RIAA vs AllofMP3: Testing the limits of globalization

Two weeks ago, the Recording Industry Association of America filed a lawsuit in a New York court against AllofMP3, a music download site that operates out of Russia, saying the Web site owes it $1.65 trillion as the result of 11 million downloads since Oct. 2006.
AllofMP3 has maintained, and still maintains, that it is a legal download site that operates under Russian law and pays royalties to Russian Multimedia and Internet Society, (and said record companies have refused all attempted payments from ROMS) and the prices on its site, low as 10-cents a download, reflect the actual cost of a CD in Russia.
What a clusterbuff.
This is one of those situations where no one is right and just about everyone is the bad guy. First, AllofMP3, while operating under Russian law, is not paying the musicians who spend their lives creating art as a career. An accurate system must be put in place to reward these artists for a job well done.
That said; If AllofMP3 is operating under Russian law, which it says it is, it’s the law that is not protecting the artists, not commerce.
Russia is not part of the World Trade Organization, and thus — technically, according to my understanding—does not have to comply with its rules and regulations.
Think of it as diplomatic copyright immunity.
This has to be worked out on the global playing field, not in a New York courtroom that may or may not have jurisdiction in Russia.
The RIAA is not the good guy in the scenario either.
And one could easily argue that the RIAA is a dinosaur that spends its time and money fighting to get theirs while disregarding the integrity and livelihood of the artists it was originally formed to protect.
Take for instance the RIAA’s math skills.
The RIAA apparently feels a single downloaded song has a price tag of $150,000. Wait, that can’t be right. $1.65 trillion divided by $11 million is $150,000. So, yeah, I guess that seems right. You pay a buck a track at iTunes, under Russian pricing it would be about $150,000 a song.
Wrong.
Realistically, it costs around $2-$3 for a legally purchased, physical CD in Russia, as opposed to $10-$20 in the U.S. So AllofMP3 is, like it has been argued before, selling downloads at comparable price points. The company also said it pays 15 percent of its sales to ROMS. So, based on more accurate math, AllofMP3 has socked away $165,000 since October, which would be a more accurate lawsuit total—not 10 million times that amount. In fact, the RIAA could probably just ask ROMS for that money and get it cash in hand—according to AllofMP3.
I have a feeling the RIAA is going to regret this lawsuit in the long run. Eventually, any US governmental organization that investigates this will as the question: Why does a download cost $0.99? They asked a similar question in the 1990s when the RIAA was sued for price fixing.
The cost of recording and distributing music has dropped significantly with the invention of the Internet. Recording studios have been reduced to computer programs like ProTools and distribution on the Net has grown exponentially.
In the next year or so, the physical CD will die (a bold prediction, but that’s where it’s going), and distributing music over the net, which costs virtually nothing, will be the way of the world.
At that time, the RIAA will have to justify why a physical CD (which needs to be pressed, printed, sealed, stored and shipped) has the same pricing structure as a downloaded CD (which is hosted on a server, eliminating all of the printing, shipping and storage costs).
It will be determined that the RIAA has fixed prices, again, and the cost of a download in the US will drop, probably to around $0.50.
The worst part is, during all of the struggles between the players in this fight for global commerce domination, the artists are the ones who will ultimately suffer—whether its at the hands of a faceless international corporation or under the thumb of a fossil bent on protecting itself not its clients.

For more, read HERE.

Photo courtesy of Digital Music Weblog.

