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Are Copyright Royalties "Out of Whack"?

In the heated debate over new digital technologies and their impact upon the traditional recording distribution system, we've grown used to intemperate dialog, but an organization now charges that "mechanical royalties currently are out of whack with historical and international rates."

Here's the twist: The group is the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America). And here's the part that won't surprise you: Their solution is to lower the rate they pay music publishers and songwriters for using lyrics and melodies to create sound recordings.

Well, not all sound recordings,…

A Blacker Shade of White

A chancery court in England has issued a ruling that, if left to stand, may have a profound effect on copyright holders throughout popular music.

On December 20, Justice William Blackburne decided in favor of keyboardist Matthew Fisher, who in June 2005 sued two of his former Procol Harum bandmates and their music publisher, Onward Music Ltd., for a share of the songwriting credits and royalties to the hit song "A Whiter Shade of Pale." In today's ruling, Justice Blackburne declared that bandleader/composer Gary Brooker and lyricist Keith Reid must share 40% of the "composing royalties"…

Decca Concerts: New Classical Downloads

In an enterprising attempt to serve music lovers via the Internet, Universal Classics has launched Decca Concerts. An unprecedented partnership between the label and some of the world's better-known symphony orchestras, the website gives classical music lovers the ability to download very recent live orchestral performances "from the world's most important musical cities." The performances are generally no more than 10 days old, depending on how much postproduction editing is needed.

The first "album," made available December 12, is a program performed by the Gewandhausorchester, Leipzig…

Sony BMG Settlement Grows Even Larger

Two days after reaching $1.5 million settlements with the states of Texas and California over its knuckleheaded attempt to prevent "unauthorized" use of its CDs, Sony BMG agreed to pay another $4.25 million to an additional 39 states and the District of Columbia in what has become known as "the rootkit debacle."

In 2005, Sony BMG shipped more than 12 million CDs with two "copy protection" programs: First 4 Internet’s XCP (extended copy protection) and SunnComm International's MediaMax. Those discs installed programs onto consumers' computers, even if they declined the installation option…

Labels Sue www.allofmp3.com

A cabal of record labels—including Arista Records, Warner Bros., Capitol, and BMG—have taken legal action against the Russian music site allofmp3.com, charging that the site offers their music without having received permission. The suit, filed in federal court in New York, is only the latest step in the war against the Russian digital download site.

Allofmp3.com was established in 2000 and charges just a few cents per song, with whole albums for under $1, compared with the iTunes Music Store rate of 99¢/song. In addition to being so inexpensive, allofmp3's downloads do not contain DRM.…

HE2007 Registration Now Open

For 2007, Home Entertainment Show makes a return engagement to New York City—one of the most popular destinations ever for this event! The venue is the elegant and gracious Grand Hyatt New York Hotel, where the consumer-electronics industry and music lovers alike will descend on May 11–13, 2007 to see and hear the latest high-end home audio and video entertainment products, gaming consoles, imaging products, and more.

Informative seminars, music and over 100 private demo rooms will be open to the public, who will be able to meet more than 300 participating manufacturers as they…

James Brown (1933–2006)

"Fellas I'm ready to get up and do my thing. I want to get into it man, you know. Like a, like a sex machine man. Moving. Doing it you know. Can I count it off. One!! Two!! Three!!"—"Get Up (I feel like being a) Sex Machine."

"But I'm a world of power and all know it's true
Use me once and you'll know it too.
I can make a mere schoolboy forget his books
I can make a world famous beauty neglect her looks.
I can make a good man forsake his wife
Send a greedy man to prison for the rest of his life.
I can make a man forsake his country and flag
Make a girl…

Our Biggest Links of 2006

Here at Stereophile we like to measure things. Part of that is because we can, of course—and that's another reason why we love the Internet. We have no way of knowing how many times our readers re-read certain articles, nor do we know how many different readers look at any given issue, but on the web, we can at least count the page views. Yes, we know that there are some uncertainties about that metric, too, but we can count it, so we do.

So when webmaster Jon Iverson asked me if I wanted to see the 10 most-read URLs on our website, I responded with alacrity. Of course I did. Here's the…

Has HD's DRM Been Hacked?

HD DVDs and Blu-Ray discs came to market with a digital rights management (DRM) content encryption system called Advanced Access Content System (AACS). Supposedly, AACS was intended to permit greater flexibility than conventional DVD's Content Scrambling System (CSS) DRM, since it was touted as allowing purchasers, say, to load DVDs onto their media servers or burn downloaded HD purchases to disc.

In reality, however, some consumers found that their expensive HD monitors wouldn't sync to the players because AACS didn't recognize them as legitimate. Needless to say, this did not endear…

The Real Cost of a Download?

We've written frequently about the lawsuits brought by the recording industry against alleged downloaders, but here's an interesting fact: None of the cases has actually gone to trial yet. Many have been dropped by the labels when it appeared they had targeted the wrong defendants; even more have been settled by defendants intimidated by the $750-per-song damages claimed by the labels. Now an attorney is vigorously seeking a trial—and one of his big arguments is that the labels' math doesn't add up.

Ray Beckerman, the attorney who represents Marie Lindor in UMG v Lindor, alleges that the…