As someone who is fortunate (?) enough to be married to an IP Attorney,(One who was deeply involved in RIAA litigation) I can definately state that the board is lucky to have Paul weigh in occasionally on Trademark/Copyright matters. Having Paul on the board is the next best thing to being married to one! (Mmmm, let me think about that for a minute.)

Yes Peter, I agree, the RIAA will never go for this concept at any near future. What might happen in several years though, is that musicians will begin to flee their labels and the Holy Grail of musicianship..."Our Label Contract" and at some point the members of the RIAA might be forced to consider such a drastic change. Annie Lennox set the industry on it's butt by what she's done, and with Madonna, Janet Jackson, Garth Brooks, Evanescence, Thursday, and other bands all striking their own P&D deals....I'd say the writing is on the wall. In effect, Apple is going to become a label of sorts because the iStore/iTunes will be a huge reseller of music. Of course, it would be sensible if there were a compulsory attached in a second "Buy Me" column for those that might want to use the song for more than just listening to. Wait a minute...That would be sensible. Therefore it will never happen. :-)

This makes me think of a very interesting article I read on a similar topic just recently. Written by a NY subway musician who is a journalist by day (and makes more money down there than above ground).

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/fea....thompson.html

Not a bad write, thanks for the link. But at the same time, it's written by someone whose sole income isn't based on his music. I don't think it matters whether he sells his CD's or not, after listening to his music on his website, it explains why he's not got a label deal. (Michael Hedges wannabe) He doesn't even know how to upload his media correctly but he chides labels for not 'getting it." I agree they don't, but not in the way he suggests. File sharing is NOTHING like being a subway musician. File sharing is like cloning that subway musician and putting him/her in every home in America WHETHER HE WANTS TO BE THERE OR NOT! That's the problem with file sharing, the creative has lost every concept of control of their works. That....is a violation of their constitutional rights.
While I don't point this at you Imran, the one thing I get so damn sick of is reading how "people have a right to listen to whatever they want wherever they want however they want it....for free" The world has gotten so used to having a soundtrack playing behind their lives that they expect that soundtrack to play for free. Wrong. Someone paid the cost of recording that soundtrack, it's theirs to control and be remunerated for. I challenge any street musician that has a day job to be a street musician full-time, and at the same time, maintain a decent quality of life. Only the IP related industries have people conspiring to steal their products 24/7. If any other industry saw this sort of behavior, we'd be living in a complete police state, IMO. If you steal a snickers bar right now, today, you are more heavily prosecuted than if you steal a song from a CD and replicate on Kazaa/Gnutella, Morpheus, whatever. That is so offensive it makes me sick to consider. No one has a right to music in their life unless they pay for it at some level. Even ancient Rome recognized this, so did England. And so did the founding fathers of this country. So if folks can't see the morality in it, then they need to at the least see the law in it.

Oh, I'm definitely not one to do the free downloading thing. I've downloaded in the past when it was a new thing, but as an artist of a different type myself (writer, primarily), I value the work of another artist enough to respect the fact that they created it with the desire to earn a living. It's their right. For a while now I've refused to download anything the artist hasn't given permission for, and I urge friends to do the same.

Heck, songs are only 99c a pop now on iTunes or whatever, and you can listen to them before you buy them. The only complaint I ever saw in file sharing that rang true to me is that record companies tend to bamboozle you a bit by shoving 11 crap tracks into a cd with 1 good track that they market in the most profitable way, regardless of the style or genre of the other 11 tracks. That's almost the textbook definition of bamboozle.

But iTunes and services like it have changed that. You buy what you like, when you like it. No force, no waste of your own money. And if you want a whole CD, it's usually only 9.99 - often cheaper than 99c a song. Or there's Virgin Music, where you can scan a CD and listen to every track in the store before buying.

I look at it this way - with every bad thing, comes good results (i.e., the fix). The thing the Internet has ultimately given people is the ability to really force change in generally unchangable corporate interests. It's a form of competition, though illegal it may be. Ultimately it caused companies like Apple to address the real issues of convenience, price, value, etc., and boom, they're raking in the bucks.