Feeling fine, online. 10 years and counting

It was almost 10 years ago to the day that I was introduced to the Internet. I was just starting college, as a non-traditional student, and one of my classes required I have an e-mail address.
“E-mail?” I remember thinking. “I’m in class every day. What does e-mail have to do with this class?”
I argued, but I didn’t want to fail so I signed up.
My first couple weeks on the Internet were pretty blah. I would go to the computer lab, type up my homework, e-mail it and go home. Then, and thank goodness for weather, it was raining and cold one day, and I didn’t feel like waiting for the bus. So I started surfing.
Now, 10 years ago the Internet wasn’t any great thing. In fact, one of the first places I surfed to was the Heaven’s Gate cult Web site that was all over the news at the time (in case you don’t remember, Heaven’s Gate was a cult of computer geeks who committed suicide in 1997—many members were wearing identical outfits and black Nikes).
But then I really started looking around. I found Web sites that were posting movie reviews (illegally) from major newspapers, I found the movie company (Troma) that made one of my favorite cult movies (Toxic Avenger), I found a list of every chalkboard gag ever written on The Simpsons... the list goes on and on.
I was instantly addicted.
Every day, after finishing my homework, I would search some more. It was fascinating the amount of information that was on the net.
In late 1998, I had my first article posted on the Web—a movie review for the UWM Post. A few months later, an article I wrote was picked up by an online news service. In early 1999, I did my first shopping on the net (eBay). The same year, I discovered online music, online video services, online movie chat rooms, and so on.
For me, it’s neat to think back to my pre-Internet days. It feels like I was in a cloud, so uninformed, so unaffected by the world around me. Of course, my ADD wasn’t as bad as it is now (what was I talking about), but that aside the Internet has been very good to me.
And while some have gone on and on about how their industry (banking, insurance, retail) has been changed by the World Wide Web, nowhere has it been changed more than inside the newsroom at a newspaper.
Newspapers have been around for hundreds of years, and for most of that time, they didn’t change. Sure, with the advent of wire services content changed slightly, then there was color...but for the most part, papers were unaffected by time.
In the last 10 years, papers have been completely retooled. Newspapers have moved onto the Web. They’ve added podcasts, streaming video, blogs, pop-up and online classified ads, up-to-the-minute news updates, content links and so on.
I can’t tell you how many times in the last month of doing video people have shot me confused looks when I tell them I’m putting together a video for The Sheboygan Press Web site.
“But the Press is a newspaper,” most say in paraphrase. “What does that have to do with a newspaper?”
Ten years ago ... nothing. Today, it has everything to do with a newspaper. Tomorrow? That’s a mystery. I’m pretty sure physical newspapers aren’t going anywhere, but you never know what tomorrow holds.So here’s to 10 more good years of the Internet. It will be interesting to see where this thing goes.

Photo of Yahoo! browser, circa 1997, courtesy of Tranquil Eye.

Missing the point

So, let’s see a show of hands from those of you who didn’t care to see O.J. Simpson hypothetically run through how he would have killed his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman. I’m assuming that most of you are either raising your hands or nodding in agreement.
Now, how many of you feel News Corp. violated your right to free speech?
According to reports from IMDb, poet/playwright Jayne Lyn Stahl, in her column on Arianna Huffington’s blog, wrote: “What may (be) lost in the shuffle here is that one person, and one corporation, News Corp., has the power to pull the plug on a T.V. special, as well as the planned ... book. ... Few, if any, will lament the loss of the OJ book and interview, but make no mistake, unprecedented media, and newspaper consolidation poses the gravest threat to freedom of expression, and the First Amendment.”
I read this a couple of times and could not believe how far off of the mark on person could be.
The First Amendment is:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
My question is, Ms. Stahl, where did the government come into play in this O.J. scenario?
News Corp. is not “Congress,” nor is it any governing body. That gives it too much credit.
If O.J. Simpson wants to revisit the past, hypothetically confess to a crime, reopen the gaping psychological wounds of the Brown and Goldman families and make himself appear as horrible monster in the eyes of the children he fathered with Nicole Brown Simpson, he has every right to.
He can shout it from the rooftops, yell it at the subway and bus stations, post fliers everywhere and so on. He has the right to do it.
But no person or company is under any obligation to pay him. The First Amendment doesn’t guarantee a written work will be published.
That, Jayne Lyn Stahl, is what this is about. Profiting off of the unsolved murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman is the issue, not the freedom of speech.
Rupert Murdoch, News Corp. chair, didn’t say ‘O.J. doesn’t have the right to say these things,’ he said News Corp. wouldn’t pay O.J. and give him a venue. Murdoch decided it wasn’t good for business.
In fact, any company that wants to step in and publish Simpson’s book has every right to. But, and I could be way off on this one, there probably isn’t a market for it.
Money will always trump vision. As a poet, I'm sure you've run into this before.
As a writer, I would be more pissed off that any celebrity with a half-baked idea can waltz into a publisher’s office and be offered a $3.5 million publishing deal and television special.
The “gravest threat to freedom of expression, and the First Amendment,” isn’t a media conglomerate rejecting written or filmed material. That happens all the time.
The gravest threat is not having an audience. Without an audience, it doesn’t matter what you say.

