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The
RIAA Music Downloading Controversy: Both Sides of the Record
By Darcie-Nicole Wicknick
Special to MusicBizAdvice.com
A LITTLE HISTORY ON MUSIC PIRACY
The subject of piracy has a long history. In the 1920's, when radio stations started
playing records over the airwaves performance was not tracked. Performance is currently
one of the legal entitlements a songwriter is granted in a copyright registration. Then,
an artist may have been paid for their live broadcast performance, but the writers were
not. And, no one was making money off of the recordings being played, except the radio
station via its sponsors. This particular vein of history is not piracy per se, but did
impact writers who were losing countless amounts of money from public performance of their
works without accountability. Over time, ASCAP and BMI (the performance rights societies)
worked with Congress and the FCC to change legislation and to ensure that radio stations
acted fairly in tracking airplay and that they paid blanket licenses that were distributed
to writers based on airplay. BMI also worked in the 1940’s to prevent relegation of
certain music to remote stations, and to make radio a more equal opportunity medium,
according to its own historical account.
Now, the sophisticated program BDS tracks airplay, and is used not only to report airplay
on behalf of writers, but is used by record companies to ensure that artists are in
regular rotation at the stations that accept their singles.
Before the invention of blank tape it was close to impossible to COPY a record. If you
wanted the record, you either bought it or played it at your friend's house till the
needle lost its tip. Even after the invention of blank tape in the mid 1960’s copying
a record was a clunky process at best, involving a reel-to-reel machine hooked up to your
phonograph receiver and pre-amplifier.
Moving ahead to the advent of cassette tape, people began dubbing vinyl-to-cassette and
cassette-to-cassette, but chances were low that they were selling them, with the exception
of pirates who owned mass duplication systems and graphic machines good enough to fool
consumers. But you could still tell it was a dub by listening to it because every time you
make a dub, sonic integrity is compromised. Dubbing was mostly kids at home who made mix
tapes to give to their girlfriends, "make out" tapes, "party mixes"
for that sweet 16 bash next week - that kind of thing. And, for that reason, ASCAP and
BMI, at the hand of the FCC, began to collect and disburse a modest dividend from blanket
license fees on the sale of blank media. These dividends pay writer and publisher members
a portion of the sales license. Most industry insiders felt it was better than nothing.
When CDs surfaced in Europe and Japan in 1982 and here in the United States in 1983, they,
like vinyl, were read-only. There was no way to burn to a CD - at first. But technology
has advanced so rapidly over the past twenty years that now, in 2003, mp3s and sources
like iTunes offer NearBeer quality of recorded music for a fraction of the cost. And you
can burn the CD or mix right from your desktop. For those who like album artwork and liner
notes, those are online, too. MP3 and iTunes do charge for the licensing (and offer
generous duplication allowances.) Although the debate on that issue merits a separate
article, it's worth noting that this is not theft. Many record companies have worked out
deals with those particular companies.
So why are people downloading and file-sharing illegally? Are they thrill seekers? Evil
thieves? Hardly. Most consumers of downloaded music view it as convenient, and sound
quality isn't an issue to them-especially to those who aren't serious audiophiles. Others
are more conflicted: "I'm kind of divided on this issue, " writes one respondent
we polled for this article. "I download music frequently but the music I download is
for one of three reasons (usually): a.) the music/artist is obscure or hard to find, b.) I
want to sample the music before I buy the CD or c.) I only want a couple of songs off of
the CD. Needless to say I find all three acceptable. However, when someone consistently
downloads [an] artists’ whole CD I think both the artist & the record company
have a right to be pissed."
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