1. Well, as a friend of mine said to me one day, "They reacted too late". Doug Morris wants to go against MySpace and YouTube but those are the most populars. There are endless sites nowadays. If he thinks that he can stop A WHOLE GENERATION NOW of computer kids, he wont! Never!

Posted at 2:44PM on Sep 14th 2006 by Emilio Pastrana

2. As a music publisher I can say with conviction that Grant Robertson's take is exactly wrong. His Business Plan 101 remarks have to do with the conduct of RECORD LABELS but who is really getting the shaft here are MUSIC PUBLISHERS and those brave and creative souls who "write the songs the whold world sings."

The VAST majority of song writers and their publishers are not fabulously wealthy but rather rely on their royalty income to live from month to month.

So when "Suzy Q" uplinks a Tim McGraw song for "broadcast" on MySpace, the writer does not get paid and is essentially being stolen from.

Mr. Robertson says that's OK since the "broadcast" just makes the song more popular but just try to upload, say, a Superbowl game to MySpace and see what the NFL and the TV networks have to say. It's the SAME thing...violation of copyright and an essential form of theft.

Mr. Morris complains on behalf of Universal because his company owns a copyright to the actual "master recording" that is copied onto CDs for sale. But Universal is also a HUGE music publishing company and it not only has the right but the DUTY to defend Universal's share of the copyrights in the masters but also the additional copyrights in the songs themselves...a duty to both Universal AND the songwriters who create the music.

There is, admittedly, a movement afoot which suggests that music should just be available to everyone for free. But that movement is based on the gruesome and selfish logic that "It is OK to steal from anyone but me." Sad but true.

Posted at 6:22PM on Sep 19th 2006 by Jim

3. We certainly live in the technological age, with every great invention comes the afterthought, "now we got it, how do we control it?" Just because the technology makes things easier, does not give it carte blanc to break the law. Reproducing songs, papers, movies and artwork is stealing from the original artist. There are a great number of "struggling artists" on the streets that as has been stated, rely on these royalties to pay the bills. Each reproduction has to have a way to be licensed, inexpensively if you will. Afterall if i use my equipment and my time to download a song for example, I should not have to pay the same amount as the CD with casing and stocking fees attached. Theoretically I believe the download could be anywhere from $.50-$1.00. What a deal, the price of a coke, when you see the number of downloads that take place, even if this cut it in half, the volume would still be great enough to offset the cost of getting a keycode to download the song and still make a profit. There certainly is a valid argument that websites such as MySpace do give exposure, but most people only listen to the song briefly, so if you want a free play, you will only get a sampling. Most kids or adults will pay a small fee if they really like the song. Other ways are special promotions and write it off to advertising, for a limited time, download the song from the artists website or even a certain number of downlaods. There are hundreds of common sense ways to solve this issue, get it out of the boardroom and think logically instead of by committee. If you want to promote a song and someone wants to hear it for free, request it on the radio, XM, Sirius, MTV, VH1, GAC, CMT and so many more places or just set it up on the artists website for a listen with no download. You can listen to just about any radio station on the computer now. How many opportunities do you need to hear a song? Free downloading is not the answer, the thing about our country, we are all entitled to make money on our hard work, we should not have to share our talents for free!

Posted at 10:35AM on Sep 20th 2006 by Matt Tutton