Safe Harbor Cost the US Music Industry Up To $1B in Lost Royalties Per Year, Study Finds (musicweek.com) 194
An anonymous reader shares a report: For the first time, researchers have quantified the "value gap" and its impact on the US recorded music industry. A study published yesterday (March 29) by Washington, DC-based economy think tank the Phoenix Centre For Advanced Legal And Economic Public Policy Studies attempted to calculate how much revenue the recording industry loses from the distortions caused by the safe harbor provisions. Entitled Safe Harbors And The Evolution of Music Retailing, the study was conducted by T. Randolph Beard, George S. Ford and Michael Stern who applied "accepted economic modelling techniques" to simulate revenue effects from royalty rate changes on YouTube. It showed that if YouTube were to pay the recorded music industry market rates, similar to what other streaming services pay, its economic contributions to the sector would be significantly bigger. The premises used by the Phoenix Centre economists was that, according to the music recording industry, YouTube evades paying market rates for the use of copyrighted content by exploiting the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's "safe harbor" provisions, which allow to post creative content online in good faith and remove it if rights holders so require. Using 2015 data, the Phoenix Centre found that "a plausible royalty rate increase could produce increased royalty revenues in the US of $650 million to over one billion dollars a year."
Wait - WHAT? (Score:5, Insightful)
Half the music posted on YouTube is by the musicians for promotion.
So they are stealing from themselves?
My how have the tables turned (Score:5, Insightful)
The musicians are stealing from the record companies.
Re:My how have the tables turned (Score:5, Interesting)
And the record companies, as usual, are claiming the "loss" of something they never had in the first place.
Re:My how have the tables turned (Score:5, Insightful)
Bingo.
Also the problem with RIAA specifically, is that it does not consider licensing.
Eg, if I upload random song from my mp3 player to Youtube, and tick the "monetize" box. I don't have rights to that song, so I should not be allowed to make money off of it, but who actually does? The recording artist? (Eg see the *VEVO channels), The recording company directly? Google makes maybe a penny per 1000 views. If Google was paying RIAA rates for playing of music, youtube would have no music on it what-so-ever, because google has devalued advertising to the point where nobody makes anything from advertising revenue, and now the people who use music as background noise is inconsequential.
The RIAA is barking up the wrong tree. They've simply over-valued music in non-contractually agreed to rates.
From the study:
" Industry data indicates that playing a song a subscription music service pays the recording industry about $0.008 per play,
while the same play on YouTube offers compensation of only about $0.001"
Yeah, and Youtube doesn't own that content and hasn't contractually agreed to pay the recording industry at those 0.008 rates. This is because people uploading the video aren't putting up a deposit to cover licensed use of the music, and the RIAA doesn't know if something has been licensed privately or not.
So I take issue with the argument that these are "losses", the quality of using Youtube as a poor mans Spotify is terrible. If the RIAA really wants to get a handle on this issue, they should upload their entire back catalog to youtube, complete with instructions on how to buy and license the track, and then subsequently have youtube take down all non-fair use (eg straight uploads of the music, not music videos) copies off youtube. That solves the entire problem of Youtube being a piracy haven, by letting the RIAA get 100% of the revenue instead of the shitlord pirates.
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That solves the entire problem of Youtube being a piracy haven, by letting the RIAA get 100% of the revenue instead of the shitlord pirates.
And replaces it with a system where YouTube gets to profit off the entire RIAA back catalogue yet also to dictate to the rightsholders how much it's generously going to pay them for the privilege through ad rates it unilaterally controls. This isn't how copyright was supposed to work. In fact, it is the very antithesis of how copyright was supposed to work, and since the primary reason to have copyright at all is to generate economic incentives in creative markets analogous to markets for physical goods, I'
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Looking back, was there anything your record label did that you couldn't have done yourself?
