Slashdot Log In
RIAA Claims Ownership of All Artist Royalties For Internet Radio
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Apr 29, 2007 12:22 AM
from the isn't-that-called-stealing dept.
from the isn't-that-called-stealing dept.
ISurfTooMuch writes "With the furor over the impending rate hike for Internet radio stations, wouldn't a good solution be for streaming internet stations to simply not play RIAA-affiliated labels' music and focus on independent artists? Sounds good, except that the RIAA's affiliate organization SoundExchange claims it has the right to collect royalties for any artist, no matter if they have signed with an RIAA label or not. 'SoundExchange (the RIAA) considers any digital performance of a song as falling under their compulsory license. If any artist records a song, SoundExchange has the right to collect royalties for its performance on Internet radio. Artists can offer to download their music for free, but they cannot offer their songs to Internet radio for free ... So how it works is that SoundExchange collects money through compulsory royalties from Webcasters and holds onto the money. If a label or artist wants their share of the money, they must become a member of SoundExchange and pay a fee to collect their royalties.'"
Related Stories
[+]
Politics: Internet Radio's 'Second Chance' Bogging Down in House 105 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Wired is reporting that the Internet Radio Equality Act is failing fast in the House, with negotiations breaking down over fair pricing for internet radio broadcasters. 'A legislative setback could make it harder to dislodge the new fees, which took effect last month after a federal appeals court refused to postpone the payment deadline. With the threat of congressional backlash fading, SoundExchange could find little incentive to budge from its current position ... SoundExchange has already proposed changes that could relieve small and custom-streaming sites from charges they could not possibly afford to pay, at least in the short term. Many expect a small-webcaster deal to be done by early September, when Congress goes back into session. But the deal on the table hasn't changed since SoundExchange extended an offer in May to charge them 10 percent of gross revenue under $250,000, or 12 percent of gross revenues over $250,000, with a revenue cap at $1.25 million.'" All very cushy for SoundExchange. Wired also points out that this is the same organization illegally lobbying for terrestrial radio royalties through 'third party' shell groups.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
RIAA Claims Ownership of All Artist Royalties For Internet Radio
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 458 comments
(Spill at 50!) | Index Only
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(1)
|
2
when I was a young boy (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Wednesday August 15, @03:36PM)
When I was young, my Dad told me the RIAA was good because they took care to ensure our music was reproduced with as high fidelity as possible. For example, the RIAA worked with the recording industry to establish techniques and standards for "storing" bass on vinyl by attenuating it, but incorporating offsetting amplification to restore the bass to its correct presence allowing for more music on a single vinyl disk. Thus the RIAA was there to ensure or help ensure the best possible music experience.
Oh how things seemed to have changed. I don't know if my Dad was correct (I didn't do the research), but regardless, the RIAA certainly seems to be the antithesis to the "old" RIAA. Today the RIAA sounds more and more like organized crime, except that to date, for some reason, every thing they do seems to be deemed legal.
So, it seems the RIAA has become evil. It's probably time people tried to fulfill their musical quests elsewhere as much as it may be possible. If you still need and want to listen to Janet Jackson, so be it, but:
Someone on slashdot turned me onto this before, I feel it important others check it out... I've signed up and have been a member of emusic [emusic.com] for a while now, and now have over 300 non-drm'ed mp3s and love it. And, I don't have to worry about the RIAA, at least I don't think I do. After reading their staked "claims" in the article, I'm not so sure. Regardless, should it actually be so, check emusic out.
Re:when I was a young boy (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://zulupad.gersic.com/)
I believe what you're referring to is usually called RIAA equalization [wikipedia.org], or the RIAA curve.
Re:RIAA Curve (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like an apt forerunner of the RIAA we know today...
Re:when I was a young boy (Score:5, Informative)
(http://christopherdeckard.com/)
your father was correct. in fact, as another poster mentioned, the eq curve still bears the name of the organization (RIAA EQ CURVE), and basically describes how vinyl should be "encoded" during mastering, and "decoded" during playback.
it's an issue with vinyl, because if the cutting head moves too much (from bass frequencies), it can actually cut into the adjacent groove, so you can compensate by turning the head in more each turn, but the storage capacity (length of time) suffers.
interestingly, how bass energy is dealt with today is super duper limiting -- this can almost be thought of as dynamic eq, but it's not. it takes place in the time domain rather than the frequency, but when a blip of low end energy hits the limiter, it turns it down -- coupled with the make up gain, this effectively turns everything else up.
this is why modern music SOUNDS LIKE ALL CAPS.
mr c
Re:when I was a young boy (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.pipingdesign.com/)
Re:when I was a young boy (Score:5, Informative)
Oblig wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
Re:when I was a young boy (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Re:when I was a young boy (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Tuesday August 22 2006, @10:59PM)
eMusic comes up regularly on Slashdot, and every time it does, I try to mention Magnatune.com [slashdot.org]. Yes, eMusic has DRM-free music and a decent selection (from what I hear, I never subscribed), but Magnatune has that plus the ideology. While the former got rid of DRM as a business decision in order to enter an under-exploited market, the latter is actually trying to change the face of music in the internet age.
