RIAA Goes After Satellite Radio 547
nicholasjay writes "The RIAA is at it again. Now they don't like satellite radio. From the article 'The record industry ... believes the recording capability [of satellite radio receivers] is a clear copyright violation and could take revenue away from paid download music services.' This comes on the heels of both Sirius and XM announcing mp3 enabled players and the ability to record music heard on the radio. Also from the article: 'RIAA may seek $1 billion plus in music rights fees for a new contract covering 2007 to 2012 to replace the current $80 million pact that expires in 2006.'"
No kidding? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the music labels had a problem, shouldn't they have approached it at the front-end?
I'm sick of this suing customers/pointing the evil finger at them after the point of sale. It's fscking stupid.
Some currently available mp3 players (Score:1, Insightful)
power of the buyer (Score:3, Insightful)
The beginning of the end (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously they are trying to keep their distribution model valid (read crappy CDs), but everywhere they turn, they're losing... so... they decide to jack up the price of distrubtion rights so high that they will either force the companies to stop distributing anything other than CDs, or will pay the insane prices for the right, and the RIAA will continue to be fat and rich.
Unfortunetly for them, they will eventually fall with this tactic, and fall hard.
Re:The beginning of the end (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, is their goal to sue every single person in America ? That doesn't seem like a good long-term business model. I'm generally less likely to buy things from companies that have taken legal action against me.
me thinks (Score:2, Insightful)
me thinks (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No kidding? (Score:3, Insightful)
No wonder you're posting AC.
I'll buy this one (Score:2, Insightful)
Just because we do not like the RIAA does not make them wrong each and every single time.
Apparently the RIAA has never heard of... (Score:3, Insightful)
I figure eventually the RIAA is going ot end up suing everyone on the planet, including its own members. Such is the insanity of the corporate world...
Re:The beginning of the end (Score:3, Insightful)
The RIAA has to fight against any and all threats to its members. As long as its members continue to try to maximize profits (ie. as long as they are in business), this organization will be constantly lobbying and making noise against anything that upsets their business model. The only thing that will shut them up is the bankrupcy of all the major recording labels.
Dare to dream....
Re:I hate the RIAA (Score:2, Insightful)
I think you misspelled "clubbed". The biggest problem, from my perspective, is that too many people seem to think that the RIAA is a government institution, and don't really question it. If news like this was to be put on a major news network, such as CNN, then I think we'd be seeing changes.
I'm beginning to think (Score:3, Insightful)
- They illegally trespass onto people's computers in clear violation of a number of statutes in order to further their bottom lines
- When offered exonerating evidence, they refuse to consider it as this might cut into profits
- They want to sue anyone who has the means to play something that could possibly be copyright (whether to them or not, it doesn't matter)
- They want to prevent things from going into the public domain and thereby enclose the digital commons
- And...for the kicker, they actually produce....nothing. Rather, they front money for other people to do work while getting paybacks that make usurers like the credit card companies look like angels. Artists make like 1% of the net?
If these folks aren't leeches and a detriment to our society, then I don't know what is.It's only a matter of time... (Score:4, Insightful)
The opportunity is widening for a record company to form that gets *good* music together under a banner that benefits primarily the consumer and the artist, without the pimp and whore attitude the RIAA has.
The solution (Score:2, Insightful)
1. prevent any broadcasting, podcasting [wikipedia.org] and streaming and
2. prevent anything that can record and reproduce the performances they need to sqeeze revenues from.
But I'm not sure this will solve the problem once and forever.
RIAA Serves Their Purpose (Score:5, Insightful)
If we want to rid ourselves of their existance, we should #1 appeal to their members that they are not acting in the 'industry's best interests' and #2 appeal to the government(s) that these organizations exist to do nothing less than to act a singular means by which large entities are made into a single larger entity by which legal muscle is used to bully and intimidate individual consumers into unfair settlements and otherwise abuse the legal system to their own ends.
These abusive organizations should be striken down completely. If individuals need to protect their interests, they should be required to protect them individually just as individuals are required to defend themselves individually.
