................................. To leave Commie, hyper to http://commie.oy.com/commie_leaving.html ................................. Well, it seems now that all right-thinking people will exchange as many MP3's as possible. The RIAA is trying to stiff (i.e. not pay) songwriters. Amazing! So just keep downloading, until the RIAA gets a clue. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,42426,00.html When it comes to fighting alleged music pirates, the recording industry and the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) have always stood shoulder to shoulder, united by a common interest in protecting copyright. But despite the united front against Napster, behind closed doors the relationship appears to have chilled. The argument is over what the recording industry should pay publishers for the right to stream MP3 files. Suddenly, the industry finds itself on the other side of a copyright fight. Last November, it was big news when MP3.com settled the last outstanding suit against it, agreeing to pay Universal Music Group $53 million for the privilege of making Universal's library available for streaming. What didn't make the headlines was when, just three weeks later, the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization and the Songwriters Guild of America, along with other artists and publishers, sued Universal's new website, called the Farmclub Online, for letting users download music without paying royalties to the people who wrote and published the songs. The very first line of the suit makes clear that the irony of the situation had not slipped away unnoticed. "UMG Recordings has decided to engage in the very same infringing activities that UMG itself -- in a recent and highly publicized lawsuit -- successfully challenged in this court." Around the time of that suit, negotiations broke down over how the spoils would be split once the industry finally figured out how to turn MP3 files into cash. The NMPA and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed separate petitions to the U.S. Copyright office, asking the government to help settle the matter. On March 9, the copyright office responded to the petitions by opening a public comment period on the question of what kind of licensing digital streaming and downloading of music files should require. Once the office settles the dispute over whether a digital stream is really the same thing as selling someone a CD, then it may arbitrate what the royalty on a digital file delivery should be. In its petition to the copyright office, the RIAA made some arguments that could have come straight out of MP3.com's defense playbook. "To be compelling to consumers ... a service must offer tens or hundreds of thousands of songs, in which rights may be owned by hundreds or thousands of publishers," the petition said. "No service provider is eager to embark on individual negotiations with all those publishers unless it is necessary." n short, the industry is arguing that present copyright law makes it diffi- cult to launch an online music service. It has asked the copyright office to interpret the law to permit it to sell streams under a compulsory license from publishers. This would be in the best interests of all parties, the RIAA said, by allowing "legitimate" online music services to thrive. The industry's stunning turnaround -- of not stifling the online music industry by demanding strict compliance with copyright -- hasn't gone unnoticed. Smelling vindication, its adversaries have stopped licking their wounds and started licking their chops. "We find it exquisitely ironic that the recording industry tries to define the sound recording license (the one it owns) as narrowly as they can for webcasters, but the publisher's license (the one it pays royalties on) as broadly as possible," said Jonathan Potter, executive director of the Digital Media Association (DiMA). "They want to take as much as they can to build their own business, but don't want anyone else to build theirs." Bill Goldsmith, Web director of KPIG radio -- the very first radio station to simulcast on the Net -- was less restrained in his criticism. "I think the RIAA is a bunch of greedy, shortsighted idiots," he said.
