What little concern there was over music piracy was restricted to “bootleg” tapes made at concerts. Even one of the most outspokenly liberal musicians ever, Frank Zappa, vented in vain at bootleg tapes of his music. He went so far as to include the tape of an interview expressing his anger with this practice at the beginning of his “As An Am” album, part of his “Beat the Boots” project. But even at its most vampiric, the bootleg recording industry was hardly able to suck off more than a single-digit percentage of profits.

But then the Internet happened. And suddenly, through it, the sharing of a home-made recording suddenly became something you could provide to thousands of people instead of one or two friends. Where even the recording of several purchased CDs onto cassette tape was only moderately a big deal before, now it is a major industry.

The media piracy issue is one of the most vitriolic hot-button issues in today’s Internet culture. The major factors being:

* The RIAA. The Recording Industry Association of America may live on in history as being one of the most ineffective measures of copyright protection the world has ever seen. Its methods have been draconian, never once catching a pirate, but relentlessly pursuing everyone from soccer moms to grandmothers to even dead people with a lawsuit for receiving a pirated tune, which in and of itself is not even a crime. Funded by the not-particularly successful record labels and armed with a battalion of lawyers, the RIAA’s practices have so far been futile at stopping piracy and harassing of legitamate users.

* Sony – became the laughing stock of 2006 with the Rootkit Fiasco. Sony included a malicious program on several music CDs, which installed a computer program called a “rootkit” on any computer you stuck them into, for the purposes of preventing unauthorized copying. The attempt backfired two ways: not only did it do nothing to prevent copying, but it crippled the software on the computer by compromising its security layer; any hacker looking to break into a computer need only look for the rootkit and they were in! Sony faced consumer lawsuits for this attempt and had to distribute an uninstaller for the rootkit, which itself was another botch in that it introduced more security holes into the system after patching its own rootkit. Sony lost millions of customers with this fiasco, many of whom swore publicly that they would never trust Sony again.

* The DMCA. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is the United States copyright law which both criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services that are used to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works and criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, even when there is no infringement of copyright itself. This law has since endured no end to controversy, and is in the process of being reformed. The DMCA is said to be anti-competitive; because it gives copyright holders and the technology companies (including the ones convicted of monopolistic practices under anti-trust laws) that distribute their content the legal power to create closed technology platforms and exclude competitors from inter-operating with them. Once again, DRM technologies are clumsy and ineffective; they inconvenience legitimate users but do nothing to stop pirates.

The whole problem with copyright protection stems from the haziness of defining at what point someone has broken the law. Say I bought an album on tape cassette, brought it home, and played it on my stereo so that my whole family can hear it. I’m not a pirate yet. I upgraded my stereo to a new model and copied that album to a compact disk so that my new stereo can play it. Obviously, I haven’t stolen anything here, but now I might be breaking a law intended to stop me from copying it for piracy purposes. If I play it so my whole family can hear it in the living room, that should be no different from if I made a separate CD copy for each member of my family so they can all listen to it in their bedrooms with their headphones on. Am I a pirate now?

The further problem is that digital protections against copyright are platform and player-specific. There has been a whole quagmire of different devices such as the Apple iPod, Microsoft Zune, handheld game consoles, cell phones, and other devices capable of recording, storing, and playing back music. These features are sold to us as benefits of the device, and yet when we get them home we find that we have to pay for the song some six times to be able to listen to it on each device – if indeed (as is seldom the case) the song has even been ported to that platform! Subscribing to a DRM-protected device further restricts the user’s freedom to switch to a different device – you’re locked in, and would be breaking the law if you moved the media from one device to another – even if you, yourself, wrote and recorded that song at home!

The turmoil over media piracy isn’t likely to end any time soon. Fortunately, the legal system has so far left the enforcement of copyright concerns to private industry, which isn’t doing such a hot job of enforcing copyright anyway. Consider that any country in the world can host any media pirate and in fact several countries do just that, with no laws to stop them. Pirated media is very big business in some countries, not because they want to steal, but simply because they want that media to play on their own independently produced digital devices. Remember when you could just buy a record and drop it on any record player and it would just play?

