New Big Music attack on tech, innovation
p2pnet news view Music:- In the wake of Sony and YouTube, “reupping their licensing agreement, we wrote about how rare it is to see deals between the labels and digital music companies, and we explained why that is,” says Rory Maher in paidContent.
It’s a, “function of the way such deals are structured, and of the damaged psyches that each side brings to the negotiations,” he says, going on, “The record labels have filed a slew of lawsuits against digital music companies in the last few years, and that bad blood was underscored this week with the news that EMI was suing digital music startup Seeqpod, including its investors and partners.”
SeeqPod is a search and recommendation engine specifically for indexing and finding playable search results including audio, video, podcasts and Wikipedia articles that are publicly accessible on the World Wide Web, says the Wikipedia.
“The site claims to index more than 13M individual tracks and files.”
“Find. Discover. Watch. Listen. Share,” says SeeqPod.
Oh !!! The Horror !!!
What to DO !?
“Broadly, digital-music companies need to do a better job of extracting value from their audiences to use as a bargaining chip with the labels,” Maher figures, saying they, “also need to develop business models that aren’t so dependent on the music itself” and the labels, “need to seriously consider developing their own wholly-owned, independent digital businesses, and then striking only a few deals with the largest digital companies as a complement to those home-grown ventures”.
So, the “digital guys” need to »»»
Stop distributing record-label content without approval [...] If digital companies come to the table openly acknowledging the value of the labels’ content, perhaps the labels will be more flexible and creative with their needs.
Provide the labels with valuable data in return for better economic terms [...] Providing them with data that helps them understand which cities are listening to their music and watching their videos first, what age group listens to which bands the most, or which markets are seeing the greatest uptake in streaming music videosâall of that market intelligence is valuable to record labels when considering how to promote their products.
Consider other forms of music programming besides music videos [...] webisode programming [could] offer digital companies a way of producing music content that doesn’t require them to compensate the labels, [and] it could provide premium advertising opportunities like product placement, product adjacencies and advertorials.
And the labels need to »»»
Start internal angel-investment funds that help entrepreneurs develop new and interesting digital-music businesses [...] William Morris has successfully done this with its Mailroom Fund, and a Google policy that allows employees to devote 20% of their time to individual projects is similar.
Stop selling digital music through distributors and instead create their own platform to sell MP3s [...] No, this would not stop piracy, but it would enable the labels to set their own rules, including pricing, quality, and how many songs they choose to sell at a time.
The post is bait for “the latest report by our research director Lauren Rich Fine”.
Or have you had enough?
Casting a chill on the lifeblood of technology
With a serious suggestion to sort things, and still on Seeqpod (and Favtape) and its management investors, “Ray Beckerman throws down the gauntlet on the music industry’s latest attack on technology and innovation – suing investors in tech companies, which if successful would cast a chill on the lifeblood of technology,” says Richard Koman on ZDNet, going on:
“EMI and its associated companies recently sued Seeqpod and Favtape – and its management investors – in a case alleging direct, vicarious, contributory copyright infringement, as well as inducing copyright infringement.”
The trend, “is alarming, especially in view of the woeful state of our economy,” says Ray in his original Recording Industry vs The People post, going on »»»
The last thing this country needs is to discourage potential investment in emerging technology.
Professional investors typically:
-invest only a portion of their assets, never putting their base or personal assets at risk; and
-carefully weigh the risks and rewards before investing.
If a professional investor determines that one type of investment will put his personal assets at risk, thus potentially putting him out of business entirely, because one of the company’s exposures happens to be in copyright infringement due to the unsettled state of copyright law in the 21st century… he or she will decide — guess what — to take a pass.
Which is exactly what the cold and calculating content cartel is hoping will happen.
They can’t compete in the marketplace, and they don’t know how to innovate or create anything themselves, so they are trying to use litigation as a means of choking off innovation.
This should be disturbing to each and every American.
The recent complaint filed by EMI, which is not even an American company, is an outrage.
I recommend that my readers write to the White House, and to Congress, calling for legislation to prevent this abuse.
