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Record Labels Change Minds About Sharing MP3s
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Dec 12, 2007 08:03 AM
from the seven-years-late dept.
from the seven-years-late dept.
Mass Defect writes "While the RIAA continues to sue people for p2p file sharing, the record labels have made an about-face and given their blessing to users sharing MP3s via the social networking site imeem.com. In May this year the site was being sued by Warner for allowing users to upload photos, videos, and music to share. However to everyone's amazement, instead of being flattened, imeem.com managed to convince the label that this free promotion was a good thing. In July imeem.com signed a deal with the label. Since then the site has added Sony, BMG, EMI, and now the biggest fish of them all, Universal. Imeem now has the royal flush of record labels supporting its media-sharing service, each getting a cut of the advertising revenues generated by their catalog. Finally someone has figured out a way to do 'YouTube for MP3s' without getting sued out of existence."
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RIAA Argues That MP3s From CDs Are Unauthorized 668 comments
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In an Arizona case against a defendant who has no legal representation, Atlantic v. Howell, the RIAA is now arguing — contrary to its lawyers' statements to the United States Supreme Court in 2005 MGM v. Grokster — that the defendant's ripping of personal MP3 copies onto his computer is a copyright infringement. At page 15 of its brief (PDF) it states the following: 'It is undisputed that Defendant possessed unauthorized copies... Virtually all of the sound recordings... are in the ".mp3" format for his and his wife's use... Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recordings into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies...'"
Firehose:Record Labels Change Minds About Sharing MP3s by Anonymous Coward
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About time (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
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Give them a way to keep indie music off of Morpheus and they'll embrace it.
The end it near (Score:2, Funny)
here's the answer (Score:2, Insightful)
gee... i wonder why they agreed to drop legal action against imeem.
Re:here's the answer (Score:5, Interesting)
What I wondered is how much it costs an advertiser per page view. A bunch of kids that never buy anything could prove to be expensive to an advertiser. Remember the free Net Zero? I expect the content providers to squeeze the middle pretty hard. They overcharge for any use of their product. This will be no exception. Advertisers payments will go directly to the record companies and the website will go broke. Nobody providing RIAA content is making a lot of money and negotiations often bread down. Look at the fees they were trying to charge webcasters and the higher fees they were trying to push on iTunes. This outfit is next in line for the squeeze. They will be squeezed to the point they have to raise advertising rates to the point the advertisers demand more in your face exposure for the money or they go bye bye.
Re:here's the answer (Score:5, Insightful)
wait a tick (Score:2)
Besides, what's to stop them from having the RIAA from going after these downloads?
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Re:Making available (Score:5, Informative)
Nothing changes in the P2P lawsuits. The RIAA has been solid on a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy being as good as the original copy is a bad bad thing. Making a copyable file and posting it is bad bad bad and we will sue...
This website is not P2P. It is a post and broadcast.. There is no download and pass along a copy.. well not without some google searching on how to D/L a copy in violation of the DMCA. The songs are protected by streaming flash and maybe an identifying watermark.
The site is now a web broadcaster. The site pays royalties out of the advertising revenue. There is no P2P. Copies stolen (copyright violated) may be identified for later lawsuits by watermarking or other identifiers provided at the site to prevent theft (copyright violations). This is probably why there is no listening beyond a 30 second clip without an account. With an account the info may be embeded in the clips so if they show up on Kazaa later, they know who to sue for the violation. How much personal information do you have to give to get an account? If it requires a CC number, you are pretty much a sitting duck if you D/L and post on Kazaa.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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You can only violate the DMCA if you live in the USSA.
-mcgrew [slashdot.org]
tag it.. (Score:2)
wow (Score:5, Informative)
Re:wow (Score:5, Insightful)
'Loads of ads' is apparently 2 per page. I've learned to tune them out, so I don't care.
The 'download' button is a good alternate (read: not a flash ad) revenue source and I probably -will- use it to buy from Amazon the songs I want to keep.
Registration is free, and what -doesn't- require you to subscribe to get the full benefit these days?
It even lets you create and listen to playlists, so you don't have to play a single song at a time. It's perfect for seasonal music and all those good-for-3-months songs that are oh-so-popular these days.
