RIAA Screws Artists, Pockets Filesharing Settlement Money

None of the estimated $400 million that the RIAA received in settlements with Napster, KaZaA, and Bolt over allegations of copyright infringement has gone to the artists whose copyrights were allegedly infringed. Now the artists are considering suing the RIAA.

I think the RIAA's demise is inevitable and I've been advocating major artists to sue these jokers for quite a while now. Set aside this revelation (no surprise really) that they haven't shared a dime with the artists and consider the scenario where a major artist sues them for not doing enough to protect their royalties. Also, reverse the "made available" argument against the RIAA. Weren't these the same people who helped develop the digital format in the first place? 20+ years ago, the RIAA members were promising us audio nirvana in the form of CD's that were cheaper to produce and never wore out. They told the public and the artists that the cheaper production costs would translate into less expensive products for the consumer and higher returns for the artists.

In reality, the price of music went up, and the artists share of profits decreased. This is the business model the labels are trying to preserve in the "download age".

Just think of how much more profit we can make when we get rid of all this pesky packaging and disc pressing. We'll just tell the artists we need to keep screwing them because of the high cost of digitizing music and the prohibitive cost of digital distribution.....ummmmmm yeah, that's the ticket!

I thought the rant from the member of the Cocteau Twins in the posts from the story were very interesting. Anyone who doesn't understand how badly artists get screwed and how greedy the labels are should give this a look. There are thousands of stories from artists just like this...or worse.

read more / digg this

Has MediaSentry Been Performing Illegal Investigations?

One of the more recent controversies dogging the RIAA's legal campaign against file-sharing is whether MediaSentry (now a division of SafeNet) needs state-issued private investigator licenses to operate lawfully. It's a question that has been raised in several contested RIAA lawsuits, and now the state of Michigan has told the company that it needs a license to operate there.

Michigan says MediaSentry lacks necessary PI license

This issue could have some serious implications for the investigative arm of the RIAA. If a court finds that Media Sentry has been performing investigations without the proper authority from the states where the investigations occurred, all evidence collected by them could be thrown out. You can be sure that the thousands of people that have written rather large checks to avoid a court trial could ask for the money back in a suit of their own. This would essentially leave the RIAA with no evidence to support their claims. People who have lost court cases, like Jamie Thomas, could have their convictions overturned. It's no suprise that neither the RIAA or Media Sentry officials want to comment on this issue or admit they should have been liscensed. You can be sure that we'll be watching this issue closely...

RIAA chief: We Would Rather Sue Individuals Than Use ISP Filters

Self-professed ass-monkey Cary Sherman rebutted U2 manger Paul McGuiness' claim that ISP's should be filtering copyrighted material. He went as far as to infer that since McGuiness is European he would naturally prefer a "regulatory approach" to the file-sharing problem plaguing the industry.

It never ceases to amaze me when this sort of beligerant drivel comes from a RIAA representative. In my mind this sort of off-handed stupidity is akin to poking a sleeping bear. Well established super-acts like Prince, U2, The Rolling Stones etc...don't really have any need for the traditional record companies. They could afford to do their own distribution and marketing and keep all of the profits for themselves.

Once again the RIAA is exposing themselves to a huge lawsuit from one of these artists for not doing enough to protect their share of the profits as well as their copyrights. If they are stupid enough to start a public pissing match with Bono and company, and they are also stupid enough to publicly announce that they don't support what might be a viable piece of a multi-pronged approach to the problem of file-sharing, they might just feel the wrath of not just one major artist, but a whole slew of them at once. Suing fans while not pursuing other reasonable alternatives is simply negligent behavior. If I were Bono, I'd be mobilizing my fellow artists against those who do nothing but alienate fans and hurt the artists bottom line. The RIAA is obviously more concerned about how they relate to their corporate buddies the telecos and cable providers than they are about actually protecting the artists. As for the fans....don't get me started...again.

RIAA chief: We don't see a need for mandatory ISP filtering

RIAA's sister organization has a different take on this issue:

http://www.p2p-blog.com/item-476.html