Speak Geek to Me: Take Back the Music
Stories about the RIAA bullying music fans are so ubiquitous it's nearly becoming white noise. The association has been trying to kill ants with a hammer; when the blow strikes true, it's devastating, but even as you squash a couple here or there, there's an entire Internet's worth of ant colony hanging out underground.
But thats about the artists who've been "discovered." One thing people don't focus on when the RIAA goes on the rampage is, well, who CAN we download, listen to, and maybe even share without fear of the grand hammer falling on our heads?
One genre of music that's doing just fine without the support of major labels is comedic music. American society hasn't really embraced funny music, allowing "Weird Al" Yankovic to squirm his way into the mainstream only after decades of work. But these days, musicians don't need labels and, using the Internet as their platform, their options are limitless.
One of the hottest funny musicians is Jonathan Coulton, who got attention with his "Thing a Week" podcast, where he released a song a week, coming up with gems such as "Code Monkey" the anthem for diligent, lonely engineers, and "Skullcrusher Mountain" the love song from an evil mastermind to his intended. He put a business model around his podcast, making the most recent songs available for free, but if you wanted archives you had to pay a small amount for each. Coulton also is a fan of the Creative Commons license, a way to distribute and share digital content online without losing your copyright.
The comedy musicians The Great Luke Ski, Rob Balder, Worm Quartet, Tom Smith and Sudden Death - who created The Funny Music Project (FuMP) asked Coulton if they could steal his business model, and then began releasing two songs per week by their members and some guest bands. Again, the most recent songs are free, then available for a small fee, then available on a CD.
Tom Rockwell of the comedy rap group Sudden Death (a favorite on 38-year funny music aficionado Dr. Dementos show for the past several years, with songs like Cellular Degeneration about cell phones that can do everything but make a phone call), a founding member of the FuMP, says the site will be launching a video section too and will solicit fan-made videos. Unlike the RIAA (which Sudden Death released a song about: "Take Back The Music"), Rockwell loves the sharing aspect of the Internet. "When people share [music] with friends, they're making us a new fan," he said.
Grant Baciocco, the frontman of the comedy band Throwing Toasters, agrees. The band gives away ZIP files of entire albums and recordings of live shows, inviting people to pay what they think the music is worth. Also, Baciocco is enjoying the alternative exposure YouTube gets him, as many people have found him through his videos. He actually invites fan video associated with his projects. While he does release albums, he says that the evolving standard is not to wait until an album is done before releasing: "The days of doing full albums are over. Now when you have a song you release it online."
This concept may make the RIAA scream with out rage, but lets face it geeks blaze the trail in technology; we were first online, we were first to buy the gadgets, and, as comedy musicians are almost always geeks, they will be the first to try out new things online to get listeners and build a fanbase.
The band Beatnik Turtle created waves in 2007 with The Song of the Day, releasing 365 songs through the year, getting the band thousands of new fans. They proudly proclaimed quantity over quality, knowing that some of their songs would be gems, an other would, well, not be. Beatnik Turtle member Randy Chertkow, co-author of upcoming book The Indie Band Survival Guide, says the music industry has changed considerably simply due to MP3s. "As soon as you divorce something from a physical object, it loses value," he said. "MP3s are becoming the preferred format, and therefore not as valuable [as CDs] to the listener. So you have to figure out how to make money giving it away."
But how does one get noticed online? Funny music is not the only genre making waves online: Jody Whitesides, an indie rock musician and the first artist to appear on iTunes who wasn't signed with a label, says it's harder now to get listeners than it was a decade ago. An indie musician has to do something new that will grab attention. "You can't just put music out on the web and hope," he said. He stresses that performance and know-how still matter a great deal.
MySpace, considered THE place to be for musicians to reach new fans, is something that the artists have a love-hate relationship with, although at this point emotions tend to run to hate. Baciocco calls it, "The bane of my existence" and Whitesides thinks it's more trouble than it's worth. Twitter, the 140-character microblogging site, is becoming a more fun and less stressful way to reach fans, (used, incidentally, by Baciocco, Whitesides, Beatnik Turtle's Jason Feehan, and Rockwell, who says, "There are words missing from the language to describe Twitter"). Each artist uses the site to connect with fans, announce shows, and just let people know whats going on. Some get detailed about their lives, some dont.
Beatnik Turtle, Coulton, and thousands of other bands also use Myxer, a free site that lets indie bands and other content providers create ringtones and deliver other content to users' cell phones. By accessing a unique code for the band on everything from a website to physical posters, fans can listen to the music from their phone and learn about the band immediately whether online or not.
The thing about the comedic bands and many indie artists - is that they are not just sitting back. In addition to their music careers, they continue to work on their exposure online. Whitesides wants to bring social networking to his site, creating a Jody Whitesides network that allows his fans to meet, experience his music, and everything they can do on MySpace or Facebook, only on his web real estate. Baciocco thinks UStream, the live video streaming site, has a lot of promise for the future; as wifi becomes more readily available he likes the idea of streaming live shows and other performances, connecting with fans via Twitter or the chat in Ustream, making the show more dynamic.
In his book, Chertkow covers many aspects of surviving as in independent musician in the 21st century. But his number one piece of advice? "Lose the mentality that you must be discovered. You have to take responsibility of every aspect of being a musician. Take ownership of your entire music career."
I know there are tons of bands, both funny and not, that I didnt cover here. If you want to discover some excellent funny music like Possible Oscar, The Gothsicles, and Carla Ulbrich, visit The Funny Music Project, or listen to Rockwells podcast, Manic Mondays, where he showcases funny music weekly. If you want a good resource for indie rock, Jody Whitesides has a blog, The Single of the Day where he gives exposure to other bands.
