RIAA Says There's No Value In The Public Domain
from the true-colors dept
While I've already written about the hearings for the Copyright Office concerning copyright on pre-1972 sound recordings, but I wanted to call out one particularly egregious and ridiculous statement from the RIAA. The RIAA's Jennifer Pariser claimed that there's no value to a work in the public domain. Apparently Pariser is unfamiliar with the works of Shakespeare. Or Beethoven. Is she serious? I mean, you could make the argument that it makes life more difficult to sell those works for the labels she represents, but those works have tremendous value. Pariser, of course, is famous for making ridiculous statements, sometimes under oath. Back when she worked for Sony-BMG she made some statements, on the stand and under oath, in the Jammie Thomas trial that were blatantly untrue. Only much later, after the jury had ruled, did the RIAA admit that Pariser "misspoke" while on the stand. One hopes she "misspoke" here as well, but I get the feeling she actually believes the blatantly incorrect statement she made.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: copyright, cost, economics, jennifer pariser, public domain, riaa, value
Companies: riaa
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There, I think that's what she really meant..
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OK - we mean there's no value in it for the music industry.
OK - we mean there's no value in it for the recording industry.
OK - we mean there's no value in it for the RIAA.
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"OK - we mean there's no value in it for the music industry."
That is all ...
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So nobody makes money off the bible?
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Re: So nobody makes money off the bible?
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--reading last sentence--
Oh. Never mind.
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If you'd like to see some actual religion-bashing to contrast with the straw-man; or discuss where exactly the introduction of religion to the subject of value happened in this thread, I'd be happy to oblige...
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My understanding is that a good part of the wealth of the recorded-music business traces back to a reckless act of disregarding copyright, for material which SHOULD have been in the public domain. In 1952, folklorist Harry Smith issued the ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN FOLK MUSIC, a 6-LP collection on the Folkways label which passed on key blues & roots recordings from the 1920s and 1930s to a new generation of listeners -- many of those would go on to develop the massively popular musics of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s etc.
Smith seems to have seen those old 78's as "abandonware" and he did tremendous cultural work in passing the music along for future generations. The issuing record companies saw no value in that old junk and of course it was all out of print by 1952. But, in today's terms, Harry Smith was a copyright criminal, as neither he nor the record company did proper licensing.
(Folkways, by then under the ownership of the Smithsonian Institution, did get licenses for a CD-era reissue of the set.)
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"RIAA Says There's No Value In The Public Domain"
What they meant:
"RIAA Says There's No Price In The Public Domain. Which is a downer, because we can't sell that stuff."
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ok
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Re: ok
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We have become so enthralled with this "ownership" society that regular citizens like myself and probably most of the people who comment here are going to have no choice but to be "criminals" by letter of the law. Whether its Apple telling me that I cannot giveaway my new iPad2 for a promotion, or the collection societies trying to tax me over and over for my choice in ringtones.
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And now we finally know the origins of the BORG.
"We are the Borg. Lower your Public Domain and surrender your freed intellectual property. We will add your audio and video recordings to our own and hold copyright on them in perpetuity. Your culture will adapt to service us under threat of lawsuit, prison and having your useful organs sent to the organ banks for implantation into our artists so they never die. Resistance is futile.
Spoiler alert!
P.S. This would make Sonny Bono the first Borg Queen.
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We just need to find us some Species 8472 and we could rap this up.
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That, and keep Captain Katherine Janeway from resigning from Starfleet and going to work for the MPAA/RIAA. If that were to happen, our Public Domain would be doomed.
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The value of a product and/or service is measured by seeing how much it inflates the bank account of RIAA CEOs.
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'Nuf Said
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Of course she misspoke.
What she meant was "the public domain holds no value for the RIAA" because they can't charge rents for it.
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Re: Of course she misspoke.
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This woman
If she really believes that PD has no value, then I would challenge the RIAA to have the record labels remove everything from the market that used material from the public domain. She can see how much value PD has then.
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Re: This woman
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The last decade or two have seen a flood of budget boxed sets of old blues, country, roots music -- the sort of stuff Harry Smith was anthologizing, as I mentioned above. Also old jazz and classical -- the Naxos label has reissued a lot of classical, and got strung up by New York State copyright laws when they tried to bring important historical reissues to the USA.
These boxed sets are being reissued in Britain FOR MONEY/PROFIT, and the fact that the sets have continued to be released for many years indicate that there is commercial value here in public domain sound recordings.
