RIAA's Cary Sherman: We Really Just Want To Give Consumers What We, Er, They Want

from the help-us-help-you-help-us dept

Last week on his show Keen On, Andrew Keen wrapped up a series of music-industry-themed interviews (which included BitTorrent's Bram Cohen and Techdirt's new friend David Lowery) by talking to RIAA CEO Cary Sherman. The conversation is pretty tame, and Keen mostly just lets Sherman speak his piece, so I wanted to take a closer look at his answers and respond to some of his claims. This is not a complete transcript, but the first part of the interview is embedded below—in the next post I'll look at part two, in which Sherman answers some questions from Keen's viewers.

One thing is clear: Sherman has been following the public reaction to things like his diatribe in the New York Times, and he knows that everyone is sick of hearing him whine about infringement. He actually makes it through one-and-a-half semi-sincere answers before even using the word "piracy"—but after that it's virtually all he talks about. First, though, Keen simply asks him if he thinks the new ecosystem is better or worse for musicians. There are a lot of problems with his response:

It obviously depends on where you sit. For young, emerging artists they have more of an opportunity to get out in front of the public in ways that were never before imaginable. How much money they'll be able to make doing so is a serious question. Established artists are definitely doing worse than they used to be doing, and artists who are signed by labels are not getting the opportunities that they used to get when they were signed by a label: the marketing, the promotion, the exposure and of course sales.

So he apparently admits that the labels have failed at their job, and are now no longer even trying—and that artists will get more exposure going it alone since the labels provide no opportunities. I can't say I disagree. But the catch is the money, which he's sure isn't there:

So there are more income streams, but those income streams are much, much reduced. I think the Future of Music Coalition recently came out with a study showing that most artists are not benefiting substantially from these new revenue streams. And certainly if you look at the raw data from the industry, we're less than half the size that we were in 1999, we have way less than half the employment, fewer artists on the roster and so on and so forth.

Wait, does he mean the highly optimistic FMC study in which they concluded that "overall, digital technologies seem to be having a positive impact on musicians' earning capacity"? It's a shame Keen didn't push back on this point, because for Sherman to present that study as evidence that artists are worse off today is flagrantly dishonest. As for his "raw data", that says a lot about the failures of his corner of the industry (he's only talking about SoundScan sales and major label employment, glossing over the fact that the Big Six became the Big Three in that timespan) and very little about the overall situation for musicians. Next, Keen asks him why he thinks this is happening:

There are always a lot of factors involved in anything like that. There has obviously been a proliferation of new media and therefore competition from other media, but the fact is that more music is being consumed than ever before, just less and less of it is being paid for. I think we're now at a point where about 35% of music acquired is actually being paid for, so the rest is being taken for free.

I have no idea how Sherman arrived at that figure, but I'm a lot more than 35% sure it's bunk. I imagine the percentage of music that gets paid for is much, much lower—and always has been. With radio, television, music played in shops and in public spaces, free shows at bars, music played for friends, music played at parties, guitars strummed around a campfire and everything else in this music-saturated world, only a minuscule fraction of music consumed is actually paid for. Music is not, and never has been, a simple commodity. Sherman continues, paying lip service to all the market factors that have contributed to the decline in recorded music sales, and you can feel the tension building until he finally hits the p-word:

The fact is that piracy has had an enormous, really a devastating impact on the industry, because paying for music has become voluntary. It's a tip jar. If you don't want to pay for it you don't need to because you can always find online any of the music that you want. We're trying to come up with ways to offer the consumers the content that they want in ways that they want it, conveniently, reasonably priced, so that they will get it legitimately and compensate the creators. That is the number one anti-piracy strategy, which is basically offering consumers what they want.

That second part would be great, if the RIAA actually did any of that. Instead, time and time again we see them taking a sue-first, negotiate later strategy with new music services, and pushing legislation like SOPA/PIPA that puts a huge burden on innovators. Sherman then makes some comments about the businesses that profit from infringement, and Keen asks him to elaborate:

Megaupload is a great example. They were basically monetizing all the content that was stored in their lockers that they would distribute to people who would click on links all over the internet to get that content for free. Kim Dotcom was earning millions and the creators were earning nothing at all.

