The Madness of Corporate America

I imagine this doesn't really need publicity here, but right after a revealing longer piece by comics creator Steven Grant which is more about the misery of being a comics creator trying to get a project off the ground, is a non-comics item of utter corporate madness:

Here's a good one: The Recording Industry Association Of America (RIAA) has decided that even if you create your own music you can't play it on your own website without paying them. They talked the US Copyright Office into designating their subsidiary Soundexchange the collector of Internet radio royalty payments for all music played on the Internet, not just music controlled by the RIAA.

Why? Pretty much just so they can enforce their will on Internet radio. What this means is that if you compose your own symphony and want to podcast it, you have to pay Soundexchange the royalties that you owe yourself. Then Soundexchange will pay the royalties back to you, if you pay Soundexchange for the service. If you don't want to join Soundexchange - and if your music doesn't fall under RIAA jurisdiction, why would you? - they don't have any obligation to give you the money you're owed. Because, apparently, nonmembers simply aren't owed any, even though they're required to pay.

It's basically racketeering, and like most such schemes various companies and organizations are now trying to impose on the Internet, I can't wait to see how they plan to enforce it, since the Internet is an international operation and it's only a US government agency that has authorized this thuggish stupidity. Not that it'll stop the RIAA from trying to operate like a pack of mobsters, but it'll be interesting to see what happens when someone decides to take them to court over this.

It's hard to imagine courts will uphold the scheme for long though I expect some judge somewhere will think it's a wonderful idea, so arguing it in court doesn't seem in the RIAA's best interest, but if they back down on any threats of legal action they'll be backing down on all of them. Most likely they'll face any legal challenges with the standard corporate practice of driving up legal costs for the opposition and trying to keep the case from ever coming to trial.

Reading further into this, I'm bemused to discover via BoingBoing that The RIAA is the most hated "company" in America, according to a recent poll on the Consumerist. The RIAA's campaign of suing thousands of American music lovers has been the single biggest PR disaster in recent industrial history -- which is why Engebretsen's employer beat out Halliburton, Blackwater and Wal-Mart for the coveted "Worst Company" slot.

Seems the Performing Rights Society in the UK just isn't trying hard enough. :)

Super Lawyer Required?

Talk about complex. Stan Lee Media, which the legendary Stan Lee no longer has any involvement with, is suing Marvel for a stonking $5 billion -- claiming rights to titles including Spider-Man.

Stan Lee Media was orginally co-founded by Lee, who created Spider-Man, the Hulk and other characters back in the 1960s, during the dot-com boom a few years back as a way of bringing superheroes online -- but the company went bankrupt and produced a litany of lawsuits and criminal charges in its wake involving stock manipulation schemes against the other co-founders of the company.

New media magazine and web site Red Herring has the most detailed report on this story, noting the company is back from the dead, having been reconstituted by Jim Nesfield (who describes himself as a "vulture" - has he been reading eraly issues of Spider-man in the run up to this suit?), who gathered a group of former investors, while he took charge as chairman, CEO, and president.

The suit is complex, but as I understand it, Nesfield has now filed a lawsuit on their behalf claiming claiming Lee signed his rights away to the company in 1998 and SLM a 50 per cent cut of profits from Marvel film licencing deals.

88-year-old Lee, who is now involved in POW Entertainment, has rejected the claim, as has Marvel.

In 2005 Lee had to go to court himself to win 10 per cent of Marvel's profits from the Spider-Man movies.

Seems to me that he needs some kind of super-lawyer to handle this one...

Save us from Guardian readers

So the world's going to h*** in a handbasket and what are Guardian readers doing? Arguing about who has the best computer.

I'm considering joining Harlan Ellison and Alan Moore in the typewriter zone.

Not very seriously, mind, but considering it.

Keeping comics in newspapers

Interesting piece in The Baltimore Sun over the weekend on the future of newspapers -- well, US newspapers, although the issues they're facing as new media gains in popularity across all age bands is affecting all print media.

Howard Weaver, the head of news for the McClatchy chain -- which bought the Knight Ridder chain of US newspapers and then sold off about half of them -- argues "There will be lots of audio and video" on future newspaper sites. "It should not be the mirror image of the newspaper. Newspaper content is a tremendous starting place, but it is only a starting place."

There's a clear recognition of the way the Internet is developing 'niche' audiences in the article, and recognizing that the newspaper audience of the future will be a specialized one means giving up the department-store, something-for-everyone approach. I think that's possibly true, and as an editor of various 'niche' magazines down the years, if you can get the economics right, then you're on a winner.

As part of that 'niche' marketing Peter M. Zollman, a former journalist, now a newspaper industry consultant, says he would keep the comics -- "You can't blow up your entire core audience" -- but, for instance, jettison stock tables as up-to-the-minute prices are available on the Web.

This is one of those rare occasions where comics have been recognised as a piece of 'unique content' that helps retain readers that I've read in a while, and it's a welcome argument on these pages...