This isn’t geared toward Billy Bragg. I think from reading his posts he already gets it. But I don’t think Indiana Gregg and maybe some other musicians do.
It’s not just about lawsuits – The most obvious reason why the p2p community hates the RIAA is the endless lawsuits old ladies, little kids, the deceased, vets, single mothers, it’s already know they’ll sue anything that moves. The hatred goes beyond that. Way beyond that.
Here are some examples >>>
* Opposition to new technology – Even before the RIAA, starting with the player piano the music industry has opposed almost every piece of new tech to come around. DAT machines, VCR’s, MP3 players, p2p; the incessant “It will kill the industry” or some such babble goes on and on.
* Consumer rip off – No, I haven’t forgotten the $15.00+ price tag on CDs when they first came out, while records and tapes went for around $8.00, nor have I forgotten the $70.00 price tag on VHS tapes before rentals and copying brought that price plummeting. Now we have the $1.00 per song iTunes rate.
* Artist rip off – Yes, it does bother me how artist can get shafted with bad recording deals. Because the artists are forced to sign their rights away in the hopes that they get enough support from the record company for their album to sell well they don’t have any recourse if the record company decides not to promote them. They don’t own the rights, so they can’t just take their songs elsewhere.
* DRM – A lot of the big recording companies are also hardware manufacturers, so now we have Digital Rights Management, which means you don’t even have full control over the device you bought.
* Lobby’s for bad laws – After DRM, some clever people started coming up with ways to thwart it. So now thanks to the entertainment industry’s lobby efforts we have the DCMA( Digital Millennium Copyright Act ) which forbids ANY tampering with DRM, even if it’s just to restore the ability to make a copy for backup, which you have a legal right to do. The latest entertainment industry piece of shit to come down the pike is ACTA, which is shrouded in secrecy. Some of it was leaked, but not all, and negotiations are not public.
Why am I writing this? Because some artists (not, I believe Billy) seem to take the opposition to a net/media tax levy as a failure on the p2p communities side to compromise.
A music tax as has been proposed would provide an unending stream of income to the RIAA. While most of the p2p community including myself wants to compromise with musicians we DON’T want to compromise with the RIAA.
As for compromise I think the idea proposed by both Billy and the PPUK exempting private use from copyright and adding a “use it or lose it” clause to contracts is a good start.
I like the PPUK’s idea of shortening copyright duration, and my own idea to forbid rights being signed over to third parties as well.
Unlike some musicians, I don’t see that as impossible. If book authors can retain the rights to their works while giving exclusive publishing rights for a time period to publishers, why can’t the same be done for musicians who still feel the need to deal with big music?
Monkey D. Luffy
November 11th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Not sure why you’ve included me in this post? I have nothing to do with the RIAA. My position is entirely different from whatever you have perceived. I get the impression that there have been a lot of people inferring things that aren’t true about my point of view on the web. In fact, somebody pointed me to a post the other day that was written last year that says I’m ‘for 3-strikes’ which couldn’t be further from the truth.
When it comes to the price of music in the past, however, it’s not much different than the price of anything marked up at retail. Remember, in the past when their were still cd’s & cassettes, there were still distributors (who took a cut), sales teams (who drove around and sold the plastic or vinyl into the shops), shelving fees just to stock the stuff, manufacturing and delivery costs, and back then the overall cost of production was a bit steeper than it is today. Plus, the shops generally always want at least a 51% gross margin after cost.
The real problem is that record companies are trying to charge as much for downloads as they did in the past for cd’s, vinyl, etc. and they are limiting ‘legitimate’ access by asking services for massive advances on a territorial basis.
November 11th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Ars Technica recently did an article on the various technologies in the last century that the MAFIAA has feared.
It also bears mentioning that ACTA is so secret that when a Freedom of Information Act request was made to get ahold of it the request was denied as a matter of “national security”.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Sorry I mis-categorized you! Not the first time I made a mistake, won’t be the last.
My point on CDs is valid, as records at the same time period had all the same retail costs as CD’s, I believe tapes if anything were even more expensive to make, as they had to be recorded and couldn’t just be stamped out like records and CDs, so the almost double price of CDs in comparison with records and tapes being sold was a rip off. I gave it a separate category, but drm is also a rip off, as it artificially limits a devices capabilities to the detriment of the consumer.
BTW Kerchoonz does look like an interesting idea that could work well.
November 11th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
@monkey D. Luffy,
Yes, that’s right, Cassettes did (still do) cost more to make than CD’s. However, at the beginning of CD production, the price was high due to supply/demand. They charged more for CD’s than cassettes because, put simply, they could. Although, one would easily argue that the new ‘high quality’ that you would get from the CD made the CD more ‘valuable’, so, people were willing to pay those prices. Bear in mind that it was new technology and the price of all ‘gadgets’ seem to start out high and slowly decrease. The reason for this is pretty obvious. Fixed costs to start-up (build a factory, buy the supplies, higher the workers, etc. Phasing in a new technology and phasing out an old one, in the case of tapes vs. CDs. Eventually, the volume will drive down the price of production.) But, the cost of making the cds wasn’t all there was. There was also, as per above, the cost of producing the music and the price of marketing factored into the equation (which was already there before with the cassette, the LP, the singles on 45s, etc.) Anyway, you’re right, eventually, the actual price of the CD should have fallen more sharply than it did.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Good to see, perhaps some developing consensus around some of these principles?
It’s interesting, for written authors this kind of deal has been normal, mandated by contract law rather than copyright law. So I’m with Monkey on this, why can’t the same be done for musicians dealing with distributors?
On music/ISP taxes, Philip Hunt answered my earlier post “People love to share”, recognising the issues we have with existing collection agencies, and suggesting amongst other possibilities that any such levy should be used to fund the creation of new work (rather than anything else, such as rewarding established intermediaries).
Philip is the Campaigns Officer for PPUK, and has been grokking this for a while now, and writing about it on his blog.
Which is something similar to a few comments I’ve heard before here, and divorces the remittance from agencies and what was popular before, though it maybe raises new questions. For further thought and future comments…
November 11th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
I hate the RIAA because it is a multinational consortium of corporations, dedicated to themselves, with political lobbying and lawsuits to give themselves the advantage.
So far as I’m concerned, no corporations should be allowed to lobby anyone or anything. They could protest an unreasonable law, perhaps, but they should not be allowed to have any more of a say in a matter than any of the general public.
And I won’t even mention the greediness.
November 11th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
@john barron
I don’t see that being a problem either. well, we’d have more than rubik’s cube in common I guess
( tee haaaaa:) )