Supreme Court: No royalties with Internet music downloads

MSN ^ | 10/03/11 | Reuters

[TennesseeGirl]

The Supreme Court let stand on Monday a ruling that a traditional Internet download of sound recording does not constitute a public performance of the recorded musical work under federal copyright law.

The justices refused to review a ruling by an appeals court in New York that the download itself of a musical work does not fall within the law's definition of a public performance of that work.

The not-for-profit American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) appealed to the Supreme Court. It said the ruling has profound implications for the nation's music industry, costing its members tens of millions of dollars in potential royalties each year.(Excerpted) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44761240/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/t/supreme-court-no-royalties-internet-music-downloads/

[sten]

how does that relate to the copyright of the artist on the music?

my thoughts are... change artist to programmer and music to software... is the ‘performance’ only the first moment the compiler produces the binary? after all, running a program would be akin to playing back music

this seems a bit whacked (maybe i’m just not understanding)

and how does this effect itunes? would apple now be able to ‘sell’ the music without having to pay royalties??

[BobL]

“Finally, a bit of sanity in the digital domain...

A FReeper for theft!”

A lot of us aren’t all that happy about being SCREWED big-time by the labels...particularly when the cassettes were the only way to have portable music. They sold their music on tapes that were total crap, knowing that they would fall apart after so many uses (yea, I know, technically I didn’t have to buy them...but they could have put 25 cents more into the product).

Now it’s payback time.

[edcoil]

If the supreme court rules what she did was not illegal - how can that not affect it.

[org.whodat]

The ruling in her case stands, it was a different topic. She was copying music and selling it wasn't she. This was, the music industry saying that if you watched a youtube video of a music performance you owed money, the court said no.

[org.whodat]

Dang, a complete misconception, you cannot steal and make money off of someones art without paying them.

[muawiyah]

ASCAP was wanting something more akin to the act of shuffling through records on a counter to be considered a public performance so they could collect a royalty.

There's a real problem in the use of current technology when it comes to copies ~ they really can't be controlled short of community spies and totalitarian torture chambers.

probably be best for "artists" and their marketing buddies to figure out how to vend their stuff in a technology where copies aren't easily made.

[DTxAg]

If it were private, you wouldn't know about it. Right?

Duh.

So after reading all the different ways you were wrong here, still want to tell me "duh"? ;)

[Republican Wildcat]

Not the same thing as the Napster issue. Downloading music can be done legally on numerous websites such as amazon.com This does not legalize theft of music. It finds that the mere act of downloading the song is not a public performance - just as the shipment of CDs is not a public performance.

[metesky]

Will Wally World bring back their digital download service?

[9YearLurker]

So I take it streaming would be a performance, but a download would not?

[max americana]

>Does that mean “Limewire” will be coming back?<

Nah. For every limewire shut down or paralyzed, new entities show up like Filestube,Frostwire and the always-ready bit torrent sites like kat or torrentfunk..

umm, not that I use them (cough)

[SkyPilot]

Theft is theft.

I am not so sure.

I believe this is very much a gray area.

Jim Robinson, the founder of this site, was hounded by bats of left wing media lawyers for many years for allowing Freepers to commit the cardinal sin of pasting some words into a reply box.

[Atlas Sneezed]

No it was still a normal copyright violation. This was ASCAP trying to get extra money from legal digital downloads, saying it’s a public performance (the only time ASCAP ever comes into play, shows and jukeboxes basically).

---

First post on track.

Nothing in this ruling affects the right of the owner of the recording from preventing unauthorized copying.

This is about treating downloading like playing a 45 in a saloon jukebox, which is a public performance of the recording that generates small royalties.

[TennesseeGirl]

The Federal Appeals Court had said, "Music authors are already fairly compensated for downloads...they are already paid each time a copyrighted work is lawfully downloaded" and "Congress charged the Copyright Royalty Judges with establishing reasonable rates and terms of Royalty rates..." They basically told ASCAP to take it up with the Royalty Judges if they feel music authors are unfairly compensated.

[HiTech RedNeck]

The genie is well out of that bottle. There are semi-viable schemes to protect videos, but a sound can always be captured at the speakers regardless of the acrobatic gyrations needed to get it there.