UK: BPI sues MCPS in music biz blue-on-blue
Charles Arthur writes in The Register:
Another day, another lawsuit from the record labels. Except this time - what's this? They're suing a different part of the music business. Yes, the BPI on Thursday announced that it is taking the MCPS (the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society) to the Copyright Tribunal, complaining that the MCPS is charging too much for online downloads and subscriptions.
The BPI has been joined in the action by the big music download organisations, including Apple's iTunes, AOL, MusicNet, Napster, Real, Sony Connect and Yahoo!. They're annoyed because the charge set by the MCPS for creating a digital, online copy of a song - the so-called "mechanical reproduction" - is between 50 and 100 per cent greater than that for making a physical copy of a song (such as a CD).
What! The music business, overcharging? Yes, you can stop laughing now. But there's an important principle here, which serves - once again - to show that the industry has problems Getting It.
BPI general counsel Geoff Taylor said: "The licence that the Alliance is trying to impose for online music is unreasonable and unsustainable. It is charging a royalty rate on a download that is double the rate it charges for a song on a CD. It applies this excessive rate to a whole range of online music services, without taking into account their different characteristics. The Alliance's tariff threatens to seriously harm the development of the legal online and mobile music markets."
posted by Fergie @ 7/01/2005 08:00:00 AM
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