Electronic Frontier License
I've been an EFF referral attorney for several years now after exchanging a series of emails with Shari Steele who I contacted upon reading about the organization in SV Biz Ink. Hers was one of the early organizations dedicated to protecting the freedoms that the internet offered and fighting the various powers that be who have sought to use the internet to invade privacy and restrict our rights to share and communicate over it. Most of their fighting has been in the courts, where it started. But, more and more this will be fought in the court of public opinion.
This article of theirs (link above) is a good discussion of the compulsory license concept and how it might work. RIAA will fight it to the bitter end because they rightly view the internet as their ultimate undoing. But, according to EFF, music will be included on your broadband bill, or college bill or whoever is providing the internet access, and whatever money goes into that pot will get divied up on the Big Champagne/ Neilsen type model. If TV worked on this model it would be like Comcast collecting the most cash for Apprentice because that's the top rated show on TV, and then doling it out to every other show that comes through their cables on the basis of how popular it is. The only way you could get them to do that would be to offer them (Comcast) the ability to not get sued for using their lines to transmit the music. Ooops, we don't hold the providers responsible now, so they're not gonna do it. Why should they?
But, you know who does pay Apprentice the most? The advertisers. They know the most eyeballs will be on the most popular show. Same concept except Trump does not expect money directly from those eyes, or to get it from cable providers, but from the newtworks who use the show to bring in revenue. Hello. And TV shows can take a lot more to make than songs. If not for the threat of prosecution what you'd see is iTunes, (knock-off) Napster and a million new competitors have to bring in users on the basis of quality of site, best sound quality, songlists, control, search, DJ's, entertainment, ease of use, look of site, innovation, ability to use the content creatively.... there are so many ways to add value.
The best sites would attract the best ads and make a lot of money like Google and Yahoo did.... from advertisers. EFF kind of gets the first step when they talk about the emergence of filesharing being similar to the emergence of radio, but, they lose the analogy somewhere along the line. Artists have been selling their content to sponsors instead of directly to the public for many years on radio and TV and now the new mediums are also finding the most success on the sponsor/advertising dollar model... just like Yahoo and Google.
EFF suggests some type of voluntary payment directly from end users in exchange for not getting sued, like that failed RIAA amnesty program. Know why it failed? Few are stupid enough to make their identities more visible as file-sharers, or step up to half-assed programs. Maybe with a more reassuring govt. insured type amnesty, it could work. The only real thing they have to offer anymore is to withhold the threat of prosecution. But, that threat is diminishing and it will continue to diminish as word of their abuses and broadband availability emanates through the world.
Most of the world uses our intellectual property for free so why do they focus most, if not all, of their prosecutions on Americans? Because they can. The legislators we elected to represent our interests are in their pockets. Sixty million Americans download, who represents them? That is more than the audience for any TV show or movie. Stop trying to charge people for songs, and instead use the songs to bring in your (humongous) audience, like radio, like TV. Yes, you're giving them control and portability, the technology is doing that, just like TiVo and Comcast-on-Demand. These labels should be grateful for all that time they had their monopolies, since, at the time, people did need those disks to control their music.... but....it's fucking over!! Move on.
There will be others to try and stick their finger in the dyke and make money doing so. But it's a lot of fighting for something that is so quickly becoming extinct. The genie is out of the bottle, the music is out there. I just don't see any way of getting it back in. People who feel guilted about stealing might volunteer some money for a while, but, you've got a whole generation of kids who see music as just another file you get over the internet.
When it comes to software and films, which take so much to develop, I feel differently. But, a song, sorry. There are too many talented artists out there. We'll still have great, if not much greater, freer, more varied music. That's not the same for films and software. Search/ matchup stuff will grow as will the use of music as a component in selling other things. But mostly, I think people wanting to make money off music will have to perform it, or help those who do. And, I have no problem with that. Music is now an 11 Billion dollar industry. The diet industry is a 35B industry. Get all those flabbies dancing & you're all set.
This article of theirs (link above) is a good discussion of the compulsory license concept and how it might work. RIAA will fight it to the bitter end because they rightly view the internet as their ultimate undoing. But, according to EFF, music will be included on your broadband bill, or college bill or whoever is providing the internet access, and whatever money goes into that pot will get divied up on the Big Champagne/ Neilsen type model. If TV worked on this model it would be like Comcast collecting the most cash for Apprentice because that's the top rated show on TV, and then doling it out to every other show that comes through their cables on the basis of how popular it is. The only way you could get them to do that would be to offer them (Comcast) the ability to not get sued for using their lines to transmit the music. Ooops, we don't hold the providers responsible now, so they're not gonna do it. Why should they?
But, you know who does pay Apprentice the most? The advertisers. They know the most eyeballs will be on the most popular show. Same concept except Trump does not expect money directly from those eyes, or to get it from cable providers, but from the newtworks who use the show to bring in revenue. Hello. And TV shows can take a lot more to make than songs. If not for the threat of prosecution what you'd see is iTunes, (knock-off) Napster and a million new competitors have to bring in users on the basis of quality of site, best sound quality, songlists, control, search, DJ's, entertainment, ease of use, look of site, innovation, ability to use the content creatively.... there are so many ways to add value.
The best sites would attract the best ads and make a lot of money like Google and Yahoo did.... from advertisers. EFF kind of gets the first step when they talk about the emergence of filesharing being similar to the emergence of radio, but, they lose the analogy somewhere along the line. Artists have been selling their content to sponsors instead of directly to the public for many years on radio and TV and now the new mediums are also finding the most success on the sponsor/advertising dollar model... just like Yahoo and Google.
EFF suggests some type of voluntary payment directly from end users in exchange for not getting sued, like that failed RIAA amnesty program. Know why it failed? Few are stupid enough to make their identities more visible as file-sharers, or step up to half-assed programs. Maybe with a more reassuring govt. insured type amnesty, it could work. The only real thing they have to offer anymore is to withhold the threat of prosecution. But, that threat is diminishing and it will continue to diminish as word of their abuses and broadband availability emanates through the world.
Most of the world uses our intellectual property for free so why do they focus most, if not all, of their prosecutions on Americans? Because they can. The legislators we elected to represent our interests are in their pockets. Sixty million Americans download, who represents them? That is more than the audience for any TV show or movie. Stop trying to charge people for songs, and instead use the songs to bring in your (humongous) audience, like radio, like TV. Yes, you're giving them control and portability, the technology is doing that, just like TiVo and Comcast-on-Demand. These labels should be grateful for all that time they had their monopolies, since, at the time, people did need those disks to control their music.... but....it's fucking over!! Move on.
There will be others to try and stick their finger in the dyke and make money doing so. But it's a lot of fighting for something that is so quickly becoming extinct. The genie is out of the bottle, the music is out there. I just don't see any way of getting it back in. People who feel guilted about stealing might volunteer some money for a while, but, you've got a whole generation of kids who see music as just another file you get over the internet.
When it comes to software and films, which take so much to develop, I feel differently. But, a song, sorry. There are too many talented artists out there. We'll still have great, if not much greater, freer, more varied music. That's not the same for films and software. Search/ matchup stuff will grow as will the use of music as a component in selling other things. But mostly, I think people wanting to make money off music will have to perform it, or help those who do. And, I have no problem with that. Music is now an 11 Billion dollar industry. The diet industry is a 35B industry. Get all those flabbies dancing & you're all set.
posted by Intervision at 9:43 AM
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