Music Publishers Sue Roblox In Full Frontal Assault On The DMCA

from the here's-a-big-one dept

A huge and potentially important copyright lawsuit was filed this week by basically all of the big music publishers against the immensely popular kids' gaming platform Roblox. Although the publishers trade association, the NMPA, put out a press release claiming the lawsuit, it doesn't appear that NMPA is actually a party. The lawsuit is, in many ways, yet another full frontal assault on the DMCA's safe harbors by the legacy music industry. There's a lot in this lawsuit and no single article is going to cover it all, but we'll hit on a few high points.

First, this may seem like a minor point, but I do wonder if it will become important: buried in the massive filing, the publishers mention that Roblox did not have a registered DMCA agent. That seems absolutely shocking, and potentially an astoundingly stupid oversight by Roblox. And there's at least some evidence that it's true. Looking now, Roblox does have a registration, but it looks like it was made on... June 9, the day the lawsuit was filed.

Wow. Now, that may seem embarrassing, but it might actually be more embarrassing for the Copyright Office and raise a significant and important legal question. Because it appears that Roblox did at one time have a DMCA agent registration but, as you may recall, back in 2016, the Copyright Office unilaterally decided to throw out all of those registrations and force everyone to renew (and then to renew again every three years through a convoluted and broken process).

There's an argument to be made that the Copyright Office can't actually do this. The law itself just says you need to provide the Copyright Office with the information, not that it needs to be renewed. The Copyright Office just made up that part. Perhaps we finally have a test case on our hands to see whether or not the Copyright Office fucked up in dumping everyone's registration.

Still, that's a minor point in the larger lawsuit. The publishers throw a lot of theories against the wall, hoping some will stick. It seems like most should be rejected under the DMCA's safe harbors, because it truly is user generated content, even if the lawsuit tries a variety of approaches to get around that. Part of the lawsuit argues contributory and vicarious copyright infringement, more or less pulling the "inducement" theory from the Grokster ruling, which basically says that if you as a company encourage your users to infringe, you could still be liable (this is, notably, nowhere in the actual law -- it's just what the Supreme Court decided).

But to get there, the lawyers for the music publishers seem to want to take a Roblox executive's comments completely out of context, in a somewhat astounding manner. The "proof" that Roblox is encouraging people to infringe is here:

Roblox is well aware that its platform is built and thrives on the availability of copyrighted music. As Jon Vlassopulos, Roblox’s global head of music, publicly stated just last year: “We want developers to have great music to build games. We want the music to be, not production music, but really great [commercial] music.” (Alteration in original). To that end, Roblox actively encourages its users to upload audio files containing copyrighted music and incorporate them into game content on the Roblox platform. Roblox advertises the importance of music in games and makes it easy for users to upload, share, and stream full-length songs.

But... if you read the article that they're using for that Vlassopulos quote, it's not directed at developers and users of their platform. It's targeted at musicians and the music industry. The whole point of the quote is to let musicians and the industry know that Roblox is open to licensing deals. It's pretty obnoxious to try to spin that as encouraging people to infringe when, in context, it sure looks like the exact opposite. I mean, literally the next sentence (which doesn't make it into the lawsuit) is about how they're "testing the waters" by making a deal with a small indie label to make all of its music available on Roblox.

So it seems to be Roblox saying the exact opposite of what the publishers are claiming. That's... kinda fucked up.

The lawsuit also tries to spin the impossible task of trying to moderate as proof that any failures in moderation are deliberate.

There is no question that Roblox has the right and ability to stop or limit the infringement on its platform. But Roblox refuses to do so, so that it can continue to reap huge profits from the availability of unlicensed music. While Roblox touts itself as a platform for “user-generated” content, in reality, it is Roblox—not users—that consciously selects what content appears on its platform. Roblox is highly selective about what content it publishes, employing over a thousand human moderators to extensively pre-screen and review each and every audio file uploaded. Roblox’s intimate review process includes review of every piece of copyrighted music, generally identified by title and artist—to ensure that it meets Roblox’s stringent and detailed content guidelines and community rules. This process ensures that Roblox plays an integral role in monitoring and regulating the online behavior of its young users.

