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.
-
- 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.
Author: Alex
Merck
Last Updated: 16.March 2003