Mur Lafferty is an unapologetic geek, podcaster and author. Find out more about her and her projects at www.Murverse.com, and check out her first novel, Playing For Keeps, released via Swarm Press on August 25.
Update: Internet Radio's Day of Silence is...Today
Those of you who listen to Internet radio stations such as Rhapsody, Pandora, or MTV may have noticed that there isnt any music being broadcast today. Thats because today is the Official Internet Radio Day of Silence. As was reported earlier, todays silence is to draw attention to the new royalty rates for webcast music that go into effect on July 15th (retroactive to January of last year). Many in the industry believe that these new rates will cripple independent Internet radio, if not destroy it all together. The new royalty rates will drastically increase the current royalty rate paid to RIAA offshoot SoundExchange. Some smaller webcasters will be able to pay a smaller annual fee, but only if they severely limit the number of people who stream their stations. Larger Internet radio companies may have to fork over close to a billion dollars in fees.
Here's how they say they derived that figure: When the CRB decided earlier this year to change the rules for Internet broadcasters, it also decided to levy a $500 minimum annual fee per Internet radio "channel." SoundExchange, the non-profit music industry entity that collects the royalty and other fees on behalf of record labels, says that minimum payment is supposed to cover administrative costs.
But since some of the larger Internet radio services potentially offer their listeners hundreds of thousands of unique "channels" (RealNetworks' Rhapsody offered more than 400,000 in 2006 alone, according to a company spokesman), the companies view the ruling as forcing them to multiply that mandatory minimum payment accordingly (for Real, that would amount to $200 million.)
Such an amount would far outpace the $20 million in total royalty fees collected by SoundExchange from the Internet radio industry last year, the CEOs note in their letter. And besides, it's not even clear that those payments would go to artists, as royalty payments do, the companies argue.
So who and what is SoundExchange? Ostensibly, they are the group responsible for handing out royalties to RIAA recording artists. Sounds like a pretty reasonable group, right? Well, maybe it would be, but according to its own website thousands of artists have gone unpaid because SoundExchange cant find them. Im sure with the new money theyll be raking in from webcast music theyll be able to find such shrinking violets as Ted Nugent.
Then theres the story of Sound Exchange consultant Hank Medress who got rich off of The Lion Sleeps Tonight while the original writer and singer, Solomon Linda, died penniless in South Africa. A class act and perhaps the best example of the RIAAs do as we say, not as we do policies.
If you miss your Internet radio, please contact your Senators and Representatives and urge them to support the Internet Radio Equality Act.
Wil Wheaton's Geek in Review: Sound Salvation
About a week ago, I fired up last.fm as I sat down to work, and it started playing a station "based on music similar to Belle and Sebastian." After a few songs I already knew and loved from Flaming Lips and New Pornographers, it played Sleeping Lessons off the new album from The Shins, followed immediately by Neighborhood #2 by The Arcade Fire. I've been a fan of The Shins since about three days before they broke out thanks to the Garden State soundtrack, but I hadn't given the new album much of a listen, other than previewing it bit by bit on iTunes, and I was frankly unimpressed in 30 second increments. I've heard the damn kids today go on and on about how I should listen to The Arcade Fire, but I hadn't heard an entire song from them up to that point.
I don't listen to much broadcast radio any more, but when I do, I don't hear these bands or bands like them; I hear the same Red Hot Chili Peppers songs over and over again, and whatever boring bullshit is currently being force-fed to listeners by the record labels and their partners in crime at Clear Channel.
However, based on hearing these songs, I plan to buy both these albums now, because I really, really liked them. The Shins and The Arcade Fire just made sales, earned themselves another unpaid marketer, and probably sold at least two concert tickets, all because I heard them on the Internet.
Sadly, the RIAA doing its best to ensure that, in a little over two months, you and I won't have opportunities like this to discover new music, and indie online radio stations in the United States will be as rare as an hour of so-called Alternative radio programming without Linkin Park. Last month, the Copyright Royalty Board adjusted the rates online radio stations will have to pay for the privilege of sharing music with potential customers to such astronomical heights, it will drive pretty much all of them out of business. What constitutes astronomical? How about 60%-300% of their revenue in royalties? Want some context? Satellite pays 5%-7%, and over-the-air broadcasters pay nothing.
Just so everyone understands what's at stake here, and who is affected by this, I strongly encourage you all to read Can You Hear Me Now? from bit-tech.net:
From the mid-nineties on, if you lived in the US, you were probably listening to ClearChannel Communications on up to half of the stations. Nowadays, you're definitely listening to ClearChannel on over half of the stations in the US. Did you know that the ads are now actually timed so that the average person cannot skip stations and not hear one?
In order to reach the largest amount of listeners (after all, the stations aren't competing so much, since they're all owned by the same parent), the music has been reduced down to the top hits from the
biggest artist of each genre. And to encourage you to listen to the same station, many songs are played on more than one, so you don't even have to flip that dial.
This giant ownership of the industry has led to some really poor music selection on this side of the pond, hasn't it?
And so, Internet radio was born. Streaming music straight to your computer is a lot cheaper and easier than the tremendous equipment and electricity required to generate a proper FM broadcast. All you need is a net connection, some software, and to pay some licensing fees.
In fact, it was so much cheaper that people and companies alike started small stations, playing indie music, less popular cuts and deeper, more narrowly focused playlists that resonated perfectly with smaller audiences.
The new technology reaches a lot less people per station, but can subsist on a lot less advertising revenue. Ad revenue that companies are more willing to pay, since the target demographic is that much more controllable. It's small business to the rescue, playing a greater selection of music than ever before.
