with 'copyright' tag

the story about how much the producers of mad hot ballroom had to pay for music rights caused quite a furor, but i think some people took an unfortunate focus on the total cost ($140,000) and portrayed that as the outrageous figure. considering the film, through last weekend, grossed over $2 million (and easily looks headed over $3 million), i’m not sure i find that figure ridiculous at all.

it’s the details of the story that are maddening, like trying to get a license for a kid singing the single line “everybody dance now” or emi asking for $10,000 to license the rocky ring tone that the documentary filmmakers happened to catch or having to worry about billboards and frito lay trucks. and here it’s the producers that are part of the problem: by failing to stand up for their fair use rights, they brought the cost upon themselves.

but the endeavor appears to have paid off: mad hot ballroom is already in the top 25 top-grossing documentaries since 1982, and looks poised to make it into the top 20 at least.

one thing that marillion deserves is more recognition for how they’ve really stepped up to being a fan-supported band, and have largely disentangled themselves from the major record labels. this article in the independent covers the recent “marillion weekend”, which was like a weekend-end long concert and fan festival. they’ve had a united states tour financed by the fans, and have now released two albums financed by their fans.

compare that to the recent saga of fiona apple’s latest not-yet-released album. imagine how different things could have been if the fans had financed the album instead of apple being stuck in the mess she’s apparently in with her label.

it puzzles me that the goal of some musicians is to hand over so much control to a record label, even after they often have to be very hands-on in doing the same sorts of things the label will be doing for them.

i think we’ll see an accelerating trend away from the major labels as more music is made available online, just because it almost totally squeezes out the distribution costs. i’m not sure that it is quite as imminent as mark cuban thinks it is, but it is only a matter of time. when you can spend a few hundred dollars a month to pump out bits at 10Mb/s and supplement that with a tool like bittorrent, the economics of releasing music online starts to look very attractive.

and i think that is irrespective of the outcome of grokster vs. riaa. if there’s an upside to that case, it demonstrates that the labels are not employing a fire and motion strategy. they’re focused on defense.

i tell ya, it’s almost enough to make one want to start an online music label. and one potentially brilliant way to start would be by buying out fiona apple’s sony contract.

doctrine of first sale

someone needs to beat the author of this article about peerflix with an explanation of the first-sale doctrine. the really dumb quote: “Selling a used DVD outright can be legally iffy, as it gets into complex copyright issues….”