The Web also allows musicians access to music knowledge. Artists will come across difficult terminology and phrases that they do not understand. Compiled in the following mini glossary are music business, digital, organizations, record biz lingo, computer terms and basic need-to-know info. Hopefully, something listed here will help you navigate music online a bit easier, and so you know, this glossary is an excerpt of an extensive list found on Artistopia.

A&R – Artist and Repertoire, aka talent scouts: a record company liaison whose duties may include to find, select and develop the music artist, band and/or songwriter.
Affiliate Program – a way to earn income by linking your Web site to another site, depending on the action taken by the visitor.
ASCAP – American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers which licenses and distributes royalties to it’s members’ copyrighted works.
Bandwidth – has nothing to do with the size of a band but is a measure of the amount of information (data) that can be sent over a network connection in a given period of time. Bandwidth is usually measured in bits per second.
Bitrate – The number of kilobits per second of data in your audio file. The bitrate you choose when creating an MP3 file determines the size and quality of the resulting MP3. The highest commonly available bitrate is 320 kbps and the higher the bitrate, the closer the encoding is to the original source of music.
Blanket License – allows the user to perform any or all, in part or all, of the songs in the ASCAP repertory. What a warm and cozy license.
Business Manager – an artist or band manager that specializes in the financial matters, including planning, investing, income, taxes, decisions and contracts.
Buzz – to get people talking about a new artist, band, song or album, creating intense excitement and/or rumors.
Clause – a chubby fellow in a red suit is Claus: in a record contract, there might be certain limitations, specifications, or modifications that stipulate the final outcome of that contract.
Concert Promoter – with duties including ticketing, PR, marketing, and booking, this agency or agent responsibilities are for concert event promotion.
Content – to make the Search Engines happy and have pages rank well in a search result, a good quantity of well written text aligning with the site’s keywords and theme updated regularly is a Webmaster’s steak and potatoes.
Cookie – no, not chocolate chip, but a piece of software that records info about your visit to a Web site, then holds the info until the server requests it.
Copyright – a set of exclusive rights regulating the use of a particular expression of an idea or information, in our case artistic properties, the songs and sound recordings.
Derivative Work – a new work based on or resulting from one or more preceding works.
Digital Licensing – the use of copyrighted music compositions including downloads, on demand streaming, limited use downloads and CD burning.
Distributor – the agency or agent that handles the sales and shipment of the music (records, CDs) to the marketplace or basically, gets the product to the consumers.
Domain Name – a sign post on the Internet, it is a unique name that identifies an Internet site.
DRM – Digital Rights Management is a technology that protects a piece of intellectual digital property such as a music, video, or text file.
Encoding – the process of converting audio to or from a compressed format like MP3 or WMA.
Exclusive Rights – under copyright law, the privileges that only a copyright owner has with respect to the copyrighted work.
Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) – a file format for audio data compression that does not remove information from the audio stream, as MP3, AAC, and Vorbis do.
Grammy Awards – an award ceremony for all genres presented by the Recording Academy for outstanding achievements in the recording industry: a gold megaphone for your mantel.
Groupie – what’s the point of being an act without groupies? Overly enthusiastic fans with much love to offer.
HTML – HyperText Markup Language, programming language for the world wide web. A web browser interprets the code written and displays it for a web page and web sites. Some very basic knowledge of HTML may help on some sites.
Hook – a pirate: a music phrase, a passage, an idea – something (catchy and/or repetitive) that makes the song stand out and be more appealing and remembered.
Hype – sensational and extreme promotion of a person, idea or product.
Indie – an independent artist or band that desires to do-it-all-themselves and/or not affiliated with a larger record label.
Intern – usually a college student job at a record label in a no or low paying position, more of an apprenticeship learning the ropes and gaining business experience.
Internet Service Provider (ISP) – how and who connects your computer or network to the Internet, whether dialup, DSL, Cable, T1 or T3.
Master Recording License – pertains to the recording of a performance itself, which are usually controlled by the record label.
Mastering – the final stage and preparation in a recording before weapons of mass duplication, includes the consistency of audio levels and quality perfecting.
Mechanical License – the use of copyrighted musical compositions for use on CDs, cassettes, record albums.
Music Contracts – all the various bits of paperwork used in the music business, always read the “fine print” to the many contracts – recording, management, finders fee, general release contracts. When the contracts come in – time to get an Entertainment Attorney.
Music Industry – all things pertaining and related to the business of music, dominated by the Big Four major labels: Sony BMG, Warner, Universal and EMI.
Music Publisher – provides services such as marketing, pitching and promoting works written by songwriters. Deals with the commercial exploitation of music catalogs and songs.
Press Kit – aka media kit, a prepackaged set of promotional materials for a music artist or band for distribution including song samples, bio, historical info, photos and contact information.
Producer – duties include: controlling the recording session, guidance of the artist(s), coaching, organizing, scheduling of production resources and budgets, as well as supervising the process of recording, mixing and mastering.
Publishing Royalties – income paid to the writer of a song.
RIAA – Recording Industry Association of America, the organization that represents the interests of record labels and producers in the USA.
Ripping – means to take an audio CD and record it to a computer in an uncompressed file format (wav). Digital audio extraction from one media form to a hard disk.
Roadie – the road crew that travels with a band on tour. These hard working individuals do everything but the performance, are technicians, do the set up and take down, security, bodyguards, pyrotechnics, and lighting.
Sampling Rate – the number of samples taken per second when digitizing sound. The higher the number, the better the quality of the digital reproduction.
SoundExchange – an independent, nonprofit performance rights organization that collects and distributes digital performance royalties for recording artists and record labels when their sound recordings are performed on digital cable, satellite TV music, internet and satellite radio.
Sound Recording – the copyright of the recording itself (what you hear, the entire production) as distinguished from the copyright of the song (words and music owned by the songwriter or publisher).
Synchronization License – aka “synch” license, allows the user to reproduce a musical composition “in connection with” or “in timed relation with” a visual image, motion picture, video, advertising commercial – from the copyright owner of the music.
Talent Agent – or booking agent, the representative of the music artist(s) that sets up the live performances.
Vanity Label – a celebrity recording artist is given a label within a label and runs under the umbrella of the parent label.