He makes an important point: for music nerds, technology has allowed anyone with a passion for music to share that passion with like-minded listeners. It's allowed them to effectively make endless mixtapes and play them for the world. For artists -- especially indie artists -- Internet radio is the best promotional outlet they have for their music this side of a friend handing you a CD and saying, "dude, you have to listen to this!"
So why the hell is the RIAA trying so hard to destroy that? Because the RIAA (which is essentially the major labels) has spent a lot of time and a lot of money building a monopoly with a few media conglomerates, and it's been very profitable for them all for decades.
This effort to wipe out independent online radio has nothing to do with protecting artists, and everything to do with protecting a status quo that supports a very few top 40 acts at the expense of everyone else. In their effort to protect their outdated business model and insanely corrupt relationship with a few broadcasters, the RIAA is happy to prevent their artists from having a magnificent way to reach potential customers who will buy albums, merchandise, and concert tickets.
For the audience, this is about choice: The airwaves are supposedly owned by the American people, and licensed out to broadcasters for use. (Stop laughing. It's true.) So if we, the people, own the airwaves, who told Clear Channel that they could dictate what got played on the radio all over the nation? Who told Clear Channel that they could fill the airwaves with lowest common denominator crap and empty-headed, passionless DJs who read from a script? Who told Clear Channel that they could force out everyone else and ensure that the radio really, really sucks? I know that I wasn't consulted, that's for sure.
Luckily, there's been online salvation for people like me. We can listen to Internet radio because we're bored to death with the same handful of songs repeated ad nauseam on the radio. We're tired of a few giant media companies jamming the same stuff into our ears over and over again, and we want to tune into a specific genre of music without a lot of repeats (SomaFM and radioio.) We want to listen to music that's being played by people who are passionate about what they're playing (Radio Paradise.) We want to discover new music based on stuff we already like (Pandora and last.fm.) In other words, We want something different than Clear Channel, which is nearly impossible if we don't have access to Internet radio. Some of us even want to create our own stations, not for money but for the love of music, and the Internet has made that possible, too. It pisses me off that the music industry is working so aggressively to take that all away, and it breaks my heart that I may never have the opportunity to make a long distance death dedication after coming out of a goddamn uptempo record, man.
But there is some hope for us all. There is a bill before Congress, with bi-partisan support, to give 'net broadcasters a break and set their royalty rates equal with satellite radio. Online broadcasters have gotten organized, and are currently meeting with members of congress to plead their (and our) case. The new royalty rates, originally scheduled to take effect on May 15, won't take effect until July 15, presumably to give Congress some time to really investigate this issue, and maybe give the RIAA some time to reconsider alienating yet another large swath of their potential customer base.
Stop laughing. It's . . . well, it's not true, but it should be.
Is Don on the phone?
Wil Wheaton has two new albums.
N.C. State Gives RIAA the Finger
While the RIAA shows no signs of changing its scare-the-pants-off-the-little-guy tactics, fewer people seem daunted and more are stepping up to fight. Maybe stories like that of über-lawyer Meri Ledford III, Esq. are inspiring people, because the Student Legal Services office of N.C State is urging the 23 students the RIAA has dropped letters on to tell them to go fuck themselves.
The RIAA filed 23 music theft lawsuits against anonymous NCSU network users after they refused to take the settlement.
The lawsuits are in the form of "John Doe lawsuits," meaning that the RIAA does not know the names of the people it has filed against.
The users have been identified by their IP addresses, according to an RIAA spokesperson who declined to give her name or be directly quoted.
[...]
"The RIAA actually said they might have use for the names in the future," Gerace said,
She added that this could prove dangerous for the students, as the RIAA could pursue other legal actions or give the names to record companies.
The letter sent to NCSU had nothing about a timeline for other settlements to be made or what the lawsuit will entail, Gerace said.
[...]
The RIAA accompanied the initial settlements along with a sample listing of songs the students downloaded.
"[The number of songs] ranged from 10 to 2,000," Gerace said. "They said it could be $750 per song. The letter said, though, that they could just pay $3,000, which would not be based on the number of songs."
So... 2,000 x 750... $1,500,000
The RIAA says you, lowly music pirate, have cost the music industry one and a half million dollars just by filling a single iPod Nano. How do you sleep at night? I guess the N.C. State students think it's as bullshit as the rest of us, if only one of them was scared enough to come forward wanting to settle. Student Legal Services clearly has ideas about the legality of the RIAA's actions though.
The students who are being subpoenaed do have options though through Legal Services. One of those options, Gerace said, is making a motion to quash.
"If someone is subpoenaed and they say they don't want to comply, the subpoenaed party says they can't come for a certain reason," Gerace said. "Then it goes to the federal court who could take a year to make a decision."
[...]
"But if they do nothing and it is valid, then the University would have to give out their names and addresses," Gerace said.
The student newspaper, The Technician, is also urging students not to give in to the bullying tactics.
It's apparent, based on the amount of attention the University gets from the RIAA, that we are one of its main targets, and this is something we all must fight.
We realize that students who engage in music piracy have done something illegal, and neither Student Legal Services nor the Technician advocates for it.
[...]
It is imperative that the University community makes it clear that the RIAA can't shove us around with its deep pockets, and the opposition starts with the accused -- students.
Whilst everyone hates the RIAA, and everyone loves a pirate, the important thing here is that the RIAA loves to ignore legal processes, safe in the knowledge most of the people they're dealing with won't have a lawyer dig into things and find out how things should be done. Hopefully N.C. State will be able to emulate Meri Ledford III, Esq's victory; if enough people do then, maybe the RIAA will start playing by the rules.
Hat tip: Slashdot
Best. Lawyer. Ever!