While it's possible, even likely, that Megaupload broke the law and some of the charges against them will stick, the assertion that creators were "earning nothing" is not quite true. Creators who embraced Megaupload were benefitting from it and were indeed earning money through its bounty payments for popular uploads. That's why we saw both well-established artists like Busta Rhymes and indie artists like Dan Bull take Megaupload's side after it was shut down.

Keen then asks if there are any legal businesses profiting by monetizing the content of artists, which elicits a bizarre answer from Sherman:

There's no question that all the companies that are providing access to music are benefiting in some way, legal companies, and that's entirely appropriate. ISPs have done very well by the availability of music online, because it has created greater demand for broadband access, and as a result they have now penetrated to the 66-67% level of US households, because they want access to the content that the entertainment industry offers. But that's perfectly fine.

Well, I suppose it's good to know that Sherman approves of broadband. As far as I know, the RIAA has never pushed the kind of "piracy tax" on ISPs that some organizations around the world have proposed. I guess they don't plan to start now. Of course, his answer also exposes the hubris of the legacy entertainment industry: he thinks their content is the only content anyone wants, and that they alone are responsible for broadband adoption.

Eventually Sherman can't stall any longer and starts to talk about enforcement, which, it quickly becomes clear, is all he really cares about. He actually defends their past strategy of suing file-sharers, saying that it was successful in spreading awareness and curtailing the growth of peer-to-peer networks, but then quickly reverses and says that since P2P is growing once again, it necessitated the five- six-strike plan they recently negotiated with ISPs (and the government). It's amusing to watch Sherman try to describe a consumer-punishment plan in a way that sounds "consumer-friendly":

So we did a deal with ISPs under which ISPs would send notices that we send to the ISP that a user on their network is infringing, they will send a copyright alert to the user and there will be educational materials associated with it, FAQs, all the information about how we got the information, whether they should check whether they have a wireless router that's unsecured, all that sort of stuff. And after awhile if they continue to persist in this behavior, over four and five and six notices, there might be some mitigation measures imposed like throttling bandwidth or something like that, up to the individual ISP. But the idea is to, in a very consumer friendly way, educate the public about what copyright is all about, the consequences of violating copyright, and the long term importance of preserving the content that people want.

Thankfully, Keen pushes back a bit on this point and notes that most people don't consider the RIAA to be very consumer-friendly at all, especially not after they tried to push SOPA on everyone. He asks Sherman if he thinks they can convince people otherwise. It's the last question, and I'll leave you with Sherman's answer in full, because it's a doozie. He immediately jumps to the unrelated topic of counterfeiting, incorrectly calls boots and batteries "copyrighted products", and then, having said absolutely nothing about how SOPA would help musicians, claims that's who we needed it for. For some reason, he chooses to end the interview with the random assertion that aspiring musicians are giving up and becoming lawyers (which is funny because the first person who comes to mind is Bill Patry—no friend of the RIAA's cause). With that in mind, enjoy:

For one thing, just because we don't want to get back into SOPA, but SOPA was not just about copyrighted music or movies, it was about counterfeit products too. It was designed to protect American consumers from counterfeit products like pharmaceuticals, which are actually being sold to American consumers from fraudulent websites on the internet. There are every kind of copyrighted product, from boots to Rosetta Stone language materials to things that could actually endanger your lives like batteries that could blow up and so on. So this really was designed to protect consumers against counterfeit websites that were operating from overseas and selling into the US market. Did we lose some consumer trust? Absolutely. What happened with SOPA has created a lot of skepticism on the part of the online community that were interested in consumer welfare, but it all depends on how you look at consumer welfare. We think that consumer welfare is not getting a product for free, but getting the best possible product you can. And if our artists make music that people want, it's a win-win for everyone, and we think that the long-term consumer interest is in creating an ecosystem in which there is compensation for creators so that they can be paid for their craft to go on making music. I don't know how many would-be musicians have gone to law school instead because they've seen that their opportunities in the music industry have been disappearing with every new illegal downloading technology. But it's our job to somehow create an ecosystem that makes consumers happy, makes creators happy and works for everybody.

