Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
CKSLA: Meanwhile, on another front
I talked at some length this morning with Elissa Hecker, chief legal counsel to the National Music Publishers Association. She had just returned from the hearings on Internet music and provided me some good insight into the status of the "negotiations" between the labels and the music publishers. Despite her credentials as an attorney, Bob, she was candid and quite forthcoming about her feelings regarding the current differences that exist between her constituency of publishers and writers and the labels.
They (NMPA) has asked the major content providers to bring their proposals and varying business models to the negotiating table, but thus far they have not been very successful in agreeing on a working revenue model for compensating writers and publishers; since the public knows very little about how these people are paid, in the first place, it may come as a bit of a surprise to learn that they are asking for in excess of $.075/ streamed song. This is in addition to the $.005 that BMI and (I believe) ascap have already negotiated as a blanket royalty for the performance right, alone.
While we discussed many nuances of the current impasse, it is sufficient to mention that it may be some time (6 months to a year) before a package of acceptable royalty agreements are in place between these opposing parties. Before any model for actual dowloading can exist between the labels and say, Realnetworks, the labels will have to settle these questions of royalties to be paid with the writers, publishers and administrators of the PA copyrights. M(over the)H
".....After a meeting in Amsterdam this week, SDMI said its members, comprised of nearly 200 software, consumer electronics, computer and music companies, couldn't reach a consensus on any combination of watermarking and verification technologies that would screen digital music files and make sure they are legitimately acquired."
They were able to reach a consensus,however, that 1. Amsterdam has the best red light district of any city that they had visited on the SDMI world tour and 2. that all future meetings should be held in Amstersam because it was a city of great conviviality, despite the inexplicable wave of re-eye that seemed to overcome the delegates!
OT CKSLA: Thanks, I'm sure
our friends will be deleting these two extraneous posts, but yes, Lord Buckley played a VERY LARGE ROLE in my formitive years! MH
Tinroad: Well if this ain't it,
we be in deep .......doo doo.
I plan to attend the MTIA conference
this week in Seattle. Admittedly, I am short on knowledge regarding the EDIG/Lanier relationship.
I would appreciate input from others so I might be better able to ask pertinent questions regarding the CQUENCE mobile device, and what our role is in its future. MH
cohinoor: sigh! If only it were 1999, again!/
tinroad: DID YOU CHANGE THE PASSWORD FOR THE "SECRET" room?
In the digital storage race,
will consumers win?
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/05/technology/05STORR.html
Very astute observations, DANL.
In this industry things are very rarely as they seem. Can you believe that Milli Vanilli didn't really sing?!!
OT: Death Row Inmates Use Computers
Updated 1:29 PM ET March 30, 2001
Current quotes (delayed 20 mins.) CSCQ 2.16 -0.09 (-4.17%)
JESSUP, Md. (AP) - Maryland's death row inmates are turning into computer junkies.
The 13 inmates all have access to computers, which some use up to five hours a day to research the law in hopes of saving their own lives. The computers have no Internet connections, but the inmates have legal reference software at their disposal.
"This is all we do is sit here and pick apart our cases," said Steven H. Oken, a condemned murderer. "This is our life."
State officials say the computer programs are no different than the law books that death row inmates in Maryland have been free to study since 1773.
"We're supposed to make sure the inmate has an adequate opportunity to defend himself," said Leonard A. Sipes Jr., a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.
But families of the inmates' victims were horrified to learn about the death row computers.
"It's a miscarriage of justice to be giving a bunch of computers to horrible killers on death row so they can nitpick about ways to delay the punishment they deserve," said Betty Romano, whose 20-year-old daughter, Dawn Marie Garvin, was killed by Oken in November 1987.
