EFF's Letter to the Senate on INDUCE 189
z0ink writes "Picked up off of EFFector today a letter to all US Senators on the topic of IICA (Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004 -- formerly the INDUCE Act). 'In February, EFF proposed an industry-led collective licensing
solution that would ensure compensation for copyright owners
while minimizing the need for governmental intrusion into the
digital music marketplace,' writes EFF Executive Director Shari
Steele in the letter. 'It's time for a solution to the P2P
conflict that pays artists, not lawyers.' IICA has been covered here on Slashdot with more information available here."
Copyright owners != artists (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course most copyrights are owned by publishers, not artists...
Lawyers (Score:3, Insightful)
It's time for a solution to any problem that never involves lawyers.
Lawyers are a kind of leech that is created by the government itself: the law that governs what citizens are or aren't allowed to do (that means all of us) has become so complicated that we, the citizens, have to hire 3rd parties who are versed in its intricacies, to "interface" with the judicial system. This certainly isn't new, and it's the same thing in all countries in the world, but it never fails to infuriate me.
Make the law simpler, and (1) the leeching caste of the lawyers will not be required each and every time you have to talk to a judge, and (2) since people won't necessarily lose money on attorney fees, frivolous lawsuits designed to impoverish the defendants, or threaten to do so like the RIAA's strong-arm technique of wrestling 3 grands out of 13 year old teens, will disappear.
One big problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Not sure which is more greedy...the record labels or the lawyers. They both want all the money and are not worried about the artist.
Re:Copyright owners != artists (Score:5, Insightful)
Then of course it'll be blamed for putting a whole shitload of fat guys in suits out of work, they'll buy some more laws to put a stop to it, etc...etc...etc...
Damn, I have become cynical lately.
Re:Copyright owners != artists (Score:5, Insightful)
If this was the 80's (Score:4, Insightful)
I belive that if this bill goes ahead it could act as a catalyst for other countries to pass similar laws and at the same time hurt the IT sector worldwide.
nice proposal but ... (Score:2, Insightful)
They only care about copyright owners, not artists.
Just Lower the price of music (Score:1, Insightful)
Why wont they work with p2p software and have each d/l cost like
They would make Billions and it would cost them allmost nothing to distribute the music, because the fans would be doing it for them. Sure people would still d/l for free, but most people would pay
It'll never happen (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem here is that Congress is full of lawyers bent on doing things that amount to full-employment programs for lawyers and accountants. A program like this one that would have the effect of reducing lawsuits has no chance at all.
We complain loudly about conflict of interest by legislators and regulators, while ignoring the biggest one of all: that lawyers write laws. I believe that being a practicing attorney should bar one from being eligible to serve in Congress in much the same way as being an insurance company executive, as a practical matter if not a legal one, bars one from serving as an insurance regulator.
Re:I've tired writing my Senators and Congressman (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Give 'em a chance (Score:4, Insightful)
The big music companies can't be forced to block-license their output. They do it for radio stations because it's in their interest to have their songs played in a context where a) large numbers of people can hear them, and b) if their song isn't playing, someone else's would be.
Neither of these applies to individual downloads. The fact you're listening to their song doesn't mean that large numbers of people will hear it. And, if you want to hear a particular song and find it isn't available for online download, it isn't particularly likely that you'll run off and buy another song which IS available for online download. (Unless you're an EFF protestor, but that's too small a group.) And if you say "if it isn't available for legal download I'll pirate it" then they'll call for the handcuffs brigade. It's ridiculous to suggest that the suggestion for addressing the devaluation of a law should be backed by the threat of breaking that law.
Nor do either of these apply to "internet radio stations" where there are far too many for any one to have significant coverage.
Why it won't work (Score:5, Insightful)
The EFF idea makes too much sense, and therfore violates about 10 rules of making law
10 rules of making law
a. Any law congress shall enact must be hard to understand and convoluted
b. Any oppurtunity to get your face on TV to tackle a serious problem of your campaign contributer must be taken
c. Do not pass any law that may in any way reduce any lawyers potential to earn money
d. Keep starving artists that way
e. The EFF is just like the ACLU - it's just a collection of letters that your constituants don't know about - but probably won't like
f. If I don't understant it, I must fear it and pass legislation against it
g. This letter contains the phrase " P2P technologies", get RIAA approval on how to think about this
h. This letter contains the phrase "profound threat to innovation", get Microsoft approval after talking to the RIAA
i. Anything that congress can meddle in the better
j. If it's simple, makes sense, and doesn't require congressional involvement it must be wrong.
Also remember that this is an election year. The eff proposal removes a potential income source from lawyers, the single strongest lobby in Congress. This will go nowhere until people take the time to write their congresspersons. May I humbly suggest that my fellow
cluge
AngryPeopleRule
Comparing the INDUCE act to... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fishing sinkers would be illegal because they *might* be melted down and recast into bullets.
I will buy music again when.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a plastic scratchy waste product. Not a shitty format digistream for my iPod.
A -full- perpetual, amd fully paid up licence please. And THEN, ill pay.