Magnatune's policies include: No DRM, multiple free formats, medium quality songs distributable for free (the full-length samples are Creative Commons licensed!), choose your own price, 50-50 split between label and artist, and more. Check out the info link for details.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Magnatune, I simply am a very satisfied customer.
Re:when I was a young boy (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not clear that this would fall under RICO, and none of my lawyer (or law student) friends are awake at this hour. I'm not clear that you're allowed to take payment for someone who has not given you the right to do so. I'm certain that such a scheme could be legalized by the US Government (i.e. designate a single authority to handle some particular issue [ICANN for instance]), but a random corporation just reaching out and grabbing it is pretty fucking brazen. But given their relations with their sock puppets over at FCC, it's still a possibility i suppose.
Outright theft (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.linuxlabs.com)
Their claim is nothing short of outright theft. They might as well declare themselves to be the agents for your gas and electric service and insist you write the checks to them. I'll bet that would last about two seconds before they got sued and criminally charged in every state.
If I create some sort of internet radio content, and I want to make private arrangements with one or several netcasters to stream that content (perhaps for free), that's none of the RIAA's business. If I want to be paid, who is RIAA to interfere with my right to enter into agreement with a 3rd party of my choice to collect fees for me?
How is RIAA collecting (extorting) money for playing MY content any different than me downloading a bunch of their songs, pressing CDs and selling them on the street corner? Naturally, if they want to join my club, I'll forward their share to them after I deduct reasonable expenses ( new Ferrari, yacht, etc), handling fees (30%), slotting fees (30%), modest salary for myself (1,000,000/year), and of course, a promotion fee (30%). By clicking "I agree" on absolutely any eula ever, the RIAA has already agreed that any civil or criminal issues surrounding this agreement will be handled by arbitration (naturally, I'll be the arbitrator).
Remember, when a corporation speaks of the importance of obeying the law, about 90% of the time there is an implied "when it's in our favor only". Like any thief, the RIAA wants immediate legal action when someone steals from them while believing at the same time that when they steal it's a natural right.
While I'm at it, I think I'll represent that guy who patented the wheel too. Those CDs and records look awefully wheel like. $1 each (retroactively) should about cover it. The wheel patent guy can call me for his 10% cut.
RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/~GodInHell/journal/)
-GiH
Re:RTFA (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.fundraw.com/ | Last Journal: Friday October 26, @03:42AM)
IANAL, but I figure you could still sue SoundExchange and argue that the LOC doesn't have the right to create a national monopoly that not only violates the Taft Act and RICO, but constitutes tortious interference (an illegal interference with your right to enter into a contract, such as a contract via which you grant a net broadcaster a right to stream your content without royalty payments) on an unheard of scale. But you'd have to have some pretty big bucks to file and pursue the case, because it would probably have to go through a couple of rounds of appeals and eventually be argued before the Supreme Court.
OTOH, as is the argument with many monopolies, in trying to justify their existence, they'll argue back about how their monopoly creates efficiencies and prevents chaos, and is actually a benefit to the people.
But it's the fact that SoundExchange doesn't allow that royalty exemption that will be their undoing, because a court can rule that their monopoly has been abused and creates a greater harm to the public than any good their monopoly creates. They should neither have the ability to force you to sign up with them and pay fees to get your content heard or collect royalties against your will. And because they do so, they create a public harm that goes against the intent of any law that allows the LOC to grant such a monopoly. At minimum, a court could tell them that they must amend their anticompetitive practices and policies or face being stripped of their monopoly.
- Greg
Re:RTFA (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.deathpenguins.org.nz/)
I have a very strong dislike of this crowd, and they have absolutely no right to collect royalties on anything I produce or allow to be played by on an Internet radio station.
Re:Outright theft (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
You can still do that. They didn't say you couldn't. They said that Internet radio stations are entitled to use the statutory license rather than negotiate with copyright holders, for everything. And that whenever someone uses the statutory license, the money is handled by SoundExchange, regardless of whether the copyright holder is signed up with them or not, because that's what the law mandates. No one has said that there can't be other licenses. Though signing up with SoundExchange does seem to preclude further collective licensing, though not non-collective licensing.
Honestly, this is all not a big deal. There are plenty of more important things to get worked up about, and I'd like to know how you would expect collective licensing to work, if not basically along these lines.
