RIAA Wants $1.5 Million Per CD Copied

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Not content with current statutory damages, the RIAA is pushing for higher damages for infringement, damages that would total $1.5 million for copying a CD with ten songs. It's all part of debate over the proposed PRO-IP Act. William Patry, a lawyer who wrote the seminal seven-volume reference on US copyright law, called it the most 'outrageously gluttonous IP bill ever introduced in the US.'"

$1.5 million?

[KublaiKhan (522918)]

I knew that 'going gold' meant a lot to an artist, and I knew the price of gold was high, but $1.5 million sounds just a little high...

Or is this just for the ones that go platinum?

Re:$1.5 million?

[teasea (11940)]

Gold is 500,000 copies and platinum is 1,000,000. So if you go Gold, that's a net of $7,500,000.00. Now the company spent $100,000 to $250,000 recording, $3,000,000 in marketing (mostly payola) and another half million or so on incidentals (hookers, bail). Oh, and stamps. Add a half million.

The artist on the first album will 1 to 3% of the net, so with the remaining 3 and half million or so, that means the artist only owes the company an additional $150,000.00. Luckily there are 4 or 5 members in the band, so it's relativly painless. You should be able to make most of that back on your next album assuming you can come up with quality material in 9 months when the first album took 12 years of writing. (It's easier to just use the same songs with different lyrics.)

Have a cigar!

Re:$1.5 million?

[thatskinnyguy (1129515)]

You should be able to make most of that back on your next album assuming you can come up with quality material in 9 months when the first album took 12 years of writing.

Bon Jovi said it best,"You have your whole life to write your first album and only six months to write the second."

Re:$1.5 million?

[hondo77 (324058)]

You realize that you just quoted Jon Bon Jovi...in public?

Re:$1.5 million?

[Dirtside (91468)]

He didn't say Jon Bon Jovi, he just said "Bon Jovi". He was referring to the well-known Italian architect, Dr. Giuseppi Bon Jovi of the Milan Institute of Design.

I mean, duh. Of course, I have no idea why an architect is bloviating about music, but who can understand Italians?[1]

[1] No one, not even other Italians.

Re:$1.5 million?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Might want to check the numbers. Last I heard most major artists were costing 1 to 5 million in the studio, that's ignoring the Michael Jackson 25 mill per album in studio expenses. That's an average and some are more. Low end artist may be in the 100K to 500K in studio time. I'm talking major labels not Jim Bob buying a few hours of studio time or doing it in his garage. The actual studio cost is a tiny part of the expense the majority going to expenses and demands of the artists. Some expenses are legit like studio musicians and engineer time in post processing and mixing but the bulk tends to be conditions artists demand and their small army of people that are around them. Also for a major album 3 mill would be on the low end for advertising. They don't spend film money but they spend north of what they spend on producing the albums, once again ignoring Michael Jackson, in his case he just shows up in public sporting a new nose or weird outfit. The real expense though are the five or ten albums that tanked to get the hit one. Now that sales for even established artists are dropping like rocks they are going to be far less likely to go with new talent. Kind of the irony of the situation. Companies like to play it safe when things get tight. Better to spend 5 or 10 mill cranking out another Brittany album than give ten unknown artists a shot at it. With a lot of the singers these days it's in the post production anyway. Ole Paris Hilton helped let the cat out of the bag on that one. She can't sing a note but her album was passable once they got finished filtering it. It's why so many young artists don't sing live, you'd never recognize their real voice. The excuse is the dance numbers and difficulty getting clean sound. The real reason is a good share are there for looks and can't really sing.

Re:$1.5 million?

[KeyboardMonkey (744594)]

To put this in perspective, the entire US GDP in 2006 was $13.13 trillion. That's 8.7 million copied CDs.

I wonder what that is in Libraries of Congress.

Re:$1.5 million?

[rapturizer (733607)]

I think we should let them, only with the stipulation of a $1.5 Billion penalty when they file a lawsuit against the wrong person. Of course, this would be payable in cash to the person they sue. I would think that this would be an equally justifiable fine and would encourage some top tier lawyers to defend the public for a marginal percentage.

Re:$1.5 million?

