RIAA Forgets to Make Royalty Payments 341
theodp writes "NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer agreed with the RIAA on one point - artists WERE being deprived of money that was rightfully theirs. But Spitzer managed to find $50 million for performers without shaking down grandmothers. Spitzer's culprits? A Who's Who of the nation's top recording companies - members of the RIAA - who failed to maintain contact with artists and stopped making required royalty payments."
the "harm", huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh well. Good that they caught this. The artist do deserve their money.
Re:Motives (Score:5, Insightful)
Abandoned Property? (Score:0, Insightful)
Common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Three little words... (Score:5, Insightful)
RIAA members ripping off their artists is nothing new - it's been documented over and over and fucking over again. I'm sure some slashdotters can point to half a dozen articles written by artists who point out that, by the time the RIAA gets done doing the math on a "standard" industry contract, an even moderately sucessful artist winds up OWING a few thousand dollars to the label and is pretty much an indentured servant, because they can't jump labels to find a better deal by the terms of the contract.
What we REALLY need is for some court ruling to take all those fucking provisions, and declare them illegal. THEN when the RIAA cries about "artists" being deprived of money due to file sharing, I might give a rat's ass about their bullshit argument.
The man who fell to earth and back? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Motives (Score:1, Insightful)
Spitzer might well be a bitch. But the music industry isn't being asked anything that isn't already assumed in other industries. They should be ashamed, castrated, and their children sold into slavery/prostitution. They weren't attempting anything other than padding their bottom line. And it's terribly naive to entertain ideas that it was anything different, and the companies involved are anything other than completely and indefensibly in the wrong.
Well.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Abandoned Property? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't they want their money? (Score:1, Insightful)
Lost track of these artists? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ummm....how exactly do you lose track of your prominent artists? And for that matter, why aren't the agents of these artists banging down the doors at Sony, BMI, Vivendi, EMI, and so forth to get the royalties? IOW, the agents conveniently forgot to collect? Something doesn't sound right here -- when in the history of business has someone not aggressively pursued their debtors?
Re:Abandoned Property? (Score:4, Insightful)
compared to cd sales decline (Score:5, Insightful)
Therefore, according to RIAA, piracy accounted for 200 million in sales loss. Therefore (unless artists get 25% or more of retail) with this announcement of withholding 50m in royalties from artists, the RIAA itself is personally responsible for more monetary loss to artists than piracy.
Agreed to comply? (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't know you had to 'agree' with a law before it was applicable to you. Interesting.
Re:Any hope of draconian fines? (Score:5, Insightful)
Two wrongs do not make a right (Score:2, Insightful)
If yes, do you then have the right to criticize the RIAA?
The fact is, RIAA's actions, though despicable, are ultimately irrelevant to whether or not it is morally acceptable, and/or should be legally acceptable, to copy and distribute someone else's work without authorization, contract or payment arrangement. The fact that RIAA members were lax paying artists does not give anyone a free pass, morally or legally, to download music illicitly. It does not make the claim that artists are being ripped off by illegal music downloaders any more or less debatable.
This is not an issue appropriate for posting to slashdot IMO. When the story deals with whether downloads are/should be acceptable, it's a tech story. When the story is about an RIAA conflict with artists, and the sole reason for posting it is to wag the finger of shame at RIAA for being hypocrites (ostensibly), that's just pandering and incitement.
RIAA TO RECORDING ARTISTS: (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
The RIAA was collecting money on behalf of the artists. If they kept it without making much effort to track down the rightful owners, then that's theft as far as I'm concerned. Especially if they insist on calling 12yr old children thieves for swapping mp3s.
Re:Two wrongs do not make a right (Score:3, Insightful)
Never. Even when I had to sell personal property to avoid it, I made a point of honoring my debts on the appointed date. And I am not a fat-rich-corp-guy like the RIAA. In other words: even if I had answered "yes", probably it would have been "because I couldn't, since didn't have the money". Do you think the RIAA does not have the money or cannot pay to the artists?