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TF provides an exciting new place for music lovers to discover new music and new artists. But it’s much more than that. You didn’t really think the big record labels had a lock on all the best talent in the world, did you? The fact is, there are thousands of great, unsigned singers, songwriters and bands all over the world that are making awesome music — you just haven’t been able to hear it anywhere.

And, ironically, this music is often actually better than what the big boys are pushing. The artists you’ll find at TF, because they don’t have contracts requiring them to sound “mainstream,” regularly produce music that is fresh, innovative, and often in a much broader range of genres. At Tune Flow you get more styles, and more choices. Like our name suggests, we let the music FLOW…ALL the music!

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For complete details on registering as a Tune Flow artist, participating in the tournaments, and/or using any of the other artist services and resources, go to: http://www.moreinfo247.com/9556834/TF

Copyright © Barbara Corcoran
http://www.BarbaraCorcoran.biz

No matter how much inventory you have, or how large your customer base, the viability of your business depends on the flow of your thinking, your creativity, your presence. What do you do when someone steals your hard work?

Send a thank-you note.

Remember the Grateful Dead? I was never a big fan, more into punk myself, but I was always intrigued by friends who had dozens and dozens of “bootlegs” of Dead shows- recordings they personally made, or bought from someone else.

What many people don’t know about the Grateful Dead is that early on they made a decision to treat the band as a business, and made many decisions to leverage their success, without compromising their values.

They noticed that their fans were recording their shows. Unlike many other bands and industries that tried to stop this nefarious activity (remember Napster?), the Dead encouraged it. Why?

