WMG disowns music licensing ‘presentation’
p2pnet news view Music:- The supposed Warner Music university music plan outlined in an earlier p2pnet story and bearing the name of Jim Griffin wasn’t written by him, Warner Music has told p2pnet.
“This presentation belongs to someone outside our company and represents that individual’s interpretation of issues discussed at meetings held several months ago,” says Griffin in a statement.
The presentation is a slideshow which purports to discuss a ‘voluntary’ blanket music licensing program for universities.
However, “It was not made by me or anyone at Warner Music Group,” Griffin states, continuing »»»
Of course, we are actively engaged with universities and other parties to seek a constructive resolution to a complex issue – how to assure artists appropriate compensation while enabling the widespread dissemination of their work among fans. Therefore, we are undertaking an effort to develop new voluntary business models that seek something other than – and we believe, better than – a litigation-based approach.
This is exactly the type of solution that several universities and their associations have been asking for.
We recognize that there are many different potential solutions to this issue, and we are determined to continue to think creatively and cooperatively with other parties in order to find the best ones.
At this early stage, many ideas may be discussed and discarded, but efforts to prematurely label or criticize the process only hinder achievement of constructive solutions
Definitely stay tuned
Jon Newton – p2pnet
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December 5th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
It’s about time they reconsidered the “litigation based approach” — it hasn’t worked, and — at most — can only target a vanishingly-small number of people who, thanks to the fluidity if IP addresses etc. implicit in how the Net works — may not even be the ones who they want.
Moreover, as we need to keep hammering every chance we get, Copyright as it now exists serves NOT as an “incentive to create”, but as a passive income-stream in perpetuity for already wealthy corporate megaliths. Not to mention the fact that when threatened with the expiration of one of “their “copyrights, they’ll just buy themselves another extension in the same way that the Sonny Bono bullshit happened. Everyone knows this, which is why a sizable proportion of the world’s population doesn’t see anything wrong with file-sharing or p2p apps.
So the corporate shmucks know that the “litigation based approach” (suing their best customers) won’t work, and has so far only succeeded in alienating their key demographics — teenagers and music-fans. They know this can’t work, and they also know that all of their attempts to strengthen IP “protection” have pretty much failed as well. Booby-trapping their own product (a la Sony) failed, and pissed a whole lot of people off to boot.
So, just behind all their obfuscatory bloviating, we all know what’s really going on: they know full well that they’ll HAVE TO do some kind of “constructive solution” like blanket licensing or drastic copyright reform of some kind, simply to save face and attempt to stay relevant.
You know you’re adversary’s pretty much beaten when they start taking about “pursuing constructive solutions”. Did they talk about “constructive resolution” with Napster? No. Did they talk about a “constructive resolution” when they destroyed mp3.com? No.
Now, after years of (failed) jackbooting and against ever-improving forms of p2p technology, when an entire generation of people has already grown up in a world where file-sharing is a commonplace and they’re recognized for the corporate lobbyists they are, and treated accordingly — NOW is the point where their carefully-maintained facade slips.
Those four words: “pursuing a constructive solution” — amount to the RIAA member-companies acknowledgement that they’ve already lost, and are fully aware of that face.
I’ll gladly stay tuned — just to watch them crumble.