Roblox thus unquestionably exercises substantial influence over its users and the content on its platform, ostensibly in the name of “safety.” Yet Roblox allows a prodigious level of infringing material through its gates, purposely turning a blind eye for the sake of profits. Rather than take responsibility, Roblox absurdly attempts to pass the obligation to its users—many of whom are young children—to represent to Roblox that they own the copyrights to the works they have uploaded.

Coincidentally, just last week we published our content moderation case study on Roblox, focused on how it tries to stop "adult" content on the platform. We noted that the company is very aggressive and hands-on with its moderation efforts but (importantly) it still makes mistakes, because every content moderation system at scale will make mistakes.

So just because Roblox is aggressive in its moderation, and even if it says it reviews everything, that doesn't mean that it "refuses" to stop infringement. It just means it doesn't catch it all. Indeed, the company has said in the past that it uses an automated third party monitoring tool to try to catch unauthorized songs (though, notably, this lawsuit is about the publishing rights, not the recording rights, so arguably a monitoring tool might catch some sound recordings while missing other songs that implicate songwriters/publishers -- but that's getting super deep in the weeds).

Indeed, the impossibility of catching everything -- while still encouraging websites to try -- is why we want things like Section 512 of the DMCA or Section 230 of the CDA. If you suddenly make websites liable for any mistakes they let through, then you create a huge problem. And claiming that their aggressive moderation implicates them even more only encourages sites to do less moderation in the long run.

But, the publishers don't care about that. Their end goal is clear: as in the EU, they want to force every website to have to buy a blanket license for music. They basically want to do away with the DMCA altogether, then just sit back and collect payments. They want to change the internet almost entirely from a tool for end users to a cash register for music publishers.

There are some other oddities in the lawsuit. It repeatedly tries to claim that Roblox is liable for direct infringement itself, but that theory seems like a stretch. Even the filings admit that the music is all uploaded by users:

Despite Roblox’s written policies, users regularly upload files containing copyrighted music. The act of “uploading” a file to Roblox involves the user making a copy of the file and distributing it to Roblox, where it is then hosted on Roblox’s servers.

To upload an audio file, a user simply opens the Roblox Studio and clicks on a tab marked “Audio,” which then prompts the user to choose a file on their local hard drive, in either .mp3 or .ogg format to be copied and distributed to Roblox’s servers.

It tries to build out the inducement theory by saying that because Roblox encourages developers to use music in their games, and this is the same as encouraging infringement, but that's nonsense. Nothing in what Roblox says encourages infringement. They're just saying that sound and music can enhance a game. Which is clearly true.

Roblox makes the process of uploading infringing music extremely easy for users. Roblox even published an article designed to encourage developers to add music to their games, which explains: “While building a game, it’s easy to overlook the importance of sounds and music.” (Emphasis added).4 That page gives users step-by-step instructions on how to copy and distribute their music files to the Roblox platform.

So what? That's not telling users to infringe. If anything, it's saying "find some music you're able to add to this legally." You'd think that publishers would be happy about that, as it opens up a new line of business where they could license their music, which is what the Roblox exec was talking about at the beginning. But leave it to the greedy publishers to not want to do the hard work here, and instead try to force a big company into a big payment.

Roblox has already put out a statement saying (not surprisingly) that it's "surprised and disappointed" by the lawsuit. It seems likely that it will mount an aggressive defense, and it could be yet another important case in seeing whether or not the legacy music industry is able to chip away at another important aspect of the DMCA, and to force all websites that host third party content to buy blanket licenses.

“As a platform powered by a community of creators, we are passionate about protecting intellectual property rights – from independent artists and songwriters, to music labels and publishers – and require all Roblox community members to abide by our Community Rules,” said the statement.

“We do not tolerate copyright infringement, which is why we use industry-leading, advanced filtering technology to detect and prohibit unauthorised recordings. We expeditiously respond to any valid Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) request by removing any infringing content and, in accordance with our stringent repeat infringer policy, taking action against anyone violating our rules.”

“We are surprised and disappointed by this lawsuit which represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Roblox platform operates, and will defend Roblox vigorously as we work to achieve a fair resolution,” continued Roblox’s statement.

Of course, this is par for the course for the legacy industry -- especially the publishers as lead by the NMPA's David Israelite. They wait for various internet services to get popular, and then rather than figuring out how that helps them, they sue. It's how they constantly kill the golden goose. They've done it with various internet music services, music games, and more. They're currently trying to do it with Twitch and now Roblox as well. They overvalue the music component, and choke off the long term business prospects for these platforms, many of which have music as an ancillary add-on.