As for the losers on youtube ripping you off, it sucks that you're a little guy. The big guys have the resources to search and get YouTube to take that stuff down. You can track down and stop some guy in Cyprus from using your music, but he'll just go rip off some other small artists, he's not going away. I'm not saying you should accept the futility of it and do nothing, but that you may have to accept that what you
Re:My how have the tables turned (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope you'll acknowledge the impact the safe harbor provision has on little guys like me. Our label was a little guy too and has since folded as a functioning record label. I've filed a lot of DMCA notices. I can't put a song up on youtube without some bot scraping the audio and offering MP3 files for download. It's whack-a-mole from hell. If there was no safe harbor provision, I could sue a company (e.g., Youtube) that lets the cypriot asshole post my music and profit from it. Then, they might be motivated to help me profit from my music instead of criminals. I'm pretty sure you'd still get your music affordably. Removal of the safe harbor provision would not prevent you from making playlists of your favorite songs on youtube. I'd still put my music on youtube. It'd have no impact whatsoever on iTunes or Spotify or Rhapsody, etc. Safe harbor provision sucks IMHO.
Re:My how have the tables turned (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't make music, but I write novels. I've seen my novels on pirate websites (search for my name and pdf and they pop right up). It doesn't concern me in the slightest, and I'll tell you why.
Possible consumers of my novels fall into three buckets - those that like my stuff and are willing to pay me for it, those that like my stuff but don't pay me for it because I'm charging too much/don't allow them to shift my book to their desired device/some other reason, and those who like my stuff, but aren't willing to pay a penny for it under any circumstances. There's absolutely nothing I can do to move people from that third group to another group. Nothing. But by trying to hinder that third group, through DRM for example, I can chase people from the second group into the third. So those people who regularly download my books are lost to me regardless, but that doesn't mean I've lost forever. Maybe they become a big enough fan through their pirated books that they decide to pay for some someday. Maybe they can't find all my books pirated and are forced at some point to actually break down and buy one if they want them all. Maybe they like it enough to mention it to someone who then goes and buys one. So many possibilities, and as a relatively unknown author, if nothing else, it serves as free publicity. Publicity is gold - Forty percent of people who read my first novel come back for more.
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But you missed a fourth group, which is the people who enjoy your novel and would have been happy to pay for it if they'd found a legitimate source first, but who actually found it somewhere else and maybe even paid the unauthorised source for it instead of you.
As someone else doing relatively small-scale creative business, I can testify that this group can be a significant one, and I both sympathise and empathise with the situation that sneakyimp has described in terms of watching people ripping your stuff
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The fourth group doesn't exist if things are done right. They end up falling into the first three. The ones in group one find it and buy it. The ones in group two discover it's too much of a pain to buy/use/etc based on how it's sold. The ones in group three still are in group three. Take this from somebody who made tens of thousands from publishing a hard copy of a novel posted in its entirety and DRM-free online. Then the places that charge for it are not covered by safe harbor. Plus how can you tell if s
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The fourth group doesn't exist if things are done right.
It really does. An existence proof is that I've seen people rip material and then offer it with their own branding applied from their own source(s), and I've then seen other people who have supported that (including financially) and whose public comments make it obvious that they think they're supporting the original creators of the work. Those people liked the work and demonstrably were willing to support it financially in whatever way, they were just unknowingly supporting the wrong person.
Are you certain you're seeing the same account put your music back up after you have it taken down, over and over, more than three times?
Yes (though it
For lawyers, by lawyers (Score:2)
Interesting situation. Actually I write and I have rarely done some video content, and also assisted some video content producers.
On the lines of the fourth group, it's an "if things are done right" situation still. In the situation you described, there is no safe harbor involved. If such a thing were posted on YouTube, for example, and they were taking payment via PayPal, YouTube is not the proper target. Rather, file suit and discovery against the entity that is directly accepting/charging money for the
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Personally, I moved from piracy to a premium Spotify subscription. Don't get me wrong, I've bought a lot of CDs and a lot of LPs, in fact here's my collection on Discogs: https://www.discogs.com/user/H... [discogs.com] (I'm only ~halfway through scanning my CDs, and I haven't started on the LPs yet).