So I am rightfully angry against these robbers.
And yes, it is an issue appropiate for
Re:compared to cd sales decline (Score:3, Insightful)
Forgive the offtopiccage, but wtf? That's 0.6% not 7.5%. Those are the figures quoted in the article, too, no typos. No wonder these clowns managed to lose $50M with those kinds of math skills...
Lying about the lies that they lied about (Score:5, Insightful)
Kind of reminds of me of some bigger (cough - Catholic Church) examples (cough - US war effort).
I'm sure that last bit will get me slammed. There goes my karma =D
Not the RIAA: more FUD (Score:3, Insightful)
To pre-empt any ad-hominem replies: I do not like the RIAA's tactics & I was once signed to one of the companies mentioned (BMG). But claiming this is an RIAA act is entirely incorrect, self gratifying FUD, and as we all know, spouting crap in lieu of facts does not make a convincing case. If you want to criticize a system, learn how the system works first.
Hilarious! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Motives (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Motives (Score:3, Insightful)
- While this will be great for a lot of artists I question the motive. I doubt that Eliot Spitzer is doing this for artists. I'm sure New York state will benefit from the interest revenue from "hold[ing] these monies. It won't hurt his career to have his name in the paper either.
You know, he does work for the state of NY, after all.In any case, these royalties should benefit either the copyright holder or, failing that, the state and not these distribution companies. So, this is a good thing.
The people grant all copyrights for the advancement of art. Clearly, the RIAA members have shown contempt for advancement of anything except their own profits. We have to make sure they don't benefit from their "inability" to find the artist.
Re:Abandoned Property? (Score:1, Insightful)
Also, I doubt you can let your fingers do the walking and find him in the phone book. To find these artists, the RIAA will have to figure out who the artist's agent, attorneys, and/or accountants are and contact them. This might not always be easy to do and might be time consuming per artist. The RIAA still needs to follow up on this better, but finding Bowie or Estefan for payment purposes might actually be harder than finding a nobody or a hasbeen.
No, but two wrights make an airplane (Score:2, Insightful)
You can't make a claim about filesharing on moral grounds if your own morals are suspect.
If you're a crook, its hard to take cries of "thief" very seriously.
Re:Motives (Score:3, Insightful)
It is cleverly disguised, but it is there. In saying the *RIAA* is at fault, that is like saying that all software developers abuse their power simply because Microsoft does. The RIAA is not the music industry. It is an association of music industry corporations. It doesn't run the companies nor does it collect the fees. It helps make certain that the fees can be collected in some instances where their stakeholders feel they need to do so, but they don't collect the fees.
Every artist has a publisher. His or her publisher is responsible for making certain that all royalties are collected. It is the artists responsibility to make certain that the publisher knows where you live so that you can get paid. Its not too hard. In the US there are 3 main publishing agencies -- Harry Fox, ASCAP and I believe BMI (err..I think one of those is affiliated with the other these days). I get my measly check every so often from these guys -- and they even took care of doing a search for overseas owed money when a friends song was on a foreign soundtrack (somehow I was listed on it even though I only helped with minor structural changes -- sometimes friends don't screw ya over
The point is, if someone isn't getting paid -- its there fault.
Fucking-Un-Believable! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Motives (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, to be fair, I think they're more accurately oligarchic bastards. They really don't seem to get the whole market economics thing.
Re:Fucking-Un-Believable! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Motives (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Abandoned Property? (Score:4, Insightful)
If I worked for the Recording Industry Association of America? Then gosh, I would call up the record companies that are members and funders of my organization and say, "Hi, Vigin? It's Bob at RIAA. I need to get ahold of David Bowie. Yeah, he's under B. Sure, I'll wait."
I'm guessing that since they do millions of dollars worth of business with him, they'll have some idea of how to get ahold of him.