It's silly, short-sighted, and anti-culture. In other words, it's the legacy music industry's usual playbook.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright office, dmca, dmca agent, inducement, publishers, registration, safe harbors
Companies: nmpa, roblox

Legacy Music Industry Shouldn't Get To Watch Over The Royalties Of Independent Songwriters

from the we've-done-this-before dept

Last year, a very strange thing happened in the copyright space: a pretty major update to copyright law was passed and it wasn't that controversial. Leading up to that passage there had been plenty of concerns, but a compromise was worked out last fall that was... actually pretty good for everyone involved. It wasn't how any sane society would craft copyright law from scratch, but the key aspects of the Music Modernization Act were to attempt to fix a lot of other really broken stuff. At the time we focused on the fact that it would help expedite moving some very old music into the public domain, which was great. But the much bigger deal to the music world was a reform of the mechanical licensing process for songwriters.

As we discussed in walking through one of a few lawsuits that had been filed against music streaming platforms over mechanical licensing, it was such a complex area of copyright law that basically no one fully understood it. Every single copyright lawyer I spoke to in trying to understand it would give me a totally different answer. So part of the Music Modernization Act was to clear up the questions around mechanical licensing and internet services, making it easier for songwriters to actually get royalties they're owed, without the convoluted process that used to be in place.

As with all things, the devil is very much in the details, and suddenly things are looking a bit problematic. The law directs the Register of Copyrights to designate an entity to become the new "mechanical license collective" (MLC), effectively creating a brand new collection society for these mechanical royalties. The Copyright Office has an open comment period on this, which is about to end, and musician Zoe Keating has noticed that the entire process appears to be rigged to (of course) help divert money to the big music publishers and away from independent artists. She's written a very detailed, but well worth reading, description of the problematic aspect of what's happening, and is asking the Copyright Office to extend the comment period as more songwriters -- especially independent ones, learn what's going on and can weigh in.

The key part in all of this is that the organization that represents the biggest music publishers, the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) is angling to run this new MLC. Indeed, it appears to be acting as if it already is in charge of it:

The NMPA very cleverly named their proposed group the “MLC” and continually refer to it as the “industry consensus” group. David Israelite in his sworn testimony to congress said the NMPA “is the trade association representing all American music publishers and their songwriting partners.” That’s not quite true. The NMPA does not represent songwriters like me.

Again, there is so much confusion on the street about mechanical royalties. I’ve been talking to all the songwriters I can the last couple weeks. So many are confused about what these royalties are and how to collect them. Some songwriters have tried to educate themselves and have read up about it only then to be confused by the NMPA’s naming confusion and as a result, think that the NMPA’s MLC is already The MLC or that it is the same as the AMLC or that everyone is on the same page. In short, there is confusion. That confusion benefits the NMPA.

A big part of the role of whoever becomes the MLC (whether it's the NMPA's version or another one) is, of course, to get the money they've collected to the artists who deserve it. And therein lies a bit of a concern:

There is a pot of unclaimed royalties that have already been paid by music services that is estimated to be between $1.5 and $2.5 billion. A major task of the new MLC will be to apply some clever technology to match that money to its rightful owners. I’ve already explained the difficulty of collecting when you’re unrepresented. Without question, a large portion of these unclaimed royalties belong to self-published songwriters.

The new law says that after three years the board of the MLC can decide to liquidate that pot of unclaimed royalties and distribute it to themselves by market share. This strikes me as a huge conflict of interest. Does the NMPA even have any incentive to do what it takes to match the royalties to whomever earned them? Are the unclaimed royalties of unrepresented songwriters just going to keep getting distributed to Sony, Universal etc now and forever going forward?

If you've been reading Techdirt for a really long time, this may sound familiar. Way back in 2004, the law over a different kind of royalty -- for interactive streams -- that was collected by a new group (SoundExchange) spun off from the organization representing the big record labels (the RIAA) said that it, too, could keep the money for itself, if the organization couldn't find artists. And, magically, SoundExchange had "trouble" finding lots of artists, including some really big names. By 2009, we noted that SoundExchange was hanging on to over $100 million that belonged to artists. Public outcry over this did eventually result in SoundExchange promising not to just keep the money for itself, and to its credit, after a lot of work, the organization did become much better at finding artists.