Read Jayne Lyn Stahl's editorial HERE.

FOX gets wise with OJ

Fox finally realized there are lines that can’t be crossed.
News Corp., the conglomerate that owns Fox and Fox News, said Monday it would cancel a planned TV special and book from O.J. Simpson called "If I Did It," where the former football player explained hypothetically how he would have committed the slayings his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994.
In the brief amount of time that has lapsed since the project was announced, just about everybody in the world has come forward to say this was a terrible idea. The families of the victims were shocked and outraged that they were going to be dragged through this horrifying experience, again, and news pundits from around the globe were screaming, ‘What is Fox thinking?’
Obviously, they were thinking about ratings.
The special was set to air during the last three days of November sweeps, at a time when Fox is without it’s ratings winners American Idol and (place name of hot reality show here). They needed a hit, and they were willing to pay for it.
The deal with O.J. was worth an estimated $3.5 million for the book and television special (and yes, Simpson does get to keep the advance he received for the project). When you’re willing to spend that kind of cash on a 12-year-old story, you expect a payout.
But it backfired. The backlash alone has hurt Fox, not permanently though because it didn’t air.
There have been worse ideas that have actually aired on television (Remember Geraldo’s primetime journey into Al Capone’s vault where he found NOTHING?).
And Fox is already doing spin control.
In a statement, Rupert Murdoch, News Corp. chairman, who isn’t exactly known for speaking out against anything on his networks, said, “I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project. ...We are sorry for any pain that this has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson.”

I usually applaud Fox for pushing the boundaries — especially with its Sunday night lineup. But this time, backing off was just the right thing to do.