Everyone hates the RIAA, right? Theyve had a rather lengthy recent history of being total douchewads. With their huge war chest and battalion of attorneys, theyre pretty much evil incarnate, filing lawsuit after lawsuit against users who had allegedly used peer-to-peer software to share music files. Defendants receive settlement offers long before they ever get a summons, with the intent of scaring folks into settling before the RIAA has to spend a dime on litigation fees. It works most of the time. When the RIAA actually does file a complaint, most defendants are too unfamiliar with the process to obtain adequate representation. Again, the RIAA counts on just that.
This strategy may have worked again when the RIAA filed a suit in the Eastern District of California against Visalia resident Barry Merchant, were it not for his lawyer, Merl Ledford III, Esq. And what did Merl do? He responded to the RIAAs hardball with some country hardball of his own. Here are some choice quotes from Merls letter to the RIAAs attorneys, dated March 27, 2007.
The lawsuit filed by your office and your letter arrive at a particularly inappropriate time in Barry and Cathy Merchant's life. Mrs. Merchant left my office after our first meeting to attend to ill father in Colorado. She and Barry Merchant left my office today to attend his funeral. You should advise your clients that they are facing a "thin skull plaintiff" either on a Rule 11 sanctions motion or (upon favorable termination) in a malicious prosecution action. The emotional distress inflicted by your clients' litigation -- filed in Sacramento rather than the Fresno Branch of the Eastern District Court where my clients' live in violation of the Rules of Court -- has been extreme.
Your client should carefully consider whether it has probable cause to proceed at this point. Mr. Merchant's hard drive is available for immediate, carefully supervised inspection by your client; a carbon copy of the drive has been made by technicians to insure that the evidence is well backed-up.
At the time of inspection, we will expect your clients to be prepared to dismiss all claims with prejudice. The pleadings may be e-filed from my office the same day. Although dismissal will not avoid your clients' exposure to attorneys' fees under the Copyright Act, it will certainly mitigate damages to Mr. and Mrs. Merchant and the possibility of escalating the issues by counter-claim on federal grounds that have been successfully pleaded in other states as well as on pendant California claims that have, thus far, tempered your clients' California zeal for litigating in this state.
Oh, but Merl didnt stop with just threatening to counter-sue. No, no. He broke it down, Cali-style.
Your client take (sic) the position that my middle-aged, conservative clients should speculate regarding the identity of persons your clients' claim used their AOL account to download pornographic-lyric gangsta rap tracks as predicate to possible case resolution. In an age of Wintel-virus created bot-farms, spoofs, and easily cracked WEP encrypted wireless home networks (among other easy hacks), the only tech-savvy response to such a request is, "You've got to be kidding." The extensive press that has been generated over computer security (and the insecurity of Windows XP and its predecessors) underscores the complete absence of facts on which probable cause to sue my clients could be established and your clients' willingness (even insistence) that others be implicated in Big Music's speculative, "driftnet" litigation tactics. Sorry: Mr. Merchant cannot and will not expose himself to still more litigation by speculating.
As an attorney, this part is my favorite:
Procedurally, we need to address how best to move the case to the Fresno Branch so you can enjoy our new Courthouse and avoid Judge Levi's wrath for filing in the wrong court. (Senior Judge Bob Coyle was responsible for building both our new facility and the District Court building in Sacramento; and, although neither building is as grand as Judge Manny Real's showpiece in Santa Ana, the Fresno Court is not only nicer than Sacramento but also one of the top three court facilities ever I've enjoyed practicing in.) Handling the issue by stipulation and order would probably be the most simple way to move the file. We do that routinely in PACA litigation although I am open to suggestions if you prefer to handle it differently
Once the case is moved to the Fresno Branch, your clients should consider cleaning up their complaint. The FRCP and collateral estoppel from other RIAA law and motion matters require much greater specificity in pleading than your clients provided in the complaint I reviewed. Dates of the alleged downloads, which plaintiff (or affiliate) holds which copyright to which track, etc. must be specifically pleaded and proven. You are as familiar as I am with the results in other cases where RIAA's general allegations have been challenged. Let's get over that hurdle without unnecessary law and motion practice.
Oh SNAP! You just got MODED, yo!!!
OK, well I thought it was funny. Demonstrating familiarity with local judges and customs and THEN delivering a finger-wagging lecture on civil procedure is the legal equivalent of stealing someones girlfriend and then emailing them pictures of you and her doing it. I'd say "they got served" but we're lawyers and to us that means something entirely different and less likely to involve choreographed dance numbers.
How did the RIAAs lawyers respond to Ledford's letter? Voluntary Dismissal. Boo-fucking-ya. See? Sometimes it pays to have a good lawyer.
Subrosa is a licensed attorney in the state of California and went to the same law school as Mr. Ledford. But Subrosa would never be so smug about having experience practicing in Fresno because being in Fresno is nothing to be proud of. Hat tip: Aegies
Wil Wheaton's Geek in Review: RIAA Wants to Kill Internet Radio. Again.
I'm not a huge fan of monopolies. As a consumer, and as a creator, I want to have as many choices and options as I can for interacting with content and audience.
That just makes sense, right? More choices is better, free market, etc. etc. etc. I mean, can you imagine a world where you go to turn on your radio, and all you can get is a top 40 station? "Now Wil, you're just being silly." You say, "I'll just listen to an indie station on the internet. I'll never have to hear the Red Hot Chili Peppers or Ashlee Simpson ever again."
Not so fast, Captain Smugs-a-lot. The douchebags at the RIAA (who, I have decided, have realized that they've failed to evolve with their industry and are now determined to destroy it) are working overtime to completely destroy our ability to enjoy online radio, like Radio Paradise, Soma.fm, radioio, and Pandora:
On March 1, 2007 the US Copyright Office stunned the Internet radio industry by releasing a ruling on performance royalty fees that are based exclusively on the number of people tuned into an Internet radio station, rather than on a portion of the stations revenue. They discarded all evidence presented by webcasters about the potentially crippling effect on the industry of such a rate structure, and rubber-stamped the rates requested by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).
