AfterDawn: News

Unauthorized music e-tailing

An article at The Register guided me to the online diary of Robert Fripp, a King Crimson band member. In the article and the diary were most interesting comments about online music trading, and un-authorized selling of King Crimson music on corporate web sites!

The license for the KC/RF catalogue expired on December 31st. 2004 with a six months sell-off period. This imposed the requirement that no further pressing of catalogue titles might take place, although existing stock may continue to be sold until 30th. June. No digital rights, for downloading, were ever granted to Virgin. When the reversion of the license was originally agreed in 1993 (under the Endless Grief out-of-court settlement) the technology was not available. And specifically, disagreement over the digital rights' issue ended DGM's re-licensing negotiations with Virgin/EMI last year.

Nevertheless, i-Tunes Europe began to add Crimson titles on June 27th. 2004 continuing into July; also on OD2. It took several weeks for us to have these downloads removed.

Article at The Register reminds you of the poor deal that the artists (or Apple!) are getting with the iTunes. Majority of the revenue still goes to record companies, even though the distribution has be de-materialized. The whole deal with the King Crimson music on the other hand shows how much they really care about copyrights.



Source: Robert Fripp's diary

Written by: Lasse Penttinen @ 4 Nov 2004 10:53

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• 2 comments

• strcruzer

  They are the RIAA so the rules don't apply to them just to us poor saps. This ought to show that the only thing they are interested in is the almight buck! As the last sentence in the above article states, this shows just how much they care about copyrights and the artists.

  5.11.2004 04:17 #1

• gamelover

  As a guitarist I am disgusted at the fact that they even claim to care about musicians interests. The fact is that only greedy musicians would sue their fans. The record companies make most of the money anyway. More to the point music is to be heard and enjoyed, that is why it was written in the first place.
  
  Most of the musicians (who are famous, are rich anyway) and don't really need the cash. The fans they sue are the people who would likely be buying a ticket to their next live show and a T-shirt and baseball cap to match and advertising the band in the process, do they ever think about that?
  
  True it costs money to make records, and I agree that bands/musicians should make something from it all for their efforts. Maybe if the bands cut off the greedy hand of the record labels and demand more from the deal then they would not have to resort to suing people, who probably can only just afford to be comfortable in life and that's if they are lucky.
  
  The saying "money makes the world go round" is becoming more true evrey day.
  
  What they should do is carry out a huge survey around the world and ask musicians what they really think of filesharing and P2P and I would bet that a majority of those who think it is wrong are either failing musicians or the up and coming musicians who have not quite made it yet and crave the money and lifestyle of a musician and are worried that it won't happen for them because of filesharing. News for them: if you are liked and respected for your music and you work hard then many people will buy your records and fame and fortune will arrive on your doorstep even with all the filesharing going on. A lot of filesharers only use it as a preview tool before buying music.
  
  I myself have used it to learn the guitar and without copying other guitarists and learning from them I would never have learned to play. So should I have to pay £15 per CD to learn a few guitar riffs? If this is the case then many possible future guitarists will never come to be, because they simply cannot afford to buy the music they need to learn from. MUSICIANS: Think back to when you were learning and how much you learned from playing along to your favourite bands.
  
  I could go on about this forever.
  
  Unfortunately the world is a greedy place and it's true that nothing in life is free!!

  5.11.2004 05:24 #2