2RockStars said that RIAA are middlemen and dinosaurs
Can we back up just a little to understand why these organizations had to exist?
Schizophrenic disclaimer: I'm a member of ASCAP opposed to blank-media fees, the latest copyright extension, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and institutionally-driven arbitrary protections.
A century ago music existed two ways: live and in scores. Musicians played and got paid, composers composed/performed and were published and got paid. Copyright, with its long common history, made it feasible to distribute printed copies of books and music. Early in this century, new forms of replication and distribution arose, especially photographs. Copyright was extended to those. Recorded music came later, as did software in myriad forms. No need to repeat the history.
But copyright protection was unhelpful -- almost meaningless -- without some way of acting on the protection afforded. How was a composer in Vermont to earn a few pennies from a performance in San Diego? How was a retired performer in Memphis to ear royalties on a jukebox play in Sault Ste Marie?
The answer was to form licensing agencies -- ASCAP, BMI, RIAA, SESAC, etc. -- to act as the artists' agent. This was a difficult court battle involving strikes and actions. It was not easily won, but it's hard to remember the days when a few dollars were all one earned... even if a recording went on to sell a million copies. Even as recently as the 1970s, film composers had to strike for the right to the music they wrote. Ever see Dr. Zhivago? The music for this film was thrown out. Gone.
The intellectual property concept didn't come about for no reason. It was a construct devised to bridge the differences between tangible and intangible replication, to equate in some way the idea that 1,000 copies of a record weren't merely 1,000 pieces of plastic any more than 1,000 copies of Barbie were merely 1,000 pieces of plastic. The plastic isn't the issue; the human thought is.
The agencies were aggressive, and still are. Ugly, even. Some of you may recall ASCAP hitting up the Girl Scouts for royalties a few years ago, and getting laughed out of town. The licensing agencies are called "thugs" by restaurants who created an ambiance through background music, but refused to pay the fees. In fact, the retaurateurs finally got their legislation... free background music in exchange for an extension of the copyright period.
It really went bad when the RIAA secured its tape tax in 1992. It was one of the first times government was collecting taxes and turning them over to a private corporation. The real thugs were unleashed. They slathered over the WTO and its U.S. progeny, the DMCA.
Many of us who depend on our agencies collecting royalties for us -- I make a pitiful $600 or so each year -- are ashamed by this behavior, and we've said so. I wrote to oppose the tape tax and the DMCA (my own Senator was a co-sponsor of both).
On the other hand, many compromises have been effected over the years on behalf of the listener (the 'consumer', these days). One of them is the survey. In case you've never heard of this process, it works like this: music airplays (and now netplays) are surveyed at random. Get found in a survey, and you get pro-rated royalties. I've had hundreds of airplays, but no survey ever found me. So every composition of mine has been given free to listeners. That's one of the bargains struck in order to make the licensing system work. With computers, it may no longer be necessary.
But the agencies -- my agency, ASCAP, among them -- are running scared, and they react irrationally. I was on ASCAP's first Internet committee five years ago, and even then, way before mp3 and at the very beginning of RealAudio, they saw a change coming. Their worry was not lining their pockets, but representing their composers effectively in a new world.
Likewise, the RIAA represents the performers, and in this world where commerce is now apparently king, those who sell more get more. Those who sell little get less than less -- for they pay the same tape tax that you do. The situation isn't equitable. Positions harden. Internet culture (information wants to be free) has not cohabited well with the results of a 75-year fight to identify and respect the creators of artistic 'information'. And a rising right-wing style of commercialism has further poisoned the atmosphere.
I host a broadcast and netcast with archived shows called Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar. Our raison-d'être was to widen listenership for new concert and electroacoustic music. And yet in our success, we now face the tribulations of the DMCA, which does not grandfather archived material. Our two-person volunteer gig is now obtaining clearances for 4,400 individual compositions -- or else comply with the RIAA's astoundingly bizarre rules of allowing only 5-hour show rotations for 2 weeks without playlists.
The understood relationships, not the middlemen, are being killed off. Not merely taking material without payment, but taking it without credit (all the creative participants relegated to unpaid anonymity), has become widespread.
Any experienced web site creator understands the feeling of seeing layouts and graphics and text and even complete pages and sites pop up elsewhere. Imagine if you were a lifelong artist whose survival was being compromised through similar ignorance and disrespect. I believe we have lost the ability to understand each other, and the agencies and legislators have actively participated -- encouraged -- that misunderstanding.
