Think the record industry is dead...?

... you ain't seen nothing yet!
 
http://music3point0.blogspot.com/2010/09/eminems-pivotal-royalty-battle.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Music30+%28Music+3.0%29

Wow..

This could be the death knell for the "majors" habitual screwing of artists and songwriters. Good riddance leeches.

Randy

Interesting! That article is old (2009)

 
Nope, it's from this week (although it refers to an earlier article from 2009).

That a record label should not be entitled to the same percentage of income when it licenses another distributor to make a song available as a download, that it does when it has to manufacture and physically market and distribute a CD makes good common sense. That principle was built into the contract in question. But the opinion by the appeals court did not address any issue of justice, relying instead on a strict interpretation of the contract language. If Aftermath Records had treated the artist fairly instead of mis-construing the contract "master licensing" provision in its favor, it would have either asked a higher price for the license or set aside an appropriate amount of cash to pay the artist. Any threat to the record industry from this decision applies only if similar language and misbehavior are present in all such contracts.

Ok this is something I never get . . . (and I admit I've NOT looked into it properly 


Record company wins the first case


Eninem wins the second


Isn't that one all?


It is bit like tossing a coin and saying best outta three.


First toss - Heads
Second toss - Tails

Tails wins!!

Wow.....Have to add Eminem to my list of good guys.

Always loved Dylan and Petty for fighting the record companies to get more of what was owed them. 

JR

Record company wins the first case Eninem wins the second Isn't that one all? It is bit like tossing a coin and saying best outta three.

If you wade through the decision, pretty much ignoring the details about why the appeals court decided that Eminem had not forfeited his right to an appeal based on procedures, you will find that the decision makes sense. The first case proceeded to the jury because the initial trial judge thought the contract was ambiguous i. e. it was so unclear in its wording that deciding what was intended by the contract required a determination of fact. In law a judge determines law and a jury determines fact. The judge in the first case was asked for a summary judgment i.e. a judgment that no disputed facts required a trial, because the contract was clear and competent application of the law in interpreting it would suffice to show that Eminem had been screwed. The jury (who are not considered experts in the reading of a contract)  then decided that they thought the contract did not mean what it said. That would be an acceptable outcome only if no one (no matter how competent) could determine what it actually said, in which case the law requires someone to make a decision about what the parties had intended it to mean, and the votes of a bunch of ordinary people swayed by half truths, emotion and irrelevant and misleading arguments is the method we have chosen to solve that problem.

On appeal, the argument was that the failure to grant a summary judgment (and thus to allow the jury to hear the case at all) was a legal error on the part of the trial judge. The trial judge (being a competent expert in contract law) should have realized that the contract interpreted under the relevant law was unambiguous, and that Eminem had been screwed. If so, then the jury had no question of fact to determine and their verdict was irrelevant to making a decision about the meaning of the contract. That is basically what the appeals court did determine i.e. that the contract language was clear and that it did not require a trial of fact to determine that. So that the first trial occurred at all, was an error in law, and therefore the result (whatever it might have been) was not to be accepted.

There is nothing unusual about this kind of finding in the law. That is why the law is not just a game that children play to decide who gets to bat first. In this case the law brought forth a result that most of us would see as fair and just. But if the original contract had been poorly written, or had not had a clause that recognized the unfairness of taking a large proportion of the artists work for a very small investment in cost on the part of the record company, the result would have been the opposite, and would have seemed unfair to the same people.