Under this royalty structure, an Internet radio station with an average listenership of 1000 people would owe $134,000 in royalties during 2007 - plus $98,000 in back payments for 2006. In 2008 they would owe $171,000, and $220,000 in 2009.
The RIAA claim that they are working to "protect their artists." Like every other claim the RIAA makes, this is complete and utter bullshit. They realize that they can't force their outdated Big Hit business model on Longtail consumers any more, so rather than adapt to survive in the current marketplace, they're going to destroy it, and roll radio back to the pre-internet years when they could safely sit in their glass towers and twirl their mustaches while lighting cigars with 100 dollar bills. Uh, while we all listened to Toto and Survivor and liked it.
Bill Goldsmith, one of the guys behind the absolutely wonderful Internet radio station Radio Paradise, has written an impassioned and informative article about the beauty of online radio, and the consequences this ruling will have on broadcasters like him:
I have been in love with radio all of my life, and spent 30-odd years dealing with the conflict between my vision of radio as an art form and my FM-station employers vision of radio as a conduit for advertising. I have watched the medium that I love turn from an essential part of the process of connecting those who love making music with those whose lives are touched by it into a mindless background hum of advertising and disposable musical sludge.
With the advent of the Internet, we were finally able to bring to life the radio station I had always wanted to work for (and listen to): commercial-free, passionate, and embracing a wide universe of musical treasures, from the classic rock artists I grew up with to the latest indie discoveries, with a liberal sprinkling of world music, electronica, jazz, even classical. We have slowly built up a loyal audience and have been able to support ourselves while living our dream.
[. . .]
Crippling an exciting, groundbreaking industry like Internet radio is certainly not in the best interests of the public, nor that of musical artists, and not even - if history is any judge - of the music industry itself. Just as they were unable to see how the advent of home music taping actually spurred the sale of LPs and CDs, they are unable to tell exactly what impact Internet radio and other forms of digital media will have on the future of their industry - and to behave as if they do know, and for Congress to go along with them, is a grave error, and public disservice, that needs to be recognized and corrected.
I can feel Bill's passion and his pain. When I started my blog back in the stone age, I used Shoutcast to do a simple streaming radio station through Live365. I called it Radio Free Burrito, and it gave me a chance to live out a dream I'd had since I was in middle school: play music I loved, talk about the history of the band, record, or song, and pretend I was a KROQ or KMET (rip) DJ. It was great fun, at one time got all the way up to 100 listeners, and gave me something to do that kept me off the streets. Then the CARP was passed, and my simple little hobby became an expensive nightmare of reporting and bureaucracy. Those 100 people who could have been turned into customers for some of the indie or little-known acts I played never got the chance, because it was more important to the RIAA to cling to an outdated and dying business model, rather than embrace a new technology.
Now, they're at it again, against all logic and reason, but luckily for all sane people, a diverse coalition of broadcasters from Clear Channel to NPR ultra-indie webcasters have joined forces to fight this outrageous ruling.
Jonathan Potter, the executive director of the Digital Media Association, which represents major online companies affected by the decision, asked that the judges specifically allow a per-tuning-hour approximation measure for paying the royalties.Potter also asked the judges to clarify a $500 annual fee per broadcasting channel, saying that with some online companies offering many thousands of listening options, counting each one as a separate channel could lead to huge fees for online broadcasters.
NPR argued in its filing Monday that the new rules would have "crippling effects" on public radio's ability to meet its mandate of serving the public interest, and it also objected to the $500 per-channel minimum fee.A group of commercial broadcasters including San Antonio, Texas-based Clear Channel, the largest radio company in the country, also asked for a reconsideration of key parts of the ruling, saying that the methods used to calculate the fees were faulty.
The motions filed Monday covered relatively technical aspects of the ruling and mark the first of what is likely to be other legal challenges to the decision.
There are a few glimmers of hope here: This only impacts US-based internet radio, so until big business and nanny-state congressmorons get their China-like Internet filtering right here in the good old USofA, we can still tune into services like Last.fm, which aren't located here in the land of Freedom Fries and magnetic ribbons. Also, the fact that an evil conglomerate like Clear Channel is on board to fight it should tell us all a lot about just how bad this ruling would be for everyone (though it raises my suspicions more than a little bit; I'm far too cynical to believe that Clear Channel suddenly got a case of "concern for anyone but Clear Channel.")
I don't have a ton of additional personal commentary to add here; pretty much everything I want to say is summed up in the links above and below. But this is an important issue that needs wider exposure, and goes directly to the heart of consumer choice and technological empowerment of the same. I will add this: I agree with John Scalzi's (and Cory Doctorow's, and lots of other smart people's) suggestion that the greatest threat to authors is not piracy, but obscurity. I'd suggest that the same can be said of musicians. While the RIAA's contributors at the big labels may want to ensure that clones of Fallout Boy and Panic! at the Disco get massive radio play while unique acts like The Legends and Wilco struggle to get any airtime, I believe in giving audiences more -- not less -- choices and listening options. What does the RIAA have to gain by limiting our choices? I guess we should just follow the money, but fight them every step of the way.
Pissed off? Want to do something? Here are some resources to get you started:
RAIN: Copyright Law and the CRB: What Went Wrong?
Slashdot: Internet Radio in Danger of Extinction in the United States.
FAQ from Save our Internet Radio dot Com
Medialoper: NPR Starts a War
Webcasters Unite dot Net
And, of course, write, call, and fax your congressmoron . . . but be polite. Don't tell them you think they're a moron.
