Preaching to the Choruss
p2pnet news view P2P | Music:- Back in December, “Warner Music Group – Proposed Experiment/Pilot in ‘Voluntary Blanket Licensing”‘ for Online Access to Music – Mark Luker, EDUCAUSE” was the first line in a p2pnet post, which went on »»»
Intriguing – Warner Music is one of the Big 4 record labels who are currently using their RIAA to try to turn universities across America into taxpayer-funded corporate copyright enforcement agencies acting on behalf of the music industry. The others are Vivendi Universal, EMI and Sony BMG.
Educause describes itself as a “nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology” and Mark Luker is its vice president.
The statement above is the first slide in a series with Jim Griffin’s (right) name at the bottom.
“Warner Bros hopes Jim Griffin will be able to pull at least one rabbit out of the hat to help keep the company alive in the 21st digital century,” said p2pnet in March.
Specifically, he`s to, “spearhead a controversial plan to bundle a monthly fee into consumers` internet-service bills for unlimited access to music,”" said Portfolio.com.
Is the Voluntary Blanket Licensing plan the result?
Code-named ‘Choruss,’ the supposed Warner Music university music plan wasn’t written by Griffin, Warner Music told p2pnet, and, “This presentation belongs to someone outside our company and represents that individual`s interpretation of issues discussed at meetings held several months ago,” said Griffin in a statement.
Choruss would have people paying five bucks per month.
Hmmmmm, said another p2pnet post, “That seems familiar. Oh Yeh! That`s what the EFF was proposing in RIAA v The People – four years later. ‘The concept is simple,’ said the EFF: the music industry forms one or more collecting societies, which then offer file sharing music fans the opportunity to ‘get legit’ in exchange for a, ‘reasonable regular payment, say $5 per month’.”
And didn`t Canadian musicians in the Songwriters` Association of Canada (SAC) and Canadian Music Creators Coalition (CMCC) have a similar idea? »»»
We propose a licence fee of $5.00 per internet subscription, per month. Payment of this fee would remove the stigma of illegality from file sharing. In addition, it would represent excellent value to the consumer, since this fee would grant access to the majority of the world`s repertoire of music. Existing download subscription services generally charge considerably more than $5.00 per month, while offering a mere fraction of the file-sharing repertoire.
‘ … those who file share will still be wide open to lawsuits’
Now, “After months of silence on what he was working on behind closed doors and in backrooms, Griffin recently gave a prepared speech supposedly revealing some ‘details’ on the plan — but as IP attorney Bennett Lincoff points out, what Griffin and Choruss are proposing is to pull the wool over universities and the public’s eyes,” says Mike Masnick on TechDirt, going on »»»
The plan, as we originally pointed out, isn’t a license: it’s merely a covenant not to sue — and that leads to all sorts of problems.
First, considering that the RIAA has been cutting back on lawsuits, that’s not particularly meaningful. It’ll still pushing for 3 strikes policies that will cut users off from the internet, even if they’ve paid up through Choruss. Furthermore, as was made clear in the speech, the RIAA won’t stop trying to shut down file sharing systems. So, people who think this is a good idea because it will let them use The Pirate Bay or Limewire may discover after getting locked into this program that the lawsuits continue and those services keep getting shut down. Next, since it’s just a covenant for the labels not to sue, rather than a license, it doesn’t cover all of the other rightsholders, such as songwriters and the music publishers — meaning that those who file share will still be wide open to lawsuits from those parties.
This is quite a scheme that the record labels and Griffin may pull off:
- Convince universities to buy into the program with no input from students. Universities will buy into it because they think they’re “helping” deal with the “problem” of file sharing… and to avoid Congress forcing them into such agreements
- Universities pass the cost on to students (of course), so students are forced to pay for this
- Record labels get a big chunk of money for no good reason
- New expensive bureaucracy (Choruss) gets set up to siphon more middleman cash away from musicians
- Record labels don’t do anything different, since they already have started moving away from suing individuals (sorta)
- The public thinks that file sharing is now legal
- Record labels continue to sue and shut down favorite file sharing networks, leaving only crappy, limited and expensive “approved” systems
- Individuals who paid up start getting sued by other rightsholders not covered by this agreement and not getting any money from it
Mike figures, “most of the press will eat it up as a revolutionary agreement whereby the record labels ‘legalize’ file sharing,” and he’s undoubtedly correct.