Now, like you mentioned Douglas, we just need an iTunes for video and film licensing. I agree that the Creative Commons thing will take a while to catch on, but in the past year or so, it's been popping up everywhere. I do think that while it will be hard to address the needs of currently established artists, I daresay that as time progresses, new artists will take it (or an evolution of it) to heart. Eventually, after all, U2 or Madonna surely HAVE to stop singing. But then again, there's the Rolling Stones, who absolutely refuse to stop, and will all probably die while on stage.

I do have high hopes for the next few years. I think, right now, for all types of media, we are experiencing the growing pains of a Distribution Renaissance.

Just as a clarification....labels rarely determine what tracks an album contains. Artists and their producers do. For some reason, buyers of music are deluded into thinking every work of art is equal in passionate or creative erudation.
It doesn't work that way.
Of the more than 300 albums I've recorded, produced, played on...less than 20 have had hits, 9 have been Grammy nominees, and 2 have won. And oddly enough in some cases, the songs I thought the public would like weren't, and the ones I hated were hits.
But for the most part, artists control most what goes on the record. The producer has a lot of say in the matter too. If you are a Garth Brooks, Madonna, Celine, Cher...the artist has absolute control in most cases. At my level, the label might ask for different mixes of songs, but rarely do they ask for a song to be dropped unless it's offensive.
Point is, don't blame the label if you don't like the songs on the album.
NO ONE can write a hit every time. Especially in today's ridiculously fickle marketplace. Oh how I long for the days when a record like Dark Side of the Moon can be on the charts for decades instead of the days when a Britney Spears tune is the biggest thing in the world for a couple weeks.
Like the link you submitted, that guy isn't creative at all. He's a parrot of Michael Hedges. But...he's making cash. Where's the incentive to be creative and original anymore? It's fleeting, it's faithless, and it's subject to the whims of today's buying world that doesn't buy anymore, they steal instead.
Yup...I've got a bad attitude. Ever since I discovered there is an online Douglas Spotted Eagle Radio station, I've become jaded. :>-)

Is there really one, i.e. one that isn't affiliated with you?

There really is one, and it's my music, but I have nothing to do with it. I've sent Virgin after it, but who knows what they'll do. (I record for Higher Octave/Virgin)

Doug, do you own the copyright, or does Virgin?

Depends on the work, but since they own publishing rights, regardless of me owning copyright, it's easier for them to go after it for reasons of resource. Some works are joint copyright, most are mine exclusively. Some are BMG/Windham Hill, and some are still yet another publisher. I've been with 5 publishers in my 15 year career.
I should explain that they are using the radio station to sell CD's, but I'm not happy with the full-time, 24 hour stream of the music. Therein lies the problem.
I've written to the webstation to ask if they pay ASCAP or BMI, and received no response. I need to get w/ASCAP/BMI and find out if they are a licensee. If I was seeing any significant form of sales from the airplay, I'd probably not have an issue with it, to be truthful. it all comes down to cash, doesn't it? :-)

Doug, for what it's worth, you might not only have a copyright claim against, but you may have a Lanham Act claim as well. I hope you nail 'em. Good luck!

<<<-- Originally posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle :
Oh how I long for the days when a record like Dark Side of the Moon can be on the charts for decades instead of the days when a Britney Spears tune is the biggest thing in the world for a couple weeks.
:>-) -->>>

Wait, you are telling me that Dark Side of the Moon isn't on the charts anymore? I gotta trash my CD?

Well I may have finally found a lead howto register copyright
(called auteursrecht) here in Holland. It looks like you need to
send the script to the national tax service (why are they doing
this anyway? Oh well) and it gets recorded in their "books" and
you'll get a sticker on the script which then gets send back to you.

They are talking about "assets" the whole time and talking a lot
about contracts in the examples, so it is not 100% sure it works
for scripts, but I think it might.

I'll have to phone them up some time and see what is going on.

If anyone else from The Netherlands wants to know more I found
a brochure (dutch only) through google (nowhere to be find
through the site itself, nice) that talks a bit about what it is and
which offices you can go to to get the stuff registered. The
document (in PDF) can be found here

For all those interested from the UK. You should probably register with these guys

http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/register/register.htm

cheers,

Ed