If anything, I suggest that entering the public domain allows these recordings to find NEW VALUE, while permitting the original copyright owners to keep them locked up DESTROYS VALUE.
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Simple Really
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Never, ever, suggest that again. The copyright maximalists will push for an age of the universe (13.75 billion years) plus a day copyright.
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Re: The copyright maximalists will push for an age of the universe (13.75 billion years) plus a day copyright.
In other words, the term has long since expired, and the Universe is now in the Public Domain.
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Value is a term that has different meanings to people at different times. Applying only a single meaning to it is sort of misleading.
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If they only took an existing public domain work (say a book of fairy tales) and reprinted it verbatim, they would have made little if anything.
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Disney made an entirely new animated movie based on the public domain (which is perfectly legal) and copyrighted the resulting work (again, perfectly legal). Since that time, the duration of copyright has been extended and the work is still under copyright (still perfectly legal).
It is significant to note that Disney's animated Snow White still has significant value, both commercially and in a social / society sense, unlike the public domain work which is essentially ignored at this point.
Perhaps that is part of the deal on copyright, as Disney took something that was ignored and turned it into something of true value, and something that continued to hold it's value long past what anyone would expect.
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What's yours is now mine and what's Mine is mine, too. That selfishness has no place in the copyright debate.
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Yes actually, they did. Millions upon millions.
They made money on works based in part off of the public domain, creating copyrighted and marketable products.
Had the fairy tales still been under copyright, then Disney would not have been able to create new works based upon them. Not without a licensing deal anyway.
Just having the stuff in the public domain made nothing.
The basic script was already written for them, they just freshened it up a bit and presented it in new way. I'm not trying to belittle what Disney does, just simplify it for the sake of conversation. Yes, the animation is what makes it new & special, but they started out with a wonderful story that was already well known & popular. Is there no value in that?
The public domain gives EVERYONE (not just Disney) a tremendous pool of material to draw from. Free of charge, free from restraint. There is incredible value in that.
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Yes, the public domain gives us a great pool of stuff. It's value as stuff is difficult to measure, most of it is ignored and left to rot. For every Shakespeare there is a Florencia Pinar that most people here wouldn't know without Googling.
I would actually suspect that without Disney, most people in this generation would never have heard of Snow White. How many thousands (or millions) of similar stories sit unknown in the public domain because of a lack of interest?
Remember: people aren't actively file trading 15th century books. They are file trading modern movies, tv shows, music, and the like. The public domain is there free for the taking and nobody is taking it. That is perhaps the clearest indication of the true value of it.
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The idea isn't to completely copy the public domain. It's supposed to inspire people to do different things with that content
Your comment about the most of the public domain being ignored and left to rot applies equally to material still subject to copyright. Plenty of content with copyright being ignored and left to rot.
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I think Project Gutenberg, which takes public domain books, digitizes them and puts them on line, would disagree with that statement. Guys, does Project Gutenberg have any stats on what gets downloaded?
(I know I have one friend who loads up her Sony e-reader with 19th century books from Project Gutenberg.)
Dover Books would also disagree with you: their business for years has been reissues of public domain books. Their reissues are sold for cash money in for-profit bookstores.
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There will always be exceptions, but business models are not build on exceptions.
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It would solve a lot of issues for businesses who need to make money. And at the end of the day, isn't money more important than culture? You can't buy food or pay rent with culture, everybody knows this!
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Get rid of the public domain?
Oh, and nothing new is going into the public domain either because the copyright period is/will be extended forever. The only way to make something free is Creative Commons. Google Nina Paley or search TechDirt for her name.
I guess your position is that if you can't make money from it, get rid of it. Well, what good is a new born baby? (I suppose you might sell it.)
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More importantly, all of that is just a small part of the full public domain pool. It is the part that the public has been exposed to over and over again as the result of new movies, recordings, etc. There is a huge amount of the public domain that just doesn't get any attention. What is it's true value?
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When they say "value" they mean "profits for them"
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You have it backwards,
"There is no Value in the R.I.A.A."
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God is dead, Fred.
Fred is dead, God.
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She is confused.
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Mike, literally, if you offered her a salary higher than the one she currently has she would be saying the exact opposite thing.
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It's a bit hypocritical to criticize the public domain when you work for the people who had a hand in depriving it of value.
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I shuffled just a couple of words, and suddenly, magically the title phrase started making sense.