“Now can you understand why Griffin and Warner Music aren’t open to any real conversation and will slam anyone who actually offers to take part in a conversation?”" – he asks, adding:
“A real conversation might bring out these issues, and that’s the last thing the record labels want. They want everyone to believe they’re working to make file sharing legal, when all they’re doing is constructing a massive wealth transfer from people to the labels providing almost no benefit to consumers at all.”
The plan Griffin didn’t write
The plan Griffin didn’t write, as outlined in Warner Music Group – Proposed Experiment/Pilot in ‘Voluntary Blanket Licensing’ for Online Access to Music – Mark Luker, EDUCAUSE, looks like this »»»
Goal
* Let students access and use music any way they want to
* Generate fair returns to content owners
* Avoid DMCA notices, lawsuits, etc
* Avoid technological requirements that might impact our networks or hinder innovationHow?
* Students access and use music any way they want to through the campus net
o P2P, Limewire, iTunes, etc. OK
o No DRM OK
o iPods OK
o Hardware neutral* Institutions make a reasonable effort to estimate the number of downloads per song
o Might monitor traffic through a cache
o Statistical sampling OK
o Determined by the campus
o Experimentation encouragedHow?
* Institutions collect/fund/amass a pot of money (e.g. per student per month)
o As determined by the campus
o All students or none* A non-profit organization distributes the money proportionately to content owners
o All major labels and an indie association are members
o Covers all rights holders for the music
o `Prices` TBD
In return:
* Content owners refrain from all DMCA notices and lawsuits
o Not really licensing
o `Covenant not to sue`
* Possible complication
o Simplest if accepted by all HE and ISPs
o If not must avoid massive leakage from those that are covered to others that are not
WMG Question
* Are any institutions interested in
o Learning more?
o Participating in a pilot?
* Is CSG interested in herding a pilot project?
Comments from WMG
* We are open-minded as regards our non-commercial voluntary blanket license solution, for which we`re assembling all rights (sound recording and publishing) from all four big music companies and the independents:
* We suggest our approach be self-administered in an academic setting.
* Our fundamentals are but two, a pool of money and data for a fair split amongst rights holders.
* We are following history, not an eight-ball or ill-conceived scheme. We offer the approach that followed the arrival of electricity â performance, radio, television, cable, satellite and webcast are all monetized through blanket licenses.
* Our approach leads other media and makes music the canary in the mine â music sets a precedent that video, text, graphics and others can and will follow.
* We`ve started a non-profit company to be clear we intend to operate with good intentions and not profit as a motive.
* Our approach is supported by the EFF, Public Knowledge and many organizations dedicated to network freedom.
Comments from WMG* We believe our approach is loaded with upside for the academic community:
* We believe growth and learning will result from this self-administration approach.
* Caching can lead to bandwidth savings that may offset or obviate the fees.
* Our approach guarantees unfettered network access and encourages network management optimization.
* It is a clear truce in the war between content and network. It meets the interests and goals of all concerned, a win-win.
Stay tuned.
p2pnet – Warner Music unveils university master plan, December 5, 2008
p2pnet – Warner Music hires Jim Griffin, March 28, 2008
Portfolio.com – Fee for All, March 27, 2008
p2pnet – WMG disowns music licensing `presentation`, December 5, 200
p2pnet – Warner Music `classic protection racket`, March 28, 2008
TechDirt – Choruss’ Music Tax Plan: Bait-And-Switch, March 18, 2009
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March 18th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Got a better idea. All upcoming artists who actually want to keep fans should avoid the Record Labels like a plague and stay independent till they can actually get a fair share of the proceeds from their work when it gets sold.