Re:Surely this must be a joke... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://zulupad.gersic.com/)
If they actually start enforcing this, I'm just going to start an internet radio station with my own music. Other artists should do the same. Just let them try to sue me for royalties on music that I wrote/recorded/produced.
Re:Surely this must be a joke... (Score:5, Funny)
not a joke (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was a kid, you could disparage self-publishing as 'vanity publishing'. I don't think that's the case anymore. If you really care about music, you'll take a risk and listen without considering who funded the marketing effort.
Re:not a joke (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Surely this must be a joke... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://127.0.0.1/ | Last Journal: Saturday August 14 2004, @11:21AM)
One bizzare issue that I don't know how it would play here is if some artist released some content under one of these copyleft licenses and then subsequently signed with the RIAA, would I still have to pay a royalty? Some licenses such as the GPL/GFDL explicitly prohibit such a 3rd party revokation of licensing, after the content has been granted, but I think this may be one of the weaknesses of the Creative Commons license suite.
This certainly would be a strong test case to really test copyleft principles, unless the RIAA can show that they hold a patent on the concept of internet radio (which I don't think they do... and that also opens yet another can of worms in terms of "IP rights").
Out of principle I would hope the EFF would themselves host such an internet radio station, begging the RIAA to sue the pants off of them. And do that in a public manner. I would donate money to their legal defense fund (and to help pay for the internet radio station too!) if they would decide to go this route. It would be the ultimate in 'net civil disobedience.
Or the FSF doing the same thing but with GPL'd/GFDL'd music. It almost sounds like something Stallman would love to do for the hell of it.
Re:Surely this must be a joke... (Score:5, Insightful)
However if a webcaster choses to negotiate with a music copyright holder, and they come to terms, it's a non-statutroy license. SoundExchange can't get involved music under those type of licenses. The terms can be whatever both sided agree to. You can even ignore those silly restrictions on information display, interactivity with listners, time restrictions, etc.
What the article says thats wrong is that copyright holder can give their music away for free, and can't allow webcasters to use it for free. That's flat out wrong. SoundExchange can't stop that or even try to collect royalties for it. That would be interfence with the copyright holder's rights. I've love to see SoundExchance attempt to take that to court. Can you say "Crash and Burn!"
In regards to GPL'd/GFDL'd/CCL'd music, those are non-statutory licenses. The terms are already laid out. No need to negotiate. As longer as your agree to and follow the terms of the license, your use the music. And you can tell SoundExchance to go F... themselves.
Re:Surely this must be a joke... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://127.0.0.1/ | Last Journal: Saturday August 14 2004, @11:21AM)
That is the beauty of taking this approach to the issue and boldly advertising that "internet radio" stations using this approach to music distribution. I'm talking about being blunt and obvious that this is something that the RIAA can't possible touch.
The problem here is that I don't see the RIAA/ASCAP/SoundExchange interpreting this in the way you are talking about. Sure, you or I would agree that the rights have already been negotiated here, but SoundExchange is claming rights to license all music which is distributed via "internet radio" channels. And backed up by the Library of Congress. The point of the original article posting here is that non-RIAA members (which can include musical artists who have released their music under the Creative Commons licenses) are being forced by statutory authority to have royalties paid to SoundExchange, regardless of the terms, conditions, or licenses that were granted by the artists in the first place. They are using this as a way to force smaller recording artists or even groups that want to create an alternative scheme to the RIAA methodology to having to stick with this one approach and only use the SoundExchange system.
The point of using copyleft approaches here is that it would force the issue out of a copyright violation issue into the patently obvious RIAA taxation authority by a for profit group of corporations. If music which is simply placed into the public domain can be "taxed" in this manner, why not GPL'd music? Of course this isn't the only bizzare tax on public goods that goes to supporting for-profit corporations, but this would force such an issue into the realm of public debate for exactly what it really is.
This is also why this move by the RIAA is so awful and needs to be challenged as forcefully as possible, or at the very least legitimate alternatives need to be publicized in such a way that this monopoly can be broken. I think it would be through copyleft content distribution that you can make this stick.
Re:Surely this must be a joke... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.pembo13.com/)
Re:Surely this must be a joke... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://shortcircuit.us/ | Last Journal: Sunday October 14, @02:01AM)
All your base... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:All your base... (Score:4, Interesting)
Doesn't matter. There are laws in many countries that mandate that certain portion of the sale price of a recording device, or a recording medium go to RIAA or their respective equivalent in that country. You could claim all you want that you never recorded or dealt with an RIAA copyrighted content and you never recorded any of it using that device or medium you purchased, but that doesn't exclude you from the RIAA tax - you still have to pay it.