Ill burn my own dern copies. Ill mediashift too my own dern iPod. I just want a -licence-, and a one-time access to a 100% lossless audio format. And the burden of knowing Im a licensee, should be given to the RIAA. I fully expect THEM to proove Im a licensee, and as such can copy YOUR cd if mine gets lost.
"This music was made for you and me"
"/Dread"
Re:If this was the 80's (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No comment (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Copyright owners != artists (Score:1, Insightful)
I wouldn't be too worried about those guys. I'm sure John Kerry's presidential administration would pick up any ex-RIAA executives and offer them positions of power. The democrats have a love-fest going with the entertainment industry just like the Republicans are supposedly controlled by Halliburton. :-)
Re:Give 'em a chance (Score:1, Insightful)
Sounds like a perfect monopoly to me.
Yeah right (Score:3, Insightful)
I think setting a fixed fee would be a bad idea. No incentive -> degraded quality -> socialism -> death of the industry.
I'd gladly pay $200 for the latest Ferrari.
Wrong audience (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Give 'em a chance (Score:3, Insightful)
The point is that I bought albums because I wanted to hear all the tracks that never got airplay. So many of them were such great songs.
Interesting. Most people complain that they are forced to buy 11 tracks of crap just to get a single track that they like.
Re:Copyright owners != artists (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't be surprised to find that standard RIAA boilerplate includes such a clause.
Re:Give 'em a chance (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually they can. The recording industry fought the compulsory licenses instituted for radio because they lost some control. It was in the consumer's best interest to have the compulsory licenses so the radio stations couldn't be held hostage by the recording industry. The same thing with cable television. Broadcast television programs have a compulsory license when shown on cable. That was to prevent the broadcast stations from being able to kill the CATV market by making the licenses too high.
The same situation exists here. If the licenses are not compulsory, the recording industry can simply make the licenses so high that it's cheaper to buy a CD and thus protect their business model.
Re:Copyright owners != artists (Score:4, Insightful)
They may get paid too much for what they do, but they do stuff.
Artists cannot go national on their own; they somebody to invest in studio time, radio distribution, etc.
From what I've seen, most artists in this day and age just go where they are told and say what they are told by their Handlers.
In short, you don't become big without luck or a very talented promotional team.
I, for one, would prefer the artists get to concentrate on performing and writing.
Re:nice proposal but ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope, it's not compulsory, take a look [eff.org]. No rightsholder is forced to particpate if they don't want to, unlike other compulsories that you seem to be refering to.
"If the license is reasonable, why wouldn't they? To suggest otherwise is assuming all downloaders are only trying to avoid paying for it. That simply isn't true."
All downloaders are only trying to avoid paying? I don't know. Most? Absolutely.
Have you ever tried to sell anything via "voluntary" payment? I have. The vast majority won't pay if they don't have to. As soon as you require payment, you see almost 10 times more payment -- and that's the money intended to go to the artists.
Or artists could start relying on gigs for income (Score:5, Insightful)
Bands and musicians might care to start performing live as a job of work rather than as an act of cherry picking and earn a buck.
There's no reason why musicians can't earn a living like brick layers, plumber, programmers etc all do. The need for the record industry is predicated upon a desire to turn a small proportion of people into multimillionaires.
Pandora HAS openned the box and there's no going back. All this concern about trying to wrestling the P2P networks is just tilting at windmills.
Re:Copyright owners != artists (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's break this down one point at a time.
Studio time: I think there are at least three recording studios in people's homes in my neighborhood. Most of them are highly computer-based, costing a tiny fraction of what a major label studio would cost to build, but still providing similar quality. That's not saying that finding a good engineer isn't important, but a good engineer costs a tiny fraction of what it costs to rent a studio, which in turn is a tiny fraction of how much many record company-owned studios screw you for if you are signed with their label....
Radio distribution: this one is easy. It's not like books where the cost of publication is huge and you have to be hyper-selective. You just need a handful of companies that take submissions and distribute them to radio stations. Your band would sign a waiver of liability to protect the company if you ripped off somebody else's music, and then your music would go in a slush pool. There are already a few companies that do this, though they mostly target Muzak-type markets rather than radio stations.
Anyway, with such a mechanism, radio stations who wanted to be indie-friendly could then simply grab a random 24 songs (one an hour) from the slush pool and play them, then report upstream on whether people called in and said "that song rocks" or "that song sucks". The slush pool songs would have someone reading a URL at the end telling where you could find that artist on the distributor's website ("to hear more by this artist, search for 'My Sucky Little Band' at megamusicdb.com". Music that got a good response could be weighted higher than music that got a bad response, and thus would naturally get more airplay. The weighting could be segregated by target audience, by region, by genre, whatever.
Most artists who "just go where they are told and say what they are told by their Handlers" end up making cookie cutter music that appeals to teenagers for three weeks, then dies out. And you're right that those sorts of disposable pop stars could never make it on their own. That doesn't mean that there aren't artists who could.
Re:Then nobody has any karma, right? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Copyright owners != artists (Score:3, Insightful)
What's often forgotten is the artists already pay for this in the form of 'advances' from the record companies against future earnings. Record companies lose if future earnings don't materialize, but that's a risk management issue undertaken by banks, relatives and bookies every day and I see no reason for federal legislation to support RIAA member's poor performance in this respect.