Cartel? (Score:5, Insightful)
time was, they competed for airplay. Now they threaten those playing - and therefore promoting - their music
Understatement of the Century (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'll buy this one (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Same argument as the VCR (Score:1, Insightful)
VCR recording is allowed now, but the object here is to make people forget that by pretending that ruling doesn't exist. Treat every media form as different and force the same battle to be fought over and over and over again. Eventually, you win by attrition, if nothing else.
Re:No kidding? (Score:5, Insightful)
Finally, and most importantly, people have the right to time-shift satellite radio, just the same as they do with analog radio or TV (including satellite TV!).
Re:No kidding? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not the time to buy xm then eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No kidding? (Score:3, Insightful)
Every now and then the recording companies mumble something about getting paid when radio stations play recordings and the radio stations call the bluff because airplay sells records. In fact, payola scandals demonstrate that there's an incentive for recording companies to pay the radio stations.
I'm also wondering if there's a point where recording companies ask so much of Apple, satellite radio, internet broadcasters, and ring-tone distributors that they join up in backing a new recording company that signs artists primarily for digital distribution and broadcast. As I think tangible media are important, this company would license the pressing and distribution rights for the cds, or allow the artist the retain the tangible rights, or press and distribute their own discs. By doing the same things that record companies used to do when they were hungry and necessarily agile -- tour support, signing and selling regional artists who can graduate to nationwide, scouting and signing of talent (and not management machines) -- in three to five years, they'll have stars. In ten years, they'll have superstars.
Re:No kidding? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure this has been said a million times over, but it's becoming more and more clear that the RIAA is just afriad of change. They have a business model deeply rooted in late 80's technology and anything beyond that is not understood, therefore a threat and must be shut down. How sad.
Re:No kidding? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your right. RIAA has never been involved with broadcast licenses. Pretty soon we might have things like cable and satellite TV service where people get a monthly bill and pay for the content that they receive. There will however never be a time in our lives where we can listen to music at restaurants, bars, shopping malls, in cars, and our homes. Its not a lucrative business anymore because there is simply no demand for such a service.
Why doesn't the RIAA just buy a big vault, put all of their CDs in it, lock to door, and stand on top of it and scream: "I've done locked up my toys, and nobody, including me will play with them!"
Judging by their behavior, I'm guessing that the RIAA is about done with. I'm guessing that music may go to more of a service business model vs a sales model, just like TV vs video recordings. Most video content by most people is viewed via a service such as cable or satellite. I pay something like $80 a month for my HD-DVR and my cable service. I pay about $0 a month for music recordings besides my ISP service bill (which is also my cable company, and yes the music I get is legally tradable). So, my cable provider is getting about $120 a month to provide me with internet, audio and video content. The RIAA affiliated companies gets $0.
The RIAA affiliated companies are done providing content distribution because they suck at it. They do not provide a greatly desired product like MP3s despite the customer demand that is almost 10 years old now. Most "CD quality" audio recordings are only at most 16bit/44.1 kHz, which too is almost 10 years old. Very few _amateur_ audio recordings are that low of a quality any more. For example, I record everything at 24bit and 96 kHz, and many people do that as well too.
I don't know how the moneys go as far as the RIAA vs ASCAP/BMI or whatever broadcast licenses are available. In fact, from what I understand you can pay something like $200 a year for a broadcast license and legally play almost anything you can get your hands on, again with $0 going to the RIAA.
I just don't get it how TV can stay alive, like the big 3, CBS, NBC, and ABC, which freely broadcast their content to the entire country for free _themselves_ with their own towers, and people _still pay_ for cable and satellite service. Remember, one of the biggest issues with satellite is that their customers _demand_ the free broadcast channels as well as the satellite programming.
In summary, the RIAA is done. They will lawyer their way until they die, but they are like a person trapped in the middle of the ocean that is drinking salt water "to stay alive". There inevitable death will only be sooner rather than later. RIP.