Wil Wheaton is really fucking tired of *AA orgs fucking up a good thing.
The RIAA Petitions To Pay Artists Less For Their Work
When they're not trying to assrape file-sharing college kids in the name of "protecting the rights of the artist," the fabulous RIAA is fucking with the artists themselves. A recent article reveals that the RIAA is petitioning to lower the amount of royalties paid to an artist, claiming that "a lot has changed" in the twenty-five years since the government last set the royalty rate.
Essentially, as one would expect, the RIAA's case is based upon an assumed relationship between falling record sales and piracy. In the wake of the file-sharing boom, licensing music to digital technology, such as ring tones, caused publishers' and artists' profits to skyrocket while the RIAA was left in the dust. To "level the playing field" the RIAA believes that artists should be paid less royalties for the profits made from the sale of media using licensed material.
"Mechanical royalties currently are out of whack with historical and international rates," RIAA executive VP and General Counsel Steven Marks said. "We hope the judges will restore the proper balance by reducing the rate and moving to a more flexible percentage rate structure so that record companies can continue to create the sound recordings that drive revenues for music publishers."
Do we pay the artist for writing the material, or the record industry for distributing it? What came first, the chicken or the egg? Should the artist make less because the RIAA can't seem to adapt to technology in any form, or do we need to rearrange the system to benefit everyone? Is this a thinly veiled form of karma for an industry that saps resources from both artists and fans? Or does the RIAA go underappreciated? I'll answer later; I've got a bunch of albums queued for download and I can hear my "Sexy Back" ringtone in the other room.
RIAA Finds a New Way to Alienate its Customers
Someone at the RIAA must have realized there were still a few music consumers it hadn't sued yet, so the organization is going after kids who post videos of themselves dancing on YouTube.
The RIAA is apparently sending out cease-and-desist letters to YouTube users who dare to put up videos of things such as themselves dancing to music they haven't licensed. It's difficult to see how the RIAA can make a credible claim of "losses" in this case. Clearly, some kids videotaping themselves bopping along to some song aren't going to pay a license fee -- and these sorts of viral videos tend to help build up more interest in artists. So what good does it do to go after these videos?
Kids who don't understand that the RIAA is a C&D-happy organization are just going to freak out at the artist they were dancing to, and those kids will tell their friends, "Hey, Outkast sued me because I shook my tail feathers and put it on YouTube! Fuck Outkast!"
By making kids -- who are just getting up and dancing to the music they love -- feel like criminals, the RIAA creates an entire generation of embittered consumers who will be inclined to steal music, simply as an act of rebellion. This can only hurt the artists the RIAA supposedly exists to protect.
This type of legal action may be smart, according to lawyers, but the publicity departments at all the major labels should be on the phones, screaming at the RIAA for this outrageous move.
Hundreds Possibly Wrongly Sued by RIAA
The RIAA has targeted over 14,000 people they believe were involved in illegal file-sharing. Some of those targeted were the clueless parents of file-sharing minors, some were actual file-sharers, and some, surprise, surprise, might be completely innocent, defense lawyers and legal experts contend.
Many of those targeted were contacted by collection agencies masquerading as "settlement centers", pressuring those they contacted to accept a settlement out of court for thousands of dollars. Many of those contacted had no idea what they were in trouble for, nor what their legal options were.
Ray Beckerman, a New York-based attorney with Beldock Levine & Hoffman, put the number in the thousands. "My impression is that the majority of those sued are innocent," Beckerman said.
"What really rankled me is the bullying tactics they use, and I don't like bullies," said Beckerman, the New York attorney.
"Prior to retaining lawyers, when (defendants) talk to the settlement support center, they are threatened with criminal prosecution, ruin of their credit, publication of their names," he said.
So... who has the moral high ground here, again?
RIAA Uses P2P for More Than Just Suing Users
We all know that the major lable music industry is screaming to lawmakers and courts that peer-to-peer filesharing networks like Kazaa and Grokster are cutting into their profits, costing them millions and millions of dollars as people trade music online for free.
It turns out that those money-grubbing assholes at the RIAA are actually using peer-to-peer networks like Kazaa and Grokster to determine what the next big hit should be and to figure out a new artist's best target audience in order to sell more CDs.
That's right; the same people that the RIAA has been suing for copyright infringement are being used as a test audience to help the RIAA sell more music. The company that's helping them do it is called BigChampagne.
On top of tracking who swaps what from what location, BigChampagne also searches the libraries of everyone who's online. If a new artist starts to gain fans, you can tell what else those fans listen to-- whether your new Lindsay Lohan is a bigger hit with teen girls or with their moms, whether it makes sense to push a new singer-songwriter through Starbucks, and on and on. Compare this to a few years ago, when you could sell a record to someone at a store and not even know what other albums they bought that day; now, entire libraries are laid bare and ready for dissection.
"You can get a really good psychographic profile of a listener base by just looking at the collections of people who download this or that," says [Eric] Garland [of BigChampagne], "And that becomes tremendously important, because early in the life of a record, labels don't necessarily know who the audience is. They just know they've got something great."
Of course, the same industry that's paying to watch people steal music just went to the Supreme Court to stop them from doing it. When BigChampagne opened, record execs often hired them covertly, or even took meetings across the street from the office to ensure that nobody knew what they were doing. Some labels feared that paying BigChampagne would legitimize filesharing, or even hurt the legal actions they were taking against Napster and its successors.
Don't actions like hiring BigChampagne and using data gathered from peer-to-peer networks as a marketing tool undermine the RIAA's claims that filesharing is hurting the industry, as well as the lawsuits the RIAA keeps mercilessly bringing against peer-to-peer filesharers?