Filed Under: andrew keen, cary sherman, copyright, music industry
Companies: riaa

UK Government Pressuring Search Engines To Censor Results In Favor Of Copyright Industries

from the backroom-deals dept

One of the most insidious aspects of recent Internet policy-making is that much of it is taking place behind closed doors, with little or no consultation -- think of SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and TPP. But there's another dangerous trend: the rise of "informal" agreements between the copyright industries and Internet service providers.

With the implicit threat that tough legislation will be brought in if voluntary agreements aren't drawn up promptly enough, governments are using this technique to avoid even the minimal scrutiny that consultations on proposed new laws would permit. This allows all kinds of bad ideas to be forced through without any evidence that they will help and without the chance for those affected to present their viewpoints.

James Firth has a disturbing post about a proposed "voluntary" scheme involving search engines in the UK:

We know laws such as the UK's Digital Economy Act and America's SOPA/PIPA met incredible resistance from the tech industry and internet users, and readers of this blog and Open Rights Group supporters are already aware the UK government has switched tack from legislating to encouraging agreements directly between service providers and copyright owners.

What we didn't know until now is the extent that the UK government and in particular Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and the Creative Industries, is pressurising search engines to police search results in a way that goes well beyond notice and take-down.

I'm told a consortium of search engines at a meeting on Tuesday were accused of a "retrograde step" after failing to make progress on a proposal by music rights holders for a system to promote "good" music resellers and demote "bad" in the search rankings.

What is being proposed is out-and-out censorship and doctoring of search engine results through the use of blacklists and whitelists:

The blacklist is of websites accused of infringement. These sites will never appear in search results. That's the whole site, not just the pages from the site with infringing content. And this is not a court process, it's a notification system allowing studios to tell search engines directly who the bad guys are.

A white-list of "approved" online music and film services will be artificially promoted for music/film oriented searches.

That is, absolute power over search engines' results in these areas would be handed to industries that hardly have a good track record for adopting a proportionate approach to tackling unauthorized downloads. In particular, they are unlikely to lose much sleep over all the legitimate content that will become invisible when sites of borderline legality are removed from search engines' results "just to be on the safe side." And there are no indications that there would be any oversight as to who goes on the lists, or any right of appeal -- making it a purely extra-judicial punishment.

The good news is that the search engines seem to be resisting this move -- for the moment. As Firth writes:

I'm told that whilst search engine providers are both keen to strictly abide by all national laws and also willing to work with content owners to provide easy-to-use notice and take-down systems (under the EU E-Commerce Directive and US DMCA), they are "drawing the line" at doctoring search results to suit one relatively small group of economic interests.

The whitelist is anyway problematic, since it might be seen as collusion in anti-competitive behavior, and incur the wrath of the European Commission. Worryingly, one other suggestion from the copyright industries seems to be more acceptable: cutting off the funding of sites in the same way that SOPA proposed.

On funding a meeting was held last Wednesday at the Department for Media, Culture and Sport between rights holders, and advertisers and payment service providers.

I'm told in that meeting a broad consensus was reached to create a blacklist of websites where no advertiser would be allowed to advertise or face expulsion from industry bodies such as the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).

But even that seems an extremely dangerous step to take because it raises important questions about who will draw up such a blacklist, on what criteria, and how will those placed on it be able to appeal.

That exposes one of the key problems with these "voluntary" agreements: those pushing for them have no interest in striking a balance, or in building in safeguards for those most affected -- it's all about getting a quick-and-dirty fix and to hell with the consequences. That's why legislation, with full consultation from all parties, is a far better way of proceeding. After all, it's why we have a legislative process with checks and balances in the first place -- to craft a solution that is both workable and fair. The new fashion for backroom agreements among a small group of unelected insiders is nothing less than an attack on that process, and hence on democracy itself.

