MEBIS - old news and comments from the music business:

• March 2001: Napster has lost the law suit with such a perfect argumentation within the courts findings that there is no chance for any change. The basic findings were that a user who makes tracks available is commiting a crime and that Napster is in turn partially responsible. The court has also cleared up that Napster officials were very much able to see what they did - and that it is not a "private copying" activity if someone trades protected goods for other goods. This should be obvious, but many journalists were writing an enormous amount of crap recently. It is obvious because a commercial activity always existed even if there is no money. if I give something to someone else and get something in return, then I act commercially, especially if I don't know that person intimately. If "intimate knowledge" between people might not make activity un-commercial (think of a whore and her customer, which might get to know each other intimately.
• Dec. 2000/Jan. 2001: The merger of AOL-Time-Warner's music group with EMI has been stopped by european competition watchdogs. This was a grave mistake in my opinion because it damaged all musicians chances to survive against the strong economic groups of their natural enemies: radio and consumer electronics manufacturers, Internet-companies and Telekom-companies, all of which try to get music as cheaply as possible. Strong music companies are a better chance to combat this, while a broad spectrum af small companies can not put any force against these "new technology music distributors". There is some hope for a merger between bertelsmann's music group and EMI now, which would have a smaller market share, but could at least improve the situation a bit.
• Hewlett-Packard finally got on my shit list with their efforts not to pay a royalty on their CD-recorders and other copying hardware. The fees planned are ridiculously low in comparison with the damage to every copyright holders group - but still, these companies (of course not only HP, but especially Phillips NV) are fighting to make ever better profits from the small-time theft of music, films, pictures and information. Many musicians including me are not buying any of their products anymore.
• June 27, 2000: AOL has licensed Intertrust Technologies DRM-system and will use it to protect music and potentially other content forms. Since Intertrust has already deals with Universal Music and Bertelsmann as well as KPN (dutch Telecom for their music online system, adminstrated by MAGEX), every major music company will soon use this system, which I consider the best system around. The deal with AOL means that EMI and Warner Music (especially if they go through with their planned merger) will use Intertrust.
• Adobe has cancelled their own protection system and made a deal with Intertrust, adopting their protection and Rights Manament system, which both more flexible and more secure then their own concepts. This means that soon there might be flexible intertrust-compatible systems everywhere within 6 to 12 months.
• The european commission has prepared a copyright directive compromise that still shows the disregard some politicians and their benefactors (radio companies, blank media manufacturers (chemical companies) and hardware companies (HP and Phillips) have for the basic rights of musicians. These are that musicians and their partners should have a right like everyone to be paid when their work is consumed by listening to it. This in turn means that musicians need the right -
  • a) to decide at what price and terms a broadcast or other public performance (webradio etc.) can happen (something the film business has always had)
  • b) to stop any copies - this has nothing to do with consumers rights. A consumer can always decide that he does not want to consume a specific recording of music at the price offered, so he doesn't need any right to make copies or steal !
• While some politicians understand this, a lot of them are caving in to electronics manufacturers, radio stations and ISP interest groups. Small wonder - just radio broadcasters alone are making 50% more money from music then record companies, musicians, retail stores and publishers together.
• While the directive has some good points, it can only be hoped that it is seriously improved before being passed by the european parliament. If not, the record companies will have to merge with broadcasters, ISPs and Telecom-companies - something that is already happening to a certain degree - because they will not survive otherwise. In contrast to record companies, radio and ISP have a really bad history regarding the share of the income that actually ends with the musicians, so this would be fatal for musicians.
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• May 2000: Preparations for secure download formats are progressing fast - with quite a few safe players and internet-first releases being planned for the second half of this year. At the same time more and more normal CDs come with a copy-protection code that makes it impossible to copy the tracks to a hard-disk (often called "ripping") and therefore reduces the problems of "CD-burning" and mp3's.

   

Last Updated: 16.March 2003