RIAA's oodles of boodle
and the copyright conundrum
If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
- Dorothy Parker
O.K. Or, if you prefer, "OK"; or maybe "Ok" or "Okay."
Enough already. The term has been part of our spoken language for so long and is so freely used that I'm willing to accept almost any written variant as…. Well, as OK with me.
Only those who have not paid attention (and maybe it's worth ignoring) are in doubt as to the origin of "O.K." If you are one of those let me enlighten you: O.K. stems from the supporters of Martin Van Buren, who organized themselves in 1840 into The Democratic O.K. Club.
"O.K." referred to Old Kinderhook, New York, where Van Buren was born, and "O.K.!" became a political rallying cry, along the lines of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too!" or "I like Ike!"
Let me also forestall the inevitable critics who stand ready to pounce on my using this space for philology instead of technology. (Now, of course, I've stirred up those who will decry even my use of such words as "philology." Well, OK: Let them invest in a dictionary, either electronic or paper.)
There's a similarity between understanding the history of words or concepts and understanding technological controversies.
Or at least there's an equivalent value in following the histories of tech disputes in order to dispel some of the shadowy misunderstandings, hype and plain lies that pervade many popular press reports on tech issues. Not to mention the inanities spouted by radio and tv poohbahs.
Last month ("Four candles, no ashes," H-C, April) I said, "The RIAA makes a big deal out of copyright infringement, as if that were the point." Some readers took me to task for this statement, as if I were suggesting that the concept of copyright were invalid, or that songwriters and musicians should not be paid for their work.
The recording industry has spread such a net of misinformation about itself, its practices and the oodles of boodle it has extorted from CD buyers via illegal price-fixing that it would be surprising if the public were not confused. A casual observer of the Napster controversy may be forgiven for falling prey to the public relations propaganda pimpology of the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).
The truth is that the RIAA respects the absolute value of copyright only when it can be twisted to their advantage. But when their own ox is about to be gored, they are prepared to run just as quickly in the other direction.
Record companies do hold copyright on music recordings. But they're not the only ones. Music publishers, on behalf of composers and songwriters, own the rights to the actual music. The publishers are entitled to a percentage of every sale of every song distributed by a record company. The composers and writers then get a share from the publishers.
But guess what? The RIAA, on behalf the recording companies, has petitioned the copyright office, complaining that they shouldn't be automatically obligated to pay the music publishers for their copyrighted work. "To be compelling to consumers, it is believed that a service must offer tens or hundreds of thousands of songs, in which rights may be owned by hundreds or thousands of publishers," the petition said. "No service provider is eager to embark on individual negotiations with all those publishers unless it is necessary."
Section B of the petition is headed, "The Compulsory License Includes the Right to Make All the Copies Necessary to Operate Services." Uh-huh.
Skeptics who may think I'm exaggerating may read the details of RIAA's petition in the Tech Law Journal: http://www.techlawjournal.com/agencies/loc/riaa/20001129.asp.
Wired News (http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,42426,00.html) quotes Jonathan Potter, executive director of the Digital Media Association:
"We find it exquisitely ironic that the recording industry tries to define the sound recording license (the one it owns) as narrowly as they can for webcasters, but the publisher's license (the one it pays royalties on) as broadly as possible. They want to take as much as they can to build their own business, but don't want anyone else to build theirs."
Wired also cites the more blunt Bill Goldsmith, Web director of KPIG radio: "I think the RIAA is a bunch of greedy, shortsighted idiots".
I hope that Napster and the other online music folks appreciate the lever the RIAA has placed in their hands.
They should absorb the advice of my favorite philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche:
"Love your enemies. They bring out the best in you."
#
posted by Jerry Maizell at 10:12 AM
