ARIA Sells a Licence for DJs to Format Shift Music

lucas writes "The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) has set up a new licence to let DJs format shift their music to use at gigs. DJs will need to pay a licence fee to copy music they already own legally from one format to another for ease of use, and as a back-up in case originals get lost or stolen. Criminal penalties for DJs involved in "music piracy" are up to sixty thousand dollars and 5 years imprisonment. There are also on-the-spot fines of over one thousand dollars."

Re:In other news...

[MichaelSmith]

Botany Bay is to be used to house all juveniles who fail to pay the double licenses.

Botany Bay is actually quite a nice place now. The people we really don't like get sent to Woomera, Christmas Island and Naru.

Just when we thought RIAA was bad...

[ulash]

we have this... or... wait... My bad. I guess nothing another organization can do can actually make RIAA look any better.

Re:No "fair use" in Australia

[XaXXon]

Because certain types of copies are allowed. For instance, you're allowed to have a copy of a program on your hard drive and in RAM. You can have a copy sitting in a hard drive cache. The intent behind copyright is that you purchase it for a purpose (and likely the DJs had to purchase a more expensive version that allows public performance) and you can use it for that purpose.

I've always thought the music industry should have to pick. Either they can sell you a physical media with which you can do whatever you want (public performances or personal use) or sell you a license to use the music in a certain way (private use only, but you have the right to the music in any format you want for that purpose).

Don't buy into this...

[elynnia]

Speaking as an Australian, I encourage DJs to not purchase this license. What the ARIA are doing is legally questionable, and shelling out for this only justifies their actions and legitimizes it in their eyes.

With the number of DJs here, I would not expect all of them to even know of this rule or for the ARIA to suddenly take all "offenders" to court. Don't feed the hands that bite you!

-Aly.

ARIA to be charged for musician advertising?

[Zey]

Sounds like a fair deal, presuming DJs are free to charge a similar fee back for all that previously free advertising of ARIA's recording artists. Without their music played in venues, their sales plummet and music loses mind-share as a passtime to other forms of entertainment such as the Internet, video games, cinema tickets, etc.

I bet there aren't many DJs in Australia

[sahonen]

Wait wait wait, how the hell does that work? Let's say a DJ works on a laptop as opposed to spinning vinyl or CDs... He buys a CD, rips it to MP3 and loads it into his software. Even if he's paying ASCAP fees for the use of the music (or whatever the equivalent organization is in Australia), he gets fined $60k unless he pays a SEPARATE fee for the ability to work from MP3s instead of the original CDs? My mind just exploded. As long as he's paying his ASCAP (or whatever) fees, who gives a shit whether he's working off a CD or an MP3?

Re:No "fair use" in Australia

[sahonen]

Because a DJ is ALREADY paying royalties to ARIA for the right to spin those songs at a gig. ARIA is proposing to make DJs pay an *additional* fee on top of what they're already paying in order to format shift their music for convenience (i.e. playing tunes as MP3s out of a laptop, or creating compilation CDs to reduce the number of CDs that need to be taken to a gig). This is wrong because it makes absolutely no difference to the listeners. They just hear music coming out of the speakers regardless of what format it's in on the DJ's side.

Re:No "fair use" in Australia

[evanbd]

They should also have to choose between legal and technological protection. If they want to use DRM to enforce policies that aren't based in copyright law (and there's no way for a piece of software to distinguish what's legal fair use), then I see no reason to grant them copyright protection. The purpose of copyright is to promote creation and enrich society. Fair use is a necessary part of that, as is the ability to use the work after the copyright period expires. They should not be allowed to renege on half of the bargain and expect the other half to continue to hold.

If they want DRM, fine. But pick one. They shouldn't be allowed to lock up our culture and expect legal assistance in doing so.

So when are they going to stop calling it buying?

[pembo13]

It surely seems like you don't buy a song from ITunes, and you don't buy a movie from Blockbuster, etc. At the very least they should stop using the term buy.

Re:Has the world gone bonkers?

[Anonymous Coward]

> 2. Buy a license to listen to the music. Then you can media-shift all you want, as you are licensing the music. You never have to rebuy it either, if your disk breaks, just download the music, you already have a license.

