Posted on 12/17/2002 11:59:18 AM PST by freepatriot32
Edited on 06/29/2004 7:09:34 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
WASHINGTON -- An antipiracy campaign by the recording industry is threatening lawsuits to try to force stores to pull pirated music from their shelves.
The Recording Industry Association of America said Monday it is demanding a halt to illegal music sales at gas stations, convenience stores, groceries and some small music stores that the group has identified as offering illegal copies of music recordings.
(Excerpt) Read more at wired.com ...
Or with the artifically high price of CDs being pushed even higher. Compare CD sales to DVDs. Many DVDs are available for equal or less than the price of a CD.
If the labels claim that they need to recoup the cost of the recording session, etc. why are the oldies album reissues so expensive as well (those costs were settled long ago)?
Extreme example: 100 years out. The copyright of materials created today will have lapsed into the public domain. Anyone is free to copy and circulate such ancient works. To do so though would require violating the DMCA. Another scheme to avoid works lapsing into the public domain?
That is, at least, debatable: If you compare the "cost" of P2P with the cost of conventional marketing - i.e. payola, which is now done at arms-length through promotional consultants - the cost to the creator of a work may work out to be similar. Whereas piracy is incontrovertably stealing.
Intellectual property laws were authorized by our Constitution for the purpose of making the public domain richer in the long term at the cost of allowing government to make laws making authors richer in the short term. Nowhere does it say anything about protecting record labels, publishers, etc.
Correct.
I would believe the same to be true of radio content and cassettes.
Incorrect. Congress passed a law (American Home Recording Act) levying a tax on blank cassettes and tape recorders a while back because not all taping is sanctioned by the Betamax decision, and they wanted to come up with a practical way of dealing with its economic effects. Those proceeds are distributed to copyright owners.
So someone can obtain songs without paying the artists... Only true if you're making a copy of something you've legitmately purchased for your own private purposes. In the Betamax case, SCOTUS pointed out that the primary purpose of taping television shows was "time shifting," watching a program when it was more convenient to do so, and that no economic harm was done to the copyright owners.
The DMCA has some issues, and I don't approve of all of the record industry's efforts deal with its problems, but it would be difficult for anyone to convince me that the majority of P2P transactions aren't motivated by a desire to get something for free that one would ordinarily have to pay for (and thereby depriving of royalties they would have ordinarily received).
P2P isn't a form of marketing. The vast majority of music that is being "shared" by the vast majority of P2P users is music that people only learned about because of the millions of dollars spent by the record labels in actually marketing it.
Sure, some of it's payola, but there are lot of other legitimate marketing activities (videos, advertising, press, retail distribution and support) that don't have that taint.
Intellectual property laws were authorized by our Constitution for the purpose of making the public domain richer in the long term at the cost of allowing government to make laws making authors richer in the short term. Nowhere does it say anything about protecting record labels, publishers, etc.
You're right, but the Constitution also gave the Congress the authority to pass laws that provided penalties for infringing those authors' rights in the short term too.
It seems the operative word is, "tried".
There were also the artists at Sony and other labels that got upset that some listeners would actually dare to sell their unwanted CDs so that others could buy them USED. That "robs" the artists and labels of money (it has been claimed).
I'm not suggesting that people use the site to sell their cd's, even though I believe that should be their perogative, rather that they trade, loan or exchange them with other members.
Right but I'm having a little trouble finding the clause that enables our government to regulate the ability of devices to play media.
Old Time Radio is public domain and swaped on tape. Shade tree musicians who play at home on weekends tape (and even distribute) their own music.
Indie labels also never see a cut of that money.
The RIAA is about collecting money for the beast. If you want your share, you need to go to them with your own lawyers (or pay them a fee to work on your behalf), Frank Zappa contended that no one who ever went to a record company with an accountant ever came out empty handed.
The RIAA keeps dreaming up (trying) new sources of revenue for themselves. They are in the business of skimming. To increase their own profits, they must find new sources to skim from. They employ muscle who do essentially squeeze out a protection fee from those who are shaken down.
The mob was in the record industry in the 1940, 50s and 60s. I doubt they have their hands clean today.
Not if Disney has their way; they keep buying laws which retroactively extend copyright every time Mickey Mouse comes close to expiring. (An especially disgusting practice considering the substantial portion of Disney's profits that come from making derivative works of public domain material). There's a Supreme Court case (Eldred vs Ashcroft) challenging the constitutionality of the latest extension. Your point is well taken; if the ridiculous copyright lengths are made more reasonable, it may result in a situation where a work is in the public domain, but it's illegal to actually gain access to it.
Agreed, but the underlying problem is still the same. The music industry is charging way too much for its product.
I actually don't think that's the problem. $80 movies or $40 music discs would be fine if that is how the market brought the most money to the creators of those works. The problem is that, fundamentally, it is becoming impossible to enforce copyright as strictly as before.
That may mean the end of recorded music as a revenue source. For many musicians, it is more of a promotional tool for concerts, and a little icing on the cake. Expensive or cheap, there may be no future for the RIAA record labels. So what? Lots of industries have become obsolete. The problem is that, as a last gasp, these organizations are trying to pollute our PCs with crap like Palladium and the Broadcast Flag.
Being popular with parasites isn't high on my priority list.
But that doesn't have anything to do with the mass looting of IP (eg. Napster, Kazaa) which many seem to attempt to justify.
Think Sklyarov is your posterchild? Think again. ElcomSoft sells their copyrighted software just like most other commercial software houses.
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