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Filed Under: censorship, copyright, filtering, pressure, search results, uk
Companies: google, mpaa, riaa

RIAA/IFPI Explored Possible Lawsuit Against Google For Not Ranking iTunes Above Pirate Bay

from the good-luck-with-that dept

Over the years we've seen a few lawsuits against Google because companies are upset that they don't rank high enough in search results. Those companies seem to think there's some sort of legal right to being ranked where they want to be ranked. Pretty much all of those lawsuits have resulted in dismissals. Google's search rankings are an opinion and thus protected under the First Amendment.

Of course, most of those suing over this are kooks... but apparently a much larger potential lawsuit on this issue has been considered. The IFPI and the RIAA supposedly have asked for a confidential legal analysis concerning the legal issues if they sued Google for sometimes showing unauthorized sites above authorized sites in its search results. In other words, in the mind of the RIAA/IFPI if Google shows The Pirate Bay over iTunes... that must be illegal:

“Google continues to fail to prioritize legal music sites over illegal sites in search results, claiming that its algorithm for search results is based on the relevance of sites to consumers,” the document states.

“With a view to addressing this failure, IFPI obtained a highly confidential and preliminary legal opinion in July 2011 on the possibility of bringing a competition law complaint against Google for abuse of its dominant position, given the distortion of the market for legitimate online music that is likely to result from Google’s prioritizing of illegal sites.”

Of course all of this shows a massive misunderstanding of how Google works. The IFPI seems to honestly think that Google employees are making a conscious choice that "let's rank these unauthorized sites higher." They don't seem to understand how algorithmic search results work.

The fact that no lawsuit has appeared since July suggests that (hopefully) the "legal opinion" explained to the IFPI that any such lawsuit would likely be laughed out of court. Hell they just had to look at the dismissal of the myTriggers lawsuit in September if they wanted to understand why such a legal strategy is destined to fail miserably.

Filed Under: free speech, opinions, rankings, search
Companies: google, ifpi, riaa

Justice Department Wants $5 Million To Bolster Its Efforts As Hollywood's Private Police Force

from the regulatory-capture dept

While the proposed Obama 2013 budget for the federal government is supposed to be about cutting extraneous expenditures, one area where it's seeking more money is to expand the Justice Department's copyright enforcement efforts. You see, this is what happens when you hand the Justice Department over to the RIAA and MPAA. DOJ is seeking an extra $5 million to focus on these kinds of efforts, to hire 14 new employees, including nine lawyers, claiming that it's "had an increase in the number of cases that we're dealing with in IP." Oh really? You mean like the case of Dajaz1? The site that the DOJ illegally held and censored for over a year? Perhaps if they had a few more lawyers on staff, someone would have taken the time to realize that they were supposed to give the domain back within a specified time frame. Or perhaps they could have used those people to realize that the site was posting music sent by the copyright holders. Of course, that's not what would happen. Instead, they'd just focus on seizing more sites and creating more collateral damage. The real question, of course, should be why are we allowing the government to be Hollywood's private police force?

Filed Under: budget, copyright, doj, justice department, regulatory capture
Companies: mpaa, riaa

TuneCore: RIAA Has Become A Part Of The Problem For Artists

from the indeed dept

For many years, I've used TuneCore as one of the key examples of the new generation of middlemen who served as enablers rather than gatekeepers for artists. The company has a clear record of really helping tons and tons of artists make money from their music in ways that were entirely impossible for most of those artists previously. It's a true success story. That's why I have to admit that I was somewhat disappointed in late 2010 when TuneCore's CEO Jeff Price came out in favor of COICA, the problematic predecessor to SOPA and PIPA. Thankfully, since then it appears he's realized the error of his ways.

Beyond his continually awesome series of posts providing tons and tons of useful data that the legacy recording industry has totally ignored, he's written a brilliant response to Cary Sherman's NYT op-ed that we've been discussing. Price points out that the real disinformation campaign has been from the RIAA, and the key point is that the RIAA does not represent artists, but rather it represents the major labels, who very frequently have agendas that are at odds with artists:

The RIAA has become part of the problem of protecting copyright due to its occasional less than honest approach to things.  You just can’t take what the RIAA says at face value as their agenda is not clear—is it to protect copyright or is it to protect the interests of its label members at any cost?