Have you ever tried to act like someone else? How long could you keep it up? The last time I unconciously started writing like someone I admired, I started getting unsubscribes and complaints like crazy, and I had to come back to my own authenticity in a hurry.

The Dead, by smiling at bootleggers who were making “unofficial” copies of the shows, were actually encouraging the growth of community. More people attended their shows just to record bootlegs. It created a “collection” mindset. It was a big deal to say that you had a particular bootleg, and even more of coup to say that you had been at that show.

And, their official records, more than 50 live and studio releases, were a part of the ‘collection mania’ and had strong, profitable sales over 30+ years.

Instead of spending your time and energy trying to police your “intellectual property rights,” put your attention on your heart and your authenticity, and encourage others to make the best use of your materials and ideas. Trust that your customers can tell your authentic presence from someone else who is just riding in your draft.

Are there times when it’s worth it to protect your stuff?

Keys to Hippie Protectionism

• It’s not thieving to be in the morphic field.

Biologist Rupert Sheldrake originated the “morphic field” theory in modern science (something that has been observed spiritually for eons). The basic theory is this: genetics alone doesn’t explain why a plant grows in a particular form. Why do oak leaves all have basically the same shape?

Sheldrake advanced a holistic theory that “morphic fields” hold the pattern for structures. In a similar way, it’s not uncommon to find scientists, writers, researchers all working independently on similar ideas, remote from each other. Read his article.

If you are “inspired” by a particular idea, and you notice others taking up the flag as well, don’t fret about being stolen from, or someone getting “there” faster than you. Instead, rejoice that the morphic field is making your inspiration more accessible and understandable to the general public.

• Creative Commons Licensing

Instead of a regular strict copyright, you can use the Creative Commons licensing approach to be more flexible and generous in approaching your “intellectual property.”

In their own words: “Creative Commons offers a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors and artists. We have built upon the ‘all rights reserved’ of traditional copyright to create a voluntary ’some rights reserved’ copyright. We’re a nonprofit. All of our tools are free.”

For more information, check them out. http://creativecommons.org/

• Wholesale stealing of your entire show.

I have seen instances when someone has copied a website completely, word-for-word, including the free give-aways and bonuses. I always feel a little sad the very, very few times I’ve seen or heard of this, because someone is so clearly shut-down in their heart, and feeling desperate. Their business won’t last sustainably like that, but it is good to take official notice so you don’t have problems later on.

In these instances it’s often easy to send a note to them telling them you’ve noticed them and they need to cease and desist. If they don’t respond, you can look up their website registration on Whois.

Generally, an email sent to the company where they have registered their domain name will result in some action.

If you want to track certain words and phrases on the web, you can use Google Alerts.

However, this is an extreme case, and you will probably not encounter it.

Let your heart rest easy about “borrowers.” Stay in your authenticity, keep letting your heart move you forward, and rejoice that what you are inspired by is resonating so strongly with other people. This means you probably have a very viable and profitable market for your business.

What is it?

Copyright and trademark lawyers specialize in a form of litigation known as intellectual property law.  Basically, attorneys specializing in intellectual property law can help clarify legal issues surrounding the rights of ownership, as well as the application or registration of trademarks and copyrights.  They can also be brought in to help with the licensing and transferring of rights and to further clarify what constitutes as illegal use of intellectual property.

While there are lawyers that specialize in the umbrella term of “intellectual property law”, there are also attorneys that specialize in specific factions under intellectual property law.  In other words, if you are solely dealing with a trademark issue, you should hire a trademark attorney, considering that he or she only deals in trademark issues and should therefore, be more knowledgeable on the subject.

There are actually three components that fall under the category of intellectual property law- trademark, copyright, and patent.  A trademark refers to a logo, name or symbol that represents a specific product or service belonging to a commercial entity.  An example would be the apple found on Macintosh computers (which leads one to wonder what the trademark is for an actual apple).  Copyright protection grants authors of literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works (as well as computer software) protection of their ideas.  So if you start a band and want to name it Jethro Tull, the real Jethro Tull will probably sue you under copyright infringement.  Lastly, patents grant the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, or importing an invention or discovery.  And getting a patent on an invention is worthwhile because if you are an inventor, you probably don’t have a job.

