On the surface, and from most press accounts, the recent hubub over record company royalties and webcasters would seem to be a controversy born of the Internet age. But a little research shows just how short the collective memory is, and how the RIAA dog is just up to the same old tricks.
Let’s go back eleven years, to 1991. Like now, the recording industry was in a pitched battle over piracy. Only then, the ship was called “home taping,” not mp3. Digital audio tape (DAT), which would allow for bit-perfect copies of CDs, was threatening to land stateside from Japan, and blank audiocassette sales were through the roof.
Beyond just fighting “pirates,” the recording industry was also trying to harvest new revenues from the same old product.
Where were they looking? Plain old radio, TV and cable.
A Billboard magazine article dated January 5, 1991 reported that, “The Recording Industry Assn. of America is actively lobbying for a performance royalty on all sound recordings, according to RIAA executive VP Hilary Rosen.” Yeah, good ol’ Hilary was at it even back then.
The RIAA was itching for plenty of other things, too:
“The RIAA is urging the Copyright Office to recommended that Congress take action on a performance royalty, to recommend legislation requiring broadcasters and cable operators to transmit accurate digital subcode information in CDs and other digital recordings, and to ‘endorse legislative and/or administrative restrictions on the broadcast or transmission of whole albums or multiple cuts from a single album or artist.’”
Gee, that sounds a lot like the Digital Milennium Copyright Act, doesn’t it?
Before most people had even heard of the Internet, before mp3 was anything but a wild thought, the RIAA was worrying:
“First, the arrival of digital broadcasting and electronic transmission has created a threat greater than that posed by conventional broadcasting. ‘No one stands to be more exploited by these new technologies than the recording industry,’ says Rosen. ‘Current copyright laws,’ she adds, ‘do not adequately protect artists, musicians, and record companies in the face of the services these new technologies provide.’”
Yeah, that was eleven years ago. So, it looks like Hilary’s gotten pretty practiced at this script.
By March of 1991, things had heated up considerably over the performance royalty issue. According to the March 23 issue of Billboard,
“The opening skirmishes, via white-paper comments, at the FCC and the Copyright Office in the last few months escalated March 8 when Eddie Fritts, president of the National Assn. of Broadcasters, fired another salvo at the record industry.
Fritts sent a formal letter of opposition to Rep. Jack Brooks, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee…. In the letter, Fritts reminds chairman Brooks that broadcasters already pay about $ 300 million annually in music copyright fees. Both industries fought this battle more than a decade ago, with the broadcasters eventually defeating efforts to change the copyright law…. Fritts said that when Congress revised the Copyright Act in 1976, ‘it recognized that a balance existed between the benefits broadcasters realized from airing sound recordings, and the tremendous benefits they provided to record companies by way of free exposure or advertising of sound recordings.’”
As it turned out, the RIAA was unsuccessful in matching the NAB’s power in Congress, and so the RIAA did not manage to get royalty payments levied onto broadcast TV, radio or cable. But that doesn’t mean that the issue simply died.
Only two years later, in 1993, the RIAA had royalties at the front of its Congressional initiatives yet again. The Aug. 9 issue of the Hollywood Reporter relayed that,
“‘There are few bills in this Congress which will be as vehemently opposed by the nation’s radio and television stations,’ National Association of Broadcasters chief Edward Fritts wrote in a letter to all 100 senators. Fritts and the NAB are seeking to head off a drive by Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, to gain support for a recording industry-backed bill that would force local stations to pay royalties to the musicians and singers. “
Still, once again, the issue fell off the Congressional radar shortly afterwards. But you can’t say the RIAA isn’t tenacious, because they’re still banging the drum today, although they’ve given up on traditional broadcast and been much more successful targeting the Internet.
Of course, as I noted before, among the things that the RIAA was lobbying for in 1991 were “restrictions on the broadcast or transmission of whole albums or multiple cuts from a single album or artist.” Well, they got that in the DMCA. Today there are strict rules on how many cuts from an album or artist that a Internet broadcaster can play in a role — and it’s the law.
The lesson to take away from this bit of research is that these issues, like royalty payments for playing recorded music, don’t just drop out of the sky. This particular one has less to do with the Internet than it does with the recording industry’s overall desire to control every aspect of how their product is used, and to guarantee direct payment for every single use, every single time. Ultimate control equals the ultimate profit windfall, and don’t doubt for a moment that is the goal of every corporation, especially members of the entertainment cartel.
It’s too easy to assume that these issues are born with new technologies, and the lazy, myopic and amnesic mainstream press does little to expose the falsity of this assumption. The RIAA has been trying to extract more royalties out of broadcasters since before 1976, for crying out loud. Should it be any surprise that they’ve finally gained some ground 26 years later?
The game is the same even if the playing field changes. Whether it’s broadcast radio, DAT, mp3s, the Internet or digital radio, the issue is control. No corporation involved in intellectual property will be satisfied until it achieves complete and total control over every aspect of its product.
They might quiet down after losing a battle or two. They might shift priorities.
But the war is the same. And the war isn’t won until we surrender or they die.
If those are the stakes, I’m hoping for the latter.
Notes:
All the cited articles are pre-Internet (ohmygod — does the collective historical archive stretch back before Mosaic?). Therefore, I can’t hyperlink to the text of these articles. So, instead I’ll just give ya good ol’ fashioned citations so you can look ’em up yerself:
“B’casters balk at plan for new music royalties,” The Hollywood Reporter,
Aug. 9, 1993.
“Record Biz, Radio Exchange Fire In DAB Debate,” Billboard, Jan 19, 1991.
“RIAA Pushes For Performance Royalty For Labels, Artists,” Billboard, Jan. 5, 1991.
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