This might not always be easy to do and might be time consuming per artist.
Did you note the part about $50 million? If they put that in a regular bank account, they can get $1m per year in interest. So it's not like they couldn't find the funds to hire a clerk to look into this. Their, "Gosh, honey, look at this $50 million I found under the couch cusions," line is not particularly plausible.
Re:Abandoned Property? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Motives (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Disingeneous Article (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you read the list of some of the artists they lost contact details for, they included long forgotten one hit wonders like "David Bowie, Dolly Parton, Harry Belafonte, Liza Minnelli, Dave Matthews, Sean Combs and Gloria Estefan". Now if you believe they couldn't contact these people then you'll believe anything. It's just a typical out of court where the guilty party pays up and in return get to deny all blame i.e. the RIAA are good guys stuff in document is only for the consumption of the legal system and fools.
The other side of the coin (Score:4, Insightful)
I submit that Dolly has far better terms than some relatively unknown/new/crap band, and probably does rather well with mechanical royalties, and other royalties than the unknown/new/crap band.
IOW, Dolly is most likely making money in areas that an unknown/new/crap band would not, such as printed sheet music, covers by other artists, film and television, and public performance (musak, etc.).
That said, it's not surprising that the whore-tards in the RIAA wanted to 'misplace' those extra dollars; what is surprising is that the missing artists' lawyers weren't all over those nickels and dimes in the first place - especially Dolly's lawyers. She likes the money.
Even more reason to bypass the RIAA. What you lose in enforcement (public performances, radio play) and marketing, you gain in knowing that you are getting the best deal as an artist.
Of course (Score:4, Insightful)
Both David Lindley and Courtney Love have spoken out eloquently against them in the past. I think we should remember who the real villains are here - and that they're not 13yos with a few songs on a hard drive.
From the AC (Score:1, Insightful)
That's a deliberate misinterpretation of what I said. In fact, the members of the RIAA have delegated responsibility for protecting copyright to the RIAA. So although it looks like the RIAA should be sending out threatening letters to it's own members it wouldn't do so, since this is technically breach of contract rather than copyright infringement. But any astute observer will notice that copyright infringement cases between RIAA members (and their clients) have never, not once, involved the RIAA directly; it is always company against company or company against artist. Settling intra-industry or contractual disputes is not the RIAA's role.
"Yes, the individual member should have monitored its own bookkeeping and made sure the artists were paid, but isn't the RIAA the representatives of these members, and thus should be looking WITHIN as well as WITHOUT for instances of wrong occurring?"
Not really, since the RIAA is working according to the requests of it's members. Again, ensuring a record company is obeying it's contractual obligations is not the RIAA's job. So, yes, blaming the RIAA really is entirely incorrect, since it overlooks the fact that the record companies do own the copyright to those recordings, and so are not violating copyright at all.
"Is this a one-way street, that they cannot even monitor their own members?"
Yes, it is a one-way street. You don't bite the hand that feeds you, the RIAA is fed by the mainstream industry. I would be very interested to hear an example of any industry advocacy body prosecuting it's own members; I can't think of one, if you can provide an example I would be delighted to hear it.
"...this "system" is extremely complex, and the only ones to truely "know" it are the ones that created it."
First, the system was not suddenly "created", it evolved over the best part of a century, infuenced by technology and laws, so there was no guiding hand responsible (such an idea is laughably naive). Second, any system is as complex or as simple as the level of detail you choose to examine, you don't need to know anything about copyright to read the RIAA's mission statement. Third, understanding the difference between the legal entity that is the RIAA, and the legal entities that are the individual companies is not that difficult to anyone of reasonable intelligence. But of course you are right: ignorant opinion is so much more valid an arguement than fact.
My point still stands: the RIAA is not responsible, it is the fault of the individual companies. The headline of the article is misleading, and should read "RIAA Members Forget to Make Royalty Payments". But that doesn't give us the scope for righteous indignation, does it?