But I pirated a hell of a lot more than I bought legitimately. At one point, I just reasoned with myself "am I really so fucking cheap, that $10 is enough to make me keep downloading illegally?"
Once a good enough legal option
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Well said. Yes there is the fourth group mentioned by someone else responding (although I highly doubt it's ever as significant as he suggests) and there is even a fifth group... the really dedicated consumers who simply consume more content than they could/would ever buy (or collect/hoard it even without consuming it).
This is a massive group. Do you know how many people I know with a personal archive of thousands of digital books and gigs upon gigs of mp3s and even terrabytes of movies/tv and/or all of the above? All of them buy content as well and yes they do make recommendations and people listen. On paper these are the worst pirates and amount to lost revenue figures off the charts but there is no way some guy barely makiing above minimum wage and living in a trailer park and all his friends combined was ever going to buy the movies he watches in a week or buy all the books his wife chain reads.
That would be me. I hit the 50,000 track upload limit on Google Play Music quite easily. I had terabytes of downloaded movies and TV series, which I never got around to actually watching.
Getting a Spotify subscription and getting rid of all the junk I was never going to listen to/watch anyway was tremendously good for my mental well-being (not even joking).
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There's a big question mark there. If safe harbor were removed, perhaps Youtube would just kill all videos with music (and you still get nothing). Or they might find a way to monetize the tracks and send the money to the label (and you get nothing). I'm not seeing the scenario where you get anything there, safe harbor or not.
The central problem is that you agreed that the label gets the money until their accountant decides they've made enough.
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There's a big question mark there. If safe harbor were removed, perhaps Youtube would just kill all videos with music (and you still get nothing). Or they might find a way to monetize the tracks and send the money to the label (and you get nothing). I'm not seeing the scenario where you get anything there, safe harbor or not.
Perhaps, but I think that Youtube and artists would work it out. There's too much money at stake and the solution seems pretty easy to me: find some way to demonstrate ownership of copyrighted matieral. I would point out that youtube requires you to demonstrate ownership of a musical work in order to even file a DMCA takedown notice. Why not move this proof of ownership to the front end. It might mean you have only one video of my song instead of several hundred, but the music would still be there. In fact,
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As for the label taking all the money and me getting none, that is alreayd happening now. I fail to see how that would get any worse.
It won't. It can't. But it won't get any better either. Safe harbor didn't make that happen.
Things are considerably more complicated in that in my case. Oversimplifications like this are kind of insulting, and not especially helpful IMHO.
I'm not intending to insult you, but the facts as you presented them show that some how, some way, the label got legal first dibs. That is not youtube's fault and it's not because of safe harbor.
The guy from Cypress shouldn't be making money off of the work, but apparently he isn't why you're not making any money from it.
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It won't. It can't. But it won't get any better either. Safe harbor didn't make that happen.
I think there is a case to be made that safe harbor does in fact make this happen. To wit: if the Cypriot guy wasn't siphoning off the royalties we receive from Youtube with his own competing video on Youtube, then our record label might reach a particular recoupment threshold and then the accountant would start sending me more money. I think the original article linked in this thread (which I haven't read) is trying to make this same point. The Cypriot guy is protected by the safe harbor provision, which s
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It seems to me that if your own label is taking down your attempts to monetize on youtube, they'd be sure to shoot his down using the DMCA process or youtube's streamlined notification method explicitly created for labels. That's part of their job, after all.
I am not in the music business but I have seen some of the goings on and I agree it is truly byzantine and generally only works well for the big names (and not even then often enough). Safe harbor strikes me as a spit in the ocean compared to all of tha
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He's actually an afterthought in why you're getting screwed.
