Does the RIAA own Skydog's Music?

[Easy Mac]

And possibly Antmeister. It seems that if you release any music and its played on the internet, the RIAA is collecting as fee from the station, even if the person releasing the music is in no way associated with the RIAA. Then they say you have to contact them to get the money for it... even if you don't charge a fee.

How is this legal?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/24/141326/870

OK, so I have a plan. I'll create a song and have someone here set up an internet stream. The RIAA will charge you for playing my song. Then we'll both sue the RIAA and bring charges of racketeering, and breach of copyright for charging and accepting money for my copyrighted work. Anyone game for this?

[DaddyTorgo]

game

[BigDPW]

game!!!

[RendeR]

Technically the RIAA doesn't own anything, its just a lobbying body created and paid for by the recording industry as a whole.

Even so this could be hilarious to see.

[Easy Mac]

Just wait until you hear the song... especially since I can't hit a note and have no idea how to play an instrument... basically I'm Sanjaya... except she can grow more facial hair

[amdaily]

Welcome to Hollywood!

[-Mojo Jojo-]

Originally Posted by Easy Mac

How is this legal?

Because Congress said it is (and because the Constitution explicitly empowers Congress to create a copyright scheme). Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 112:

(2) Notwithstanding any provision of the antitrust laws, any copyright owners of sound recordings and any transmitting organizations entitled to a statutory license under this subsection may negotiate and agree upon royalty rates and license terms and conditions for making phonorecords of such sound recordings under this section and the proportionate division of fees paid among copyright owners, and may designate common agents to negotiate, agree to, pay, or receive such royalty payments.(3) Proceedings under chapter 8 shall determine reasonable rates and terms of royalty payments for the activities specified by paragraph (1) ...

(4) The schedule of reasonable rates and terms determined by the Copyright Royalty Judges shall, subject to paragraph (5), be binding on all copyright owners of sound recordings and transmitting organizations entitled to a statutory license under this subsection ...

The US Copyright Office, operating under the code, settled on SoundExchange to handle compulsory licensing for online broadcast. It's all perfectly legal and explicitly exempted from antitrust considerations. Whether it's a matter of good policy is another question...

But if you're going to have a compulsory licensing scheme (and we've had one for terrestrial radio for a long time) it has to be (wait for it)... compulsory. If it was opt-in then it's not compulsory. It would be nice to have an opt-out option, but if you did that then the people who opted out should not be able to charge for online broadcast or you've defeated the purpose of scheme (which is to allow broadcasters to play what they want without having to go out and negotiate with every artist individually). You could (and arguably should) have a system where people could opt out if they wanted to allow their music to be broadcast for free, but that would be the extent of the opt-out right. Or you could just scrap compulsory licensing altogether...

[Easy Mac]

But if I'm not signed under a label represented by the RIAA, how could they legally accept funds on my behalf? I guess what I'm trying to say is, I own the copyright, and if I legally wave any fees associated with the playing of my copyrighted material, how could the RIAA still receive a compulsory payment? Wouldn't that be like the Braves requesting the gate from a Georgia Tech baseball game just because they both happen to play baseball in the same city?

[-Mojo Jojo-]

Originally Posted by Easy Mac

But if I'm not signed under a label represented by the RIAA, how could they legally accept funds on my behalf? I guess what I'm trying to say is, I own the copyright, and if I legally wave any fees associated with the playing of my copyrighted material, how could the RIAA still receive a compulsory payment? Wouldn't that be like the Braves requesting the gate from a Georgia Tech baseball game just because they both happen to play baseball in the same city?

Your rights in your copyrighted material are whatever Congress says they are. Federal statute creates copyrights and specifies the rights held by copyright owners. One of the rights it doesn't grant copyright holders is the right to control radio (and now online) broadcasts of sound recordings. It subjects all sound recordings to compulsory licenses, and grants the Copyright Office authority to specify how the fees are set and collected. The Copyright Office chose SoundExchange to administer the system.

