P2P Bits 300
yohaas writes "Two Op-Ed stories today in the NY Times address music sharing. In one Kembrew McLeod says that the lawsuits aren't working and gives some alternate suggestions. In the other Harvard Law professor William Fisher says that the industry is going about the situation in the wrong way, concluding that 'the record industry's response to file sharing--trying to block the technology altogether--would generate the worst of all possible results'. Neither article is comprehensive, but they are good read nonetheless." Reader Brill Pappin points out that Canadians aren't afraid of the music industry. And reader The Importance of Being Earnest writes "The INDUCE Act, which would make it a crime to 'induce' copyright infringement, such as by inventing things like the Betamax, has finally been officially introduced. The bill has been renamed the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act [PDF]. In addition to the name change, there has been another slight modication: 'counsel' is no longer part of the proposed statute. Here is a line-by-line refutation of Hatch's introduction [PDF] to the Act. EFF has shown how broad the Act is by writing a mock lawsuit [PDF] suing Apple (for making the iPod), C|Net (for reviewing the iPod), and Toshiba (for supplying hard drives for iPods). Previous Slashdot coverage here."
Canada and the music industry (Score:2, Informative)
Not really true, there's just a bit of confusion going on now. The courts are sorting it out for us and will let us know if we should be afraid or not real soon.
There was a photo of the Culture minister wearing a t-shirt that said "I support canadianmusic.com." Of course, it really should have said "I support thecanadianmusicindustry.com." Two entirely different things.
Canada not afraid (Score:5, Informative)
Pretty logic Canadians are not afraid....
File sharing is legal here...
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5182641.html [com.com]
Read the fake suit ... then write your Senator (Score:5, Informative)
This lawsuit is creepy, but extremely plausible. After reading so much Grooklaw recently I felt like I was reading a real lawsuit. Time to write our senators this weekend. Find your senators here:
And the EFF's action item on this, complete with a sample letter, is here [eff.org].
We should all make a habit of this - I personally don't write these people often enough.
Re:Canada not afraid (Score:4, Informative)
Jerry Pournelle... a joke (Score:1, Informative)
At a meeting, we had read Jerry's latest rant. It was a particularly idiotic rant, which was saying something. As a rule, he generally gave good reviews to equipment that was given to him and the manufacturer sent a tech to his house to get it set up.
Anyway, I asked the editor in chief (as I was a young pup), why do people read him, and why does the magazine employee him.
He likened Jerry to the town drunk. Yea, you know he a stupid drunk, no you don't take him seriously, but he is a helluva a lot of fun to watch stumble around.
Fight back, why don't you (Score:2, Informative)
Re:List of those to sue so fars: what about Sony? (Score:1, Informative)
Suing Makers of MP3 Players (Score:5, Informative)
Ummm...that's not too far from reality. The RIAA tried to sue Rio for making MP3 players in the late 90's. I refer you to this wired article [wired.com].
Re:Neither of the NYT articles get it.. (Score:3, Informative)
If I were a lawyer, and couldn't get a real job, playing the RIAA game would certainly pay the bills.
Canadian CD's (Score:2, Informative)
Canadian Culture Minister (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Funny timing (Score:3, Informative)
This sounds like manditory mechanical licensing (might have the exact terms wrong... I can't find my copy of 'This Business of Music' right now). This isn't the fee the songwriter gets paid for an original recording, but rather means two things: 1) that once you record a song and publish publicly, anyone can make another recording of the same song as long as it's substantially true to the original recording (whether the songwriter likes it or not), and 2) the people making the second recording (the licensee) must pay the statutory royalties as you describe them. The right to make the second recording and the payment for that second record is dictated by federal law, but not the original recording of the work. And it's payable to the copyright holder which may/may not be the songwriter.
Songwriters can negotiate for whatever they want for the initial recording and radio play is mostly governed by the public performance license clearing houses (ASCAP/BMI/others).
This is worth a double check, it's been about a decade since I was actively in the business, but I think I've got the facts right in principle if not in specifics.
Cheers!
SCB
P2P is not a big deal (Score:2, Informative)
For years CDs have been sold on the economic principle of supply and demand - people have been prepared to pay nearly as much as a concert ticket to buy a CD (say 1/2 - 1/3) because in their head they figure "i can listen to the CD 100's of times so it must be worth it. Meanwhile the labels and to some extent the artists have thought "well i can sing this song once and sell it 1000's of times!" Now the consumers have started to figure that they can get music for free, this is also how supply and demand works, no its not the same as shop-lifting or raiding the warehouse! so get over it. Governments have no right to screw with our rights over this.
Re:Welcome to the Dark Ages. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not my area of expertise (legal or IP) (Score:2, Informative)
Leahy and Frist's comments about the bill (Score:5, Informative)
Also of interest, might be the comments made by Senator Leahy (D-VT) and Senator Frist (R-TN). I've got the entire senate discussion of the bill available on my web page [wagstrom.net]. You should read it and the EFF's rebuttal before calling your senator.
Take action now and we can kill this before it ruins innovation.
Re:Funny timing (Score:5, Informative)
I played with a band that now has 5 CD out independantly. Earlier in their career, they signed a contract with RCA to put their first CD out. They had their own tunes, but RCA demanded they use some "canned hits" as well, and they were wrestled down to only 4 originals on the CD. During recording, the label began catering sessions from restaurants like Sunset Grill (a non-cheap restaurant in Nashville) and the like. Once this band finally realized the catering wasn't free to them, they had it stopped. Then the cost of studio musicians came into play. Added to that, the producer had to find (at the label/band's expense) some obscure rare microphone for just one song, which halted production. Of course, hotels aren't free for the couple of days that you're not working in the studio. When I was a session bassist in Nashville, I was $50 per song, which is scale to the AFM. However, Michael Rhodes, Mike Brignardello, Glen Worf etc... are more like $300 per song. There are other useless extravagent expenses the label throws in, and there's wasted time spent by the label's hand picked producer, all adding to the cost of production. For this particular band, it came out to $250,000.
The saddest part is after wasting all that money, the label shelved the completed project, not wanting to spend the money on marketing. In reality, they could've had the same quality with $50,000 in the studio, and had $200,000 left over for marketing... or a novel idea, spent less on marketing and having done so, spent less on the project as a whole. But the labels like their model of wasting money on 95% of the artists while 5% of them make the $$ to fund the rest. Anything different would be admitting that the labels have no clue what listeners want, and the Billy Gillman's of the world would never happen.
Re:Read the fake suit ... then write your Senator (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not my area of expertise (legal or IP) (Score:3, Informative)
Unless the courts find the new law to be unconstitutional, they are bound by it in making their decisions. That's part of the separation of powers/checks and balances mojo.
So technically, they can't overrule a court decision, but they can make it moot by changing the law.
Re:You US'ians sure have a twisted law system (Score:4, Informative)
Re:INDUCE Act wording includes two tests... (Score:2, Informative)
2) INDUCE trumps the Supreme Court's "Betamax" ruling that a device be "merely capable" of substantial non-infringing uses to be legal. If INDUCE becomes law any device, service or person that induces a person to infringe copy-rights is infringing (and therefore most likely a felon). Once they shut down Limewire and Morpheus as companies, they will go after everyone running those apps and the coders who build anything that touches copy-righted works.
INDUCE is on the fast track to passing and becoming law. You can help defeat this overly broad and ill conceived piece of legislation by faxing your reps in Congress now. Click The Vote [slashdot.org] has free tools to help you do this.