Inert Detritus The Internet's dust bunnies

Ripping Bits and Licensing Fees

Eminem’s for­mer pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, FBT, argues that a down­load is not, in fact, a pur­chase of music, but rather a license issued through a retail­er. As such, the per­cent­age that the artist takes home at the end of the day should be high­er, in accor­dance with licens­ing terms.

Uni­ver­sal, mean­while, appears to be argu­ing that pur­chas­ing dig­i­tal music for down­load is no dif­fer­ent from buy­ing a CD or LP.

from “Eminem’s for­mer pub­lish­er wants more mon­ey for dig­i­tal down­loads”

This is Sit­u­a­tion Nor­mal for the record labels: when they’re los­ing mon­ey, they’ll define a music sale as a pur­chase to try and keep more dollars.

But when try­ing to fight P2P, they argue that any copy­ing of music is ille­gal. They lat­er said they did­n’t mean it, but I would be sur­prised if the “CD rip­ping as an ille­gal dupli­ca­tion” argu­ment did­n’t sur­face again in a court of law some­time this year.