Respectfully, you don't know the particulars of my personal situation. The record label has been quite ethical. There are other entities in the money collection chain that make it difficult for them to get pair properly. In particular, Youtube and Spotify seem to be raking money hand-over-fist. Daniel Elk, founder of Spotify comes to mind [hollywoodreporter.com] as someone benefitting disproportionately from other people's work. But that's tricky. He is arguably helping artists. I'm not sure he's helping us to the tune of $400M do
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Would it be fair for /. to be on the hook if I cut paste a copyrighted work here?
If you did it once, and when informed of the problem they promptly removed it, perhaps not. I don't think it's a clear-cut issue, but there are obvious costs to having every piece of hosted third party content potentially incur liability, and it may be that the net benefits to society of making it easier to run a hosting service do outweigh the costs.
If there was a pattern of you doing it, and they were aware of that pattern, and they didn't then do something reasonable about it, I think that's a different
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The only thing that can tip that balance is either some kind of revolution or collective bargaining (which I could totally get behind) OR legislation.
Well, a review of the principles underlying IP regulation/legislation does seem long overdue. Intellectual property rights in their current form often are not creating effective competitive markets, which is their raison d'être. The most important players in the creative markets are the creators and the consumers/society, yet current incentives are mostly directed towards the middleman services. Given that those services are provided to creators, if competition were functioning effectively, this would
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In short, what you're advocating is that you should kill YouTube.
This assertion, made without proof of any kind, is laughable. Youtube is not going anywhere.
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Even if YouTube did go away, who is to say that would be a bad thing and it wouldn't naturally be replaced by something different and perhaps better? We take a lot in the technology world for granted because once, often long ago, it somehow won and became the default way of doing things. That doesn't necessarily mean it was or remains the best or even a good way of doing things, particularly if after the incumbent had become established the barriers to something else developing became high. Personally I thi
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hmm... stealing. Taking something that doesn't belong to you.
So, are they taking credit for your music or are they creating links to what you already put on line so that you still get credit?
What specifically are they taking that belongs to you?
Obviously they can't take what you haven't made available. The assumption that people 'should' do often times varies depending on country and culture.
'Copywrite' is a type of 'virtual' property the exits only because of certain western laws. It has a long and comp
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hmm... stealing. Taking something that doesn't belong to you. So, are they taking credit for your music or are they creating links to what you already put on line so that you still get credit?
They are taking music from a CD -- or scraping it directly from youtube, etc., they are uploading it -- not for personal enjoyment but to monetize it on youtube. Note that I've already uploaded it there myself.
What specifically are they taking that belongs to you?
I think I know where you are headed with this. I believe they are taking my right to profit from my music. It's not fair use IMHO, it's a cynical appropriation of something they did not create for the purpose of profiting.
Obviously they can't take what you haven't made available. The assumption that people 'should' do often times varies depending on country and culture.
Obviously. And if I don't make my music available? Aside from the crushing loss
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As a fellow artist, I empathise completely. And your points are very well articulated.
If I may, I'd like to offer a few thoughts of my own.
First, in my own experience, I am sick of corporations exploiting artists, wringing them out, squeezing them dry, and tossing them away (often penniless). This obviously doesn't apply to some small, honest labels and distributors (and it sounds as if you had an above-average experience with your label - I'm saddened that they folded), but it certainly does apply to lar
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And just as an aside... have you considered beating them at their own game? Taking their videos (with your music) and reposting them for your own monetisation? It's not as if they can claim copyright, since it's all derivative work...
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And just as an aside... have you considered beating them at their own game? Taking their videos (with your music) and reposting them for your own monetisation? It's not as if they can claim copyright, since it's all derivative work...
This would only dilute the monetary stream further. The key, from an artists perspective, is to make sure the material is on every platform, but only in one place. Otherwise, all of the analytics, everything is diluted.