But it boggles the mind that having already gone through that experience 15 or so years ago, the Copyright Office would set up a nearly identical boondoggle. And, as Keating notes, the NMPA doesn't want much oversight over its proposed organization (unlike the competing proposal, which Keating is supporting):

If the NMPA is awarded this contract by the Copyright Office they will control billions of dollars in royalties without oversight (unlike the AMLC, the NMPA proposal says the Copyright Office will not oversee their entity) and with a conflict of interest that gives them incentive to liquidate and distribute unclaimed royalties to their members rather than to the songwriters who actually earned them.

This is increasingly important. As we've continued to show in our latest Sky is Rising report, the number of musicians and music being created continues to skyrocket. And a whole lot of that is coming from independent songwriters and musicians. The idea that the legacy industry should be able to collect and be in charge of distributing many millions of dollars owed to those independents seems problematic in many ways -- and it's not helped by the presumptuous attitude of the NMPA in pushing its own organization as the solution.

Keating is asking the Copyright Office to, at the very least, extend the deadline for comments beyond April 22nd, and hopefully the Copyright Office will listen.

The education issues here are huge. All the songwriters, large and small, that I’ve talked to have asked why they haven’t heard about any of this controversy when so much money is at stake. “If it was a big deal, why haven’t I heard about it?”. I can’t believe the deadline is as soon as April 22. We need more time to educate songwriters on this issue so they can choose which entity will administer their mechanical royalties.

I call on the Registrar of Copyrights to extend the comment period.

Meanwhile, I call on all songwriters to submit comments to the Registrar of Copyrights.

As Keating points out, one of the biggest challenges she's always had in making a full-time living as a successful independent musician is not piracy, but rather the legacy industry getting in the way and keeping money it owes her.

Ironically, a lot of the obstacles in the early stages of my career came not from file-sharing/piracy sites but from the established music industry and their gate-keeping. I understand that the NMPA is trying to protect its members from an industry that most often tries to siphon off as much of their member’s earnings as possible, but they should not protect themselves at the expense of unrepresented songwriters. Lets not bake the mistakes of the past into future systems.

Filed Under: independent song writers, mechanical royalties, mechanicals, mlc, music licensing, music modernization act, songwriters, zoe keating
Companies: nmpa

Legacy Recording Industry To Trump: Please Tell Tech Companies To Nerd Harder To Censor The Internet

from the feeding-right-into-the-program dept

Last week, we wrote about the ridiculous suggestion from the former Newspaper Association of America (now called the News Media Alliance) that President Donald Trump should scale back fair use because newspapers still don't like Google. As we noted, at a time when Trump has been strongly endorsing censoring newspapers, for those very newspapers to tell Trump to undermine a key cog in protecting free speech was absolutely ridiculous.

And, of course, now we can add the legacy recording industry to this same "shoot foot" brigade. Upon hearing about Trump's meeting with the heads of a bunch of top tech companies, the RIAA and a bunch of related recording industry associations (including ASCAP, BMI, A2IM, NMPA, SoundExchange and more... ) have sent a letter to Trump (found via Variety), asking him to force the internet companies to nerd harder to find better ways to censor the internet. This is fairly incredible, seeing as the traditional recording industry wasn't exactly a major Trump supporter. For them to now reach out to Trump and urge him to increase censorship of the internet is fairly astounding and sickening. Basically, to the RIAA and friends, hatred of Google and the internet is more important than concepts like free expression or holding our elected officials accountable.

Of course, the legacy recording industry doesn't come out and directly say "censor the internet," but that's exactly what they're asking for here (though watch the blog posts from defenders of the industry howl about me making this intent obvious):

Surely the world’s most sophisticated technology corporations can do better – by helping to prevent illegal access and paying fair market value for music with prices set by or based on the free market.

Strong protection for intellectual property rights will assure growth in both creativity and technology, benefiting the American economy as a whole.

We hope you will lead the effort to assure American creativity is encouraged, invested in, protected and fairly compensated in a manner that carries out the exclusive rights guaranteed in the Constitution to those who, with the genius of their mind, form the cultural identity of our great nation.