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As for the reference to testimony in the JRT trial, to your knowledge do record labels as rights holders have any significant revenue streams other than the licensing of music? Perhaps I am mistaken, but to my knowledge most of the alternatives mentioned in your earlier article are not pursued by record labels.
Ms. Pariser was also labeled as not being truthful concerning the copying of music CDs. Actually, the only mention of the absolute right under statutory law to make a copy of a CD is with respect to making a backup copy of a software CD.
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And yet,t his sorry excuse for a liar is allowed to roam free.
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I can't help but read this and think "Do buggy whip makers have any significant revenues streams other than selling buggy whips? Perhaps I am mistaken, but to my knowledge most of the alternatives mentioned concerning automobiles are not pursued by the buggy whip makers."
Your point is what, exactly, that it's okay for the RIAA to force governments to change laws and lie in courts because they're too stupid or lazy to adapt to a changing market? Really?!?
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Ms. Pariser did not give perjured testimony, and for you to say that she did is unfounded and inappropriate.
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Ms. Pariser did not give perjured testimony, and for you to say that she did is unfounded and inappropriate
Wow. You really do love to misrepresent, don't you. The key issue with her statement was not the revenue question, but her claiming that ripping a CD was "stealing" and against the law.
Separately, the lesser of her statements, concerning her claims of how record labels make money was both wrong (record labels do make money from other means) and misleading to a jury. While you now claim that this will mean they will figure out how else to make money, that was NOT the impression she gave the jury.
Your obsessive desire to make us look bad here leads you to state amazingly untrue things. Please stop.
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The "back peddling" you are intent on calling a lie is that the music labels have made a decision, as is fully their right, to not pursue claims against those who rip music CDs so that they can listen to the music on their music players.
I have no desire, obsessive or otherwise, to make you look bad. My comments in major part are merely to point out that what this site says "is the law" in many instances "is not the law". The problem as I see it is that you are reluctant to engage in any sort of a discussion to try and understand why this is the case.
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Not so on multiple accounts. Considering that both time and place shifting has been deemed legal, you are grasping at straws.
Furthermore, even if you *were* right, she was wrong in that she equated it to "stealing," when you know full well it is not, but that it is infringement.
Finally, I find it amazingly obnoxious that even the RIAA has admitted Pariser misspoke... and you STILL insist what she said was accurate.
My comments in major part are merely to point out that what this site says "is the law" in many instances "is not the law".
And yet, a very large percentage of the time, you appear to be wrong in your claims. Even worse, when the law is different in the other direction, you have no problem ignoring what the law says (e.g., your claim that "stealing" is the same as infringement).
Might I suggest that perhaps you need to revisit your biases?
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Even the RIAA admits she did. I'm stunned that you continue to insist otherwise.
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In fact, the labels are still on record that the copying/ripping of CDs is not per se a legal act (but this in neither here nor there because the labels have made it quite clear that they have no intention of pursuing private individuals who copy/rip CDs for private, personal use). The labels similarly do not acquiesce to the argument that fair use excuses such activities.
I insist otherwise because this is my understanding from RIAA statements I have read.
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I think most rational minded people would say no.
The RIAA mentality, however, seems to say (indirectly) that if a given media is no longer playable, that the license has expired and you must purchase a new one to continue listening.
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Hence, the right to back up a music CD was be found elsewhere, and that elsewhere is a policy decision made by the labels to allow backups/rips. If they do not care, then it does not present you any problem. Importantly, the labels have gone on record stating the law as I have summarized, and announced their policy without acquiescing that backups/rips are countenanced by law.
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2. Disney has made movies.
3. Some of those movies were based on public domain works. (Early examples: Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland. Recent examples: Rapunzel, The Frog Prince.)
4. Those movies were profitable. (Cinderella is noteworthy as being critical to Disney's early success.)
Therefore, it is empirically true that public domain works can have value. They cannot, by definition, have cost, but they can be useful, and can therefore have value.
The cost of a thing does not necessarily reflect its value, as anyone who breathes can affirm.
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shakespeare is w/o a doubt worthless, beethoven could use a bit of work, but isnt to bad
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Yes - because without a doubt, no one has ever written anything based upon anything he wrote - nothing I say - nothing!
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"RIAA's Jennifer Pariser claimed that there's no value to a work in the public domain."
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When..
Just goes to show that there is one law for citizens and another law for lawyers and politicians.
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Jennifer Pariser misspoke
how can you compete with free?
(but she wasn't logged in)
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