[PopeRatzo (965947)]

I just copied Icky Thump by the White Stripes and Parsifal by Richard Wagner, conducted by James Levine. The Wagner is 4 CDs, so does that mean I owe them a total $7.5mil?

Let me get my checkbook.

Strange, because the last time I was in a record store (a few years ago, honestly) the price tag was only about 14 bucks.

What a bunch of wankers the RIAA is. Talk about having an inflated sense of worth.

 

Re:$1.5 million?

[Fishead (658061)]

Buddy of mine was working on a yacht with a schnazzy sound system. Once they realized what they had access to, all the technicians bought portable harddrives and made themselves a copy.

Good thing I didn't copy the 50Gigs of mp3's from CD, or I could be on the hook for a lot of money!

Re:$1.5 million?

[PopeRatzo (965947)]

They say a CD is worth $1,500,000 and you can get it for $14. (First of all you are apparently getting one hell of a deal at the store)

Sorry, but it's been a while since I bought a CD in a store.

Not that I never buy CDs, though. I've purchased quite a few CDs last year (or at least CD's worth of music) directly from the artists. I really like dealing directly with artists when buying their work. Not only is all the money going directly to the people who did the hard work, but it creates a personal relationship with the artist. You'd be surprised how many of my favorite musicians have corresponded with me personally just because I bought their music directly from their website. In at least two cases, they've sent me free previews of their next releases, and one even put me on the guest list at an upcoming show in my area (naturally, I declined and paid my way). Hard-working musicians really appreciate it when their fans think enough of their work to lay down a few bucks which goes right into their pockets, without doing a detour through several colonies of leeches and skimmers, none of whom have done a goddamn thing to help, and in many cases have made life harder for them.

I love music and musicians. I make a significant portion of my own livelihood by making and selling my music. The RIAA, MPAA, intellectual property lawyers, record company execs, A&R people, radio program directors, Clear Channel, major concert promoters, etc etc do nothing but hurt the quality and quantity of music. More and more creative people are realizing there's a better way. God bless 'em.

Does the RIAA have a licensed proctologist?

[Steeltalon (734391)]

I ask because I want them to be safe. It has to be painful pulling garbage like this out of their asses.

Re:Does the RIAA have a licensed proctologist?

[spun (1352)]

It has to be painful pulling garbage like this out of their asses.

Not when you're THAT big of an asshole. The RIAA could pull a dump truck out of their asses and not feel a thing.

Re:Does the RIAA have a licensed proctologist?

[VultureMN (116540)]

You are, indeed, correct.

I think this is the first, and probably last, time on /. where a link to the goatse guy would be ONtopic.

RIAA SUX0RZ

[by Anonymous Coward]

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  RIAA wants $1.5 million per goatse viewed [goatse.ch]

Re:Does the RIAA have a licensed proctologist?

[Malevolent Tester (1201209)]

The digestive system isn't a dump truck - it's a series of tubes.

heh

[Captain Splendid (673276)]

RIAA Wants $1.5 Million Per CD Copied

And I want a pony. Somehow, I think we're both going to be disappointed.

Re:heh

[Hatta (162192)]

Give as much money to politicians as the RIAA has and you'll both get your wish.

Re:heh

[KublaiKhan (522918)]

Cheaper just to buy the pony.

Re:heh

[TubeSteak (669689)]

Somehow, I think the RIAA have better lobbyists than you have.

And I think the point is not to actually get $1.5mil per CD, but to have that statute on the books as leverage to get more settlements.

Whenever you see legislation like the PRO-IP Act, you have to ask yourself two questions:
1. Who is sponsoring the legislation?
Sponsor:
John Conyers [D-MI]

Co-sponsors:
Rep Berman, Howard L. [D-CA]
Rep Cohen, Steve [D-TN]
Rep Jackson-Lee, Sheila [D-TX]
Rep Schiff, Adam B. [D-CA]
Rep Wexler, Robert [D-FL]

Rep Chabot, Steve [R-OH]
Rep Feeney, Tom [R-FL]
Rep Goodlatte, Bob [R-VA]
Rep Issa, Darrell E. [R-CA]
Rep Keller, Ric [R-FL]
Rep Smith, Lamar [R-TX]

2. Where did the model legislation for this Act come from?

Re:heh

[eiapoce (1049910)]

Excellent piece. BTW: Republicans = Democrats = Sold out. And I mean it, here is proof: http://www.politicalmoneyline.com/ [politicalmoneyline.com] - http://opensecrets.org/ [opensecrets.org]

I'd suggest american friends to change from a Duocracy system to a real democracy. As much is proven that a duopoly is not effective in favouring the consumer, why whould a duocracy do any better in the political field?