Who needs it?

Those with a proclivity towards the artistic will most likely be the ones who benefit most from copyright and trademark attorneys.  That is to say, most intellectual property law (or any practice of law for that matter) can be rather dense and confusing, especially to creative types, what with their goatees and berets and ponytails.  Intellectual property law can be especially difficult, considering that it is constantly changing as it tries to adapt to the internet age.  Therefore, in order to keep your best ideas protected, it’s probably in your best interest to sit down with a copyright or trademark lawyer if you have any serious questions pertaining to the legal protection of your work.

It should also be noted that your work does not have to be published in order to be copyrighted.  It costs a small fee, but it will probably be worth it, especially if you have an idea that you’re worried someone else will cash in on.  However, because the costs of attorneys can be high-end, you’ll probably only need to deal with one if your work is being published.

Benefits

You will definitely benefit from having a specialized copyright or trademark attorney at your side if you ever need to trademark or copyright something.  The truth is almost any lawyer can register trademarks or copyrights, but most lawyers also lack familiarity with the fundamentals of intellectual property law.  If you need a lawyer for this particular field, you might as well seek a specialist.

Also, the benefits of copyright protection are pretty great, as copyrights last for the life of the author, as well as 50 years after their death.  Unfortunately, trademark protection is less convenient, as it lasts only ten years after registration before it needs to be renewed again.  However, it can be harder to prove copyright infringement on someone else’s behalf because it will only be considered in violation if the defendant consciously duplicated the material in question.  Therefore, it is considerably easier to call someone out for trademark infringement than it is copyright infringement.

THE BOTTOM LINE
If copyright and trademark issues ever arise in your career, you’d be foolish not to confer with a copyright or trademark lawyer.  It’s their job to know how to handle these situations, just like it’s your job to have a wild imagination.  Even if you were a writer for Murphy Brown and consider yourself to be quite smart, don’t take chances with your copyrighted or trademarked work.

To avoid falling victim to plagiarism it is often necessary to register your work for copyright. The “blogosphere” – a world where people from all over the world can put their writing in the public sphere for reaction, credit and criticism – has its own way of copyrighting work via “time stamping”. A blog “client” – generally the medium through which you put your writing into a domain – will put a date and time on the work, so that if someone decides that your writing is so good that they want it for themselves, they can easily be identified as having stolen it.

Other fields of work are less automatic in terms of avoiding plagiarism, however. An author who finishes a book will be well advised to send it for copyrighting before submitting it for publication, as there have been unsavory stories of publishing houses liking people’s work so much that they decide to send them a rejection letter but keep their work and amend it, publishing it under a different name. Anyone who has fallen victim to the act of plagiarism without having recourse to a method of proving this will be able to confirm that there are few things more frustrating and galling than being ripped off and not being able to prove it.

The reason that it is important to register for copyright even if you have largely incontrovertible proof of the originality of your work is that it gives you rights under the law to bring a case in a civil lawsuit. This is important in terms of claiming damages and protecting the legal integrity of your work. It will also enable you to claim your legal fees if any are accrued in the course of pursuing your case. As time goes on, the more successful you become in your chosen field, you will not have to register the work yourself, as the publisher will do it for you. But early on, it is important to make sure you are doing everything you can to protect yourself, as no-one is going to go to the bother of doing it for you.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and should not be construed as legal advice on any subject matter.

If a band wants to release a pressed CD independently, the quality of the recording better be outstanding.  Although it does not need to sound like it was recorded by a major label, it should not sound like it was recorded inside a garage where the band was practicing.  The average cost of a higher-end quality recording studio is about $55 an hour.  This includes the cost of the producer, recording equipment, and mixing and mastering the recording.  Assuming that a band will release a typical EP containing eight songs, they will be in the studio a minimum of 45 hours to record the music and vocals and to mix and master the product.  Thus, by simply recording the music, the band has already incurred $2,475 in expenses.