Now, you (as a copyright holder) can still cut side deals with broadcasters. The compulsory license system doesn't prohibit that. If DaddyTorgo wants to play your song on the air, and you want to let him do it for free, you can come to an agreement, and he won't have to pay SoundExchange. You could even charge him for it directly. However, if he says he doesn't like the deal you're offering you can't stop him from playing it anyway and just paying SoundExchange. The compulsory license is at the broadcaster's option, he can use it or not as he chooses. If he chooses it, the money runs through SoundExchange, but in theory you should still get paid. You probably have to jump through a fair number of hoops to establish your ownership of the song to get paid. Likewise, if you want to let him play your song for free, I assume there are plenty of administrative hoops you have to jump through to keep SoundExchange from siccing their dogs on him.

I'm not defending the system, just trying to explain it. It's a situation with plenty of room for RIAA abuse, but it is legal. The bigger problem, as far as I can tell, is that the Copyright Office just set a new rate schedule for online broadcasting, and put the license fees way above what most internet radio stations can afford. The RIAA is doing it's best to kill internet radio, no doubt about that. All these amateur broadcasters playing independent music gives them the heebie-jeebies.

[Easy Mac]

Originally Posted by -Mojo Jojo-

I'm not defending the system, just trying to explain it. It's a situation with plenty of room for RIAA abuse, but it is legal. The bigger problem, as far as I can tell, is that the Copyright Office just set a new rate schedule for online broadcasting, and put the license fees way above what most internet radio stations can afford. The RIAA is doing it's best to kill internet radio, no doubt about that. All these amateur broadcasters playing independent music gives them the heebie-jeebies.

And that's what I guess I just gon't get, that the RIAA can control stuff that is theoretically not in their control, that being the independent music.

[Rando]

Ach, it looks like Mojo already put together a better reply while I was typing this one. Oh well.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I own the copyright, and if I legally wave any fees associated with the playing of my copyrighted material, how could the RIAA still receive a compulsory payment?

Because according to the law, you don't have the right to wave those fees even if you own the copyright. In 1998 Congress gave your right to wave those fees to the RIAA, who set up SoundExchange to negotiate the royalties for you (since obviously you weren't doing a good enough job of it on your own). SoundExchange has a compulsory license over any fees or charges tied to any online, streaming audio broadcast (direct download of music in an electronic format is not covered by SoundExchange's government sanctioned license) it doesn't matter who owns the music in question, SoundExchange has the rights to charge for its streaming digital broadcast.

How can they get away with this? Well, because technically they are collecting those fees on your behalf and only "holding" them for you. You cannot make them stop collecting, but you can try and get those royalties from them. I say try because from what I've heard this is for all practical purposes, impossible.

First up you have to be a member of SoundExchange. This is easier than you might imagine because according to the law you already are a member, you just haven't registered yet. Luckily there aren't any membership or registration fees, but if you want to try and collect any royalties you will have to pay "administrative fees" based on a percentage of the royalties they pay you. They won't tell you in advance what that percent or those fees will be, and it seems no one has actually every gotten any royalty money out of SoundExchange to find out.

Next you have to prove to SoundExchange that they owe you royalties. (Yeah, they'll collect money on your behalf, but they'll never tell you they're doing it) To do this you need to prove you own the music in question (a processes so expensive and time consuming, once again, it is very unlikely any independent artist could actually pull it off). And they'll want you to provide them with the exact dates, times and number of listeners for every instance one of your songs was played on any Internet radio station (this is so they can figure out just how many pennies they owe you).

Then they have to verify those claims. This is the final brick wall the artists run into. According to their current agreement with the Internet radio station companies, the royalties paid are not based on specific songs, so neither side actually keeps track of the information that they ask you to provide. Since they don't have that information, they can't verify your claims. And since they can't verify your claims, they can't actually pay you any royalties. Instead all of the money goes to the RIAA and once again the artists get completely screwed.

Or at least that's what I was able to work out from the frothy mouthed rantings of my manager (and mass com. professor) when I worked at the university radio station.

~Rando

[Vinatieri for Prez]

The best part was the NY AG lawsuit from a few years ago where the RIAA was found liable for failing to pay miilions in royalties to musicians from these licenses (they settled for paying 50 million after claiming they couldn't locate artists like P.Diddy, David Bowie, and Dolly Parton to give them royalty checks - yeah right). Of course, it was the smaller artists who really need the money who would get hurt most. It was when that happened that I lost all sympathy for the RIAA.

http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/...highlight=riaa

[JediKooter]

RIAA = The Music Mafia.

[DanGarion]

I'm game, I can stream at a high rate .