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So, I'm reading up on my history. I apparently had some bad information fed to me in high school because I very clearly remember being taught that copyright law was almost non existent until an outcry after the death of Stephen foster. The who of which seems to have been a myth.
https://www.copyright.gov/circ... [copyright.gov]
http://www.pitt.edu/~amerimus/... [pitt.edu]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
On the other hand what you are saying doesn't make all that much sense either , because without copyright law the 'public domain' si
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ok found it:
http://www.history.com/this-da... [history.com]
Re:My how have the tables turned (Score:5, Informative)
Youtube already has a fix for this problem. Just use their Content ID sytem [google.com]
that lets you decide how to deal with other people using your music. You can block, mute, or monetize the infringing video.
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Another Bullshit Study From the Music Industry (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Another Bullshit Study From the Music Industry (Score:5, Insightful)
You wouldn't pay for the Youtube content, and Google doesn't necessarily have the money to pay (it's allocated elsewhere). You paid for the CDs and for Spotify and whatever else.
You're not a lost sale; you're a successful sale.
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The point being argued was:
Someone watching a youtube video does not equate to a lost "sale" from a streaming service.
Note that I never argued against that. However, now that I'm being asked, by way of your additional argument, to examine it more closely...
Since I do subscribe to streaming services where I would have listened to [hypothetical song], for which the label would have been paid, my listening to [hypothetical song] o
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The argument was that the Youtube viewer would have never paid to listen to your song, full stop. You gave an argument demonstrating that you have paid to listen to those songs, and still use YouTube. The music industry wants to label you as a lost sale; the OP wants to suggest that you were never going to buy the song anyway; and you demonstrated that you are a successful sale.
You also implied your use of YouTube was out of convenience, and likewise we can reasonably assume you purchased the songs out
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Also, I'm not saying their argument is correct; I'm merely pointing out the logic by which they believe it to be so.
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Tell that to everyone who bought music through DRM-encumbered stores that later shut down. They're sure all wishing they'd bought physical media. Plus the fact that an uncompressed
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A preference for physical media, which you can continue listening to after the store that sold it to you has closed up shop and the hard drive holding your music collection took a shit or the DRM music player used by your store of choice (admittedly a thing of the past in most cases) needs to refresh licenses, isn't respectable?
Tell that to everyone who bought music through DRM-encumbered stores that later shut down. They're sure all wishing they'd bought physical media. Plus the fact that an uncompressed CD just sounds better; yeah, I'll keep my physical media, thanks.
I waffled over this issue for a long time. but the simple fact of the matter is that I cannot remember the last time I put a CD in my CD player and just played it. Any CDs I've bought for the last 5-6 years have gone straight to my PC, ripped to LAME -q0 -V0 MP3. And I recently decided to get a Spotify premium account, because 99% of the music I listen to is on there anyway, and I like the curated playlists and recommendations.
So my collection of ~400 CDs is simply taking up space for no good reason. Luckil
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And I recently decided to get a Spotify premium account, because 99% of the music I listen to is on there anyway, and I like the curated playlists and recommendations.
Yes, while Spotify is still around, that's great. I use them, and I fill gaps in their collection with Napster (the streaming service, not the defunct filesharing service). I also buy a few CDs every year so I don't lose the songs I really enjoy when streaming services start going belly up. It's also useful to be able to load tracks onto an iPod Classic and not care about cell coverage when driving cross country; something no streaming service lets you do. Napster comes the closest, allowing you to download
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Someone watching a youtube video does not equate to a lost "sale" from a streaming service. The youtube viewer would have never paid to listen to your song.
What they are saying is that if the video with that copyrighted music was properly registered as that copyrighted work, Youtube would be paying a royalty for it or monetizing it for the record company/artist. Since it was uploaded by a user and not registered as the copyrighted work, Youtube does not pay for it until after it is discovered. It is not saying these were lost sales.
