AudioGalaxy Reaches Settlement With the RIAA 392
blanu writes: "Today AudioGalaxy reached an out-of-court settlement with the RIAA.
To sum up the settlement, AudioGalaxy will pay the RIAA a lot of money and from now only provide songs for which the copyright holder has specifically given permission."
one problem solved, how about another? (Score:4, Insightful)
Great, what about MY songs? (Score:5, Insightful)
What about the MP3's I'm sharing of my music?
I suspect it's going to be a bit of a pain in the ass to convince Audiogalaxy to allow me to share my band's music over their service. How can I satisfy them that I'm truly the copyright holder? If it's easy enough to make it painless, what's to keep others from attempting to get their favourite artist's music unprotected using the same technique?
Opposite Effect Achieved (Score:5, Insightful)
And thus, this sad chapter of history has ended. No longer can rufians download music on the internet, making the delivery channels of CD, tape, and vinyl the only channels, ensuring that the copyright holders recieve their fair compensation. The brief period of anarchy is at last over, likely forever.
Or, possibly, just possibly, decentralized services with no way to be shut down are still around, and will always be around, and the RIAA is trying to close the cell doors after the inmates have already taken over the prison.
Well, good luck to them. As they kill those services that have any sort of control mechanism in place, all that will remain is those services that they can't control, which are precisely those services which can't be used to make money for the publishing industry. What may have taken a decade of evolution from central-controlled P2P to fully-distributed P2P is being encouraged to take place in a couple of years. The dinosaurs aren't just being replaced by mammals, they're encouraging them to do it as quickly as possible.
AG was about as good as possible.. (Score:2, Insightful)
This is only the beginning. (Score:5, Insightful)
THESE MOFOS ARE GOING TO TRY AND DO THIS TO THE ENTIRE INTERNET
Filtering of all content, on the backbone, to remove anything without DRM flags indicating it's OK to transmit is both technically feasible and completely coherent with increasing government demands to be back in control of the internet.
Welcome to the future of the internet: we call it television, and we'll tell you what you can see!
those wonderful press releases... (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course. The recording industry would much rather let the record labels, executives, managers and lawyers do the exploiting of musicians, as always.
"This is a victory for everyone who cares about protecting the value of music," said Hilary Rosen, Chairman and CEO of the RIAA.
And by value, she means dollars, not musical or technical merit. But she doesn't mean the dollars spent in "payola" fashion to radio directors who decide which songs are put into rotation in key markets (and you thought your phone calls and emails picked which songs got played)... nor does she mean the dollars spent on flawed copy-protection schemes. She means
I'm left to wonder; where's the AG press release?
Re:So...what's it gonna be? (Score:5, Insightful)
But the crux of the settlement is that in order for AG to let you download a song, they supposedly have to be given explicit permission by the copyright owner to allow the song to be traded through AG - whereas before, they had a model where it was up to the copyright holder to instruct them to block the song.
Bottom line then is that AG may once again become a good resource for well known material from popular bands (as someone might bother to let them trade this stuff for some type of fee), it will never again be a good resource for obscure stuff - old songs from less popular band's back catalogs, live radio appearances etc. - the copyright holders will never bother to give AG permission to allow that stuff to be swapped. In the end the Big Brother that is the RIAA and their DMCA cronies have dealt yet another serious blow to the rest of us todayt.
I don't like this stupid RIAA. (Score:4, Insightful)
I strongly believe this is an unacceptable settlement. An acceptable settlement is one where a business arrangement is reached whereby both parties benefit from the agreement. For example, a deal whereby some small fee is paid to the RIAA for each copy of a song downloaded or sold, in exchange for RIAA marketing muscle supporting the scheme. This would most likely bring more benefits to both parties than the current scheme, which will screw over AudioGalaxy and give no extra profit to the RIAA.
