Re: R: Napster (aka: The New Digital Realm)

[Sevo Stille <sevo@ip23.net>]

luca wrote:

> CDRs (for computers) cost less than Audio CDs.
> I have been told this difference ( in Italy it is about 1/2  U.s. $ ) is 
>a
> sort of tax that is payed to majors  or whatever because it is clear that
> people uses the specific Audio Cd to duplicate music.
> Is this correct ?

Yes and no. In the EU (or at least all countries that have already
passed the recent set of EU bills into local law), there is a copyright
fee both on Audio CDRs (i.e. CDRs recordable in consumer audio devices)
and Data CDRs. The money is shared among all  national copyright boards
responsible, and is further shared among their membership by whatever
general distribution scheme each one has. In Germany, that would be GEMA
(publishers, composers) and GVL (musicians and producers) in the case of
Audio CDR, and GEMA, GVL, VG Wort (writers) and VG Bild (graphic
artists) for Data CDR. The software industry is still struggling to get
into the picture. 

> If yes, majors do protect their lost sells, and what about artists ?

At least the GEMA and GVL use sales and airplay statistics to build
their distribution schemes - you get points for each of these events,
and get a corresponding share of the total at the end of each billing
period.

> ...I know that a guy duplicated one of my cds, but nobody gave me any 
>money
> from the Cd for Audio he had used...

How should they know what CD he had copied? Money from events that do
not generate playlists (or where the value is too small to warrant
collecting and evaluating data) is pooled and shared as explained above.
The schemes are arguably unfair to artists catering for a special
interest market, as their sales and airplay tend to be invisible to the
GEMA data collectors, but OTOH, administering the whole thing at a level
where it would observe microsales would be so expensive that they would
get even less out of their membership.

Sevo



-- 
Sevo Stille
sevo@ip23.net