There was an interesting Q& A Session on Washingtonpost.com this morning about the recording industry’s battle against XM Satellite Radio over its “Inno” handheld recorder. The most interesting comment was when someone who allegedly works at the RIAA chimes in with his opinion about the case.
The session’s pretty straightforward and covers all the important facts, with one individual for instance bashing the so-called greed-infused mindset of the RIAA for not doing a better job of embracing emerging technology into it’s business model.
Steven Pearlstein, who is the moderator of the session, retorted that “That’s capitalism, so let’s not get moralistic about it. The problem comes when industries use the power of government to win such advantages that they can’t win in the marketplace. RIAA is VERY good at doing that.” A point well taken. 
But, as this article alluded to, the best retort is out of Washington D.C., with an alleged employee of the RIAA offering his rebuttal of the XM’s Inno business model.
He writes:
I work at the RIAA, so I can’t say we loved your column. I won’t offer a line by line rebuttal but I did want to make one thing clear: we too think that satellite radio is a great thing. Both the music industry and XM and Sirius are partners. We agree with what many people have said in this chat.
The concern here is when a business tries to offer an iTunes or Rhapsody-like business model but not play by the same set of rules as those companies.
The music community been killed by piracy for the last 5 years (thousands of layoffs and enormous drops in sales), and here we have this nascent, exciting legal online marketplace that is offering real hope for the future. When businesses try to encroach upon that marketplace without playing by the same set of rules as others are, that’s when we take issue.
Pearlstein then retorts:
There’s nothing wrong with anything you said there, except your assumption that there is some clear bright line between a radio broadcast that can be taped, the Inno device, and a music download. Its all along a continuum of convenience and control, with a pure radio broadcast having the least convenience and control and a download service giving consumers the most. Should there be different rates for the different services along that continuum? Absolutely. So go and negotiate them in a free and open market. But please don’t suggest that XM, which is paying the royalties it thinks it is required to pay under the 1992 law, a pirate. If you really wanted to have the law clarified on this point, considering the unforeseen changes in technology since 1992, you could have asked for an advisory opinion from the Copyright Office, or the FCC, or even asked for a declaratory judgment from the same court you visited in order to sue XM for what could be hundreds of millions of dollars. Your tactics are thuggish and abusive.
Pearlstein makes an excellent point here in that technology has truly changed over the years and the RIAA needs to better use its time and effort and embrace it rather than fighting a losing battle against it. After all these years the RIAA still just doesn’t get it. It would be comical if wasn’t so sad.
Also, if XM is already paying the royalties required under the law for its broadcast, why do they then have to change those payments because people are recording them at a better quality? Is there also a difference in royalty payments paid by television broadcasters whether they broadcast in HD or regular digital? That’s a question I’d like to know, as does the quality of the broadcast determine the royalties one should have to pay?
Quality issues aside, the fact remains that the RIAA has a long track record of being asleep at the wheel and then getting pissed off when they wake up and the scenery has changed.
Furthermore, what they don’t admit is the fact that they are still secretly seething inside that they have to sell digital downloads at all, especially since people Steve Jobs has almost supreme control over their pricing and not them. They still long for the days of record stores with overpriced CDs at 20 bucks a pop. Times have changed and they don’t seem to care.
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Technology allows for everything and anything to be copied and recorded. The USSR kept a copy machine under lock and key. The world has changed. Big companies no longer practice fair and free trade. They practice undemocratic process to keep employees paid and governments happy with contributions in the millions in taxes and political payoffs. This is the end of the world as we know it…. and I feel fine. Only honest businesses will be able to complete in business in the future. Pay per click will change the world.