more beckerman

From: Charles Nesson
Date: Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 9:04 AM
To: Ray Beckerman

It may be unfair to the record companies that the internet came along; progress happens; Henry Ford was unfair to the buggy whip business;

But it is not fair of the record companies to put it off on the kids.

It is amazing to me that the riaa can impose thousands of lawsuits through the federal courts not for compensation but purely for message-making with not more than a helpless whimper from the federal court. The record companies admit they lose money on these law suits. That means all the money they collect goes to lawyers paid to grind poor people up in federal process.

And this is not an abuse because we are to presume that Congress intended this. Why would we presume it when there is no evidence of it?

Think what an amazing proposition this is, that Congress can authorize private lawsuits for message-making as their primary purpose, and here we are to act as if this is what Congress actually did, by the by.

There is no precedent for this.

———-
From: Ray Beckerman
Date: Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 9:41 AM
To: nesson

I disagree; I don’t share your sympathy for the record companies.

I haven’t seen anything “unfair to the record companies”.

The Copyright Act, as interpreted by the courts, has been able to

accommodate new technologies, and there is nothing about the

internet that is inconsistent with copyright law. Brick-and-mortar

analogies abound, and will provide guidance as we work our way

through.

The record companies came into the internet age with a huge head start – a vast

and valuable collection of sound recordings with enormous

earning potential as digital music. Instead of seeing digitalization

and the internet as the unbelievable business opportunity that

it represented, and recognizing the enormous marketing and promotional

opportunities it offered, their executives hemmed and hawed and

wondered, too accustomed to being monopolists and too accustomed

to talking only to each other, to reach out to explore and to make deals.

They let it all pass them by, until musicians no longer needed them,

having found the ability to market their music directly to their fans

and potential fans.

The same visionless executives then decided to find a scapegoat,

for their own failure, and those same failed executives are the ones

pursuing this phony witch hunt, mercilessly, ruthlessly, and to the

detriment of the companies they are supposed to be serving.

Thanks to their (a) initial failure, and (b) compounding of that failure,

those 4 record companies are shrinking as we speak; numerous new

‘record companies’ and marketing channels are thriving; and many

musicians now act as their own ‘label’, keeping the fruits of their labor

instead of having almost all of it skimmed off by parasites.

No, it’s quite fair.

The only thing that’s unfair is the misery they have created for

so many American families.