Re:heh

[pclminion (145572)]

I disagree with the notion that Republicans = Democrats = Sold out There are real and serious differences between the two parties and anyone who tries to marginalize those differences is usually agitating for a 3rd party or giving in to apathy.

Indeed. Back when I was getting my feet wet in the field of data mining, I decided to download the voting records of the US Senate, at least for the last 20 or so years. This data is publicly available on the government web site. A few Perl scripts later and I had reduced the entire voting record to a single CSV file. Each "issue" (an item being voted on) was represented by a single row. Each column represented a specific Senator, and the values were either "For," "Against," or "No Vote."

I also created a perpendicular data set, where each row represented a Senator and each column represented a specific issue, with the values again being "For," "Against," and "No Vote."

I loaded these data sets into a general data mining tool and ran some trials. Among other experiments, I ran J48 to produce decision trees to predict vote values for each Senator, based on how the Senator voted on some specific "model issues," such as gun control legislation. In other words, based on how a Senator voted on certain issues I could predict how they voted on some target issue. If somebody voted against a pro-life abortion bill, how would they vote on a matter of pollution control? Etc. I also ran the perpendicular analysis: based on how other Senators voted on issue X, how would any given Senator vote on the same issue? These decision trees achieved predictive accuracies of greater than 80% in standard cross-validation testing.

The decision trees are also very informative in that they describe the political influences between Senators. If the topmost branch of the decision tree for Senator X is Senator Y, then we can assume there is some kind of friendship, similarity, or power relationship between those two Senators, at least to some degree. These decision trees are powerful tools for political analysis.

But more to the point, one of the best tests I conducted was the application of EM-clustering to the Senators themselves, with the goal being to divide them into "camps," where each camp had similar voting preferences. I allowed the EM-algorithm to decide, on its own, how many clusters to produce, using an MDL principle. I was only somewhat surprised when the algorithm created three clusters. All the Republicans ended up in cluster 1, along with two Democrats. The rest of the Democrats, as well as all the independents, ended up in cluster 2. The third cluster contained Senators who had run for President. (My theory on why the algorithm created a "Presidential cluster" is because Presidential candidates often spend a long time away from the Senate, during their campaigns, and therefore have long stretches of "No vote" on their records. This makes them appear somewhat similar to each other from a statistical viewpoint.)

When "dumb," statistically based data mining software is capable of grasping the clear differences between Republican and Democrat, it becomes impossible to argue with a straight face that the two parties are the same. A fucking computer can tell the difference, why can't a human?

(By the way, one of the Democratic Senators the computer placed into the Republican party was Hillary Clinton.)

Re:heh

[by Anonymous Coward]

Whenever you see legislation like the PRO-IP Act, you have to ask yourself two questions:
1. Who is sponsoring the legislation?
Sponsor:
John Conyers [D-MI]

Co-sponsors:
Rep Berman, Howard L. [D-Hollywood]
Rep Cohen, Steve [D-Nashville]
Rep Jackson-Lee, Sheila [D-TX]
Rep Schiff, Adam B. [D-Hollywood]
Rep Wexler, Robert [D-Disney]

Rep Chabot, Steve [R-OH]
Rep Feeney, Tom [R-Disney]
Rep Goodlatte, Bob [R-VA]
Rep Issa, Darrell E. [R-Hollywood]
Rep Keller, Ric [R-Disney]
Rep Smith, Lamar [R-TX]

Fixed some typos for you.

Wrong decimal place?

[IronMagnus (777535)]

Maybe they ment $15

Re:Wrong decimal place?

[SailorSpork (1080153)]

Actually, that's about what each infringement is worth. If you use filesharing, and if for each song you download, you upload a song, your infringement for downloading/uploading and album on that fileshare would be about the cost of that same album; about $15. I still don't understand how any competent mind can come up with any more than that per infraction.

