[advocacy] The record industry strikes back

[Daniel James]

> About the carrot side, they made a new weapon, new
> subscription services, which is similar to personal
> license with the payment of royalties to the artists.

Except that you cant share the files even if you pay the royalty. I 
think it's more similar to the conventional copyright terms on CD's, 
which are all about what you're not allowed to do.

> Although
> the music files will be able neither to be transferred
> to portables nor burnt to CDs, both MusicNet and
> Pressplay are developing ways allow the subscribers to
> share music files securely. 

I don't think you can reconcile the concepts of 'shared' and 
'secure', not in the content industry definition of 'secure' anyway. 
There could be a model where we pay for the bandwith to share the 
file but it remains 'pay to play' - can't see that being popular.   

> Can the income of GPL artists enough for them to
> become professional?  If not, it must be quite
> difficult to persuade artists into personal license.

Most artists make very little money from music, even if they have a 
record deal and are making plenty for someone else. They look rich 
because the record company supplies them with a limo and pays their 
hotel bill, but as soon as the recordings stop selling - that's it.

When Paul McCartney left the Beatles, he had to tour with his new 
band Wings from the back of a van. All the money owed from the 
millions of records his band had sold was tied up with contractual 
wrangles. To this day he still doesn't own the rights to his own 
songs, because he signed them away.

If you think things are different these days, read Steve Albini's 
article:

http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

"The band is now 1/4 of the way through its contract, has made the 
music industry more than 3 million dollars richer, but is in the hole 
$14,000 on royalties. The band members have each earned about 1/3 as 
much as they would working at a 7-11, but they got to ride in a tour 
bus for a month."

> Of course, I do not mean
> that it is meaningless to advocate here but that here
> is not the best place to find music fans.

You're right. I've tried to interest a hi-fi publication in the 
format with little success, but the music magazines have to be the 
next step. The 1.0 release will be a 'news event' that they could be 
interested in. 

> How about using personal license for the revival of
> 'lost music' by the bankrupts of record companies? 

That sounds cool to me - I guess you'd have to contact the artist for 
approval. There's also the issue of music which is out of copyright 
(as much jazz and blues will soon be) but where we might want to 
direct CD sales to the families of those musicians, using the Ogg 
commenting system.

Daniel

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