RIAA and MPAA Join Internet2, Sue Users
The Internet2 project is a high-speed network being developed largely by and for researchers, universities, and goverment, much like the origins of the current Internet. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), both known for suing internet users, have joined the backers of Internet2.
"Internet2 provides the MPAA and the RIAA with unique access to the research and education community, which shares their interest in developing secure leading-edge content distribution technologies," Internet2's chief executive, Douglas Van Houweling, said in a statement.
Internet2 will serve as a test site for the MPAA and the RIAA to study secure content distribution over future-generation networks, and the organizations will collaborate with select members of Internet2.
"We look forward to collaborative work with a broad spectrum of Internet2's members to develop new technologies that will enable us to produce and distribute digital content over next-generation networks in ways that protect and enhance the value of creative works," RIAA President Cary Sherman said in a statement.
The RIAA has already sued Internet2 users for filesharing.
Taking the Fight Back to the RIAA
In a rather surprising change of events, someone being sued by the RIAA isn't taking the settlement. She's fighting back.
Patricia Santangelo of Wappingers Falls, NY, has decided that she's being unjustly sued, and intends to battle the RIAA, saying she:
...feels as if the well-heeled record companies are picking on a single mother...
She claims that she never used the file-sharing program Kazaa, saying that the name on the Kazaa account belonged to a friend of one of her children.
Santangelo's lawyer, Morlan Ty Rogers, who works in New York City and grew up in Sleepy Hollow and Ossining, said no one has challenged the "boilerplate" language of the lawsuits, adding that the record companies don't have enough evidence to bring their claims to court.
"Many of these lawsuits have been brought against people who are simply the names on the Internet account," Rogers said. He said that's not good enough to sustain a lawsuit. The companies have sued unsuspecting mothers, fathers, grandparents people who have only grudgingly made the switch from vinyl albums to compact discs.
And perhaps the most amusing thing of all, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon had this to say:
"I would love to see a mom fighting one of these"
RIAA Launches New Round of Lawsuits, Targets 784
One can imagine RIAA chairman Mitch Bainwol positively skipping down the halls with glee, cackling maniacally, as he heads toward a meeting with the lackey who'd drawn this round's unlucky names out of the Hat o' Corporate Doom. I bet he was the kid in high school who told the principal when he saw you and your buddies smoking out in the parking lot at lunch. He got a gold star, you got busted. What a NARC.
This week the RIAA launched a new round of lawsuits against 784 file-sharers, and Bainwol had this to say in a statement:
"On Monday, the Supreme Court provided a real shot in the arm to legitimate online music services and unanimously injected moral clarity into this debate. If there was any doubt left, there should now be none individuals who download music without permission are breaking the law. Our efforts to defend the rights of record labels, musicians, songwriters and others in the music community from theft will certainly continue and likely be strengthened in the weeks and months ahead."
This week on Exercises in Futility:
Bainwol also gave props to the launch of a pair of new educational initiatives from Music United, a music-industry coalition formed to help parents understand how to keep their children safe when downloading music. Among the new programs is a worldwide campaign led by Childnet International to distribute a pamphlet for parents entitled, "Young People, Music and the Internet a guide for parents about P2P, file-sharing and downloading." The pamphlet is available at musicunited.org and will be distributed in 18 countries by Childnet, an international non-profit aimed at making the Internet safer for children.
Along with the pamphlet, Music United has launched an outdoor ad campaign in 11 major cities with the tagline "Feed a Musician, Download Legally."
Have you had "the talk" with your children about downloading?
A revealing quote on the MusicUnited site:
To assert that music should be free is the same as saying it has no valuethat music is worthless.
You see, my young consumer, only things that cost money have value.
I don't think music should be free, but I also feel little sympathy for an industry that would rather spend its time in court hampering progress than get with the 21st century. While CDs cost $2 less than a DVD, while legally downloading an album costs as much as buying a CD but gives you less freedom, while it's literally impossible -- if you want more than the latest pop hits -- to find what you want legally because some labels refuse to cooperate with each other, I've got precious little sympathy for them at all.
Why Are the RIAA Such Fucking Assholes?
As the music piracy scourge grows with each passing day, the music executives must be ever more vigilant. Fortunately, they are striking right at the heart of the problem: the clerks at independent record stores that sell hip-hop mixtapes.
Employees of Mondo Kim's and fellow NYC record store Other Music... confirmed yesterday that five of Mondo Kim's employees were arrested... When asked why these five employees were singled out for arrest, the Kim's source told us that an undercover agent was allegedly sold a bootleg, and the arrests followed. After the sale, police produced a search warrant, fingered the arrestees, shut down the store for roughly five hours, and confiscated, according to the RIAA, "500 CD-Rs, 27 Music DVDs, Nine DVD burners, and a scanner,"
"What I'm told actually brought them down... was that there was a CD DJ mix that a guy from Sony saw in the store, and it had a bunch of big-time Sony hip-hop artists on it. So he alerted the feds, and they showed up and arrested a bunch of clerks-- not anyone who does any actual bootlegging."
Not that any legitimate hip-hop artist ever participated in bootlegged mixtapes. And of course these mixtapes weren't crucial to the development of every Sony DJ's career. Keep fighting the good fight, boys.
Woman Sued By the RIAA Sues Back
We all know that the internet leaves a trail, log files tell the man where you were and what you were doing, but what rights does the man have in obtaining that information? One Washington woman, told she had to pay $4,500 for file-sharing or face a law suit is suing her ISP.
Comcast, the top U.S. cable TV network operator, is being sued by a Seattle-area woman for disclosing her name and contact information, court records showed Thursday.
[...]
Leadbetter, a mother of two teenage children, was a customer of Comcast's high-speed Internet access service.
