But what about
our freeeeeeeeeedom
Copy-shop Grooveshark's prospects in the latest round of its lawsuit are looking bleak: remarks made by the judge hearing the case have opened up the possibility of damages close to three quarters of a billion dollars against the song-share site. Ahead of this week's hearing, the presiding judge told jurors that Grooveshark's …
And how much do you think his recording rights, in fact any recording rights, will be worth if freetards have their way? And how much would they have been worth if copyright was enforced? And how much do you think the fact it isn't will bear on what artists get paid? I'll tell you - a lot.
Len owns what is essentially an artists' agency. It represents artists. They choose - as sovereign agents - it to represent them. They could choose another agency. But no. It acts on behalf of the artists - it *is* them in a sense. Undermine the agency and you undermine the artists.
"it emerged that executives had boosted its catalogue as a start-up, by uploading content themselves and encouraging staff to do so."
In that case, I hope the evidence is strong enough that the individuals will also be fined individually on a per song basis too. If not, then maybe that evidence isn't so strong after all.
I'd also be interested to see if the $150,000 per song fine lists the specific songs included in the fine and confirmation that the correct amount of royalties will then be passed on to the writers and performers.
But uploading material first and pay or validate later is the whole formula for Grooveshark. It's actually a good concept and completely in tune with the broader nature of the Net (not "free" in terms of money but in terms of looser, more chaotic appearing processes and less central control) and a bit ahead of the wave simply because the music industry is massively, seriously behind -- actually it's still standing at the beach, toeing the "surf". For any music service to become relevant and "modern", in my eyes at least, a massive catalogue needs to be in place to start with. Nobody has that and there's no sign of such thing on the horizon. Grooveshark made a relevant attempt but might not escape the legal red line. What should be an example of good thinking, to drag the industry along, will be another example of the industry killing everything it doesn't like because it's losing control (while they say "money" but that's not a fact at all).