On 17 Jun 96 at 12:45, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote: [..]
2. copyrights. the issue of copyrights is not even resolved today. when serious cash starts to be associated with cyberspace you are going to see a lot of incredibly agitated people, especially lawyers. I imagine systems will evolve that are similar to a technology that has evolved by which radio stations pay music companies whenever they play artists songs. (if any cpunks could elaborate on this system, I think it is an excellent preliminary example of how a microcurrency-like system would interact with a copyright situation). I think similar standards are going to
Excellent example? I dunno. At the non-commercial station I work, once a year or every other year ASCAP or BMI, for a two week period, wants our playlists... not the usual playlists, but detailed ones which even the most anal-retentive people hate to fill out: the performer, the song writer (not always the same), album and song titles, record label, and if music is ASCAP, BMI, etc. Includes not only songs but them music, background music, etc. I don't remember the rates, but non-commercial stations pay a lower rate than commercial ones. Royalties are supposedly divied out to songwriters (and performers?) or record companies based on how much airplay they received, which I guess is averaged out for the whole year. I don't know if they survey all radio stations around the same time or space it out for different areas and different stations throughout the year. Touch luck for artists who get some airplay but not enough to make it on the lists, of course. Digital area: possibility that people will feel because it's computerized, EVERYTHING can be kept track of. This is problematic, aside from privacy reasons, because the big royalty makers get less and the smaller people get more. Parallel with experiemtal Nielson-ratings tech... a special cable box that did the monitoring for you, and even had an electronic eye that could tell if anyone was in the room, or if they were sleeping or reading the paper rather than watching... apparently every station got much lower ratings than when people generously filled out booklets, so the stations threatened to set up an alternate system, so I don't know if that system was adopted. I'm curious as to how royalities are divied up from the cassette tax, since everyone with blank casssettes is, of course, violating copyrights according to some logic. Will people want royalities for reselling? There was a flack a few years ago from some big record distributors over used CD sales. They refused to supply some of the big chains if they continued to sell used CDs without giving them a cut. Rob