Since filesharing is on average 1:1, It's not that each person uploading ten songs is causing thousands of dollars worth of damages, its that thousands of different people are causing ten's of dollars of damage each. But if that were how it was stated in court, legal fees would outweigh damages, and lawsuits would no longer become lucrative sources of income.

Careful: Don't double dip

[by Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure the RIAA would love to double-dip, as it were, but if you upload a file to me (which I'm downloading), that's 1 infringement, not two. So, when doing your accounting, don't count both uploads *and* downloads. Or if you do, count them as 1/2 an infringement each. Which, may be what you are doing since you're coming up with a total value of infrigment which is equal to the album's retail price, but it wasn't exactly clear from your writeup.

Statutory damages for infringment of a registered copyright is 3x actual damages, so you could come up with a figure of $45-60 per total album upload/download. I'm with you guys though - I'm not sure where they get 1.5 Million from.

Walmart

[im_thatoneguy (819432)]

Fuck it. If they say I'm stealing it I'm just going to start "ripping" music from Walmart. The fines are cheaper and less signficant on a criminal record.

Re:Walmart

[StringBlade (557322)]

If you're going to steal CDs, why not start with a store that doesn't put RFIDs on all of it's merchandise?

Innovation through Litgation!(tm)

[frankie (91710)]

Sweet! At that damage level, the RIAA could afford to ditch all pretense of supporting music, and make a killing by sending lawyers down the street in major metro areas to slap subpoenas on every passerby with an MP3 player.

Re:Innovation through Litgation!(tm)

[Achromatic1978 (916097)]

He didn't sue the family, he sued the /estate/ of the pedestrian. Reasonable enough, if, as you have no idea of knowing, the pedestrian was at fault. Did they step out into a busy street? If it's the pedestrian's fault, are you saying that the driver should suck up the guilt for the rest of his life, /and/ shell out for the damage done?

Should he claim insurance?

Who do you think the insurance company would sue to reimburse their costs? The estate of the pedestrian.

Granted it's an unsavory thought, but if that car was your livelihood, and the accident was not your fault, why in the hell should you not try to recover costs?

It's grim and should be approached with tact, but...

Re:Innovation through Litgation!(tm)

[laura20 (21566)]

That's what I thought myself, until I looked up the original [typicallyspanish.com] Spanish [thinkspain.com] articles. His insurance company settled with the family of the dead bicyclist, admitting that the driver was at fault since he was speeding (estimated at over 100 mph in a 55 mile zone), and he had also been drinking. Then the driver sued them, presumably because his own insurance didn't cover his damage. So yes, the guy is a dick, is at fault, and is probably going to regret the lawsuit; the family was too devastated in the immediate aftermath to push for criminal charges, but that has changed.

Re:Innovation through Litgation!(tm)

[jd (1658)]

Bits of the pedestrian gave way. The driver was cited by police as doing 20+ MPH over the speed limit, although the news story cites (unnamed) independent experts as saying it would have been closer to 40 MPH over the speed limit. (The speed limit was 55 MPH). Far as I can tell from the news article, the driver is not claiming that there was shared responsibility for the accident or that the pedestrian did anything wrong, merely that the pedestrian caused damage to his Audi. If that really is the whole story, then the attitude is no different from the RIAA's (bringing this thread back on topic).

Right then

[by Anonymous Coward]

All you trolls that insist copyright infringement is the same as stealing, please point out a single instance of somebody being fined $1.5 million dollars for stealing a CD.

Obligatory Austin Powers Quote

[EEPROMS (889169)]

Mr Evil "I demand the sum... OF 1 MILLION DOLLARS."

Re:Obligatory Austin Powers Quote

[billius (1188143)]

It's Dr. Evil, he didn't spend six years in Evil Medical School to be called "mister," thank you very much!

Dollar worth less these days

[chris_mahan (256577)]

I hadn't realized the US dollar had lost that much value recently...

"Engineering Expectations"

[plasmacutter (901737)]

These people are just "engineering expectations".

They introduce this outrageous dreck, then suggest something which is still outrageous but comparatively mild, like, for instance, forcing ISP's to disconnect users a-la france, or forcing them to pull great firewall of china style 'filtering', or prison sentences for college students.