They can simply say that you have the license to listen to the music on THAT media you purchased.

nope

[nguy]

A recording industry association can't arbitrarily define themselves what's legal and what isn't under copyright law. They are bound by copyright law as much as everybody else.

Format shifting is not a public performance. Therefore, it should be covered under standard copyright law and not require separate licensing.

Public performance of the music can, of course, be subject to licensing fees. But the recording industry shouldn't be able to set licensing fees based on which media or equipment the DJ happens to use.

Re:public performance.

[Omestes]

I know I'm trying to be logical when it comes to the various recording industries, but...

If I got this right, the DJ has to buy, and pay royalties towards music purchased in format X, and potentially the venue also must pay royalties. So music X is bought and paid for, correct?

Now if the DJ decided to shift X into Y he must pay AGAIN, noticing that X was already completely paid up and legit.

I don't see where this is different from me doing the same, even if my use is not commercial. The main similarity, of course, is that X is completely legal, legit, and paid for. What the difference from me playing the CD containing a song, and me playing an mp3 of the same song, ripped from the same album. Where does the industry lose money? Is there something in the process of encoding and ripping that takes back all the money I paid in the first place?

Off topic, but relevant: WTF is up with the new comment boxes and format? The comments make me feel like I'm using a ghetto version of Reddit, and the actual page format is just UGLY. The huge gray buttons are... well... And the new way of displaying threads is more moronic than the last version...

Who taught the monkey to play with code?

Re:No "fair use" in Australia

[sahonen]

Pressing a bunch of copies of a CD and selling them/giving them away is a completely different matter than format shifting music for your own personal convenience and not giving anything away except as part of a performance for which you are paying royalties.

You also failed to answer the question I specifically asked. Tell me why, in a fair and just world, should ARIA be allowed to charge extra for the convenience of format shifting when no sales are lost and no person hears the music except the DJ who purchased it and his audience who are covered by the peformance royalty that the DJ is paying. No copyright holder is in any way harmed by allowing DJs for format shift. Charging DJs an extra royalty harms the DJs by forcing them to haul their entire physical CD collection to gigs (and risk them getting lost, stolen, or damaged) instead of a hard drive or compilation CDs.

Your argument seems to be based on the "letter of the law." Tell me why that law should be interpreted in that way instead of in a way that allows DJs more convenience without harming copyright holders in any way.

Re:No "fair use" in Australia

[QuantumG]

Dude, in a fair and just world there wouldn't be copyright, period. If you frequent this site, you've probably seen me rant about this before.

We're not having a discussion about how great the world would be without copyright, we're having a discussion about what ARIA is doing in the real world.

In the real world the license granted by a copyright owner can be as strict or as lax as they like. It can authorize the public performance of a work but not the time shifting of a work. It can say that you're only allowed to play any song an album or just the acoustic ones.

Is this absurd? Yes.

Does this put too much power into the hands over the copyright owners? Yes.

That's the way the copyright system is.. fucked..

Re:No "fair use" in Australia

[sahonen]

Ahh, I see where you're getting at. You could have made your position a little more clear. As a musician who owns a few copyrights of my own, I disagree that copyright shouldn't exist. Someone who creates a work should be allowed to have a say in how it can be distributed, and nobody should be allowed to make money off of somebody else's work without compensating them. I license my work under a Creative Commons license that allows it to be freely distributed, but if someone wants to make money off it they have to make their own licensing deal with me, which would involve compensating me. I believe that this is perfectly fair, and this could only happen with some sort of copyright law in place.

I do agree, however, that copyright law should be significantly overhauled. For starters, durations should be shortened (20 years or less), and copyright ownership should not be transferable.

Re:No "fair use" in Australia

[mrvan]

The analogy is flawed: they block off something I have the right do do.

To extend your analogy: suppose you own property next to mine and I have legal right-of-way. Now, you're not allowed to build a gate and not give me the key, since I have the right to pass over your property to mine. That is what DRM is trying to do: they 'guard' their property in a way that also blocks my legal rights (ie fair use copying, distribution after copyright ends).

