Canadian Record Label Fights RIAA Lawsuits 215
An anonymous reader writes "Nettwerk Music Group, Canada's leading privately owned record label has
joined
the fight against the RIAA's strategy of individual lawsuits.
Nettwerk CEO Terry McBride says 'Suing music fans is not the solution,
it's the problem. Litigation is not "artist development." Litigation is
a deterrent to
creativity and passion and it is hurting the business I love. The
current actions of the RIAA are not in my artists' best
interests.'"
Oh, fer cryin' out loud (Score:1, Insightful)
Paying the legal expenses and fines of one Texas teen isn't joining the fight. It's a publicity stunt. If they want to join the fight, then they should use their clout and cash to take a more substantive swipe at the RIAA than just a tiny, ineffective gesture.
- Greg
Re:Oh, fer cryin' out loud (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh, fer cryin' out loud (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh, fer cryin' out loud (Score:5, Insightful)
This sets a precedent. Not to mention endears me to that company in particular. I may well go get a list of artists under that label and go buy something just to support them. Or send in a donation saying "Thank you."
Perhaps Nettwerk Music Group will make the same offer to anybody accused of downloading their music. Perhaps others will join in.
Also, paying the legal expenses is HUGE. Now they can get a big time lawyer, and not have to worry about how they can afford it. Lawyers are not cheap. This is why most people settle. Are you really going to pay $6000 to a lawyer to maybe win, or $5000 to the RIAA to make them go away?
But now the money is not theirs, they will fight, and I pray they will win. But either way, this was a Really Good Thing.
Re:Oh, fer cryin' out loud (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh, fer cryin' out loud (Score:5, Insightful)
They could very well be testing the water, you know. Not many of the families being sued (sorry, extorted) by the RIAA have the resources backing them to even make it possible to stand up to them without going bankrupt in the process, even if they win. Make the RIAA start losing, you start setting precedent. Start setting precedent, the cases start getting thrown out before there is a trial because there's not anything left to back them up. If you can make them start losing, then it doesn't take a lot to end the whole thing; but it takes someone willing and able to stand up and fight back. Publicity stunt? Certainly. Exactly what's needed? Definately.
This case isn't the point! (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:mnb Re:Why'd...... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Oh, fer cryin' out loud (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a major broadside to the spin and misdirection campaign they have going (i.e. We sue sharers because they hurt the artists! We act for the artists! We're being the good guy fighting evil!). Now, one of "the fold" has stood out, and actually declared "You are stating you represent us, but in fact, you're acting way out of line and going contrary to our real wishes.".
The crux being, this record label is an agent for an artist mentioned in a case by the RIAA, and yet both the label and the artist are explicit in not wanting the RIAA to go ahead with the action. The RIAA are doing so. Thus they lose the moral high ground they've been claiming so long to the general public, and showing themselves blatantly to NOT be following the wishes of the artists AND their own members. Which really cuts out a fair portion of their reason for being.
Re:Oh, fer cryin' out loud (Score:3, Insightful)
> stunt. If they want to join the fight, then they should use their clout and cash to take a more
> substantive swipe at the RIAA than just a tiny, ineffective gesture.
It is a very big step. RIAA suing a kid is not newsworthy. A Canadian company standing up against
an American organisation to protect an American kid *is* news. Copyright law will not be fixed until
the masses realise how bad the situation is and they start to make noise. Then the politicians realise
that fighting **AA means popularity that means votes. There are always lobby groups who
will grease your palm but you have to be there in the first place and you need voters for that.
The only issue important to a carreer politician is the one that directly affects the votes.
Whether the Canadian company wants to get the "do no evil" image or wants to piss off the RIAA just for fun or
they happen to believe that a fairer copyright system means a less monopolised but more lucrative and dynamic
business environment (for the smaller publishers) is not important. Whatever the reason they stood up against the RIAA,
they did and it's going to be a lot harder to the RIAA to mow them down than a 12 year old kid or a grandma.
While they fight, a lot of people will get enlightened about copyright and that is a Very Good Thing.
I LOVE Nettwerk! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh, fer cryin' out loud (Score:5, Insightful)
The RIAA is suing person X because person X downloaded songs owned by the RIAA AND by company Y. So, the RIAA is taking unauthorized legal action on behalf of company Y, without the permission of company Y. Company Y feels this is NOT the direction it wants to take with unauthorized downloading and is thus suing the RIAA and also agreeing to pay for person X's legal defenses in the fight against the RIAA.
The court system can only make decisions in existing disputes.. so until there's a proper existing dispute, company Y cannot really get involved.
So yes, company Y is definitely now involved in the 'fight' against the RIAA's heavy-handed legal tactics... Tactics which company Y (and most likely many other smaller labels) do NOT approve.
Re:OH CANADA (Score:4, Insightful)
The conservatives are in for hell. They can't really form an alliance with any party, and they don't have the position to protect themselves or to maintain legislation which only the conservatives want to push through.
Impotent? Useless? This to me represents the best of all possible worlds with regards to the Conservative Party of Canada in power, or indeed any party.
Re:What I don't understand is (Score:3, Insightful)
What record companies and RIAA don't get, is the quality of the service together with the available selection. Want yesterdays good music? Don't waste your time going to a music store, someone in the internet has it, and is willing to share.
