A Copyfighter’s Musings

In a Reuters article published yesterday, Yahoo Music general manager David Goldberg offers this choice quote:

“The notion that a track I buy in DRM is protected and one without DRM isn’t is a fallacy…. It’s all nonsense. Music is never going to be protected, and anybody who tells you that is not being honest…. [Y]ou’re just making it hard for people who want to do the right thing to get the music they legitimately purchased on the devices and services that they want.”

Nicely put, and this isn’t the first time Yahoo Music’s sharply criticized DRM and openly expressed its desire to sell major label music in unencrypted formats. When will the major labels come around?

(Cross-posted at DeepLinks)

Filed by Derek Slater at 6:03 pm under Big Ideas
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Lost in the GooTube shuffle last week was some even bigger news for the scores of YouTube users who already enjoyed lip syncing (and hip shaking) to their favorite songs and posting home videos to the site. Deals worked out with Sony BMG, Universal, and Warner Music suggest that fans will be able to freely remix and share popular sound recordings from those major record labels’ catalogs. When a remix video gets viewed, YouTube will share a cut of the advertising revenue with the rights holder.

It’s a simple concept with potentially profound implications. Artists get paid, while fans can keep on sharing remixed tunes on the site and push the boundaries of user generated media even further. No fans or innovators get sued in the process.

That raises an important question: why can’t P2P users get a similar deal? EFF has long advocated that the music industry blanket license P2P users to let them keep sharing in a way that gets artists paid. The labels could help Internet users get legal by cutting a deal with an intermediary, whether a P2P company, an ISP, or a collective licensing society like ASCAP.

Cyberscholar Michael Geist points this up in an insightful article:

“During the height of Napster, experts estimated that even a five-dollar monthly fee would have generated billions in additional revenue for the content industries, yet those companies chose instead to sue the P2P services along with thousands of their users. The YouTube deal may foreshadow a reversal, with the industry at long last ready to embrace the remarkable commercial potential of the Internet.”

Read the whole thing, as well as Wired’s Eliot van Buskirk hitting on the same notion.

(Cross-posted at DeepLinks)

Filed by Derek Slater at 5:16 pm under General news
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