And for goodness sake READ the contracts at your own pace. NEVER let them rush you into signing things take at least 3 wks to read it thoughtfully.
March 18th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
I have been struggling within the University System of Maryland to push for an EFF-modeled Voluntary Collective Licensing model for several years now. When I was approached about Choruss it sounded a lot like what Mr. Luker was talking about, and I was excited. But this latest information sounds like yet another attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of people like myself who are pushing for real solutions, paying lip service to new business models while in reality everything is “same old.” This is extremely frustrating and adds fuel to the belief that there will be no “peace” until these major labels are buried.
March 18th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
What’s really actually kinda encouraging is that the MAFIAA are now so desperate that they’re pawning off “fake” versions of their opponents’ ideas. This is basically the offline equivalent of the “fake torrents” MediaDefender used to put out, and the thinking behind it is obviously something along the lines of “Well, if we make this LOOK enough like the (good) idea everybody ELSE is proposing, hopefully people will be dumb enough to believe it!”
Like I’ve been saying for a long time now: the only REAL solution is drastically scaling back copyright terms, repealing the DMCA, and REQUIRING registration to even get the privilege of the new, shorter copy’right’ monopolies: if you want privileges from the State (like, say, incorporating a business so your ‘personal’ assets are protected), then you wade through the bureaucracy.
Copy”right” monopolies should require exactly the same thing.
1. Explicit registration would mean that if you DIDN’T bother to register, you’re not permitted to to take advantage of the State-granted privileges involved. Thus, if you REALLY want to be a money-hungry jackass, and the idea of being ‘infringed” makes the dollar-signs light up in your eyes, you put the effort into letting the State WHICH GRANTS YOU THE MONOPOLY PRIVILEGE know exactly who the hell you are, and where the hell you are.
Good aspect of this is, of course, that the vast majority of stuff will probably revert to the Public domain (where it SHOULD be, anyway) simply due to the fact that while people are sometimes extremely greedy, they are also notoriously lazy about paperwork, and adverse to “bureaucracy”.
(Those buying the law know this: else why make the law so torturously complex that nobody except specialists can understand it?)
2. Shorter copy”right” terms even if you DO register will “act as an incentive” for rights-holders to keep producing. (That is, assuming that their ONLY motivation for such production was financial in the first place, rather than, say, a genuine commitment to artistic vision, needing a good piece of software, etc.)
3. Roll the “collecting agencies” into the copyright office: make it a State function. Copy”right” is already a State-granted privilege, and — if registration were explicitly required — who better to distribute the revenue from such “blanket licensing” than the organization in charge of administering the State privilege which REQUIRE such “licenses” in the first place?
(This also acts as an incentive for even the most money-hungry foe of “Red Tape” — read: corporate conservative — to “play nice”, in that if you don’t register, you don’t get to cash in.
Of course, this — and so many other — GOOD ideas just mysteriously never seem to get to the “right” people in Government (but copyright term extensions always do!) Hmmm……the other alternative is to keep increasing the amount of so-called “piracy” to the point where large segments of the society are by default “criminals”, but the sheer ubiquity of such activity renders enforcement-efforts moot. (Oh wait, that’s happening already. My Bad.)
March 19th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
I like Henry Emrich’s ideas. Far better than the “lets hold hands with the RIAA and sing Kumbayah” blanket licensing ideas that seem to get endlessly recycled here. The fact that Warner Music took this idea, and twisted it to something where they only offer limited protection from lawsuits and are still trying to shut down p2p networks proves the point I have tried to make in previous posts about just how bad an idea blanket licensing is.
A couple of quotes from Al Wilson’s The Snake best sums up people wanting to deal with the RIAA
“She stroked his pretty skin again and kissed and held him tight
But Instead of saying thanks, that snake gave her a vicious bite”
“I saved you,” cried the woman
And you bit me, even why?
You know your bite is poisonous and now I’m going to die
“Oh shut up, silly woman,” said the reptile with a grin
“You knew damn well I was a snake before you brought me in”