Recording Industry Association of America

The Recording Industry Association of America is interested in defending the rights of artists and protecting the integrity of the creative process to preserve the copyrights that musicians hold over their own work. We are seeking to compensate musicians and businesses in the music industry by paying them a fair royalty fee when their music is downloaded, used in peer to peer file sharing online and when downloaded from a central server such as Microsoft. It is our express opinion that giving away artists music and receiving music without paying for it is a violation of the artists rights and highly illegal. Through a joint decision an acceptable royalty fee rate could be reached and both sides would be winners (RIAA).

The decision reached on June 27, 2005 in the case of MGM v. Grokster is the new landmark for decisions regarding the legality of online music sharing. Large entertainment companies, many of whom are involved with the Recording Industry Association of America, brought suit against Grokster, Morpheus, and Kazaa for illegally aiding and participating in illegal online music downloads. The court decided that the central servers are in fact liable for the illegal actions of their users and would be found guility for aiding the process of illegal file sharing. However, the court was at the same time careful not to limit the creativity or innovation of constantly changing and updating online products and programs (EFF).

We at the Recording Industry Association of America feel that an acceptable way to negotiate a fair deal with a central server such as Microsoft would be to take a small royalty fee on every song downloaded from your online music store and programs. A portion of this fee would be distributed mainly to the actual artists, creators, and producers of the songs along with their record label and any others who have stake in the artist. The Recording Industry Association of America will also take a small cut to further defend the rights of oppressed musicians nationwide. We feel that a reasonable starting point to negotiate the actual cost of the royalty fees will be as follows:

-$5 per recent release single song downloaded
-$20 per recent release full album downloaded
-$3 per normal song downloaded
-$15 per normal album downloaded.
These fees are similar to the rates that record labels and musicians are losing on decline in compact disc sales and cassette tape sales. Helping compensate the artists in this way will encourage new artist to try and break into the industry knowing they will be duly paid for their endeavors.
Charging a royalty fee on music downloading online is not taking the freedom of the internet and file sharing away from the people but rather making them pay for good music that they would have gladly bought on a CD ten years ago, and the fact is that musicians put their hearts, souls, and lives into bringing that music to these very same people, and they deserve to be rewarded for their efforts. Only through the help of large central corporations such as Microsoft can we help to solve the issues of illegal online file sharing, and reaching an agreement in this negotiation is one step closer to solution.

Works Cited

Recording Industry Associatoin of America. < http://www.riaa.com/issues/piracy/default.asp> Copyright 2003

Electronic Fronteir Foundatoin. "MGM v Grokster." http://www.eff.org/about/. Copyright 1990