Editorial: War on YouTube

The media has been covering wars since its inception. Early journalists, which we would now refer to as embedded reporters, lived with the troops and wrote about battles they experienced first hand. As technology advanced, so did the reports — first on radio, then in movie newsreels and finally on television.
In the early 1990s, when cable television news pioneer CNN started reporting live from Desert Storm, war coverage reached a new frontier, bringing the sights and sounds of war home to watch live in our living rooms.
But even then the television viewers, radio listeners and newspaper and magazine readers were only able to experience so much. News organizations aren’t given all-access passes by the armed forces to go everywhere, especially during battle, and the governments (United States and others involved) have tried kept a tight wrap on what can be shown and reported on.
Even more, not all of the information delivered to news organizations could be aired. There are FCC regulations and ethical concerns to consider when covering war, in fact one of the three forms of speech that is not protected by the First Amendment is giving out military secrets during wartime, so many news organizations have chosen to air on the side of caution.
Plus, words can only describe so much. After hearing phrases like “the horrors of war” and "enduring freedom" over and over, they tend to lose their meaning both in delivery and interpretation.
That has changed. Several months ago, video clips of the war in Iraq shot by US soldiers (like the one below) started showing up on YouTube, as did videos from the insurgents. They are reports from the frontline, sans the reporter, that are both fascinating and hard to watch.
Without the commentary from trained news professionals, lowered sound of fighting compressed to allow for voiceovers, graphics and maps and quick edits to maximize points of coverage, the raw footage is horrifying. Soldiers scream as they fire their guns, bullets and smoke flying around them as curse words are echoed every couple of seconds.
After watching less than a minute of it, you start to feel sick. For someone who has never been in that position, it’s hard to imagine what these people must be going through.
And while it is hard to watch, this is an amazing development for the media.
The Internet basically has no regulations on content, especially when it comes to broadcasting. You can swear, shoot, blow up things and so on, and there are (basically) no federal regulations against it (so long as you prove you are 18—even at YouTube). For news organizations, this could be huge.
We can’t show you everything on TV or in print, and you can’t hear what war and other sensative situations really sound like. We just can’t do it. But we could on the Internet.
According to the US Census data from 2003, 54 percent of homes have Internet access, and it appears that number is rising by 2 percent a year. At this rate, nearly 68 percent of homes will have Internet access by 2010, possibly more.
While this doesn’t compare to the 98.2 percent of homes that have a television set (according to the FCC), it’s still a sizable amount of people that have access to these images and accounts at their fingertips.
And as interest in these actual accounts rises, which it will, the news organizations of the world will be able to give you more of them — undistorted, untwisted, unedited, leaving the interpretation of facts up to you.
It’s the media in its purest form, and it can be yours for the asking.
For now, it’s just an awesome experience that these little voices are being heard all over the world, whether it’s a soldier in Iraq fighting to stay alive, or a college student with a webcam trying to make sense out of their life.
While the images are sometimes unsettling, they are at least being seen.

Editorial: Allofmp3: Too legit to quit?

“Of course, we will survive. The music industry is rapidly changing and we will change with it.”

That line was issued in a virtual press conference today by the bargain-basement Internet music store, allofmp3.com.
In the press conference, the Russian-based website that sells full CD downloads for around $2 to customers worldwide vehemently denied accusations by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the British Phonographic Industry and music labels including Universal Music Group, Warner Music Inc., SonyBMG Music Entertainment and EMI Group PLC, that the site is selling copyrighted material illegally.
“AllofMP3 is a legitimate business that is incorporated in Russia, pays taxes in Russia and pays royalties to the iTunes).
The company says it pays 15% of its sales to the Russian-based society ROMS, the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society, as royalties for the artists (the record companies have allegedly refused all attempted payments from ROMS) and the prices on its site reflect the actual cost of a CD in Russia.
So what is the truth? Good luck on this one. International copyright law is about as complicated as putting together an internal combustion engine without instructions or a working knowledge of mechanics.
Length of copyright protection varies from country to country, as does the level of enforcement.
In the US, the RIAA has lead a charge against illegal file sharing — sharing music on services like Napster — suing companies and users for copyright infringement. And, not to side with an organization that has been successfully sued for price fixing, but they are right about file sharing — it is stealing.
But allofmp3 represents a fascinating gray area. It does appear to be a legitimate company, they do appear to comply with Russian law (no matter how lax anyone says it is), they do appear to be attempting to pay artists for the legitimate sale of their music, and (without any advertising at all) have attracted a worldwide customer base.
I am in no way going to claim that I am an expert on media law — in fact, I would bet that most people who are experts in media law couldn’t say whether allofmp3 if this is breaking the law or merely bending it. I am also NOT going to recommend shopping there until they get their legal issues settled.
My opinion though is that allofmp3 may be the future business model for all legitimate music download sites. It at least raises some rather obvious concerns about the current state of the music industry:
Why do music downloads cost the same as (or more than) the cost of purchasing a physical CD — even after you strip away the expensive packaging, distribution, losses due to breakage during shipping, credit for theft, and other pricing points that cause CDs to cost between $8 and $15?
Why does it cost $2 for a CD in Russia and $15 for the same CD here?
Does international copyright law allow all countries to participate in the sale and distribution of digital music on a level playing field or is this once again an intricate international music price-fixing scheme?There is a great myth that we are moving toward an international marketplace. If this is true, businesses like allofmp3 are going to exist — legitimately, and the copyright governing agencies and online music stores are all going to have to suck it up and compete.

