got it back to front I think. Despite throwing the occasional olive branch as in this case, the RIAA has a massive problem with MP3s, because they're fighting for their very survival, even more so than the musicians. There are a lot of possible scenarios for the future of the music industry in which the RIAA ceases to exist utterly, along with the studios that they represent.

Their current actions are like the red flags that pressure groups walked in front of locomotives, and their mega-industry is every bit as collosal as the one that used to be centred on the horse for transport and which now does not exist at all except in tiny niches. The lesson of history is that even the most extensive and solid of institutions is not as permanent as it may seem in its heyday.

In the case of music, that impermanence couldn't be more clear. Before the invention of recording, it wasn't possible to make money from replication of musical performances. Then recording was invented but replication required massive plants and capital, which created the opportunity for an industry to be born and collosal profits to be made. And now the wheel of technological progress has turned again: replication can be performed by anyone and costs almost nothing, and the window of opportunity for making profits from it has closed again.

Despite their self-righteous rationalizations, there is no law of nature that says that the music industry will always be as lucrative as it has been for the last few decades. There are no fixed points where technology is concerned, and MP3s are a sign of that. This newest chapter in the empowerment of individuals effectively means that the time for massive profits from replication and controlled distribution is over, that the RIAA is in the throes of extinction or at least severe mutation, and that the relationship between musicians and their audience is in transition. And so be it.

Bye bye RIAA. No one really expects you to die quietly, but die you will, just like other prehistoric giants who were too set in their ways to adapt to changing conditions. And that's not a bad analogy, because once again it's those pesky little creatures underfoot that are in the ascendency.