What they did not seem to mention was the knock-on effect of purchases made by people that heard the music in those unregistere
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The recording industry "studies" keep making this same "lost sale" fallacy over and over. People will often find alternatives or have no music track if you start charging such that you cannot convert usage to lost revenue 1-for-1.
There's plenty of free or at least royalty-free stuff. I post my own music for free even. (I don't claim it to be good, only to be free).
The fact they keep making this same fallacy despite pundits pointing out the error means they are either incompetent or bribed. I suspect the lat
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I'd re-title the article, "Changes to government-granted monopoly rules could earn music industry $16.5 billion instead of a mere $15.5 billion."
For a bunch of people who 100% depend on the government to supply them with a living they sure do get uppity.
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I listen to many many music tracks on YouTube (some are original artist uploads/official videos, some are those audio-track-plus-CD-cover-picture videos provided by some music company, some are unauthorized uploads and many are awesome covers uploaded by their creators) and I cant think of a single instance where I would have paid money to listen to that song where it not available on YouTube.
I posit that (Score:5, Insightful)
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If YouTube were to pay the recorded music industry market rates, similar to what other streaming services pay, its economic contributions to the sector would be 0. This would be so because YouTube would simply not allow copyright music on its service.
But YouTube actually does pay the industry. Most of the time, if you post a copyrighted song the copyright owner doesn't bother filing a DMCA takedown request, YouTube just informs you that your video contains copyrighted material and that instead of paying you for any ad revenue from views, YouTube pays the copyright holder. I've made a few videos for weddings and funerals, set to music, and that's the case for all of my videos. I don't care. I didn't make them to make money but to honor the people in them
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But YouTube actually does pay the industry.
I never said they didn't. The complaint in TFS is that they aren't paying market rate; in fact, about 60% of what you quoted was copied and pasted from TFS. My stipulation was not that YouTube doesn't pay but, rather, if they were forced to pay "market rates" they would simply not allow copyright music any longer and, rather than pay something below market, they'd pay nothing.
I've made a few videos for weddings and funerals, set to music, and that's the case for all of my videos.
It's also the case for something like 90% of my videos, as well. I'm quite familiar with the practice. My point was that, if YouTube
Same mistake the copyright industry always makes (Score:2)
As you lower the price, the demand goes up. So you can't simply do what the copyright industry always does - take the demand at a price of zero, multiply it by how much you'd like to be paid, and claim that as losses. Otherwise I could just claim plays of my song are worth $1 mi
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Lack of Good Music Costs Them $2 Billion Per Year (Score:2, Interesting)
Lack of Good Music Costs Them $2 Billion Per Year
Math? (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm rather annoyed at being treated like a criminal for paying for things. If you need me i'm going to be watching "pirated" movies on this highly illegal service i've been paying for for the last few years called netflix.
Netflix is going to have to start their own VPN service in a few years if current trends continue.
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Universal Media Groups stupid-ass annoying and clearly audible watermarks on streaming services are another good example.
They're deliberately supplying an inferior product to paying customers, but the people who torrent a CD rip get the untainted sound quality. It's absolutely ridiculous.
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They actually did press "The Beatles: the Copyright extension album".
https://www.theguardian.com/mu... [theguardian.com]
Basically, if they didn't publish the couldn't claim the extended copyright, so they published rather than let them become free.
There is something to be said for the way copyright manages to keep some popular collections alive and well-tended, rather than rotting away in a cellar. (There is also something to be said for the way copyright manages to keep less popular collections buried and rotting away in a
Need better cellars (Score:2)
What we need to do, is invent a new storage system which is better than cellars, combined with some kind of means whereby the public can access it.
I wonder if the electronics nerds could come up with something. I remember watching a Woody Allen movie called "Take the Money and Run" where Woody's character mentioned his aunt had some kind of special machine [youtube.com]
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Who are these guys? (Score:4, Informative)
Propublica sadly only has their funding lumped together as "contributions" [propublica.org], which doesn't help.