Conclusion? The boring, gray-haired old men in charge of the RIAA have absolutely no imagination whatsoever. Only a lot of greed. And greed is their downfall. Case in point: If music (and indeed, other "content" such as movies) was sold for much cheaper, I believe the RIAA would increase volumes tremendously and make more profit than under the current scheme, where laws are passed left and right to protect the alleged right of the RIAA to eternal profit. Suppose an album you wanted cost $8.00 to $10.00 (USD), rather than the outrageous $18.00 that many albums cost nowadays. I believe that most people would find it so much more convenient to buy an album than to download 300 copies of a song in search of a good quality rip. Further, I think that music should be sold online, for extremely low prices. An album that sells for $8.00 in the store might go for $2.00 if downloaded, as the buyer doesn't get a nice shiny CD, case, booklet, and all kinds of other stuff. The copy available at the store would include all sorts of cool stuff (including coupons to direct customers to other music they might like), giving people a good reason to actually buy the music.
Finally, I think everyone should fight for their fair use rights. If you buy a CD, you should be allowed to make as many copies as you want for your own use. For example, I never take my original CDs into my car, as they could get jacked or lost or melted in the heat or something. It would be even more convenient if my stereo played MP3 CDs, so I could put all my albums on a few discs and not have to endanger myself and others while driving to change CDs around.
But like I said, those idiot gray-haired old geezers in control of the RIAA have no style or imagination. They're a bunch of boring old men with no goal in life other than to make themselves appear elevated by crushing others.
Re:RIP audiogalaxy (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not saying that getting pushed around by the xxAA's is a good thing, and sure, AG will now probably go the way of Napster. But really, folks, if the OSS community is going to gain standing (and a measure of its own legetimacy, I suppose) in the public eye, it really should stop blindly backing causes rooted primarily in software and music piracy, and start working on projects that are legally bullet-proof. That way, we can have software that is both useful And legal!
If you consider these terms to be mutually exclusive, your efforts will be an exercise in futility.
Re:chown -R riaa * ; chmod -R -r * (Score:4, Insightful)
If an artist can easily get worlwide distrubution and play without them. What happens to RIAA. Granted it would take many years. I could see a world where bands are all distrubuted on the net and the only thing we pay for is a live preformance.
Of course this has been discussed to death in the past.
Re:Opposite Effect Achieved (Score:2, Insightful)
Conclusion: the RIAA is continues to fool those who really think they're protecting artists and whatnot, while in the meantime filling its pockets with what they win in the courtrooms. I have to admit the courage they have to do this kind of thing right under everyone's nose...
The RIAA shot themselves in the foot... (Score:3, Insightful)
If the RIAA had figured out a way of turning Napster/Audio Galaxy into a business, then the majority of music downloaders would be there using the service legitimately.
What has happened instead, is they shut down the popular way of getting music. The result is that the people hooked on this service are going to go underground and acquire music through alternative means. If they can't get music from Kazaa, then they'll head to IRC or other de-centralized sources.
They basically blew up the central location for music swapping, forcing everybody into smaller cells. Now, if the RIAA does ever provide a service, few people will head towards it.
Oops. Songs will still get traded, but now the RIAA has little to no hope of ever getting money for it. I'd feel sorry for them if they didn't call me a thief because I own a CDR-drive.
Re:I don't like this stupid RIAA. (Score:4, Insightful)
If AudioGalaxy weren't profiteering off copyright infringement, perhaps they wouldn't have gotten into this mess in the first place, any more than a thug or any other criminal deserves an "acceptable settlement".
The RIAA is entitled to charge whatever the market can bear -- and whether or not the market is truly involved (as in -- is it a price-fixing cartel?) is an actual, but completely separate, issue that does not justify willful infringement on their property except by judicial action if and when they are found to be being anticompetitive.
In any fair transaction (*), neither party can impose terms on the other -- there is always the option to walk away. You, as a customer, may choose not to buy a CD -- but you are not then entitled to the music in any form if you reach no agreement. The copyright holder may choose not to sell at a price or in a form that you desire -- but it is then not entitled to seize your money. Both sides may negotiate, but the main principle of reasonable theories of entitlement is an informed consent -- both sides should properly disclose their terms, and no transaction takes place unless agreed upon.