Related Stories
Computer Access on Death Row (Mar 30 8:10 am ET)
Web Sites Using .org Fear Eviction (Previous story)
Sushi Shop Has Computer Ordering (Next story)
TIN: I doubt you're following, this late, but I'd like to carry the subject over to chat.......even though I can't type or think as fast and well as you!
callmeal: I have posted "points-of-view"
information on RB and Agora quite a few times. Some of it was not presented as my personal opinion, but rather, as opinions of say Courtney Love, David Lindley, Talal Shamoon, Wendy Waldman and others. My own point of view has evolved about this issue over the last couple of years, and, a lot of my comments on these boards reflect that (de)volution.
Plus, IMO, it is Napster as a phenomena that accounts for the momentum interest in EDIGITAL. I like the effect, partner.
Tinroad: A complex issue for me.
I agree that this is a sorry state of affairs. I have had my work literally pirated by bootleggers in the Far East, Long Island and Trinidad! It really hurt when I proposed re-issuing an LP by legendary bassist Chuck Rainey as a CD, and he matter-of-factly told me that he'd been autographing "that" CD for years on his annual trips to Japan! So yes, I am somewhat poorer because of that kind of piracy.
My feelings are mixed about Napster, however. Much of the music available was recorded before the inception of the SR (Sound Recording) copyright law, some is in the public domain (more than 56 years old), and some is remixes of music that has been intentionally made available by the creators of those mixes. New music, available as singles on Napster might actually be driving demand for the complete collections available in stores.
I don't even want to touch the subject of the inequitous relationship between artist and the labels. Many of those artists, who are embittered by not receiving ANY compensation for their performances, owing to the "recoupable production costs" concept, seem to enjoy the fact that people are taking their songs from Napster. Suffice to say that the old system needs to be overhauled so as to make the distribution of the wealth more equitable.
Dear Rainlady: Many a time I have read and admired
your positions on the issues we discuss on these boards. I see from your description of Napster as a "pirate site," that your feeling is not positive toward it. As must be obvious, I have no problem with people differing in their opinions, and I have received varying amounts of tolerance over this past year of EDIG posting, for my controversial views.
I wish to say that in my opinion, unequivocably, Napster and MP3.com have done more to move the issues of internet music access to the forefront of discussion than would have ever been possible without them. We, as EDIGITAL investors, will benefit enormously from the catylizing effect that Napster, et. al have had on this question.
I don't know of a single person who has actually used it, who has not enjoyed its simplicity, efficiency and access to music that is not available anywhere, even for sale, as INDIVIDUAL SELECTIONS. Napster has an enormous political constituency, at this point; this fact has not gone unnoticed by Senator Hatch and the other members of congress seeking to advance their own political fortunes by entering the fray. IMO, the 9th circuit court of appeals has told Judge Patel and the parties involved to settle the dispute. I don't think that they want a trial, particularly with the high-powered legal mavens involved in front of Judge Patel, who strikes me as being potentially as bumbling as "Judge ITO."
Whatever ultimately happens, I'm convinced that an injunction is not in the offing, and that many more twists in the road lay ahead for Napster.
berge: I scrolled and found many that I had previously not seen. I assumed that they were ones you had put up. Honestly, I didn't look that closely yesterday. There was a football helmet, a CD and many others that I can't recall as I am writing. You know, this isn't my strength (computers), so maybe I just am behind in seeking out a better icon than the smiling face that just doesn't become my ghoulish personna! MH
Napster preps for Tuesday's hearing with promotions:
http://www.billboard.com/daily/2001/0330_02.asp
i like them!
CKSLA: Bet their advertising rates go up, as well
with the EDIG posse moving in!
CDR: He writes well!/
WOW! This is REALLY slow! Please
forgive the three over-anxious duplications!
CDR: My definition of CARROTSPEAK
is language spoken by Robert Putnam that dangles optimistic promises of exciting things to come, and as the date for those promises to reach fruition approaches, the "carrot" or promise is extended to a timeframe further into the future. I believe it derives from the time-honored "carrot &/or stick analogy. Since ETTG is the poster who first coined this term, it is probably best for him to define it most accurately.
CKSLA: I believe that this is what
our younger brother ETTG (Yardbird) calls CARROTSPEAK!