Robert Fripp lays in to music industry rip-off merchants
GUITAR WHIZZ and composer of Vista's little blipping noises, Robert Fripp is fed up with the hypocrisy of the music industry over copyright.
Fripp writes that he and his King Crimson band feel ripped off by record label EMI.
Apparently, EMI may have flogged some King Crimson CDs when it shouldn't have and cryptically Fripp refers to returns of unsold CDs. "A concern with returns is always that they are not dumped back onto the market by mistake (by mistake, dear reader)," he writes.
But it is the issue of downloads that is causing most headaches.
"After the licence (with EMI) expired," writes Fripp, "King Crimson tracks repeatedly appeared on various download websites licensed from EMI. If this had happened during the licence period, it would have been disturbing – even though shit happens and we should have gotten over it! - because EMI never had download rights from us."
This, mainly, is because when the licence period began, there was no such thing as downloads. Fripp says the EMI licence was subsequently not renewed because he and the band were not willing to approve download rights, "because the royalty terms offered sucked."
"These are current industry standard royalty terms," Fripp adds.
The download income EMI offered was neither sufficient nor satisfactory says Fripp. But what galls the most, he says, "is the cavalier approach to copyright ownership of someone other than EMI."
"It’s a little too rich to punish punters for illegal downloads of EMI copyright material when EMI are themselves guilty of copyright violation. The response, many months ago, of the EMI lawyer (the one who also said "shit happens! get over it") effectively told us "I’ve done my best! we’ve told them to take it down!"
"This isn’t quite good enough when making publicly available the copyright material of others. How bad do EMI management systems have to be that the company has no power of control over its licensing to download companies?"
As Fripp notes it's a pain in Aris for artistes to have to keep tabs on the record companies like this. It's "a major distraction from the creative life, and almost wholly a negative experience," he bleats.
The bad news, he writes, is that it's not in the record companies' interests to sort it out. In this case: "Efficiency is not seen as being in the direct interest of the record company - because it profits from its carelessness."
More Frippery here. µ
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This sort of thing would seem to constitute something akin to unclean hands on the part of the music industry when it comes to going after members of the public for alleged copyright infringement.
$799 a pop for each instance of any song being available for download and each instance if it being downloaded.

This is much worse than they are going after grannies and dead people for, the ARE actually doing it for profit.
it would be much better to reach an agreement with some music downloading sites ...

instead of feeding the burocracy of record firms
What kind of crappy lawyer doesn't take a complaint to court, when they wont listen to his legal request? If he was my lawyer he'd get fired on the spot for a comment like that, even if it was to someone who wasn't his client.
The obvious recourse is to sue them for copyright violation. Under the DMCA that they helped write, they are liable for up to $150,000 per download. That'll make you more money than you made selling the music in the first place, plus the irony is delicious.
If they are distributing the music to which you own the copyright, the solution is simple. Submit a DMCA take-down notice to their ISP (of the people selling the music). I bet submitting a takedown notice for someplace like amazon.com or itunes.com will quickly ensure that they respect your copyrights, just like they want everyone to respect theirs.
It's easy to say 'sue the bastards', but when a copyright suit is likely to cost anywhere from hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions (depending on how good the record company lawyers are at drawing it out), You've gotta think twice before you send the legal sharks out into your swimming pool.
This just confirms how widespread this malpractice is. It was noted in New York Times, Billboard and Digital Music News about Beatles digital tracks being available on a EMI-approved vendor's site but EMI took a similar flippant attitude as noted in the article "Is EMI profiting from Beatles digital piracy?" at http://www.music2dot0.com/archives/8
As Robert Fripp wryly noted " this is known by the company, and allowed for within its operating structure. That is, efficiency is not seen as being in the direct interest of the record company - because it profits from its carelessness."
So at what point do we call this piracy? Somehow, much as the labels like to falsely focus on the morality of wrong and right of downloading, the business is actually simply built around accountants and lawyers and as most can't afford to take them on on the legal front, they seem right by default.
of the crimson king