(*) Determining the ethics of state transactions is often hairy. So, for that matter, are nigh-automatic transactions such as pollution; in that case, determining compensation becomes a problem.
Re:Great, what about MY songs? (Score:4, Insightful)
The settlement reached would allow Audiogalaxy to operate a "filter-in" system, which requires that for any music available, the songwriter, music publisher, and/or recording company must first consent to the use and sharing of the work.
If you are the copyright holder, which you are unless you have signed your rights away to a RIAA member, then you should inform AudioGalaxy that you would like to allow your music to be shared that way. AG will be within its rights to distribute it, since you will have given permission.
IANAL but I suspect that a letter signed by you claiming that you are the copyright holder should be sufficient. Or you could check to see what MP3.com does. Now AG may take a while to handle such things, but then again they are now actually in the world of all indie music rather than the world of claiming that it's all about indie music as a PR fig leaf, so if they don't they will be 100% instead of just 99% toast.
Re:And so, as another one dies.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just curious, has anyone heard of any attempts by services such as these to buy copyrights from artists and challenge the RIAA as a legitimate (competing, rather than RIAA-owned) distributor on legally even ground?
It's a nice idea, but it doesn't work like that. I'm sure that artists may be amenable to the idea, but major artists simply aren't going to be able to do that. For albums released by major labels (smaller labels as well, IIRC), the artist/songwriter owns the song, but NOT the actual recording of it that appeared on the album. So all those tracks that came off an album are owned by the publisher, not the artist - and there's a snowball's chance in Hell that you'll get them to sell that (or license it, either - they can't even agree on fairly doing that between themselves for their lame online music services, let alone fairly licensing it to some young startup whippersnappers).
"Okay," you say, "so the artists don't own the actual recordings (that particular performance that's on the album) ... so why don't they re-record it (since they own the song itself) and sell or license that to someone else?" Unfortunately, most major artists are under contract to large record labels - so if they record a new version, their label gets first dibs. That also includes "official" live recordings, too. BTW, live bootlegs, even if the band turns a blind eye to their existence, are theoretically just as illegal as pirated album tracks, since the label the band is under contract to should get a chance to make money off the band is going to release it (and the band to get some royalties from it).
Lastly, don't blame the bands for making these "deals with the devil" - yes, it handcuffs them to have the rights to their next X albums' worth of songs locked into a big nasty music label - but when you're struggling to make it, the offer of financing to make albums, distribution networks to get you on the radio and in Tower Records is nothing to sneeze at. They're just trying to make it when they sign these deals - nobody else right now can offer them the same things that the major labels can.
Maybe the real hope lies in bands that use the big labels to get popular, then after their contracts expire use the 'net intelligently to reach their fans. But unless rock stars start reading Slashdot daily (or someone can convince them that there's a really solid plan for not losing their fiscal shorts in the effort), we may be waiting a while.
Re:RIP audiogalaxy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Opposite Effect Achieved (Score:3, Insightful)
Hilarious, isn't it? This is exactly like those Soccer Moms who wipe every surface with low-grade antibiotics and insist the doctor give their rugrat antibiotics for their every cold. It's utterly useless, and the only result is to produce stronger and tougher viri.
They killed Napster, which allowed them to see what music millions of people collected. They just killed AudioGalaxy which gave them the same information. Any businessman with a fractional clue could have figured out how to use that information to build a profitable business. Now, they've lost the potential for getting any information at all.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Re:Well, there goes another good service (Score:3, Insightful)
The RIAA only has the power it does because they have used their massive weight to insure that you can *only* gain popularity through them. The large CD distributors and retailers have exclusive deals with the big record Co.s MTV will never play a minor label artist, and neither will Clearchannel (who owns over half of all radio stations in America)
to think that popular music was once a medium of freedom and rebellion, or at least made a passable effort of pretending to be. these days it's just another hollywood, only far far worse.
hey kids, want to be rad, want to be a star? forget the damn guitar, start writing novels, or maybe learn to paint, it's more respectable, and your ass won't be so sore after dealing with the suits.
Re:Notice this is an RIAA PR (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm leaving this fucking country.