RIAA's price secrets probed

w1z4rd

w1z4rd

Karmic Sangoma
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A FILE SHARING court case is getting the RIAA deeper into hot water, this time over the matter of pricing.

For ages the RIAA has been claiming in court that the amount of damages it needs from pirates is $750 per song.

This figure is being challenged in the case of UMG v. Lindor where the RIAA is being told that it must come up with a more realistic figure and closer to the actual damages involved based around the wholesale price for a single.

Observers have been wondering why the RIAA has been fighting to keep its wholesale pricing secret.

Many assumed that it is because the figure is only 70 cents a single. However, according to Ars Technica, the reason might be a bit more important than the problem of file sharing.

Any proposed order would force the labels to turn over contracts with their 12 largest customers. While most details would be kept confidential, the pricing information and volume would not.

This would reveal to the world if any price shenanigans were going on between the RIAA members and could cause them more problems with regulators than it would like.

Already investigations into industry pricing have revealed a Byzantine system of backscratching between record labels and distributors and the last thing the RIAA wants is to have details of this information made public.

If Lindor wins then the most the RIAA would ever be able to charge a pirate in the US will be between $2.80 and $7.00 per song. However the RIAA might also find itself up in front of a Senate inquiry.
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http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36723

So its starting to come out that RIAA are a bunch of thieves. Same people who shout "theft" when someone likes someone elses music and listens to it.
 
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GOOD. I hope this blows up in their faces and they get their a$$e$ hauled backwards through the legal system.

Then we will see who the pirates *really* are...
 
"In its professed battle to protect the 'confidentiality' of its 70-cents-per-download wholesale price, the RIAA has now publicly filed papers in UMG v. Lindor in which it admits that the 70-cents-per-download price claimed by the defendant is 'in the range'.(pdf) From the article: 'The pricing data really may not be all that secret. Late in 2005, former New York Attorney General (and current Governor) Eliot Spitzer launched an investigation into price fixing by the record labels, alleging collusion between the major labels in their dealings with the online music industry. Gabriel believes that making the pricing information public would 'implicate [sic] very real antitrust concerns' as the labels are not supposed to share contract information with one another ... Beckerman argues in a letter to the judge that the only reason the labels want to keep this information confidential is to 'serve their strategic objectives for other cases,' which he says does not rise to the legal threshold necessary for a protective order. The proposed order would force the labels to turn over contracts with their 12 largest customers. Most details--such as the identities of the parties--would be kept confidential, but pricing information and volume would not.'"
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Lots of links in this link: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/04/2059245
 

For ages the RIAA has been claiming in court that the amount of damages it needs from pirates is $750 per song.​

I understood that this was a statutory amount - ie a legal penalty - and nothing to do neccessarily with any pricing or actual damages suffered.
 
But such statutory amounts probably originally come from the industry, when the politicians they own propose laws written almost entirely by industry lawyers.
 
noxibox said:
But such statutory amounts probably originally come from the industry, when the politicians they own propose laws written almost entirely by industry lawyers.
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The irony here in South Africa is we do not have as much recourse here. Telkom is a perfect example.
 
Unfortunately like most things in life. Money talks. The chances that the RIAA will ever be forced to show how much it loses per pirated songs is a very unlikely event.
If they don't get it dismissed then most likely for the next 20 years it will be in court.
 
RIAA Admits 70 Cent Price is 'In the Range'

Source

As far as I know they are constitutionally only allowed to charge 4x the Industry price for damages (don't quote me on that but I seem to remember something like that, I just can't seem to find the source!). Meaning this is a significant win since many people are only threatened with a few songs and then end up paying them a settlement fee so they don't stand a chance of losing in court (and pay say 5 x $750 just for 5 songs).
 
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Good olde RIAA - Chicken counters to the last

If Radio Stations had to play the music the public bought (over a 20 year period) most would be shocked - It is no surprise that they disappeared into genre ratings years ago, I think I should start planning an article on what has gone on in local music over the last few years

Lots of little gems, like how artists do not get what is defined here as needle time, which means that only the composer of a song that gets played on radio gets any money... which saw lots of big name artists in SA getting almost nothing for their efforts, compare this with for example Elvis, who AFAIK did not write any of his songs.

And yes, it was ICASA that decided SA Artists should not get any money from needle time (ie the performers on the record, other than the composer) - To give you an example of this, if TK did a cover of a Beatles song, and it was played day and night on the radio, she would (or her estate) get nothing, the only money an artist would get is whatever percentage of sales they have worked out on their deal with the company they signed to

The ppl that score the most on CD sales are:

SARS (VAT + Company taxes)

The retailer

Record company

Composer

Performers

On the plus side of things, there is a quota for the playing of local music, which in the past some radio stations have had problems with, and it got raised from 20% to 25%
 
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