The call for censorship is in "preventing access" which means blocking what you can do online. The hilarious part is the "prices set based on the free market" because that's exactly what the industry is protesting. The whole "value gap" bullshit is basically the industry saying "we do not like what price the free market is setting, and therefore we need the government to artificially inflate prices through monopolies.

Just to be clear, if you're whining about not getting "fair compensation" you're clearly saying "I'm upset about the price the free market has set."

But the bigger issue here is the censorship piece. I shouldn't have to detail here how many times we've shown that copyright is abused for censorship purposes (including by governments). The call to hold platforms more accountable and putting the onus on them to "nerd harder" is a call to ramp up tools for censorship-via-copyright. This is pretty ridiculous -- and one hopes that musicians who have spoken out against Trump will also speak out against this demand to give him and his friends more power to censor parts of the internet.

Filed Under: copyright, donald trump, nerd harder, recording industry, value gap
Companies: a2im, ascap, bmi, google, nmpa, riaa, soundexchange

RIAA: How Dare The Internet Use The DMCA That We Wrote To Build Useful Services!

from the calm-down,-sparky dept

As we've mentioned, today is the day that comments are due to the Copyright Office on the effectiveness (or not) of Section 512 of the DMCA, better known as the "notice and takedown" safe harbor provisions. We'll be posting the details of our own filing at some point (possibly not until Monday as we're still finalizing a few things), but some of the other filings are starting to filter out, including a fairly astounding 97-page document from a bunch of legacy music industry organizations (about half of which is the actual filing, with the rest being appendices), including the RIAA, ASCAP, AFM, NMPA, SoundExchange and more. It's basically every organization that represents the way the industry used to work -- and the document reads like an angry polemic against the internet. It would have been much shorter, if they just wrote "our business used to be much better when we had more control and less competition -- and we never bothered to adapt, so fuck Google and all those internet companies -- and let's change the DMCA to punish them and magically bring back the good old days."

Also, the filing seems to leave out the fairly important point that it was these groups that basically wrote the DMCA that they're now whining about. Actually, let's get even more specific. The comment here was co-written by lawyer Steve Metalitz -- who has a way of showing up whenever some legacy industry is pushing to make copyright laws much, much worse. Metalitz's own bio emphasizes the fact that, as a lobbyist, he was "instrumental in the drafting" of the DMCA: So it seems rather... rich, for the legacy music industry to hire Metalitz, who proudly states that he was "instrumental in the drafting" of the DMCA while lobbying on behalf of these same groups, to now write a jeremiad about how totally awful the DMCA is for these same groups. But that's what's happened. The document literally mentions Google or YouTube more than once per page. But it starts right in with the industry's concerns, which might be summarized as "why hasn't Google stopped the evil piracy!?!?"

The Music Community’s list of frustrations with the DMCA is long. A broken “notice-and-takedown” system. Toothless repeat infringer policies. Active services mischaracterized as passive intermediaries. Incentives for services to embrace willful blindness instead of preventing known and widespread infringement. The words “representative list” read out of the statute.

Basically, Metalitz uses the document as a chance to list off how he's sad that the courts have basically ruled against copyright holders trying to chip away at the safe harbors at pretty much every turn:

Courts have also given little meaning to key provisions for content owners in the DMCA bargain. Examples include “red flag” knowledge, repeat infringer policies and representative lists. The result: safe harbor status for services that choose to stick their heads in the sand rather than do their fair share, forcing content owners to divert valuable resources from away creating content to sending minimally effective take down notices, or for content owners with limited resources, to actually refrain from sending takedown notices at all. Content owners, especially those with limited resources, simply cannot take on the entire digital universe alone.

At its worst, the DMCA safe harbors have become a business plan for profiting off of stolen content; at best, the system is a de facto government subsidy enriching some digital services at the expense of creators. This almost 20 year-old, 20th Century law should be updated.

Astoundingly, this comment claims that the results in the YouTube and Veoh lawsuits prove how broken the DMCA is and how much it favors internet companies. Remember, Veoh was a YouTube competitor that won its lawsuit that had been filed by Universal Music... but went out of business due to the legal costs of defending itself under the DMCA. And Metalitz and the RIAA are bitching about the fact that Veoh won... as if that was the travesty in the case, rather than the fact that the recording industry was able to shut down a perfectly legal web service that many people found useful.

