RIAA fights to keep wholesale pricing secret

The whole John Doe/IP approach by the RIAA has no legal validity. In any other area of life, using a method such as this to target people for lawsuits would have gone down in flames a long time ago. Shame on our court system for allowing this kind of intimidation to take place.

I'm wondering what kind of ignorant judges are allowing the RIAA to simply drop these John Doe suits, usually before the target even has a chance to respond. It is highly unethical to abuse the judicial system in this way, and it should be illegal. I'm at least hoping that somebody files complaints with the various state bars over this activity.

An total overhaul of the system is certainly in order. It is no longer 1952, and the damage to the forgotten persons, the performers, is the only damage that should be considered in the public interest. I often wonder how violently the parasites would fight if ALL of the statutory damages went to the performers.

That's why there are more and more performers making their music available on their website for download for a nominal fee. I've seen some bands that have a 99-cent-per-song, $8.00 to download the whole 12-15 song album sort of deal. I love those, because the performer gets virtually ALL of the money.

The RIAA is a dying dinosaur, and it knows it. The future is here, and the old ways of doing things are soon to be gone.

There's a whole angle to this that makes traditional laws against theft and copyright infringement outdated. In those cases, you have a pretty clear definition of what the offense in question constitutes because you are usually dealing with "real" property or "intellectual" property whose ownership can be established.

The digital age of music threw a lot of that into disarray because one of the early players (Napster) was configured in such a way that -- by all traditional legal definitions -- the material in question was being shared, not transferred. From a legal standpoint, digital music that is hosted on a server and accessible around the globe via the internet most closely resembles a newspaper that is purchased by one person and then read by others (even simultaneously, if different people are reading different sections of the newspaper at the same time). There is no copyright infringement in this case no matter how many different people end up reading the same newspaper.

I have no horse in this race myself*, but I do find it fascinating to see how difficult it is for the legal system to keep up with advances in technology.

* One exception to this is that the RIAA has also been trying to define "copyright infringement" to include the copying of recorded material from one form to another for personal use (e.g., creating MP3 files from CDs that you purchased legally). If the RIAA is successful in this, then I will never purchase a CD for as long as I live and will have no qualms about downloading music "illegally," either.

It's far worse than you can even imagine.

I know a guy who had a major record company contract.

They recorded a CD of his songs and charged him at unbelievably high rates for recording his music. This became an unpaid claim against his future royalties.

They even charged overhead of their company against his future income.

If he had ever had a hit record, he never would have been paid a dime of income from sales. They dug him a hole he couldn't have climbed out of.

You wouldn't believe the number of artists who have CD's selling like crazy and don't make a dime off the sales.

Most major label artists are indentured servants in a scam rigged completely against them.

Record and sell your own CD's. The majors are not the place to turn.

Having been there, I can tell you that what you're describing is in fact the business model for the larger labels. They claim outrageously inflated costs for production and marketing, which they then tack to the artist's "debt" column, guaranteeing that they're the only one's who'll ever see a dime of profit from sales of the recordings.

All their blather and blubber about "caring for the artists" is just that - blather and blubber. Much sound and fury signifying nothing.

Unless you're a supergroup like Metallica, REM, The Rolling Stones, The Who..etc, you will make ZERO dollars from the sale of your music because you are in no position to negotiate with the label. Furthermore, most new artists end up with lawyers who are double-dipping. They win sweetheart deals for some of their clients by assisting the labels in fleecing the others.

This is why many rap artists are getting caught pirating their own music - They make a digital copy of the CD before they send it up the chain, then they pay a private firm to dupe it out and they sell the dupes under the table because they're so in debt to the label they can't make any money.

Middle-of-the-road artists make money off three things: publishing, performing, and merchandising, not by selling CDs.

However, it's my belief that the previous business model is dead and the labels know it - They're just late for the funeral and trying desperately to find a way to make themselves necessary in the new system.

I have a studio in my basement where I use a PC loaded with recording and effects software along with several good microphones to record music. I do studio-quality recordings all the time for a fraction of the cost. Major studio time can run in the thousand dollar per hour range - Now I can duplicate that level of performance, and use it as often as I want and as long as I want for a total investment of about $3000.

Bands are becoming more and more aware of this and are recording their own music which they then promote using portal sites like MySpace or ISound or one of the other well-publicized places for doing so. Certain radio stations, mostly x-format alternative stations, are beginning to play self-recorded MP3's more and more based on the requests of their audiences which further pushes this sort of de-centralized model.

In the end, the music itself will likely be free, distributed via file sharing and portal sites, and the artists will recoup their costs using the same three things as before: publishing, performing, and merchandising. Although I think there's a high likelyhood that the publishing side will disappear as well.

Regards,

Col Sanders

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