Then, they'll bloviate on and on about how these new proposals are a "compromise"

Or.. this dreck is merely a red herring to distract activist groups away from that rider they put into the college funding bill to force schools to 'filter' their internet on pain of losing their federal grants.

Explain this, RIAA

[DigitAl56K (805623)]

If a single copy of a CD has a value of $1.5M, how can you justify letting hundreds of thousands of copies on it sit on the shelves of major retailers worldwide, priced at gasp $10-$20?

This suggests that if I were to publish a copy of a CD online , even assuming it retails at $20, I would have to serve 75,000 copies of it personally to justify that infringement penalty. Consider that the only feasible way for me to do such a thing is to torrent it, and in this case I personally am not responsible for the entire distribution, the total distribution must be subdivided across every single person who downloads a copy, because they are also uploaders. Claiming penalties against every distributor for the total distribution is like double taxation, but tens of thousands of times worse - I should not be liable for the activities of others, except to the extent you can prove that I facilitated the very first unlicensed distribution and that said unlicensed distribution was directly responsible for the entire cascade of further infringement, and that all other copies of the works were suitably protected.

Complete B.S.

Typical lawyer's wrinkle

[Bearhouse (1034238)]

From the article:

"The issue is compilations, which now are treated as a single work. In the RIAA's perfect world, each copied track would count as a separate act of infringement, meaning that a copying a ten-song CD even one time could end up costing a defendant $1.5 million if done willfully."

Neat trick, eh? I fail to see the common-sense logic, but I guess that's never stopped the legal-beagles before...

For those posting about changing the business model, (earn money by prosecuting the shit out of your consumers). Yes, but it's probably more to get headlines and increase the imagined "deterrent" effect... Yeah right. Sure worked with the death penalty and murder/serious crime rates, eh?

For those posting about stealing the CDs, well sorry, but the way these desperate dudes are going, pretty soon it'll be illegal to rip those tracks to your Ubuntu box/iPod/whatever anyway. Fair use? Byeeeeeeee... Next up, 2Bn$ fines for those who rip music from stolen CDs!!!! Think of the children!

PRO-IP

[RobBebop (947356)]

This is related to the PRO-IP Act [house.gov] (press released on Dev 5, 2007) that is in Congress. Here is who to blame:

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), Ranking Member Lamar Smith (R-TX), Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA), and Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Tom Feeney (R-FL), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Steve Chabot (R-OH), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Ric Keller (R-FL), Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX), Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), and Robert Wexler (D-FL) introduced the "Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property ("PRO IP") Act of 2007"

Here's the "SHOCK AND AWE" value that the industry is using to get people's attention:

It costs the United States between $200 and $250 billion/year in lost sales, including 750,000 jobs.

Obviously, any rational thinking individual knows that 750,000 individuals are not "out on the streets" because piracy has taken away the revenue streams necessary for employing them.

Similarly, *if* $200-250 Billion isn't flowing into the pockets of Imaginary Property companies each year, doesn't that just mean that Americans are free to spend that same money elsewhere? Shouldn't Americans NOT NEED A $150 Billion handout from the government, if they have all this extra money from their copyright infringement?

Something isn't right...

Comparing the RIAA with bands

[adminstring (608310)]

Stories like this only help highlight the differences between musicians and corporate leeches that exploit musicians.

If you live in a city with a local music scene, support your local independent bands, and support the independent bands that come through directly by buying CDs from them. No musician has ever attempted to extort 1.5 million from their audience. There is plenty of great content out there without having to go to the RIAA and their ilk.

By Public Demand

[rinkjustice (24156)]

Alright, let's settle this once and for all - a SCO vs RIAA cagematch for most hated entity in the history of Slashdot.

I'm almost starting to believe RIAA is the favorite.

Riptopia

[teslar (706653)]

So, first I get an email from Amazon, telling me about their amazing new service called Riptopia [amazon.com]. You send in your CDs in multiples of 100, you wait some days, you get the CDs back along with a few DVDs containing high quality rips complete with album art, correctly filled-in tags etc. For about $1 per CD. And my thought was, "well, how curious, I wonder what the RIAA would say to that".