After all, this is the same organization that had the RIAA employee Mitch Glazer attempt to sneak language into a bill on Capitol Hill changing the definition of “work for hire,” depriving artists of their rights (there’s a great article about this in the Austin Chronicle).

Now add to this that as the RIAA demands that its label members’ copyrights be respected and properly compensated, its members have knowingly taken hundreds of millions of dollars of other peoples’ songwriter royalties over the past few years.  Knowingly taking money generated from the copyrights of others—aka “Black Box Money”—sounds eerily like stealing.

Furthermore, he notes that the RIAA's strategy here now puts it at odds with what's actually best for musicians. He goes on to point out that SOPA/PIPA in their original forms might have actually been the end of a service like TuneCore:

However, if the original SOPA and PIPA bills were passed years ago, TuneCore most likely would not have existed, and power would still be concentrated with the old regime; they would have found a way to slow the market shift away from them. In the guise of “protecting copyright” the original SOPA bill would have provided the RIAA unilateral and almost unchecked power to kill the new emerging industry.

All the RIAA would have had to do is claim that music distributed by TuneCore was infringing on its label members’ copyrights. With limited to no due process, TuneCore could have been shut down just like Dajaz1.

And I can assure you, from time to time TuneCore gets illegitimate and wrongful claims of infringement by the RIAA (and some of its label members).

No matter how much the legacy players in the industry want to claim that it was "just Google" that helped kill the bill, there's simply no way anyone can credibly claim that TuneCore is a Google puppet. In fact, I think it's clear that TuneCore has been one of the most useful tools out there for getting artists paid. And it's coming out strongly against the RIAA on this one, highlighting the key point that too often gets lost in this debate. The RIAA represents the gatekeepers, not the artists. This has never been about protecting content. It's always been about protecting gatekeepers.

Filed Under: enablers, music, opportunities, pipa, sopa
Companies: riaa, tunecore

How Much Of The Collapse Of Recorded Music Sales Revenue Was Due To The End Of Illegal Price Fixing?

from the just-saying.. dept

Harold Feld has made a very important point that has been totally ignored in the debate over the state of the recorded music business. In Cary Sherman's diatribe about how the evil tech industry is destroying the music industry, not only does he pretend that recorded music is representative of the wider music industry's situation (it's not... at all), but he seems to have carefully chosen the date of 1999 as his starting point for the supposed "collapse." Why? Because in 1999 the major record labels (i.e., exactly who the RIAA represents) were charged with illegal price fixing... a practice they then agreed to cease. And, of course, when you stop price fixing, generally speaking your revenue goes down:

This is important because in 1999, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the major labels were engaged in an illegal price fixing scheme. The major labels agreed to discontinue their price-fixing practices as part of settlement decree in May 2000. Not surprisingly, once the major labels stopped violating antitrust law, their artificially inflated profits declined and independent competitors saw a significant rise in profits.

This is a pretty important point. The "high point" for recorded music sales was completely artificial, not just because of a "legal" monopoly right, but because of illegal antitrust activities in the form of price fixing.

Filed Under: antitrust, cary sherman, music industry, price fixing, recording industry
Companies: riaa

Always A Gatekeeper: RIAA Backs .music Proposal... If It's Only Limited To 'Accredited' Musicians

from the gates-have-come-down dept

For years there have been a few efforts underway to try to create a .music top level domain. While I'm not totally convinced such a TLD really is needed, it's been interesting to watch the RIAA's allergic reaction to the general idea. About a year ago, we wrote about how the RIAA was complaining that any such TLD might (gasp!) be used to infringe, and arguing that ICANN shouldn't allow it unless it was completely locked down. Apparently, the RIAA has now found the plan it likes, siding with a company called Far Further on its bid to run .music, and going against the company that has fought the hardest for .music... a company called dotMusic. If you want to understand why the RIAA is now endorsing Far Further's proposal, it's pretty simple:

Its .music would be restricted, along the same lines as gTLDs such a .pro, to card-carrying members of what the company calls "accredited Global Music Community Members".

"It's not open to everyone," Styll said. "You'd have to join an organization."

