In the past the strangle hold they had on the means of distribution has been what gave them the ability to force artists and creators into one sided contracts. Now, they see new mean of distribution and are threatened as they will (and already are) losing their strangle hold on the creators they have for so long exploited. They will do verything in their power to squash or control all new technologies in an attempt to maintain their strangle hold. When a new drug dealer shows up in town, the existing drug dealers either wipe him out or force him to work for them. That’s what cartels do.

Some clarification is in order.

Actully no, RIAA does not have a right to payment each time a song is played on radio or a public place. No one has that right or the right has been waived.

Songwriters/Composers (or their designated reps) have a right to license (for money) for the performance of their music on radio. RIAA has no participation in that process.

As it turns out the designated reps (called publishers, even though they publish nothing) have hijacked the system and though their so called collective performance rights organizations only issue blanket licenses for a single payment for all songs in a catalog (which no one gets to see) regardless of how many songs are perfomed any number of times. Meaning that the right to be paid for each public performance has been waived. Allowing their reps to do this is a stupid position by songwriters, for cetain.

As to artists (performers), they never had a say on or profited from the performance of their recordings. This is because lawmakers left them out, as they only repond to lobbies and artists have never had any organized movement to lobby anyone (record companies -RIAA- would never stand for that, would they?).

Then through some miracle accounting systems the money is distributed mostly among the designated reps (publishers) who in turn have their own miracle accounting system which allows them to retain all of the songwriter’s income, more or less fraudulently. As always, there may be exceptions.

As to RIAA, all they want is to stop the copying of music, a very well established tradition practised by everyone. They think that they can somehow stop the copying and that that will lead to higher profits.

One thing is sure. If RIAA is succesful in their ploy to prevent copying of songs broacasted digitally through satellite, RIAA may actually stop the satellite radio industry from growing. No one will benefit from that, including music fans, artists and RIAA, in the long run.

Maybe if the old passenger ship companies had lobbied and stopped the renascent airline industry, as RIAA is trying to stop the digital revolution with DRM and other gimmicks, the passenger ship business would still be prosperous.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

Except that here are two problems.

1. Most, if not all devices such as radios with cassette recorders are made abroad. Americans simply buy them. The question is if Americans, a minority of the world’s population (5% or so), can dictate the design of electronic products throughout the world.

One of the things that happen in the gobal economy is that you loose independence. Since Americans import almost everything, they have lost that independence.

2. Laws are generaly prospective. When you make laws that prohibit the production of goods already being produced, making the production of a legal device illegal, then instability for investment set in and that may be bad for the economy. After all, investments were made to produce the device when it was legal.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

The way a home stereo with a built in cassette deck does ?
The way a VCR ( has a built in TV tuner ) does ?

What assholes.