The same general principle could apply to the Internet radio and given that it has successfully worked for the recording devices/media, there is no guarantee that all of a sudden lawmakers in all countries, including the U.S., will come to their senses and deny the RIAA their "right" to purchase their share of legislation.
Re:In the US at least, you can sue the government (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
I believe that.
I write a couple hundred songs.
I run a web radio site and broadcast these.
The U.S. Copyright Office authorizes SoundExchange to collect royalties on my "use" of these songs.
I therefore owe SoundExchange royalties for the "compulsory license" to broadcast.
No. The law does not require a copyright holder to pay royalties that are ultimately due to himself. It's not a statutory license to broadcast music over Internet radio at all, it's a statutory license to broadcast music over Internet radio where you otherwise don't have a right to do so (i.e. you're not the copyright holder and you don't have a separately-negotiated license with the copyright holder, and there is a copyright)
As the holder of copyright in these works, *I am the one who authorizes their licensing, and if another party does so they are breaking the law.
Except when the law itself includes a license (as is the case here) which you don't get a choice in. You can always offer a different license, but anyone can opt to take the one Congress created. This is because Congress defines what copyright is in the US, and they've defined it to include this license.
Take Off Every FUD... (Score:5, Informative)
this only applies if you want to rely on SoundExchange to get you a statutory license.
So stations willing to negotiate directly with the artists and get nonstatutory licenses,
wouldn't have to pay SoundExchange royalties. (Although that said, they apparently forbid
SoundExchange members from granting separate licenses, so this would only work with artists
who are willing to boycott SoundExchange...)
(ObDisclaimer: me am not copyright attorney though)
Re:Take Off Every FUD... (Score:5, Informative)
How does this help the artist? (Score:4, Insightful)
Part of the whole RIAA con is that they loudly proclaim that they are doing all the crap they do "to defend the little guy, the artist." That's how they moralize what they do. They're just here to help.
So, exactly HOW does this accomplish that? Are they going to cut paychecks to all the indie artists they're leeching off of?
I'm betting not.
Re:How does this help the artist? (Score:4, Funny)
It start by panning around a rich mansion on the coast of the Pacific with 2 pools, a 5 car garage and a yaht on. A very rich family of a CEO of EMI lives there and he is having a conversation with his 15 year old daughter, he sadly tells her that unfortunately she will have to settle with just a Mercedes sports car for her next birthday instead of having a Ferrari, because those evil pirates downloaded movies for free. ... Sad marimba music comes on and the daughter start crying, throws herself on the ground and start having a hysterical fit. The screen fades to black and a marque scroll by with the words "LOOK WHAT THE PIRATES HAVE DONE!". The end.
Maybe someone would want to make such a clip and put it on Youtube...Re:How does this help the artist? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://savagebart.vox.com/)
"Don't download movies off the internet"
I couldn't believe what I was reading, so I said "Holy Shit! You can download movies off the internet?" As loud as I could. Since then I haven't seen the same ad in the theatre.
Re:How does this help the artist? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.thinktankdesigns.ca/ | Last Journal: Thursday December 02 2004, @07:07PM)
Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
The RIAA is alienating listeners, and now alienating artists. These policies will only cause artists and music lovers to seek alternatives- even more so than before. Eventually, SoundExchange will be collecting nothing, because they'll alienate themselves out of business.
It's not about the artists. It's not about the music. It's all about control. That's all it will ever be to the RIAA/SoundExchange.
RIAA... great business, or greatest business? (Score:5, Insightful)
They're #2. Maybe #1.5 (Score:5, Funny)
(http://kadin.sdf-us.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 16, @01:46PM)
Really? I could do better -- how about killing people and taking their stuff?
The RIAA is a close second, though.
Re:They're #2. Maybe #1.5 (Score:5, Insightful)
High risk, no guarantee of a long-term income. Real first-rate scum knows to squeeze people little by little.
Re:RIAA... great business, or greatest business? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~ram)
That is their business model.
Pay a royalty to collect their fees... (Score:5, Funny)
Hmm, this sounds just like a letter I got the other day
Hello dear Sir or Madam, This is Mugu Maccaca The III, the son of the late Mugu Maccaca The II, the prime minister of Nigeria. I respectfully request your assistance in transfering a sum of $65,000,000.00 from the bank account of my father who has past away. For your assitance you will get 25% of the total sum. To initiate the transfer we will need your help to pay a $7,345.34 fee to unfreeze my father's money. Please help me as the rebels are coming closer and closer to taking control of my inheritance. Your help will be aboundantly rewarded.
Thank you and God bless.
Mugu Maccaca The III, the son of the late Mugu Maccaca the II
This is the exact definition of the Mafia (Score:3, Funny)
(http://www.partow.net/)
Its madness (Score:5, Interesting)