The RIAA Knows Where All The Best Hookers Are
You know you’re a thug’s thug when you can push the federal government into creating a regulation that legalizes your stealing anything that falls under a certain category.
Hey, FCC, I want a law that says that all anime in the United States is mine! Cool?
According to a new sick excuse for regulation, obviously created as a result of the Recording Industry Association of America hiring the best hookers in the business to be their lobbyists, all royalties for music streamed over the Internet now belong to the RIAA.
Yup. All of them. By default — and worse than by default. The FCC sanctioned the use of one, and only one, royalty license to be applied to streaming Internet media, and that license grants all royalties (at the newly-demanded 300%-of-normal rate that you’ve probably heard about) to Sound Exchange, which collects royalties for the RIAA. Because, um, we’re democratic capitalists and we don’t like monopolies. Errrr…
(Actually, SoundExchange collects a special Internet royalty that the Republican congress of 1998 granted to the RIAA — yes, they already get regular royalties plus a special royalty for the music being online. Recently we learned that the price would be hiked enough to put National Public Radio out of business, and now we’re learning that the FCC is granting exclusive rights to SoundExchange for all Internet music. Next, I expect we’ll see mandatory royalties for whistling in the elevators, and a law granting the FCC the right to try all the good hookers first.)
So thanks to our public servants at the FCC (I guess they’re providing the service of whore-testing?), the RIAA is going to be allowed to collect royalties on all streaming Internet music, whether they own the copyright or not.
Al Capone didn’t have it that good!
The deal is, all operators of streaming radio, big or small, have to either a) operate under the RIAA license or b) negotiate individually with every single copyright-holder of the music they play to determine royalties. (And if the RIAA is the copyright-holder of anything you play, then you must use their license, which grants them royalties on everything you play.) Maybe, the RIAA grants charitably, if they see a value in letting your station continue to exist (value for them, not for musicians or listeners, to whom the diversity of stations is already valuable), they’ll negotiate with you for a rate that won’t quite put you out of business. If they feel like it.
Well, wait — the RIAA estimates that it "owns" the copyright on 90% of what’s played on the Internet. (I still think their "ownership" is far from uncontestable in any case.) So they’re only stealing ten percent. Therefore, by extention, stealing is not stealing if you own 90% of things in the vicinity.
WOW. A proper application of this new legal precedent could leave one owning most of one’s city in just a few short weeks of shuffling the shit from your garage around!
Hmm, I’ll have to remember that…
Okay, so: What if you’re an indie artist, dutifually having nothing to do with the mob RIAA, and your music got played by a radio station and SoundExchange collected your royalties? Well, you can sign up with SoundExchange — giving them the right to permanently collect your royalties, as well as gods-know-what-else (but if you seen one recording company contract, you’ve kinda seen them all, so ouch). Or you can just let them keep your money. What if you’ve declared that you don’t want any royalties from Internet music? Well, then, if the station in question is directly negotiating with every artist, they don’t have to pay you. But if they take the only other option, the FCC’s precious monopoly contract, then they have to pay the RIAA anyway, so the RIAA will just keep that money for you, eh kid? It’ll be, like, a mututally beneficial arrangement. You let us have the money you didn’t want anyway, and Buffo here won’t break both your knees.
There’s one–ONE–ray of light that I know of in this, and it’s a dim one (especially since the FCC just rejected NPR’s very large, public appeal for a rehearing on these issues). That’s that the obvious next step — to put the kibosh on all non-paying ("illegal" if you commit the atrocity of grouping this regulation under your definition of "legal") and non-U.S. Internet radio stations — is probably impossible. Internet Service Providers have so far resisted the RIAA and other monopolies’ attempts to use them to scour the Internet for everyone they think should be paying them, and they’ve done this for a reason: Because once ISPs admit any responsibility for the content that crosses their lines, they’re in biiiig trouble. Right now they have "Common Carrier" status, which is the same thing that means that AT&T doesn’t go to jail if I use their phones to call in a bomb threat. If they give that up–by agreeing to be responsible for content in any situation–then suddenly every spammer, every incident of kiddie porn, is potentially sending some sysadmins and businesspeople in the ISP world to jail. I seriously doubt they’ll let that happen.