If the band wants people to be interested in buying their music, the visual aspect of the CD must also be appealing.  A band should not simply Google search an image that they think best suits their image, because they increase the possibility of a copyright infringement lawsuit.  Therefore, they should hire a talented artist to create custom art for their CD.  The cost of an artist who designs art that fits a band’s image and sound will usually cost between $300 and $500 for local unsigned bands.  It may seem like an unnecessary cost, but in order to appeal to more people than your immediate fan base, the artwork must be desirable to the public.

The final cost of creating a pressed CD is the actual pressing of the disc by a company that prints CDs.  The average cost of pressing a CD for 1000 copies is $850.  Why would a band do this rather than just simply use a home-printer and CD burner to put out an EP?  Once again, it is for the visually pleasing aspect of a CD; chances are if a person thinks you are not dedicated enough to press a CD with custom artwork, they will not want to pay money for your music.

Adding the $2,475 cost of recording, the $300 minimum cost of custom artwork, and the $850 cost of pressing 1000 discs, the cost of releasing a pressed CD is $3,825.  If a band sells these CDs for a cost of $5, they will need to sell 765 copies in order to break even.  Although this is an achievable feat, it can be a very daunting task for an up and coming local act.  Finding anyone to pay for music today is difficult for signed acts, much less independent ones.  Unless a band is completely sure that they are capable of selling at least 765 copies of their CD, recording and pressing is not the best option.

When it comes to getting music out there in an economical fashion, the best option is for a band to record the three or four best songs they have written and give the discs away for free.  This way the only relevant expense is the hourly recording fee discussed above.  In order to cover this expense, bands newer to the local scene should sell merchandise such as T-shirts, which have a profit margin of about 50%. 

Although it may appear that it is a waste of time and money to record music only to give it away for free, getting the band’s music and name out there is much more important for profits in the long run than by making $5 for each CD.  Therefore, if a new band wants to get their name out and make a few dollars, the best route would be releasing free music and selling merchandise rather than charging for both.

One such factor is the size and influence of the individual or organization that holds the copyright on a piece of work. If you redistribute a television show that has mass popularity by placing it on a website, the station who hold the rights to the show or the production house that made it can quickly apply for an injunction to prevent you from continuing to gain from what they perceive as their work. If, however, you were to place concert footage of a little known singer-songwriter online, there is little likelihood that legal action will be taken. Apart from the fact that it may be viewed as good publicity, the difficulty of compiling a lawsuit makes it often too difficult for a smaller commercial entity to get anything substantive done.

Likewise in the case where some musical groups decided to take on what they viewed as the negative impact of peer-to-peer downloading software. This practice entails one individual putting some musical tracks on a mirroring site to allow others to download it into their own collections. When done in bulk, it is probably the most profound example of simultaneous file transfer, and something that showcases one of the major reasons for people having the Internet. However, when popular download site Napster made a number of tracks by the band Metallica available for download, the rockers were quick to complain and take out an injunction demanding that Napster stop hosting Metallica songs for broadcast.

The argument is that, having heard and even downloaded the tracks into one’s own collection, you will not spend the money on purchasing any of them. This has been disputed, however, with many people leaving positive reviews and those whose opinions are taken seriously potentially influencing a number of people to go and spend money.

Copyright is different from trademarking in that a trademark protects specific words, short phrases and designs for use in commercial settings, whereas copyright protects the actual ideas and the work that goes into making them reality. While a trademark violation can interfere with a company’s marketing strategy, a copyright violation is different in that it interferes with an individual’s work. One is a matter of intellectual property, the other a case of identity theft. It is for these reasons among others that a “blog” post is always time- and date-stamped demonstrating when it was written, giving it its own form of copyright.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and should not be construed as legal advice on any subject matter.