Re:Who are these guys? (Score:5, Informative)
In other words, its exacta what everyone thinks. This is yet another one of those corporate mouthpiece "think tanks" that release studies to push a corporate agenda.
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Update: I found the closest thing to a mission statement I could find buried in a wall of text on page 17 of their 2013 tax return.
In other words, its exacta what everyone thinks. This is yet another one of those corporate mouthpiece "think tanks" that release studies to push a corporate agenda.
I think you're right about that, but that's not what the text says. Unless you think that only corporations want "free markets, competition, and individual freedom and liberty". Corporations typically want none of those things. They like markets that benefit them at the expense of their competitors, not free markets, and they'd love to have no competition. They tend not to care much about individual freedom and liberty, except to the degree that their directors feel personally strong about such issues.
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Unless you think that only corporations want "free markets, competition, and individual freedom and liberty". Corporations typically want none of those things.
It's the corporate doubletalk that's confusing the issue.
1. ISPs selling your browsing history is the free market in action. Because they are neither a natural monopoly nor anti-competitive.
2. ISPs disclosing how much they've spent on infrastructure and how much their "partners" paid for your information is burdensome, anti-competitive, anti-job, and blatant government overreach.
Corporations always sell their legislative wishlists as some kind of gift to the public. So, yes, I would expect a corporate mouth
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Unless you think that only corporations want "free markets, competition, and individual freedom and liberty". Corporations typically want none of those things.
It's the corporate doubletalk that's confusing the issue.
You're assuming it's doublespeak, and so did jandrese, and I strongly suspect that you're both right, but it is an assumption. There's nothing in the text to make it clear.
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Translation: Remove government oversight and public programs to increase corporate power.
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that release studies to push a corporate agenda.
Their corporate agenda showed problems with the DMCA. I say we should get behind them and push to fully abolish the law.
The title of the study says it all (Score:2)
And YouTube "evades", is "exploiting" the DMCA (Score:2)
YouTube evades paying market rates for the use of copyrighted content by exploiting the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's "safe harbor" provisions...
Neutral phrasing, anybody?
The key phrase...industry market rates (Score:2)
I think the key phrase is:
This is the flaw in the study. The music industry has basically strongarmed and set these rates so that streaming services live on the edge of death and can be killed off at any time. If YouTube (and streaming services) paid what radio stations pay (nothing!) it would be a different story
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Mea culpa, you're correct that radio stations do pay licensing fees, however when converted to a per song play basis it seems to be remarkably less than what Internet companies are paying.
So? (Score:2)
The fundamental issue that's unpopularto dicuss... (Score:2)
... Is that none of care how much the music industry loses in royalties, because they already manage to squeeze us for too damn much.
You could argue YouTube derives a good amount of its value from hosting content copyrighted by other people -- because at the end of the day, that's what people want to see, not other people's home movies. However, you also have to realize all of that "value" is derived from the fact that it's the only place to find things that people already think should be free by now.
This is not about you. This is about Google. (Score:2, Informative)
Wow, you people lining up to identify with Google's interests are totally missing the point. Google is not your friend. This study is about Google paying royalties. Not you.
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Wow, you people lining up to identify with Google's interests are totally missing the point.
Google's interests happen to align with the vast majority of the online world's interests in this issue. I think that you are the one missing the point. This goes far beyond the mere, insignificant issue of how much Google should pay in royalties, or even whether Google should pay royalties at all. This is the RIAA positioning itself as the gatekeeper of shared culture, much like how Disney is positioning itself as the gatekeeper of the public domain, via absurd paid-for studies.
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You are failing to recognize Google's present position of power.
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In the battle of Google vs RIAA, I will side with Google. I will side with any entity vs RIAA for that matter.
You have informed the world how to exploit you, then.
i have not bought any music in years (Score:3)
copyright no longer serves its purpose (Score:3)
Don't forget the trillions in lost royalties (Score:2)
If anyone that ever downloaded an MP3 without owning the original worked forked over the much praised reasonable fine of $750,00 then the music industry wouldn't be dying for decades now.