Personally, I like it and it didn't cost me anything. Plus, the fact that they got some record companies to agree to -anything- is great. Maybe they'll keep continuing to gain some sense.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I've been registered for a few days since I heard about it.
I have to say, I really like it. Once signed up I can listen to every song in full, and fair enough the site is littered with ad's, but I am getting legal music streaming for free.
I just load a pla
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New at Amazon.Com: "How to
Yawn... (Score:5, Interesting)
What we're seeing here is the Record Companies trying to appeal to our better judgement, while making one last effort to maintain an iron grip over their content. And it's just not going to work.
You see.... last year was arguably one of the best years on record for independent artists and labels for this very reason. The amount of *great* content being released by small labels was staggering to say the least, and I'd be pretty certain that more than a few of these artists got their "big break" via P2P.
Meanwhile, the talent on the major labels was.... crap... to say the least, and it has nothing to do with the inevitable backlash that occurs between generations. Most of the "Top-40" artists are untalented, formulaic, and absolute rubbish.
The crackdown on P2P, and the agreement with Imeem is at least in part trying to mask the fact that the RIAA's members have completely lost the ability to identify and sign new talent. On the other hand, the indie labels have gotten quite good at it.
The days of rock stars with million dollar salaries are over. The labels need to accept the fact that music is going to become increasingly diverse over the next several years, and that their old strategy of promoting a very small number number of superstar artists just isn't going to work any more.
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Tell that to Led Zeppelin.
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pHR33 L394L /\/\P3z!!!1!! (Score:5, Informative)
End result: free, often decent quality (128 kbps), legal MP3s of music from major labels (where fair use applies; the usual disclaimer about not being a lawyer also applies).
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Are we seeing the start of "128kbps are just previews, 256kpbs is what you are prepared to pay for"?
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All the time all I hear on Slashdot is how all people want is to try before they buy and want to use their own fair use rights to shift from PC to iPod to car stereo
Re:pHR33 L394L /\/\P3z!!!1!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:pHR33 L394L /\/\P3z!!!1!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Vorbis is an excellent compressor, but LAME often beats it, mainly because it's a very mature codebase and it's psychoacoustic model has been tweaked to near perfection. Vorbis can get there - but it'll take time. What's really hurting Vorbis is the lack of support in iTunes/iPods - the most popular players out there. If Vorbis was available on this platform, you'd see a lot more interest in development, I think.
I've ripped all of my CDs to FLAC, then transcode to MP3 as needed for our iPods.
Getting out of hand (Score:2)
Common sense? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
IMEEM Confuses and Infuriates me! (Score:3, Interesting)
I think (Score:2)
Parallel universe? (Score:2, Funny)
I guess this means Duke Nukem Forever will be coming out next month.
Re:30 second clips are for non-members (Score:5, Informative)
Clipped right from a song sample page...
"You must be logged in to hear the full song. Click here to create an account."
You can listen to the entire song.. With an account. That is why there is so much Google information of how to cheat the system and download the songs. Nobody wants a bunch of 30 second clips of songs except as ringtones.
Re:30 second clips are for non-members (Score:4, Informative)
Re:A couple of choice comments on the announcement (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree that file sharing is a problem, but there are plenty of problems in the music industry and these problems have more to do with their lost revenue than file sharing itself. If the record labels had gotten off their ass and got into online music in a big way when it started, we wouldn't have this problem.
Re:A couple of choice comments on the announcement (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the copyright system isn't broken. Copyright has worked well for over 200 years in this country. (The patent system is another story). Now laws like the DMCA that criminalize what would otherwise be legitimate acts...that's broken.
Some would argue that the current copyright system is broken.
Re:A couple of choice comments on the announcement (Score:5, Informative)
Citation needed (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:A couple of choice comments on the announcement (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but accessing a Web server on port 80 plugged into the public internet without any authentication methods is legal.
Copyright infringement is not.
A better analogy would be reaching in to an open car window and removing something that doesn't belong to you: it's easy, quick, technically and physically possible. And it was made easy and quick because the window was down, and you happened to be in the area. So just because it was possible, enabled, or made easier doesn't mean it's okay.
But wait, in my analogy, someone was "deprived" of something, right? And in copyright infringement no one is "deprived" of anything (except the right to manage the music they create, own, or both, in the ways they and their duly authorized agents see fit under our current system of law, but we'll just ignore that for now).