Then I come to /. and it appears the RIAA is saying it wants 1.5 Million dollars per copied CD.

It almost makes me feel like they have a new money-making scheme:

1. Let people copy CDs on Riptopia
2. Get detailed lists of exactly what CDs have been copied for whom from Riptopia
3. Send out the bills
4. Profit!!!

Now, I'm sure I saw a guy handing out tinfoil hats running around here somewhere....

calling filthy rich old guys.

[timmarhy (659436)]

What we need is some filthy rich old guy with nothing better to spend his money on, to take up this cause and start paying for some high price lawyers to defend people the RIAA sue.

if i was a multimillionare i'd do it just to see the reaction.

cost analysis

[xPsi (851544)]

$1.5M/CD? Hey, its only about $0.00027/bit. After a couple bucks, you might even recognize the data stream as music!

In euros that is...

[MavEtJu (241979)]

1.5 million US dollars... That will be 75 Euros.

Well, I'm screwed then...

[UttBuggly (871776)]

Hmmm....past 50 and still the proud owner of some 500 pieces of classic vinyl having and many more CDs.

I have many records...the original quadraphonic recording of Dark Side Of The Moon, for instance...that have been played ONCE. And that was to RECORD THEM to a more durable, portable media so I could enjoy the music as much as I wanted without damaging the original album.

Sure, vinyl isn't a CD. Doubt if the RIAA makes a distinction. And considering I have some excellent gear, and that I'm a professional musician with lots of studio time, and so on, many of my "copies" sound better than the CD version.

Of course, silly me...I assumed that when I bought an album...Led Zepplin IV...it was mine. Should I be penalized, brought to penury, and vilified simply because I've outlived some technology? If I could still get a sealed, cherry vinyl record album, I'd still buy them. That's not the case, so I feel well within my rights to record an irreplaceable piece of music every decade or so to the latest storage medium.

So, by my calculations, I can apparently offset the National Debt all by myself simply because I have old records.

Brilliant.

Re:IOW: steal the physical CD from a store

[ivan256 (17499)]

One pirated CD copy is worth more than a human life!

An above-average wrongful death compensation award for a healthy working parent would be in the $1-3 million dollar range. You could go murder somebody. It'd be cheaper than pirating a few CDs. And if the CDs had DRM, the jail sentence would be shorter for the murder too! The US military pays out $600 for wrongful deaths in Iraq. A pirated CD copy is worth more than 2500 Iraqis!

In reality though, they're probably asking for so much in hopes that the compromise amount will be high. Hopefully congress tells them to fuck off instead of coming up with a "compromise" that is right in line with what they were really hoping for anyway.

Re:IOW: steal the physical CD from a store

[JensenDied (1009293)]

Does this mean I can now go kill several people and leave a few burned CD's for their families as compensation and continue with my day?

Not $600

[c6gunner (950153)]

Totally off-topic, but since you decided to fudge some stats, I may as well respond: the maximum payout is not set at $600 but at $2,500. Larger amounts COULD be paid out...but my general experience has been that any time you start compensating locals for large amounts, they go out of their way to try and suck money out of you. When we were doing "peacekeeping" in Bosnia, there was a fairly large payout for pretty much everything from property damage caused by raids to vehicle damage caused in accidents. As a result, locals would often damage their own property in order to try and claim "compensation". They'd even go so far as to intentionally cause a head-on collision between a honda-civic sized shitbox and an armoured personnel carrier, which, unsurprisingly, most often lead to the death of the driver.

These things often seem like really great ideas to people sitting on their asses in North America, banging away at a computer keyboard, but in real life they don't work nearly as well. For instance, I can't count how many times some clown on an internet forum has suggested we offer a cash incentive for people to turn in explosives. Of course, the real world result of that would be a lot of civilians being killed while trying to bring in unstable ordinance. Or the suggestions that we pay people to turn in weapons - usually the only result is villagers selling us their WW1 era muskets, and then using the money to buy AK47's.

So, long story short, paying out large amounts for "wrongful deaths" is a bad idea. The cash currently paid out isn't meant to replace the person who was killed, and it's certainly not an admission of culpability or responsibility. It's just a gesture to say "we're sorry this had to happen to you, here's something to help you get back on your feet".