Re:No "fair use" in Australia

[sahonen]

Would Lord of the Rings, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, have been made if there had been no way to recoup the costs of production? Somebody has to pay for these things to get made, and people generally don't give away millions of dollars without a way to get it back. Without at least a temporary monopoly on their work so they can earn back the cost of making it, it wouldn't get made in the first place, that is how copyright benefits society. Copyright makes it financially viable to make art for society to enjoy.

On the other hand, copyrights need to expire to encourage people to keep creating new works all the time rather than being able to sit back and cash in on one work for the rest of their lives. Copyright expiration benefits society by allowing timeless works that have become part of our culture (i.e. anything that people still remember 20 years later) to enter the public domain.

Re:No "fair use" in Australia

[sahonen]

Question though define making money off of your work? If I create a compilation CD and sell that does that count as making money? Yes. Any time you incorporate my work into a product that you are selling, you're making money off my work. What if I am a DJ, and the format you distribute your work under isn't compatible with my systems, So I change your copy to MP6 so that it plays better on my system, is this a change? While I am getting paid for your music if we remove your music I am still getting paid. If you're a DJ the venue you play at is playing an ASCAP fee and I'm getting my cut of that. I really couldn't care less how you get the tunes onto the dance floor as long as ASCAP knows you spun my tune so they can give me my cut. define distribute as well. is listening to music out loud at a park considered distribution? The music industry thinks so. I'd chalk that up under fair use.

Re:No "fair use" in Australia

[sahonen]

You said you thought people had a right to control how their work is distributed and that no-one has a right to profit from someone else's work without compensation.

Well the exact quote would be "should be allowed," not "has a right," but that's all semantics. I'm not a lawyer or debate major so I'm not used to having to phrase everything precisely lest my words be twisted so bear with me a bit. I do mean a temporary granted monopoly, not an unalienable right. I hope you'll see that I'm trying to argue to the spirit of the argument, not the semantics and that you'll do the same.

If things fall into the public domain then others can profit from the work without compensating the creator. So which is it? If a work is in the public domain, there's not much money to be made off it. Why would someone buy a copy of a public domain work when they can grab it off Project Gutenberg? How many people are getting rich selling copies of Shakespeare and Dickens? This is exactly how it should be IMHO. Shakespeare and Dickens are part of the fabric of our culture and people should be able to have access to them cheaply and easily.

pointless change

[Chuffpole]

What's with the intrusive new ugly "Reply to this" and "Parent" buttons here?
Horrible. Is there any way to go back to the old appearance?

Re:No "fair use" in Australia

[electrictroy]

Copyright law should be rewritten so it's "per user". In other words you pay for a song once, and that's it. If you want to move your CD over to an MP3 file, you can, as long as you keep the original CD as "proof of purchase". (And if you don't have the original, then you can be prosecuted.)

It's ridiculous that I have to buy the same song multiple times (first cassette, then CD, now Itunes download) just because I switch formats.

Either that or "greed" on the part of money-hungry companies desiring to sell the same song again-and-again-and-again.

Re:No "fair use" in Australia

[Eivind]

Because sane copyright-laws have an exception where NORMAL copies that are needed for NORMAL usage of the work are exempt, as are temporary copies arising as a natural side-effect of the use.

To run a computer-program, for example, you MUST copy the bits from CD-rom to hard-disc, from hard-disc to RAM, from RAM to CPU, some parts of the program end up in CPU-cache. Parts of the artwork end up in RAM on the graphics-card. Temporary copies exist as electrical signals traveling towards screen and speakers, as soundwaves in the air and as photons of various frequencies between your screen and your eyes.

Similarily, just listening to a CD creates (more or less temporary) copies in wires, buffers, DACs and assorted cabling.

Even just reading a book creates short-lived copies. There's a continous stream of photons containing the page you're on traveling outwards in all directions from the page. Fragments of the work will stick more or less permanently in various neural structures in your head and so on.

Nevertheless, doing these things are not equivalent, in a practical sense, to COPYING the work. Rather they are nessecary and natural consequences of USING the work in the ordinary way.

As I said, in sane copyright-law, such copies are explicitly allowed. In Norway, for example, copying a CD to a different format like a mp3-player, or to a backup-tape is explicitly allowed.