Re:*sigh* (Score:2, Insightful)
I think it's rediculous that they are getting their undies in a bundle over people being given the ability to record music from their satellite based music system. They're argument will be because you can make perfect digital copies over and and over with no degradation but why can't they deal with that when it comes to it? Why punish the good people for what bad people do? Ugg, I'm tired of corporate America.
Sue these scum bags (Score:2, Insightful)
In my case I heard Western music all my life but when I moved to US I switched to classical music from my own country. The reason, well CD - 5 bucks Cassette -- 2 bucks, here CD - 16-20 bucks and download $1.
the long hard fall (Score:2, Insightful)
So i'm wondering when the beginning of the end will actually begin. RIAA has been pulling stuff like this since they started losing what they deemed their "fair share" of the market, repeatedly looking for excuses to perpetuate their model, as someone stated above. Sometimes they have justification for copywrite infringement. But most of the time they are trying to rewrite information property rights to suit their own needs.
When is it gonna stop working in their favor? When will society/the legal system/RIAA realize that they are gripping the past a little bit too tightly and society tends to follow innovation?
Re:The beginning of the end (Score:5, Insightful)
If they ran a program on your computer without your consent, then that is illegal in most jurisdictions. If you bought something that was advertised as a music CD, and it contained a virus[1], then the authors of the virus are liable for your time in removing it and for punitive damages. Don't settle for anything less than $10,000 (after all, that seems to be what they consider a good round number for sharing a song on a P2P network).
[1] A virus is a self-replicating program. This program installed (replicated) itself with no user intervention, and is hence a virus.
Music's social contract breaking down (Score:5, Insightful)
The financial structure of the industry as developed in the 20th century depends on a high price paid by the listener to the music industry for each individual recording. This price is roughly one hour of minimum wage earnings
per fifteen minutes of music recording. This price has been stable throughout the 20th century and has been inflation-proof.
In return, the music industry provides a centralized repository of all the musical styles currently of popular interest, a filtering service of the junk and mediocrity, and exposure to the best of new music performances.
It was successful. There was pure capitalism among the various large and small record companies. There was a separation between the new music presenting services (radio and discos) and the record distribution networks.
Talented people could gain exposure to many new styles from many different parts of the globe. They could create important new musical styles and have a marketplace and a financial structure to successfully present them.
Everything changed by going digital and by corporate consolidation. Three companies own and control a vast percentage of the radio stations of the USA. Four or five corporations control about 80-90% of the music industry in the world. Digitization of the music playback machines means that all music presentation comes from recordings. There is no longer any difference between exposed to new music and having a recording of that music. This plays
havoc with the structure of companies that sell recordings and use the proceeds of the sales to finance the filtering, product distribution, and new music exposure services.
The companies want to return to the old business model, but only in the ways that are most profitable to them. They want their customers to continue to buy recordings at the old price, and also pay again for the new music exposure
, junk filtering, and distribution services that used to be incorporated into the recording's price. As Slashdot readers know, they are meeting resistance from their customers.
With lots of money going to technology development of digital encryption of recordings and payoffs to politicians for custom-tailored laws protecting their interests, they will be successful in reconstructing their old business model in the short run. In the long run (ten years or more) they will cut off their supply of new musical influences. All the people who are shut out of consuming music industry product because they can't afford to buy it will develop new musical alternatives that they will deliberately hide from the music industry. The music industry won't be the center of musical culture and development in the way that it is now. The best musicians now all want record contracts and seek out the music company executives. That means that music industry employees have been the most knowledgeable about the best new music. That will end.
But no one will notice because music is basically a young person's industry and the number of young people in the world continues to grow rapidly each year. So the music industry will continue to grow. But the principle that the music industry is the source of the best music available will pass. There will develop many underground secret music societies.
The real question is whether the music industry will take the position that they 'own' the music created by these secret societies. Will they chose to hunt them down, imprison their musicians and steal their ideas, or simply ignore them as being non-commercially viable and therefore unworthy of investment.