“We are a bunch of old guys that suffer delusion of reality, you can’t punish us dear judges and society”

“Rot in Hell” Would be a more appropriate ending to that sentence.

OMG! It’s almost 2007, recerding labels are not really needed, and they’re like… “oh please, can I pay you less for your music/lyrics?, you know, I am wearing a CASIO watch, and it should totally be a ROLEX.

While turning legislating bodies int whorehouses.
While turnig lawyers into prostitutes.
While turnig police into hired gun criminals.
While turning presidents against the people.
While destroying every culture in their path.
While criminilizing kids, grandmothers and invalids and you if they could.

Couldn’t be done by a more honest bunch of guys. May their souls rest in peace.

Let me tell you what I have done for my small part. When the RIAA started sue em all, I ceased at that time to buy from them. When the MPAA started the same theme, I followed suit with that one too. Not a single cd purchased, not a single movie gone to see at the movies, not a single dvd movie bought, no pay-for tv channels, no magazines bought, no newspapers bought. All of these are outlets for their megacorporation. I personally take resentment for being called pirate and thief by those that depend on me and others like me buying their products.

It has been made much easier by the fact that the “products” now put out don’t really do it for me. I look at the old black and white movies of the past and reflect that those had actors that acted, story and plot lines that don’t seem to come from some master computer’s idea of entertain themes, and that I felt good about after seeing them, like I got my moneys worth. I don’t get that feeling in modern day movies.

I don’t get a choice to hear new music on the radio. I get replay city of the same tune over and over, hour after hour. Those tunes don’t seem to have real artists that connect with my life and there doesn’t seem to be that revalence I relate to. New tunes are the exposure that urges one to go buy something they might like. Nor do get a choice when I go buy some album with getting filler. That makes the few songs I might consider buying the album for far more expensive in getting those tunes that I don’t want, don’t like, and feel I got ripped off in the getting of that one tune that was wanted.

Then there is the issue of DRM. Singlehandedly, it has almost killed the music market. The megacorporations that push it don’t want to hear the customer doesn’t want it. You’re gonna get that if you buy the music. There’s no standard compatibility, there’s no value in a locked down tune (certainly not at the highway robbery prices they are charging), and now I hear they want more? Hey, everytime I go buy a blank dvd I pay for the right to copy as I will. Even if I buy those for computer data backup, I still pay.

No wonder they are doing so poorly. Congratulations on killing the golden goose. Couldn’t happen to better folks.

I operate a small music publishing company. We control over 500 songs. There are currently over 75 records in the American market with our songs. None of these records have a license from us or has paid us a single cent.

Many of these records are made by RIAA members. Sony alone makes 24 of these records (yes we have sued them).

Shit, they don’t pay royaltieas and they want them to be lowered?

It’s funny how all of these capitalist die hards hardly believe in the market. Royalty rates should be set by the owner of the songs, the copyright holder not by some government burocrat or by the publishers on a take it or leave it basis, uniform rate for all sogs regardelss of worth, just as the price of records are set by the record makers.

With some exceptions price controls are a bad idea. It is absurd that royalty rates should be set for songs when songs are not a critical-for-survival product, like a medines, when there are absolutely no price controls from medicines, even for the ones that sell at 50 times the cost to make (and there are many of those).

At present if there is any price fixing in prices for songs, it is dome by the Music Publisher Association’s Harry Fox operation. Harry Fox issues almost all the music publishers’s licenses to record companies and the licenses all have a standard rate, currently about 9 cents per song per record, regarless of the quality of the song. But here is a twist. Record companies, the large ones, are themselves music publishers and to a degree control Harry Fox. It is odd for record companies to want an outsider to tell Harry Fox to lower the prices to the record companies when the record companies actually own and control Hary Fox.

Anyone, who says that record companies have to pay a too high royalty rates are mistaken. All a record company has to do to get lower prices is to tell the copyright holders how much they want or are willing to pay. They can negotiate a price if they want. Or they can shop aroud for the best combination of song quality and price.

There is nothing in the (American) law that forces a record company to pay a price they don’t want to pay, making it incredible that they are requesting lower prices, just as there is nothing in the laws that frces a recrd company to sell at a controlled price.

Perhaps this is a publicity stunt for getting some badly needed sympathy. Sympathy that is needed to gain back some of the customes that have been lost because of their criminalization of, mostly kids, who share music.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

They are just looking for handdouts from others.