Colleges Secretly Test Music-Industry Project 208
An anonymous reader writes "The music industry is still pushing Choruss, a controversial blanket-licensing scheme, but it is far less innovative than first described. Six colleges are setting it up now, but they refuse to have their names released because the issue is a political landmine — and who wants to be associated with the recording industry?"
Blanket licensing is never legal (Score:5, Insightful)
The Canadians have their blank CD tax ostensibly because blank CDs are used to copy music. Great. But is it then legal to copy music in Canada? No. How does that even work?!
Doing this other blanket licensing stuff will enjoy similar respect in that anything acquired will be decidedly illegal until proven otherwise and even with proof, there is little doubt in my mind the recording industry will respect it as legal.
Re:Blanket licensing is never legal (Score:2, Insightful)
I do think it's made burning dubs de facto legal though...
Re:infinite, free music for a one time fee? (Score:4, Insightful)
Won't most of the students get sued the day after graduation, when they are no longer associated with the college and haven't deleted their music collections?
RIAA is more hated than IRS (Score:2, Insightful)
And music was supposed to be entertainment..
Re:Blanket licensing is never legal (Score:5, Insightful)
Individuals do not have access to government. Government is influenced by money. The corruption is plain and obvious for all to see and neither the government nor those who are influencing government with money are the slightest bit ashamed.
Re:Blanket licensing is never legal (Score:4, Insightful)
As an artist, no way would I let someone download my entire library of songs for a monthly fee. It's simply not fair.
Why not? Serious question. If I subscribe to a service with a monthly fee, it's because I want to be able to listen to lots of new stuff. If you're not producing new stuff, then once I've downloaded everything from you that I want then I won't pay you any more. How is this different to buying a CD? You don't get paid every time I listen to a CD and you don't get paid if I sell the CD to someone else later. If your music is good, then I'll want to download your next album, so I'll keep paying the subscription and when you release something new I'll download that too and you'll get more money. If it's not good then I won't download anything else from you.
The problem with the Canadian system is that there's a disconnect between the music people copy and the people who get paid. If someone likes a band and gives a copy to their friend, this is not recorded anywhere. If they sent a link to download it, covered by their monthly subscription, then it would be and the bands that produce the music people download would get more money.
Re:Blanket licensing is never legal (Score:3, Insightful)
Radio stats don't necessarily match the popularity in other mediums though. Here radio stations keep playing various 80s stuff everybody heard 500 times before. So long radio stations keep playing ancient hits those people will keep getting paid, even if nobody cares anymore.
We're talking about different things.
You're saying that the part SOCAN has to pay you according to how much you get played on radio doesn't go to somebody else if you're not signed up. Right.
But what I'm saying is two things.
First, if I pay $1 of tax on some CDs, and put some of your music there, and you don't get any significant airtime, that money doesn't go to you -- most of it will go to Celine Dion and other popular artists, even if it's your music what I'm storing. I consider that fundamentally unfair -- why should any of my tax go to people I don't care about? As a result I choose not to buy media, which means I don't pay tax, which means neither you nor she get paid.
Second, if I pay $1 of tax on some CDs in Spain, and put some music there, the money gets spread between local artists, and Celine Dion never sees a cent of it even if it's her music there. Spanish artists for some reason do get paid, while I absolutely don't care about their music and don't want to support it. Again, same thing, I consider this to be unfair and choose to act in such a way that nobody gets paid.
Re:Blanket licensing is never legal (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The really interesting part of the article... (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Man, silly world... (Score:2, Insightful)
Part of it is that we look around and see silly things like roads, so apparently some of the money is being spent on the things they say it is being spent on.
Re:The music industry is retarded (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about... (Score:3, Insightful)
What about this:
The most unusual feature of Choruss is that users would be able to download any song in the collection to their own computers, with no restrictions. Unlike Apple's iTunes, which charges about a dollar per song for unrestricted downloads, this would be an all-you-can-grab song buffet. Want to make CD's? Sure.
