payola is illegal, but there's other ways around it, i'm sure.
something like "we'll sponsor this cool promotional contest for your radio station" but only if "you play this song a lot" where everything not in quotes is a verbal agreement.
does anybody even remotely trust the major labels anymore?
well, supposedly the labels are backpedaling on that "all music is a work for hire" issue, so ownership should be back in the hands of the songwriters at _some_ point.
that said, unless you're a top-ten sorta songwriter, i don't think it matters much. the vast majority of musicians don't make much off of royalties.
what they actually busted people for was making the copyrighted material _available_, rather than downloading it. busting the dealer as opposed to the user, or the hooker as opposed to the john.
which seems really screwed up, because just because i happen to own a few metallica cds, and somebody takes one, shouldn't mean i'm banned from the record store.
if i remember correctly (i wasn't -that- old then) at the time cds came out there wasn't much fuss over the ability to copy them because that ability didn't exist for the majority of consumers. i think they were thought of more as a possible solution to professed problems with illegal tape duplication.
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payola is illegal, but there's other ways around it, i'm sure.
something like "we'll sponsor this cool promotional contest for your radio station" but only if "you play this song a lot" where everything not in quotes is a verbal agreement.
does anybody even remotely trust the major labels anymore?
well, supposedly the labels are backpedaling on that "all music is a work for hire" issue, so ownership should be back in the hands of the songwriters at _some_ point.
that said, unless you're a top-ten sorta songwriter, i don't think it matters much. the vast majority of musicians don't make much off of royalties.
what they actually busted people for was making the copyrighted material _available_, rather than downloading it. busting the dealer as opposed to the user, or the hooker as opposed to the john.
which seems really screwed up, because just because i happen to own a few metallica cds, and somebody takes one, shouldn't mean i'm banned from the record store.
if i remember correctly (i wasn't -that- old then) at the time cds came out there wasn't much fuss over the ability to copy them because that ability didn't exist for the majority of consumers. i think they were thought of more as a possible solution to professed problems with illegal tape duplication.