…but then again, before today I was pretty sure that the Federal government wouldn’t pass a blatantly illegal regulation protecting an obvious act of theft. Obviously I can be wrong.
All of this appears to mean that Internet Radio is pretty much hosed in the U.S. That’s too bad, because I would normally like the royalties from music I listen to to be staying in my country and bolstering our economy, rather than, say, Russia’s…but fuck it. (’scuse me.) At the moment I’m liking Russia better than the RIAA anyway.
-PD
Read an explanation of the most recent bullshit here. I also found the Slashdot comment thread on this story enraging enlightening.
5 comments
Interesting… I was completely unaware of all of this. You had me worried for a little while, before I got to the part where it only applies to the US.
I agree that it’s messed up. Crazy politics of it all…
Thanks for the info about all this =)
Well…it only applies to the US for now, yes. But I wouldn’t rest easy on that for a moment — the RIAA, with the help of other monopolies, is steadily increasing pressure on International organizations to punish all the countries that won’t play along.
I’m about to take my second class on this subject, and I’m considering specializing in something like this area in law school…I just think choking the world’s supply of music, and screwing the artists who make it at the same time, is probably the exact zenith of evil.
::shudder::
As a working member od the Entartainment community and of ASCAP I dont know how RIAA continues to be given “Special” treatment on such “Illegal” issues. Those who are allowing this “Internet Only” royalty Increase are violating MY rights by allowing a specific group (RIAA) to not only increase Royalty Fees but NOT to include MAIN Copyright holders in this action I call ILLEGAL. Composers, Songwriters, Lyricists, and music Publishers also hold a Copyright to the songs you hear.
I wonder what would happen if we filed legal action against RIAA, CRB and others who seem to think they can make these decisions without the authority of ALL Copyright holders?
Remember we still hold Copyright to songs regardless of what Artist or Record Lable records it yet we have been left out of this decision that MOST of us do not support at all.
Hey!
What about the fucking ARTIST’S?
NOONE EVER talks about the Artist, his hardwork & his creations, least of all, $ for the Artist’s, thier familys & their creations, that, they own! All the bicklering & concern is over business’s.
Bottom line everyone, because of the psychology of the computer & being online, really feels that music should be free, or, at least very, very cheap.
NOONE, honestly, gives a damn about the ARTIST’S who make the music who makes everyone’s jobs. NOONE gives a damn about the ARTIST’S not matter what they say!
You want music very cheap or free!
Well, normally I would have modded this out and waited for a better-articulated reply, but it is, though shabbily presented, a darn good point.
I, since you seem misinformed, have talked about the artists quite a lot. I am, in fact, married to a musician who has supported himself as an artist, recording contracts and all. I also wrote a paper for a class I took outlining several alternative pricing-structures for online music that would compensate the artist exponentially better than the current greed-driven system does.
I am a businessperson, and this article was written from the point of view of the concerns of the business world. The particular problem of Internet Radio royalties has huge implications there as well as to listeners and artists.
Several things are wrong with the sorta-argument you make. The most glaring is that, if music were made cheap and half the profits went to artists, the artists would be making a TON more money than they are now. For all that a CD costs a few pennies to make and twenty bucks to buy, the artist is only seeing about 1-5% of that money.
Under the RIAA’s scheme, an artist in a gold-album-selling band will make not much more than $40,000, once they pay back the exhorbitant fees. They can’t get a better contract, because the recording companies work together to make sure the contracts stay pretty standard (book publishers tend to do the same thing). There are a million other things wrong with their system, from payola to artistic interference, but the basic point is that the RIAA is not a good model for artists. It screws them, as it were, without lube, and sometimes also with a sandpaper condom.
Ahem.
That said, there are several much better options available, which provide music for cheap — and yes, sometimes for free, because getting heard by a wider audience and having more merchandise and concert sales is often economically better for artists than selling more CD’s. People are already trying them and already proving that they can work, if the people who matter — artists and listeners — educate themselves and make a call.
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