(Long, and off topic, unless you care about music and the business.)
Chirpy, do you work for a record company? Sounds to me like you're spouting the party line.
I read the link. And I find your arguments to be, well, misleading.
Distribution licensed to a limited geographic area? You seem to forget that the Russian ROMS isn't bound by the RIAA member edicts. They're Russian, not American, and are thus bound by Russian law, not the inane American laws written by the RIAA and their minions. Their "store" is in Russia; I'm just buying from them, and legally importing a product that is legal in its country of origin.
The Beatles and Metallica argument is the same. In Russia, the license is compusory, just as some are here in the USA. The difference here is that in the USA, the compulsory licenses benefit the record companies. In Russia, they benefit the consumer.
As far as what's right, no one's stealing your CD. You've still got it. Another straw man. I believe that the record companies have created an oligopoly that systematically screws the artist and the consumer, and thanks to the global marketplace, there's now a way to cut those theves out of the picture.
It must suck to be them. Their antiquated, corrupt business model is being conveniently bypassed, and before long, they'll have to EARN money. What a shame.
Many moons ago I was a principal in an on-line record label startup in Austin. We learned a lot about how the record biz works, and in a nutshell, it's a methodical screwing of the artist. The screwing of the consumer is a newer development, but they're made great strides.
I'm sure you know these things, but other folks may not. Recording contracts have clauses in them that reduce royalties for breakage... the kind that was an issue in the days BEFORE LPs. And it's still there, for every "record" sold, in the era of CDs and MP3s. It's not justified anymore, but it's still there.
The record companies tried to slip a little change into the copyright code about reverted rights. They wanted a wee little change, and it wasn't discussed, it was slipped in. The change was having rights revert to the publisher, when it currently reverts to the author. That little scam was stopped.
These are the same folks who are trying to destroy the concept of fair use; they've tried to make it illegal for a consumer to make backups of the music he has bought.
And don't get me started on the DMCA, the darling legislation of the RIAA and their ilk. It's now illegal to reverse engineer copy protection. So, even though you've got the fair use right to back up media that you've legally purchased, it's ILLEGAL to do the work required to actually do so. That's a nice end-around on consumer rights.
The deductions from the artist's royalties are amazing. The "packaging" deduction; the band pays for packaging the CD. The producer deduction. Etc.
And then there's recoupment. All that studio time you talked about? The band pays that out of their royalties. Promotion? Ditto. The only thing that the record companies don't grab is the advance: If the royalties don't cover the costs of the studio, the packaging, and the promotion, they don't have to pay back the advance.
As far as "cheating the artist", that's simply not true. In around 80% of all cases, the advance is all the artist ever sees. So in those cases, the royalties that the RIAA considers due is simply money into the pocket of the record company.
As soon as record companies start respecting MY rights, I'll respect theirs. All they do is manipulate the system for their gain, so I'm doing the same. Legally, just like they do.
Karma is a witch. With a capital B.
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