Ok, then. What if you invent a really nifty contraption that makes it easy, practical, and quick to go into Borders and quickly photograph every page of the selected book in a very low key and unobtrusive way, and then have a mechanism that converts the content to a nicely formatted PDF, so that the final product is as desirable and functional as the original, albeit in electronic form.
Copyright infringement? Check.
Something made easy/quick by a technological improvement? Check.
No deprivation of a physical object? Check.
So how is that right, given the recognition and control that we grant to creators and owners of content (and their agents, etc.)?
That's right, but you also tend to make it sound like the record labels are totally benign and that artists get paid fairly. That's also not the case, as recording artist after recording artist has come out and said. You also make it sound like the RIAA don't try to control what gets played on the airwaves. They have rules, you know, for radio stations that says that if they want to play RIAA content, they can't play it alongside of non-RIAA content -- i.e., indie rock. Some radio stations have even expressed this view as completely ridiculous, but abide by it because they feel they have no choice. Doesn't this sound like the tactics of another big monopoly? One that starts with an 'M', ends with a 't' and has a Vista in the middle?
That's right, but you also tend to make it sound like the artists were forced into signing contracts with record labels. If they did so because they believed it was the best thing to do, that was THEIR CHOICE. There is ALWAYS a choice. And any organized framework for managing media content, distribution, and sales, will inevitably involve organizations or groups, no matter how informal or loosely organized, that act on the behalf of their artists. They'll take something for this. Whether it's "too much" is completely subjective, not to mention irrelevant to the discussion. I don't care of the label takes 99% and the artists gets 1% for the purposes of this argument: it doesn't matter, because that is the arrangement THEY entered into of their own free will, and THEY granted the right for their label and the industry trade organizations to vigorously protect the content that they essentially now legally co-own.
As a particular indie gets more popular, they'll realize they can't do it all themselves, and they'll have their own labels and proxy representation. And if someone doesn't care about how their content is distributed or shared, maybe they'll be able to find labels and trade groups who share this philosophy.
The game may change because of the digital realm. It is changing. But it's not going to happen overnight, and the persons and organization that OWN THE RIGHTS to content under the current system of laws have ever
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A couple of choice comments on the announcement (Score:4, Insightful)
If the artists don't like record companies making the majority of the money then maybe they should stop agreeing to terms where the record company gets the majority of the money.
If you can find people stupid enough to sign their right over for you to make money on then that's just capitalism. The artists are most of the problem.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The content is fingerprinted.. (Score:5, Informative)
"Any audio that you upload to the imeem service will be filtered by an audio fingerprint filtering system that prevents registered audio content from being full-length streamed to any users other than the user that uploaded it. "
This is why some tracks are fully playable without an account and other tracks are 30 seconds. They also frown on uploading content that you didn't create.
"You must not upload or present any media or content in which you do not have the appropriate rights to do so. You may be in violation of copyright laws if you do not have the appropriate rights to the media or content you upload or present on imeem. imeem will not tolerate known infringements or misbehavior by its users."
Most disturbing part of the terms of service is they claim you retain your copyright when you upload, but in uploading you provide an unrevokable license to them.. This is bad.
"Member Content, you agree to and hereby do grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, imeem, its contractors, and the users of the imeem Site an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully sublicensable, fully paid up, worldwide license to use, copy, publicly perform, digitally perform, publicly display, and distribute such content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such Member Content on the imeem Site or Service."
Basicaly you give them a permanant license to use your content in any way they want forever including distribution. They could compile your work and then sell it worldwide and you would get jack for royalties.
Re: (Score:2)
I cannot reconcile this. What is the difference? That Imeem makes money and a P2P user doesn't? That's exactly backwards from my thinking,
Re:"Stealing" (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed with stealing you can get away with a mild sentence or some community service when caught. Copyright infringement, on the other hand, will probably put you in debt for the rest of your life.
Re:"Stealing" (vs copyright infringement) (Score:3, Interesting)
If I go to WalMart and shoplift a CD, that's stealing. WalMart no longer has the item; it's gone. If I get caught stealing that $25 CD, I'll be arrested for misdemeanor retail theift, released o
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Oh, really? Where are these devices that ONLY play DRMed content? Every media playe