Amateur bands would have to be members of an accredited songwriters association to get a .music address, for example.

In other words, it goes against the reality we know today, which is that new technologies are allowing anyone to become a musician. Instead, it's based on the obsolete notion that only those in a special club are "really" musicians. What you end up with is exactly what the RIAA wants: a system where it gets to "accredit" musicians. In other words, a system where gatekeepers still matter. Of course, what they don't realize is that if .music uses such a system, it almost immediately becomes irrelevant, and sets itself up as an exclusionary club in an era when such things aren't necessary any more.

Filed Under: .music, accredited musicians, gatekeepers, top level domains
Companies: far further, riaa

If The RIAA Wants To Talk About Misinformation Campaigns, Let's Start With The RIAA's Misinformation Campaign

from the misinformation-works dept

We already walked through the ridiculousness of RIAA boss Cary Sherman claiming that the reason SOPA/PIPA were defeated was because of a "misinformation" campaign on the part of some tech companies. Tons of folks who have followed the RIAA for years probably broke out in open laughter when we saw this statement from Sherman:

Misinformation may be a dirty trick, but it works.

Because, if anyone knows that "misinformation works," it's Cary Sherman, who is famous for his ability to run vast misinformation campaigns to get bills passed. Thankfully, Ernest Falcon, over at Public Knowledge decided that if Sherman wanted to open the door to discussing "misinformation campaigns" concerning SOPA/PIPA, we might as well focus on the biggest one of all: the claims by the MPAA and RIAA that DNS blocking was no big deal:

During the legislative hearing on SOPA, House Homeland Security Subcommittee Chairman on Cybersecurity Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) questioned MPAA Exec. Vice President Michael O’Leary about the cybersecurity problem.  In response he received the standard misinformation campaign line of there was no cybersecurity problem and that this type of activity “occurred all the time.”  To bolster their misinformation campaign, the content lobby worked hard to manufacture the “truth” by highlighting the work of the very small number of individuals (a grand total of three) who wrote “technical rebuttals.”  These were not so much rebuttals as they were well orchestrated advocacy pieces that ignored the engineering and distorted the studies they utilized in order to dupe Members of Congress to believe the legitimate concerns were in fact unsupported.

Part of the RIAA and MPAA misinformation campaign centered on the argument that DNS filtering and secure networks (DNSSEC) could both exist in the same network.  This was despite the fact that top experts in the field provided an extensive explanation why that would not be technologically possible (a couple of these individuals actually saved the Internet in the past).  In the end, when Comcast (a SOPA supporter) announced they had to shut down anything that filters DNS traffic when they activated DNSSEC and the White House Cybersecurity Coordinator stated that the bills “pose a real risk to cybersecurity,” the jig was up.

Lastly, claiming that censorship concerns in regards to DNS filtering were misplaced completely ignores the fact that SOPA and PIPA moved America closer to censorship oriented regimes.  If these bills were enacted into law, American broadband providers would have been required to install the same filtering technology used in China, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Armenia, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Burma (Myanmar), Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.  This reality triggered the outpouring of opposition from the international human rights community who fight censorship overseas every day and point to the United States as the model.  Summing up the well informed reasoning behind their opposition, Julian Sanchez with the Cato Institute points out that enacting SOPA and PIPA would mean the “only difference between the Unites States and China is what's on the blacklist.” 

Part of the RIAA's favorite tactics is to pull out all the dirty tricks in the book... and any time people call them on it, to accuse the other side of using the dirty tricks that were really being used by the RIAA. It's a classic DC-insider move, but in this day and age, where the internet can route around lies, it's going to backfire, as it did here. All you have to do is look at the comments on the original Sherman NY Times piece, where upwards of 90% of the comments call Sherman out for his ridiculous claims. Sherman has the old playbook, the one where those who knew the truth couldn't speak back. If he had paid attention at all to what happened in the SOPA/PIPA debate he would have know that playbook doesn't work any more. But, it's all he knows. If the major labels were smart (don't laugh), they'd dump Sherman and put someone in place who actually gets the internet.