For some reason, expensive restaurants still exist even though you can grow your own food and/or hunt, no (big) money spent there. So the competition with the free supply of food hasn't killed off restaurants.
Re:Oh, fer cryin' out loud (Score:5, Insightful)
Even one person winning against the RIAA would be a good thing.
IANAL but I believe that falls under legal precedence, so once a legal decision is made regarding one case, it is applied to all subsequent cases like it.
Nettwerk (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What I don't understand is (Score:3, Insightful)
Quite a lot of it, they don't. Say I download 100 albums and buy 3 of them. That's still a net gain for the record industry, because had I not been able to download anything, that money would have gone on a graphics card instead.
Look, I despise the RIAA as much as the next guy, but if you're downloading the music of a small band, you're not supporting them. No one will notice that and think "hey this is the next great band" except for maybe the hated RIAA's lawyers if they see a spike in P2P traffic.
Maybe not directly. But they will tell friends, raise the band's last.fm visibility (which is how I discovered Lacuna Coil, so that's almost certainly one more customer from rampant piracy), and some of them will buy the songs. Maybe only a small proportion, but a few percent of lots of pirate downloads is still more than 100% of no sales.
Don't ever forget that the boom in CD sales with Napster in 1998-2000 corresponded to the dotcom bubble!
Huh? So successes of websites lead to more CD sales?
Re:Oh, fer cryin' out loud (Score:2, Insightful)
You can almost think of it as what a real "label" will become as more artists break away from the coporate megaliths that form the RIAA and embrace distribution networks that let them retain some control over their music, not seem like part of an "evil empire", and make more money while charging their fans less.
This snowball has barely left the top of the hill.
Conservatives will bring lawsuits to Canada. (Score:2, Insightful)
The political parties are all have a different ratio in favoring the individual/corporation. The conservatives are farthest to the right and will favor corporations the most over individuals.
I would think this was obvious.
Re:Oh, fer cryin' out loud (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, it would smash their entire "doing it for the artist" excuse to bits. And the artists are the real owners of the rights. It would really hurt if all their artists did this to them.
Re:What I don't understand is (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, I'll bite. First, I will point out that downloading music via P2P for personal use does not contravene the Canadian Copyright Act or any other Canadian law, so there is no issue of infringing on anyone's proprietary rights. Since the record companies are intent on asserting their rights to the fullest extent of the law (and beyond) I see absolutely no reason to grant them an inch more: if they insist on pursuing their rights to the fullest extent of the law, then I likewise insist on pursuing mine. If they will not decline to assert their considerable rights in full, then I will not give up any of the few rights that I have either.
Second, I have no issue with paying for a copy of recorded music, as long as it provides a good value for money.
Buying CDs is generally a poor value proposition: $20 for one or two tracks I like is not good value or a reasonable price. The music I want is hard to find on CD, meaning that it is a lot of work on my part to track down what I want. Many newer CDs are infected with all kinds of crap that is potentially dangerous and which might make it harder to convert the CD audio into the MP3 format I need to use the music the way I want to. On the plus side, I can get high-quality rips off of a clean CD, but that doesn't offset the other factors. I might buy a CD if the price is low (second hand shops are more reasonable) and it contains enough material I want, but I won't buy a CD at full retail, with DRM, or with unknown/unheard content.
Buying music from ITMS is a bit of a better proposition: 99 cents is more than it should cost, but low enough that I would be willing to pay if I thought a track had a lot of long-term play value. But the selection is mediocre: less than half of what I want is there, and the files are DRM-hobbled, meaning I have to do extra work (and, if we get DMCA-style legislation, break the law) in order to get it into a DRM-free format that gives me the flexibility I want.
Downloading from P2P is a pain: the selection is uneven but, with perseverence, I can find over 90% of what I want. The quality is uneven: a lot of people dont' know how to cleanly rip and encode a track off CD, so a lot of P2P downloads have clicks and scratches and multiple attempts may be required to get a good copy. Download speed is uneven. The ID3 data is sketchy. I have to verify and fill in the data for each track, and manage my own authority system for ensuring that the forms used for artist and band names are consistent. But once all that is done, I have a copy that I can use where I want, when I want, and how I want. The fact that it is free is a bonus but, even considering the large amount of work I have to do myself, it would be worth a certain amount of money to use even the chaotic, mixed-quality P2P systems that exist today. (Are you listening, music industry?)
If some for-profit commercial business could give me a service that would provide me with the same final product as P2P but with better selection, easier searching, and better quality control, I would happily pay a reasonable price for such a service. But there is no way that I will pay for a product that is inferior and less convenient to one that is available for free.
If you are an artist and you want to make a living by selling copies of recorded music, you have to provide a product that people want at a price that provides good value. High-speed Internet connections, data compression technology, and P2P networks have changed what constitutes good value. I would no more pay $20 for a CD today that I would pay $2,000 for a 4.77MHz IBM XT. At one time, that might have been a fair price for a good product, but not anymore. An artist who relies on copyright law to force people to buy, rather than provide a product that people want to buy isn't going to be very successful in the long run.
Go Nettwerk! (Score:3, Insightful)
Visit their site: http://www.nettwerk.com/ [nettwerk.com]
Guess what they sell. MP3s!
I for one, am going to be writing them a letter thanking them for understanding that not all their customers are crooks and that they shouldn't be punishing everyone because of a few bad apples.
Nettwerk++