Piracy, and lies...

woot

Anyway, the artists are already (supposed to be) getting royalties via agencies like ASCAP, SESAC, and BMI. These royalties are for what's called the "musical work", i.e. the composition of the song. The copyrights on recordings are typically held by record companies, and this is what the current royalties are for. As I understand it these are also supposed to be split between record companies and artists, but from what I've heard record companies typically pull crap like making the artist pay back production/promotion costs with royalties, so it's not clear how much of that money artists are likely to actually see.
 
Online radios (the legal ones) already pay royalties, much like airwave radios.

But airwave radios doens't pay PER song PER listener. That's absurd.

What the RIAA wants is to boost the royalties because they think that digital copy is "da shit" and EVERYONE will make digital records from the webcasted tunes.

Really, IMO recording from airwave radios into cassetes provides far better sound quality.
 
Originally posted by M3d10n@May 22 2002,20:24

...But airwave radios doens't pay PER song PER listener...

Thats not quite true. Most radio stations pay an annual fee based on the estimated number of listeners and the number of songs played.

At least thats the way it works in Australia.
 
This is one of those things about the DMCA that I can't understand.

The way it's written, people are now liable for breaking the law BEFORE it was a law?!

No. The DMCA was passed in October 1998, which is the cutoff for back royalties.
 
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