

Music Labels Ask Blogs to Post Songs then ask Google to Erase Blogs for Posting - bensummers
http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/2897

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loso
This is not the only time that the music business has played this game, more
specifically the RIAA. From 1997-2004 I worked a lot in the world of Hip Hop
on a regional scale. I did security for clubs and artist and I was a DJ.
Before file sharing exploded, the mixtape was the way that people would get
exposed to underground hip hop artist, the most popular being 50 Cent but also
many others.

So what the industry would do is to send free music to DJ's from both the
worlds of mixtapes and radio. They would beg and plead for you to feature
their artist on the mixtape. This is coming from both the A&R's that worked
directly for the labels and third parties whose whole job was to find popular
mixtape DJ's and give them music. They were hired by record companies as well.
So anyway, after you released a mixtape, you would give it to a store at a
consignment price. In other words, you would give them a box of CD's and they
would sell them a set price depending on how popular you were. Then you come
back and split the money, of course bigger DJ's would work out a different
deal.

So everyone in the industry is aware of this fact and they play along with the
so called "street" rules. But the RIAA would come down and bust these stores
for selling bootlegs. These are items that would be cosigned by record labels
with artist even hosting the tapes but they would still bust the shops anyway.
Legally, there was no paperwork so in the eyes of the law they were bootlegged
and if it was the police that came down hard, I would have less of a problem.
But it would be the RIAA, basically the record companies would backdoor the
DJ's and the mom and pop stores.

This is why I am glad that the music business has taken such a big hit. The
people are crooks and as far as I am concerned, they is what they deserve.

~~~
anamax
> So what the industry would do is to send free music to DJ's from both the
> worlds of mixtapes and radio. They would beg and plead for you to feature
> their artist on the mixtape.

After the first time, why didn't folks wise up and say "not without a contract
allowing us to create and sell compilations"?

They'd probably ask for royalties and then you'd insist on the standard
breakage allowance against said royalties plus the other standard terms that
they demand from content producers.

------
marilyn
Being a music blogger, I feel conflicted about this article. The issue of DMCA
take down notices and Google's blind obliging has been a problem for a long
time. It has affected many bloggers that do play by the rules. It sucks that
Google gets to be the judge and jury in these cases, because really, I doubt
anyone at Google cares about who is in the right; they just want to avoid
hassles over Copyright.

These and all music bloggers know what they are getting into when they set up
their blogs. It is no secret that music piracy is a major issue for the RIAA,
and posting mp3s publicly definitely puts you at risk. While there are many
bloggers that work hard to promote the music they love, and provide links for
users to buy the music legitimately, there are many others that just want to
attract traffic by giving away free shit. All of the music bloggers are often
put in the same pile either way.

The music bloggers who were affected by these take downs may be playing the
poor me game, but did have the power to prevent what happened by self-hosting
their blogs, enabling them to truly own and protect their content. I hope this
current round of of publicity encourages more bloggers of all types to take
ownership over the content they labour over.

~~~
hhjj
"It sucks that Google gets to be the judge and jury in these cases..." It
isn't since there are DMCA coutnernotices.

~~~
marilyn
From the article: " _the notices that Google relied on to delete the blogs
were woefully incomplete. Google should not have acted until it had proper
notices from rights holders, including the name of the actual work allegedly
infringed. Since many of the notices did not even include this information,
there was no way for the bloggers to file a DMCA counternotice_ "

------
extension
_apparently, DMCA operate on their own set of odd rules, as they even
requested that the BLK JKS official blog remove the song_

Busted by beurocracy for stealing your own music.. hard to think of anything
more revolting to an artist.

~~~
_delirium
It's unfortunately what happens when you sign away the rights to it. Happens
to authors, too: you can be taken to court by your publisher if you post a PDF
free online after selling the publisher the rights to the book.

~~~
derefr
What if you post it before? What happens when you Creative-Commons a book, and
then try to sell it?

~~~
iron_ball
<http://diveintomark.org/archives/2009/10/19/the-point>

Wise publishers just won't pick you up if they can't get exclusive rights.

------
awa
Wow! So Google simply deleted the blogs without any kind of investigation. It
seems irockcleveland had had received many such notices in the past wrongly,
they should have checked with the blog owner if the current one was of similar
nature .

Case in point:
[http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?tid=4ba...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?tid=4ba979f2d9e7b6d9&hl=en)

------
lutorm
Regardless of the legitimacy of these claims, it makes me very weary of
putting any content on third-party sites at least unless they offer a reliable
way to sync it. I don't understand people who put the results of their hard
work (blogs, photos, code) on some online service without thinking about
backups. (I have my code hosted on Google code, but if I couldn't svnsync the
repository to my local machine I don't think I would.)

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artagnon
What the world really needs is a very smart licensing/ distribution mechanism
for digital music.

~~~
pyre
The kind that guarantees that every piece of audio that's ever created has to
have licensing information attached to it and some sort of built-in DRM to
enforce it? What about formats like flac, ogg, mp3, etc? Do they just become
illegal in favor of the 'better' format?

~~~
artagnon
I certainly don't mean DRM. I'm asking for clarity of license, not some daft
enforcement "solution" that prevents users from listening to their own music.
And no, I'm not asking for a universal format for all music.