Slashdot Mirror
2RockStars said that RIAA are middlemen and dinosaurs
Can we back up just a little to understand why these organizations had to exist?
Schizophrenic disclaimer: I'm a member of ASCAP opposed to blank-media fees, the latest copyright extension, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and institutionally-driven arbitrary protections.
A century ago music existed two ways: live and in scores. Musicians played and got paid, composers composed/performed and were published and got paid. Copyright, with its long common history, made it feasible to distribute printed copies of books and music. Early in this century, new forms of replication and distribution arose, especially photographs. Copyright was extended to those. Recorded music came later, as did software in myriad forms. No need to repeat the history.
But copyright protection was unhelpful -- almost meaningless -- without some way of acting on the protection afforded. How was a composer in Vermont to earn a few pennies from a performance in San Diego? How was a retired performer in Memphis to ear royalties on a jukebox play in Sault Ste Marie?
The answer was to form licensing agencies -- ASCAP, BMI, RIAA, SESAC, etc. -- to act as the artists' agent. This was a difficult court battle involving strikes and actions. It was not easily won, but it's hard to remember the days when a few dollars were all one earned ... even if a recording went on to sell a million copies. Even as recently as the 1970s, film composers had to strike for the right to the music they wrote. Ever see Dr. Zhivago? The music for this film was thrown out. Gone.
The intellectual property concept didn't come about for no reason. It was a construct devised to bridge the differences between tangible and intangible replication, to equate in some way the idea that 1,000 copies of a record weren't merely 1,000 pieces of plastic any more than 1,000 copies of Barbie were merely 1,000 pieces of plastic. The plastic isn't the issue; the human thought is.
The agencies were aggressive, and still are. Ugly, even. Some of you may recall ASCAP hitting up the Girl Scouts for royalties a few years ago, and getting laughed out of town. The licensing agencies are called "thugs" by restaurants who created an ambiance through background music, but refused to pay the fees. In fact, the retaurateurs finally got their legislation ... free background music in exchange for an extension of the copyright period.
It really went bad when the RIAA secured its tape tax in 1992. It was one of the first times government was collecting taxes and turning them over to a private corporation. The real thugs were unleashed. They slathered over the WTO and its U.S. progeny, the DMCA.
Many of us who depend on our agencies collecting royalties for us -- I make a pitiful $600 or so each year -- are ashamed by this behavior, and we've said so. I wrote to oppose the tape tax and the DMCA (my own Senator was a co-sponsor of both).
On the other hand, many compromises have been effected over the years on behalf of the listener (the 'consumer', these days). One of them is the survey. In case you've never heard of this process, it works like this: music airplays (and now netplays) are surveyed at random. Get found in a survey, and you get pro-rated royalties. I've had hundreds of airplays, but no survey ever found me. So every composition of mine has been given free to listeners. That's one of the bargains struck in order to make the licensing system work. With computers, it may no longer be necessary.
But the agencies -- my agency, ASCAP, among them -- are running scared, and they react irrationally. I was on ASCAP's first Internet committee five years ago, and even then, way before mp3 and at the very beginning of RealAudio, they saw a change coming. Their worry was not lining their pockets, but representing their composers effectively in a new world.
Likewise, the RIAA represents the performers, and in this world where commerce is now apparently king, those who sell more get more. Those who sell little get less than less -- for they pay the same tape tax that you do. The situation isn't equitable. Positions harden. Internet culture (information wants to be free) has not cohabited well with the results of a 75-year fight to identify and respect the creators of artistic 'information'. And a rising right-wing style of commercialism has further poisoned the atmosphere.
I host a broadcast and netcast with archived shows called Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar. Our raison-d'être was to widen listenership for new concert and electroacoustic music. And yet in our success, we now face the tribulations of the DMCA, which does not grandfather archived material. Our two-person volunteer gig is now obtaining clearances for 4,400 individual compositions -- or else comply with the RIAA's astoundingly bizarre rules of allowing only 5-hour show rotations for 2 weeks without playlists.
The understood relationships, not the middlemen, are being killed off. Not merely taking material without payment, but taking it without credit (all the creative participants relegated to unpaid anonymity), has become widespread.
Any experienced web site creator understands the feeling of seeing layouts and graphics and text and even complete pages and sites pop up elsewhere. Imagine if you were a lifelong artist whose survival was being compromised through similar ignorance and disrespect. I believe we have lost the ability to understand each other, and the agencies and legislators have actively participated -- encouraged -- that misunderstanding.
Dennis