Songwriters Want Dual Payments For Copy Protected CDs

from the oh,-sweet-irony dept

For all the effort the recording industry has put into making sure that they get paid for every single song that appears anywhere - it looks like they may have painted themselves into something of a corner. The current popular copy protection scheme is what's known as a "dual session" CD - where two sets of songs are included on the CD. The first one is like a regular CD, and plays music when the CD is placed in a standard CD player. The second set of songs is called if the CD is put into a computer CD tray - and includes mechanisms to prevent copying. The problem is that the publishers and songwriters claim that each CD sold with such dual sessions should count as if two copies of each song had been sold. In other words, they want to get paid double for each of these CDs. As ridiculous as this sounds, using the recording industry's own logic, it makes perfect sense.
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  1. identicon
    Milnesy, 13 Jan 2004 @ 12:11pm

    I don't think it sounds that crazy...

    Songwriters are paid for every record created for a certain song. If you are going to create technology that requires the song to be on the media twice, then the song writers should get paid. They get paid pennies anyway, so this should help them out a little more. Either that, or it will be a good leverage point to prevent copy protected cds from being distributed.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    LittleW0lf, 13 Jan 2004 @ 1:09pm

    Re: I don't think it sounds that crazy...

    If you are going to create technology that requires the song to be on the media twice, then the song writers should get paid. They get paid pennies anyway, so this should help them out a little more.

    Of course, the RIAA will use this as an excuse to tack on four more dollars to the $18 per CD cost their members charge their customers, even though the songwriter gets another $0.02 for the CD. And then they will complain even louder why customers aren't buying half of what they bought last year because of illegal file sharing.

    As much as I think this is a good idea, I think the ultimate goal is to cut out as much of the middle-greed-monsters as we can, since their short-term greed is hurting everyone else, including the folks that they are "sworn to protect" (which is laughable at best, since the RIAA couldn't possibly care any less for the musicians they steal from, nor the customer they steal from.)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Inner Critic, 14 Jan 2004 @ 7:59am

    Yes it does. Re: I don't think it sounds that craz

    You know, my car drives on both the highway and city streets. I should really be paying twice as much for it.

    What a bunch of jack@$$es. Wish I could dictate that kind of nonsense in my field. "I'd like you pay double for anything you use in two different players."

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Joe Smith, 14 Jan 2004 @ 10:42am

    This is why people pirate digital music

    It is this kind of greedy, money-grubbing bullshit that is one of main reasons why people download illegal MP3s... and like the other poster said, this will give the RIAA something else to blame waning CD sales figures on. What a bunch of jackasses!

    link to this | view in thread ]


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