Filed Under: blocking, cary sherman, dns, misinformation, pipa, sopa
Companies: riaa

Major Label-Owned Vevo Caught Publicly Streaming NFL Game Off Of 'Rogue Site'

from the where's-ice-when-you-need-them? dept

Where's ICE when you need them? For a while now, ICE has been making the case that sites that merely link to streaming content -- especially sports content -- are the most evil kinds of criminals around. It's why they're trying to extradite Richard O'Dwyer from the UK to have him face criminal charges. It's why they recently arrested Yonjo Quiroa, who will soon be tried on criminal charges as well. Both ran sites that linked to streams of TV content, including sports content. So clearly, this is serious, criminal business. In fact, if you believe the propaganda from the RIAA, these sites contribute to gangland violence and terrorism.

But, of course, when those major label guys want to set up an illegal public performance of an NFL game, where do they turn? You guessed it! One of those rogue sites.

Jason Kincaid over at TechCrunch has the rather insane story of how Vevo, the music video streaming company created by Universal Music and owned by Universal Music and Sony Music, had a booth set up at Sundance a few weeks back, where they, quite clearly, live-streamed an NFL playoff game. Yeah. In their "lounge," they had computers showing the game, apparently sourced from ESPN America -- which isn't available in the US. And the stream came from TuTele.tv, which appears to be quite similar to many of the sites that have been seized and shut down. In fact, it sounds pretty similar to Rojadirecta, which is currently fighting the US Justice Department in court.

And the folks from these major record labels used this source to live stream the football game throughout their lounge area at Sundance. It gets even more ridiculous when you remember that Congress has been trying to pass bills that would make such streaming a felony in and of itself. Senator Amy Klobuchar's streaming felony bill, S.978 -- the one that would potentially put Justin Bieber at risk -- as well as SOPA, both had provisions that made public performance of infringing content a potential felony. Those were mainly supposed to be directed at sites that allow streaming, but I think people would find it hard to argue that what happened in that bar was not a "public performance."

Of course, what this shows is that these issues are never as black and white as the RIAA would have you believe. And, just like many others, when the industry doesn't give them a convenient way to do what they want, even the RIAA's strongest supporters stoop to making use of rogue sites to potentially do "criminal acts."

I eagerly await ICE moving in to arrest Vevo execs for this blatant criminal activity.

Filed Under: copyright, hypocrisy, rogue sites, seized sites, sopa, streaming
Companies: emi, riaa, sony music, universal music, vevo

Open Offer To Chris Dodd & Cary Sherman: Meet The Internet Online And In The Open

from the no-more-backroom-deals dept

We've covered how the RIAA's Cary Sherman and the MPAA's Chris Dodd have both taken the strategy of first slamming everyone who took part in the internet protests against SOPA/PIPA as somehow being misinformed corporate pawns... but then concluding by expressing a desire to "meet" to discuss solutions. The problem, of course, is that both of them still think that it was Google that killed SOPA/PIPA, and so their idea of a "meeting" is to get Google into a back room and to "negotiate a deal." But, as many people have been pointing out, that isn't going to cut it.

So let's make a clear offer to Chris Dodd, Cary Sherman and the rest of the corporate supporters of SOPA/PIPA: You want to meet? Let's meet. But let the meeting be open and public. Let's have it outside of DC. Pick a place. Let it involve representatives from public interest, civil service, consumer rights, human rights groups, as well as internet communities such as Reddit and Wikipedia. Let it involve the actual companies you seek to regulate as well, from the tech industry (meaning not just Google, but also the startups these bills would have hit the hardest), and the actual technologists who understand the impact of what you seek to do. And then let's stream the whole thing online, and have it with a system that lets everyone, including those watching the stream, contribute comments and questions.
Is this of interest? Over the past few weeks I've spoken to numerous people representing a variety of different groups, and they've all expressed interest in such a meeting. So how about you? You asked for a meeting. The community is happy to meet. But we want it to be open and transparent. And we want real internet users to be able to take part.

So, let's see if you're serious.

Filed Under: cary sherman, chris dodd, copyright, infringement, meeting
Companies: mpaa, riaa