The company, Settlement Support Center, based in Washington state, was using information that the Recording Industry of Association of America had obtained in a Philadelphia lawsuit over the illegal sharing of digital music files, said Lory Lybeck, the lawyer representing Leadbetter.
But no court authorized Comcast to release names and addresses of its customers, or notified his client that her information had been given to an outside party, Lybeck said.
"Comcast should respect the rights of privacy who pay them monthly bills," Lybeck said.
If the RIAA had gone through the motions they probably would have been able to force Comcast to hand over the information, but by doing it without a court order Comcast may have left themselves wide open to a lawsuit. You can bet their lawyers are spending some time going through their terms and conditions of service with a fine toothed comb looking for a way out of this one, before every Comcast subscriber threatened with lawsuits by the RIAA gets themselves a lawyer.
RIAA to Throw Bush Inauguration Party
Music will be playing a big part on both sides of the ideological divide during Bush's inaugural activities on January 20th.
Representing for the dark side of the force, an RIAA "Celebration of Pure, Unmitigated Evil"* will be held at the ritzy H20, aimed at the Bush Youth, with, apparently, the best Republican, Bush-loving, RIAA-supporting rock band they could find --- 3 Doors Down:
"We're honored that the RIAA asked us to perform at their inauguration party," [3 Doors Down] vocalist Brad Arnold says in the party announcement. "It was great that so many people voted this year-especially young people -- and we're proud to be a part of this event." Ticket prices are about $1,000, with proceeds used to pay for the cost of the "serious food, open bar" event, according to an RIAA spokesperson.
The hottest neocon ticket, however, will be the Black Tie and Boots Ball, a non-official jamboree held Jan. 19th by the Texas State Society of Washington, D.C., and featuring Lyle Lovett and Asleep at the Wheel, Clay Walker, Robert Earl Keen, Neal McCoy, the Derailers, the Gourds, Del Castillo and Yolanda Adams.
Meanwhile, the good** bands will be playing the Noise Against Fascism event at the DC nightclub Black Cat. The evening of dissent will feature:
Mirror/Dash (Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore)
The Believers
Metalux
Double Leopards
16 Bitch Pileup
Monotract
Nautical Almanac
Buzzardstain (Nate Young/Twig Harper)
Chris Corsano/Paul Flaherty
To Live and Shave in L.A. (Rat Bastard, Don Fleming, Chris Grier, T. Moore, Tom Smith, Ben Wolcott, Andrew W.K.)
*not really, but that's what they should call it.
**both meanings.
RIAA hits KaZaa...again
The collective labels forming the RIAA (and just about every album out there) have tracked KaZaa down under, and hit them with another lawsuit:
At the end of yet another year full of legal wrangling between the music industry and peer-to-peer services, MSNBC is reporting that a collective of major music labels-- including Sony BMG, Warner, Universal, and EMI (oh wait, that's all of them!)-- have filed a suit against Sharman Networks, the Australian company responsible for the popular file-sharing service. The case began this week in an Australian federal court, with the labels charging Sharman Networks with civil copyright infringement. The labels allege that the company violated Australian fair trade laws and set out to directly harm the music industry.
And under specific scrutiny will be the programming code on which KaZaa is built-- prosecutors hope to use it in proving that illegal file-sharing could be policed by Sharman through the software itself. This, of course, goes against Sharman's long-standing claim that the software itself is not to blame for the rampant illegal activity, and that the fault lies solely on the shoulders of the users who choose to abuse the service.
According to the story, Sharman could get hit with either a lump sum fine, or a fine for each illegal file passed through the system. Ouch.
Run for cover, fileswappers.
RIAA Eyes Digital Radio
The RIAA has announced concerns over digital radio broadcasts and the possibility that individuals could record the CD-quality songs and distribute them over the Internet.
Without copy protections, music fans could cherry-pick songs off the air and redistribute them over the Internet, further deepening the copyright woes of record labels, the Recording Industry Association of America said.
U.S. regulators at the Federal Communications Commission should ensure that the broadcast format limits such copying so radio stations don't turn the airwaves into a giant file-sharing network, RIAA executives said.
The National Association of Broadcasters is worried that RIAA intervention and the addition of copyright protection will slow the emerging technology.
A private company owns the technology behind digital radio broadcasts, and has said that it would wait until a consensus emerges among radio stations, the recording industry and consumer-electronics makers before enacting any copy-control measures.
RIAA Still Suing
The AP reports that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has launched 477 more lawsuits against file-sharers, college students in particular.
The latest filings brings the number of lawsuits filed by the recording industry to 2,454 since last summer. None of the cases has yet gone to trial, and 437 people so far have agreed to pay financial penalties of about $3,000 as settlements.
So no one knows for sure yet that it is illegal. Just remember, you only get sued for sharing, not downloading.
RIAA Drops Failed Amnesty Program
The Recording Industry Association of America has cancelled Clean Slate, their tell us and we wont sue you amnesty program that offered peer-to-peer junkies protection against RIAA lawsuits if they admitted to being evil file-sharing sons of bitches.
According to RIAA lawyers, the "program is no longer necessary or appropriate," and that their bucket-load of lawsuits have left "little room for any doubt that any individuals still engaged in this practice know their actions to be subject to legal sanctions."
Perhaps they ended it not only because it failed miserably, but because the program came under criticism as soon as it debuted; experts questioned its effectiveness in protecting file-sharers, saying "the program did not guarantee that participants would be protected completely from all forms of litigation. Specifically, the offer did not protect against lawsuits filed by record labels."
The RIAA has done an excellent job killing off music piracy; such an excellent job that between September - when efforts began to alienate their potential customers with lawsuits - and November, file-sharing rose 14%. Keep up the great work, guys!