Music Industry to Abandon Mass Suits - WSJ.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122966038836021137.html

Music Industry to Abandon Mass Suits

The decision represents an abrupt shift of strategy for the industry, which has opened legal proceedings against about 35,000 people since 2003. Critics say the legal offensive ultimately did little to stem the tide of illegally downloaded music. And it created a public-relations disaster for the industry, whose lawsuits targeted, among others, several single mothers, a dead person and a 13-year-old girl. [us album sales] Instead, the Recording Industry Association of America said it plans to try an approach that relies on the cooperation of Internet-service providers. The trade group said it has hashed out preliminary agreements with major ISPs under which it will send an email to the provider when it finds a provider's customers making music available online for others to take.

When you retard fair use with pointless DRM and then sue anonymous children for illegally downloading music while ignoring those of the execs at the top of the music industry, you're asking for a public relations nightmare. Now, with more than 35k lawsuits to its credit, RIAA says it will finally end the legal assault against consumers that began back in '03. RIAA will instead, focus its anti-piracy efforts with ISPs. Under the new plan, the RIAA will contact ISPs when illegal uploading is detected. The ISP will then contact the customer with a notice that would ultimately be followed by a reduction or cessation of service. As you'd expect, the RIAA is not commenting on which ISPs they are in cahoots with. The RIAA also says that it won't require ISPs to reveal the identities of individuals but could, of course, go after individuals who are heavy uploaders or repeat offenders. For the moment though, it appears that single-mothers are in the clear.

Fuck the RI double A

On Friday night a technology blog called Techcrunch posted a vicious and completely false rumour about us: that Last.fm handed data to the RIAA so they could track who’s been listening to the “leaked” U2 album. I denied it vehemently on the Techcrunch article, as did several other Last.fm staffers. We denied it in the Last.fm forums, on twitter, via email – basically we denied it to anyone that would listen, and now we’re denying it on our blog. According to Ars Technica, even the RIAA don’t know where the rumour came from. The Ars Technica article is worth a read by the way, as it explains how the album was leaked in the first place by U2’s record label. All the data and technical side of Last.fm is hosted in London and run by the team here. We keep a close eye on what data mining jobs we run, not because we’re paranoid the RIAA is trying to infiltrate us, but because time on our Hadoop Cluster (where the data lives) is so precious and we have lots of important jobs that run every

Wow! Last.fm pwns TC

The hacks at Tech Crunch post a rumor whose source neither Last.fm nor the RIAA know about. Congrats, chumps, you're sending the digital journalism community back several years with every post.

Best rebuttal ever.

I quit reading TC at least 18 months ago. As Rogers Cadenhead said, they're obsessed with first rather than right.

Last.fmはRIAAにデータを横流ししているとTechcrunchが言い掛かりをつけてきたのでキレるの図。

That leaked U2 album is causing all sorts of trouble. The unreleased album, which is due out on March 3, found its way ...

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.techcrunch.com%2F2009%2F02%2F20%2Fdid-lastfm-just-hand-over-user-listening-data-to-the-riaa

http://bit.ly/JaQGD - Why I got rid of my last.fm account a long time ago [from http://twitter.com/jkordish/statuses/1890006181]

Deny This, Last.fm http://bit.ly/ynLdR (via TechCrunch) [from http://twitter.com/KeithDriscoll/statuses/1891459474]

A couple of months ago Erick Schonfeld wrote a post titled “Did Last.fm Just Hand Over User Listening Data To the RIAA?” based on a source that has proved to be very reliable in the past. All hell broke loose shortly thereafter

The most immediate revelation, of course, is that at some point next year revenues from gigs payable to artists will for the first time overtake revenues accrued by labels from sales of recorded music.

Experiments in web journalism * Home * About Times LabsTimes Labs Blog Do music artists fare better in a world with illegal file-sharing? This is the graph the record industry doesn’t want you to see. It shows the fate of the three main pillars of music industry revenue - recorded music, live music, and PRS revenues (royalties collected on behalf of artists when their music is played in public) over the last 5 years.

Do music artists fare better in a world with illegal file-sharing

(edit this later)

Law professor Charles Nesson and John Palfrey, director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society (which Nesson co-founded), made their position clear. "Recently, the president of the Recording Industry Association of America, Cary Sherman, wrote to Harvard to challenge the university administration to stop acting as a 'passive conduit' for students downloading music," they wrote in 2007. "We agree. Harvard and the 22 universities to which the RIAA has sent 'pre-litigation notices' ought to take strong, direct action... and tell the RIAA to take a hike."

Nesson & Co.

"Recently, the president of the Recording Industry Association of America, Cary Sherman, wrote to Harvard to challenge the university administration to stop acting as a 'passive conduit' for students downloading music," they wrote in 2007. "We agree. Harvard and the 22 universities to which the RIAA has sent 'pre-litigation notices' ought to take strong, direct action... and tell the RIAA to take a hike."

In retrospect, Harvard's eventual involvement was obvious. As far back as 2007, we noted that RIAA prelitigation letters had yet to be sent to Harvard, and one reason for that may have been the quite public opposition of Harvard Law School to the entire RIAA legal campaign.

Money quote: "The absence of any mention of copyright law in Glee illustrates a painful tension in American culture. While copyright holders assert that copyright violators are “stealing” their “property,” people everywhere are remixing and recreating artistic works for the very same reasons the Glee kids do — to learn about themselves, to become better musicians, to build relationships with friends, and to pay homage to the artists who came before them."

"The fictional high school chorus at the center of Fox’s Glee has a huge problem — nearly a million dollars in potential legal liability. For a show that regularly tackles thorny issues like teen pregnancy and alcohol abuse, it’s surprising that a million dollars worth of lawbreaking would go unmentioned." This is a very interesting look at the frequency with which this show (that I have never seen) addresses copyright issues without actually addressing copyright issues. And it's dead-on about the potential for a television show or other media of this popularity to effect social change in the realm of copyright perception.

Glee Club apparent disregard for copyright

Copyright: The Elephant in the Middle of the Glee Club

"We recently had a fun post about Hollywood accounting, about how the movie industry makes sure even big hit movies "lose money" on paper. So how about the recording industry? Well, they're pretty famous for doing something quite similar. Reader Jay pointed out in the comments an article from The Root that goes through who gets paid what for music sales, and the basic answer is not the musician. That report suggests that for every $1,000 sold, the average musician gets $23.40." Good article, rounds up and quotes some other famous ones too.

And that explains why huge megastars like Lyle Lovett have pointed out that he sold 4.6 million records and never made a dime from album sales. It's why the band 30 Seconds to Mars went platinum and sold 2 million records and never made a dime from album sales. You hear these stories quite often.

In a traditional loan, you invest the money and pay back out of your proceeds. But a record label deal is nothing like that at all. They make you a "loan" and then take the first 63% of any dollar you make, get to automatically increase the size of the "loan" by simply adding in all sorts of crazy expenses (did the exec bring in pizza at the recording session? that gets added on), and then tries to get the loan repaid out of what meager pittance they've left for you.

"We recently had a fun post about Hollywood accounting, about how the movie industry makes sure even big hit movies "lose money" on paper. So how about the recording industry? Well, they're pretty famous for doing something quite similar. Reader Jay pointed out in the comments an article from The Root that goes through who gets paid what for music sales, and the basic answer is not the musician. That report suggests that for every $1,000 sold, the average musician gets $23.40." Good article, rounds up and quotes some other famous ones too.