The RIAA and MPAA Fiasco

Some interesting stuff this morning about the file-sharing debate in the NYTimes and over at USAToday. Interesting ideas raised in these debates :

1. Why allow libraries to distribute music for free and not get sued, while criminalizing people who share music online? “Copyright law requires copyright holders to give up their ability to control distribution of those works once they have put them into the stream of commerce. This principle, commonly referred to as the ‘first sale doctrine,’ is codified in Section 109 of the Copyright Act.” — Has anyone challenged the RIAA on this?

2. Why are they suing only U.S. citizens and not people from other countries? Perhaps they should determine if most piracy is done inside our borders or outside them and go after the major pirates. While they’re at it, perhaps they should determine if most piracy is done inside their own industry or outside of it. In fact, an independent study I linked to a few weeks ago points to the movie industry insiders as being responsible for 77% of pirated movies. Someone should hand the MPAA and RIAA a mirror.

3. Some people think iTunes is a wonderful way of legitimizing their music downloads by paying 99 cents per song, but if I’ve already paid for my music collection (classic rock) 4 times with each format change (vinyl, 8-track, cassette, and cd), why should I pay a 5th time for this new formatted (.mp3) music I’ve already legitimately purchased? I don’t keep receipts for 30 years, so I can’t prove I’ve paid for this music, but isn’t the burden of proof on the accusers? Am I not innocent until proven guilty? Let them prove I *didn’t* pay for it 4 times already. By my rough estimates, I’ve already paid in excess of $100/album (today’s prices).

4. The music industry did not produce most of these .mp3 files that people are sharing. The files themselves are nothing but zeros and ones; much like MIDI music, it is a digital, not analog, computer file. How can the industry (the RIAA, btw, is just the lobbyist arm of the industry, they never did a lick of work with regard to creating the music itself) legitimately lay claim to files they never produced? It’s like Microsoft laying claim to anything created using it’s operating system. Or is that next?

5. Copyright was never meant to extend to forever. It was supposed to expire at some point (which has, unfortunately, shifted further and further into the future) so that the works would eventually belong to all of us (the public domain) to use for whatever we wanted. Under the copyright laws, as they were originally written, right now the public should legally own Mickey Mouse and a whole host of other works, but corporate self-interest has kept these works from reverting to the public’s ownership… likely forever, unless someone somewhere puts a stop to this. Quite frankly, I don’t think corporations and their entities are entitled to profit off of an individual’s work forever. The public is getting horribly ripped off on all sides of the argument. This was not the purpose of copyright law.

6. Radio regulations are a total fucking mess. At some time in the historical past there was a legitimate purpose to controlling radio… certain bandwidths of the Public airwaves were reserved for specific uses. Over-the-air radio broadcasters legitimately needed to ensure that their broadcasts were not being stepped on and interfered with by other broadcast stations, such that frequencies were assigned and license fees were paid as a kind of insurance that the Public airwaves they were “borrowing” or “leasing” would be exclusively available to them in a given geographical location. Over-the-air broadcasters are not required to measure their audience and pay a per listener fee to any industry entity, nor are they required to pay a per song fee to any artist or record company. However, times change and technology has improved. The music industry now believes that they can legitimately require internet radio stations to pay fees that over-the-air broadcasters were never required to pay. But, get this, internet radio does NOT use up any of the public broadcast spectrum. In fact, streaming radio over the internet is generally no different than any other kind of computer file transfer. It doesn’t require any specific bandwidth of the Public airwaves (or even Public internet) to be set aside for it. Internet radio stations have no need to monopolize frequencies. Why are they being required to report information that over-the-air broadcasters are not required to report? Why are they being subject to much stricter regulations than those that apply to broadcasters who ARE using up Public airwave bandwidth? Why are they required to pay fees for EVERYTHING when the same regulations don’t apply to over-the-air broadcasters who are actually using up a limited Public resource?