Here is my first draft of a proposed statute:
No person or entity can be subject to secondary liability for copyright infringement by a corporation or other business organization based in whole or in part upon (a) work he or she did in his or her capacity as a member of the board of directors or committee thereof, or (b) his or her having invested in any such corporation, including any oversight, monitoring, or due diligence activities in connection therewith.
It shall be a violation of this section to name any such person as a defendant in a claim.
Any person named as a defendant in a claim in violation of this provision, shall be entitled to his, her, or its attorneys fees, trebled.
This statute shall be applicable to pending actions, except that claimants shall be afforded thirty (30) days from its effective date, as a matter of right, to withdraw or abandon any claims which are or may be in violation of the statute.
Stay tuned.
paidContent – Getting Back On Track: Some Tips For The Music Business, February 26, 2009
ZDNet – Stop suing tech investors over copyright!, February 2y, 2009
Recording Industry vs The People – Record companies threatening investors in emerging technologies…. is the last thing our economy needs, February 26, 2009
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March 2nd, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Ya know why its easier to sue them then people as its less bad press.
At least until you get this defense.
The hard core o fit thus sounds like this;
In there reasoning they say that because a hammer can and has been used to murder people as well as baseball bats and pencils and pens , we have ot make the stores and places you can acquire such things illegal because they can be used in and offense instead of going after the people that are in fact doing things.
YUP were all guilty now regardless of its use, even though by the testimony of ifpi CEO it snot p2p tech on trial it is , that is what his statement was all about and then he raised the debate question another had raised about whether it even affects sales.
WELL when you remove the riaa and ifpi and mpaa , that’s the entire side of distribution that p2p does, so by there reasoning
if na artist gets 50 cents of a 15$ album the mpaa should pay me 14.50 to download it. Then ill send the artist his 50 cents
there fore the artist cant expect me the person doing the distribution , the burning and the labeling and paying for it all to give them anything as i have used 14.50 in value and they get 50 cents of the value of 15.00
remember hackers in an underworld dont care if you sue big companies and places we will make our stuff anyways so all your doing is putting things where you wont have any site NOR opensource freebies , we will keep it and keep it for ourselves and no longer will we share with a corporation. no longer will we give back. YOU have ( corporations ) shown to be as bad as the oligarchs of old russia and the evil north koreans and so called evil iran
Economic terrorism MUST BE FOUGHT AGAINST
March 2nd, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Not to take issue with Ray or anybody else, but all this assumes that threats of lawsuits and such will actually put a chill on the development of technology. I don’t see it. Whatever doesn’t get developed “above-ground”, will eventually be developed “underground” — if there’s even a difference anymore. In a world where a bunch of disgruntled “script kiddies” can utterly trash months (years?) of DRM research, all of this thinking about “angel investors” and “business models” is ultimately beside the point. If somebody manages to make a few bucks here and there, good on ‘em, but whether it’s “legitimate” or not, technological advance WILL continue.
Y’know why? If for no other reason, than that our (s)elected leaders NEED a mythology of “national competitiveness”.
Actually, as an American, given the last eight years of how the Bush administration handled “the world’s only superpower”, I don’t neccesarily see the serious downturn as a bad thing. Maybe the United States doesn’t DESERVE to be “a great nation” anymore.
It’ll be refreshing to watch the corporatocracy hamstring itself, and radicalize even MORE of the intelligent, resourceful, anti-authoritarian type folks to “our” side.
March 4th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
@Henry,
>>Whatever doesnât get developed âabove-groundâ, will eventually be developed âundergroundâ
Not always Henry, I am a coder myself and had a few ideas that I wanted to try out by myself… but had to let them go due to possible legal issues from mr. MAFIAA man, and that idea kind of died away.
Maybe if a group decides to do something and then says no, a part of that group will take it underground, but if its a lone coder like me its quite possible a lot of ideas wont get passed because its also hard to know who to trust to pass the ideas on to someone else to carry the torch.
The **AA are always looking to make ‘examples’ of people, to scare the rest of the population into obedience, its just not worth the risk for a guy like me.
>>but whether itâs âlegitimateâ or not, technological advance WILL continue.
No argument there, but it will _usually_ continue at a slower pace, at least initially.
Cheers!