Editorial: It’s always television’s fault, isn’t it?

It’s a wonderful lie to blame things that have no relation to the actual problem. That’s what people are doing when they blame television for the ailments of the world.
I say this in response to an editorial that appeared in Tuesday’s editorial section of The Sheboygan Press, “Entertainment TV promotes acceptance of violence,” written by syndicated columnist Cal Thomas.
In it he talks about the recent brutal murder of several schoolgirls at a one-room Amish school in the usually peaceful Lancaster County, Pa. Charles Carl Roberts has been accused of pulling the trigger.
While Thomas accurately described the horror experienced in this sleepy community and rightfully concludes that life is uncertain, he for some reason decided to take a swipe at television—that glowing box of evil in everyone’s home.
In his column Thomas wrote: “As one who watches less and less TV, I observe a growing acceptance and promotion of violence in network “entertainment” programs,” and then went on to describe how CSI attempts to capture the necrophilia demographic by having autopsies of naked bodies (no I’m not kidding) and how local TV news “is drenched in crime and blood.”
While he stops short of actually linking it to Roberts’ actions, he quickly jumps on another television fear factor, saying: “the danger now is that other unstable people will see this horror on television and think they can replicate the carnage in their towns...”
First of all, his observations on television don’t make any sense. By applying the basic principles of logic: If you are watching less TV, and you are seeing more and more violent acts, then it’s the handful of shows you are watching.
As a person who watches, and has watched, a generous amount of television, I have seen a lot of television violence (not to mention a lot of sexual situations, innuendo, drug use, comedy, laughter, tragedy and smoking). But I have yet to see this escalating amount of violence I have been hearing about.
Maybe it’s the shows I’m watching. I’m only regularly watching two of the three Law and Orders and none of the three CSIs.
I do watch the news from several stations, including local, national and cable news coverage, and while I have seen reports on homicides in the Milwaukee area and the current nuclear unrest in Korea, I am not seeing any violent acts (plenty of aftermath though).
I would be lying to say television hasn’t changed. It has—it’s gotten better.
While I’m not a fan of CSI, the show has increased the public’s awareness of criminal investigations, and even though it has given viewers an unrealistic expectation when it comes to actual investigation techniques, it is opened up people’s eyes to the rapidly growing science of police work (let’s see Hill Street Blues do that!)
The same can be said for ER and Law and Order.
What these shows haven’t done is increase the public’s acceptance of violence, and any argument that it has is pure and simple Right Wing banter.
When the Twin Towers came down on Sept. 11, did any TV viewers laugh? Did they show no emotion? Did they feel safer? NO! It was horrifying, tragic, terrifying and sad, and still it is! And these events at the Amish school and schools across the country in the past three weeks, including Wisconsin, are not being seen as minor events. There has been no desensitization toward real events because of television.
And television has nothing to do with these tragedies.
At least when Columbine happened, people quickly blamed Marilyn Manson, The Matrix and KMFDM, because the Trench Coat Mafia seemed to enjoy these things. Has anyone linked Roberts to a television? NO. Did he even watch TV?
I know that many people wish television could go back to a simpler time, when “Leave it to Beaver” and “My Three Sons” were on the tube, but realistically those weren’t exactly great times. African Americans couldn’t vote, women earned way less than men doing the same job (if women were allowed to work—many were forced to quit working when they got married) and situation comedies lacked realistic situations and comedy (plus much, much more).
But to even bring television up and half-heartedly connect TV to events it has no relation with is appalling. I’m not saying television is the solution to all of the world’s problems, but it surely isn’t the cause of them either.

The views expressed in this editorial are mine and mine alone.