I'm beginning to think the music business is some sort of reanimating undead. It seems to be in a constant state of loss and on its last leg...if you believe some of these studios...
The industry lost millions because of radio. Lost millions because of bootlegs. Lost millions because of casette recorders, millions from C
And how much money.... (Score:2)
A more instersting study. (Score:2)
What would be a more interesting study would be to find out how far the attitudes of the American people are from what the current law requires.
How may people are actually aware of what the law does and does not allow and when made aware of what it doesn't allow consider the law to be fair.
As a culture we really need to have a discussion about what is 'good' copyright law and what is not.
Perhaps the laws have outlived their usefulness in the digital age and need to be replaced by something more concrete th
The logic, as I understand it (Score:5, Insightful)
Snickers candy bars are priced at $1, sold 20 million units last year.
If we'd priced them at $5 each, we'd have made $100 million, meaning we lost $80 million underpricing Snickers!
Anyone see the faulty logic there?
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Who paid for the study? (Score:2)
The Phoenix Center offer[s] policymakers rigorous economic analysis and legal acumen second to none. --- FCC Chairman Ajit Pai
OK, now I have a better idea of where this research center is coming from...
pdf is available (Score:2)
.
The research seems to take the approach of posing a hypothesis about how the music industry is losing money due to youtube, and then asking RIAA and a record company executive about the hypothesis. Lo and behold, they agree with the hypothesis.
imo, this looks like a for-purchase hit piece against youtube, probably because the RIAA is trying to justify its existence.
Pocket change (Score:2)
Orly? (Score:2)
NEWS! According to the Music Industry (Score:2)
Safe Harbor diverted 1 Billion to the local economies like small family owned businesses from large corporations that are able to use tax loopholes to pay less cooperate taxes. Who knew fair digital dealing would make the local economy grow.
I can get behind this! (Score:2)
Quick everyone, call your members of congress. Tell them an industry funded study showed that the DMCA is costing the studios money and should be abolished!
Re:Study was paid for by music industry... (Score:5, Informative)
I've bought numerous albums on bandcamp because I stumbled onto them on YouTube.
Now I understand that Bandcamp isn't likely included in the concerns of mainstream record companies. But I do believe that I am an active consumer that is spending money in this industry, and that I am not "stealing" billions of dollars.
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The sound quality is going to be utter shit for tracks ripped from Youtube.
Contrast this with Bandcamp, where you get the music for download in any format you want (including lossless FLAC or ALAC), with perfect tagging, embedded cover art and unlimited streaming in the Bandcamp app.
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Not with Bandcamp it doesn't:
From bandcamp.com/pricing [bandcamp.com]:
Artist accounts are free. We make money through our revenue share on sales, which is 15% for digital, 10% for merch. We also offer Bandcamp Pro (our premium tier for artists), and Bandcamp for Labels, both for a monthly fee.
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And that is exactly why I LOVE Bandcamp, because the money goes to the people doing the actual work.
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I bought a ton of music on cassette and vinyl during the 70s and 80s. I mostly played it in my car as I traveled a lot in my younger days. I listened to the radio as likely as not most of the rest of the time. I was never music crazy. I liked mostly rock and country and blues with some metal. Now I might go all day without the radio ever coming on. I listen to streaming music from my phone over my car stereo when I'm on a trip but I'm less into it now than ever. To think people lose their minds over
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And that's why we need sites like Bandcamp. You get to stream the tracks a limited number of times, so you know what you're buying. And 85% of the price you pay goes directly to the artists.
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Sorry, just want to make sure I'm not misunderstanding. Are you saying that since that one particular company isn't around anymore, artists can no longer market themselves directly to listeners? (Or that it's maybe not as easy or convenient as it was back then?)
Re: The bigger question... (Score:2)