What if they want to make CDs, and then they want to sell those CDs? Copyright only governs the creation of a copy, but once a copy is created you're generally allowed to sell it. Does the license forbid such reselling? Is it enforceable?
Re:Man, silly world... (Score:2, Insightful)
Read the parent comment again (and your own apparently), it is a screed against taxes of any form, not against the Canadian cd tax.
Re:Thank you, RIAA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Six colleges are setting it up now, but they refuse to have their names released
The music industry says there are six colleges, but the six won't let their names out? How are they supposed to keep a service used by all their students secret?
I call bullshit on these lying bastards. Everything the RIAA labels do is based on a lie, starting with the lie that P2P costs sales when every study says "pirates" spend more on music than anybody. Well, P2P does cost RIAA labels sales; if you buy two or three indie CDs, that's money you don't have to buy an RIAA CD.
And thank you, reverendbeer, for pointing out that these lying bastards DON'T own rights to all music. They don't. We need to call these lying sociopaths out at every opportunity.
Re:Blanket licensing is never legal (Score:5, Insightful)
essentially you'd be downloading my music for a fraction of the retail cost.
Since there's no packaging, no physical media, no cover art, not shipping, no retail overshead, it should be a fraction of the retail cost.
Re:The music industry is retarded (Score:5, Insightful)
What do I want from them?
a) No suing or prosecuting of non-commercial pirates.
b) No DRM, No laws forbidding circumvention tools.
c) Copyright terms that last no more than 30 years.
d) Don't attempt to shakedown or otherwise control radio in any form (terrestrial, sat or net).
Don't give me the impression that I am building my own gallows if I give them my money.
Re:Man, silly world... (Score:2, Insightful)
So go beat the crap out of your city councilmen; what the hell are you telling us for?
Re:What about... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:infinite, free music for a one time fee? (Score:4, Insightful)
No problem. Even after students stop paying the Choruss subscription fee, they will be able to keep all the songs they have downloaded. "They get to keep them the rest of their lives," as Mr. Griffin put it. That differs from some subscription music services, which allow access only while users are active members of the service. What's to stop students from paying for one month and downloading the whole collection? "Nothing," said Mr. Griffin.
Other folks at other companies considering similar models even go on to say:
"We're not going to stop file sharing—it's probably going to happen in one form or another, and it's probably folly to try and stop it," said Charlie Moore, a Noank official who has traveled to campuses in the past few months to drum up interest. "If we're able to use consumption data to compensate the rights holders of a particular recording, then we think we've got a handle on a fair and equitable model for rights going forward."
That is a beautiful bit of reality right there and a much improved level of insight regarding the file sharing world by recording industry insiders. This may not be the best solution yet, I don't know, but at least these folks are trying to do something productive for both their business and their customer base (college students) rather than attempting to bankrupt the latter while clinging to an outdated version of the former. I find the attitude quite refreshing myself.
Re:What about... (Score:3, Insightful)
Another substantial change from the early days of the proj ect is that the licenses now would be with individual students rather than with colleges—although on some campuses, student governments or other groups may agree to pay the fee on behalf of students.
It's not a direct answer, but could be relevant. If the licensing scheme is with individual students now, I would bet that the students have to sign or agree to something in order to participate. Thus, if they don't want to participate, ideally they just could avoid that license agreement. But you are right, the article is scant on details regarding that particular aspect and it wouldn't surprise me if any opt-out option that was there got mired and intertwined with some other form of student registration contracts and agreements that make it very difficult/near impossible to opt out.
Re:I have a dream... (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting thought, but you just come right back to a record company model. Let's say you're a financial institution in the business of giving out loans. An artist comes to you saying that they want to shoot a music video to promote their debut album. You are likely not going to give this artist any money unless you can be convinced that this artist will be profitable and be able to repay the loan. So what determines whether or not an artist will be profitable? Ideally whether their music is any good, or in line with public tastes. So now the financial institution of scouting artists. This is exactly what a record company does. They scout artists and provide financial backing, but offer zero liability to the artist. With a loan, the artist is on the hook to pay it back. Which would you choose?