The comment goes on to whine that even as more music is available to the public these days, revenue is down for some of those who signed on to the comment (the comment is careful not to mention that ASCAP, BMI, SESAC and SoundExchange revenue keeps going up... but... those inconvenient details must be ignored). What the filing also ignores, of course, is that these very same players fought tooth and nail against any of the innovative services that helped make this revolution in music accessibility possible. They basically now want to tax all the innovative companies who experimented and found the models that work and make consumers better off, while they themselves did none of that and actively sought to block nearly every new innovation. Talk about entitlement.

The comment also ignores the basic fact that if so much more music is being consumed today, that seems to suggest that the law must be working in some manner, seeing as the purpose of copyright law is to incentivize the creation of new works so that the public can benefit. By their own words, that seems to be happening.

Despite music being more popular than ever today, U.S. music industry revenues have been virtually flat since 2010 and are down nearly 50% since the DMCA was enacted in 1998. This has led to what we call the “value grab”, creating market distortions that lead to bizarre statistics like vinyl records generating more revenue for the industry in 2015 than the billions of on-demand ad-supported music streams on YouTube and similar services.

Except, of course, that comparison between vinyl and YouTube is total bullshit. As we were just discussing a week ago, the industry is comparing apples and oranges, using the gross "retail value" on vinyl (ignoring discounts and all the money that goes to everyone in the distribution chain) and only counting the net "wholesale value" on free streams (and ignoring the upsell opportunities or other revenue that comes from ad-supported streams).

The summary so far: we wrote the DMCA, but now we're going to whine about it. The public is benefiting like never before from new music -- so we're going to ignore that the purpose of copyright law appears to be met. We're not making as much money as we used to (ignoring that some of us are making much more than we used to)... but we see big internet companies making lots of money, so we're going to ignore that it's probably because they innovated and built services the public wanted while we sued our own biggest fans.

Compelling!

And, of course, the comment pushes for a "notice and staydown" regime:

Copyright owners should not be required to engage in the endless game of sending repeat takedown notices to protect their works, simply because another or the same infringement of the initially noticed work appears at a marginally different URL than the first time. The current standard of “URL by URL” takedown does not make sense in a world where there is an infinite supply of URLs. As described in the response to Question 15, technologies exist to identify content that is reposted on a digital service after it is removed, services of all sizes have implemented them, and they should be deployed as a standard industry practice.

Again, this ignores the basic fact that copyright is context dependent. And you can't put a total block on content, because you don't actually know if the content is actually infringing each time. Hell, remember in the Viacom case against YouTube (which the comment whines about), Viacom had to admit that the evil pirate uploaders to a bunch of the videos... were actually Viacom employees trying to market Viacom content. This is why we don't do full on content blocks, because just because the content is up, doesn't mean that it's infringing.

Even more ridiculous, while at one point noting that almost no one files counternotices, so that means that DMCA takedowns are almost all legit (despite a recent study debunking this point), it later whines that there are too many false counternotices:

In our experience, the counter-notification process results in too many false-positive counter-notices. For example, IFPI received counter-notices on 653 infringements, based on a sample of 98,753 infringements noticed to YouTube. After reviewing these counter-notices, it appeared that over 80% of the counter-notices had no good faith basis for claiming “mistake or misidentification,” the only valid statutory grounds for a counter-notification. Yet, based on this sample, the association representing the rights holders would be required to institute over 500 lawsuits in order to enforce their rights. This is an unmanageable burden. These statistics further demonstrate that the deck is unfairly stacked against rights holders.

Filing 500 lawsuits would be an "unmanageable burden?" Funny, the RIAA was able to go after at least 30,000 individuals. And, really, this paragraph acts as if filing a lawsuit is the only possible remedy in such a situation. It's not.

Also, trying to make sure that they're as evil and against the public and fans as much as possible, the comment actually decides to whine about the ruling in the dancing baby case, saying that it's some horrible burden to have to consider fair use before sending a takedown, even though they just need a subjective good faith belief, rather than an objective one:

We take this opportunity to highlight one case in particular, Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. In that case, contrary to Congressional intent and the weight of authority concerning who has the burden of claiming and proving fair use, the court held that a copyright holder must subjectively consider fair use before submitting a DMCA notice. This unique decision, and the fanfare that has followed it, is quite remarkable considering that other courts have expressly rejected that view, and that the Supreme Court has routinely held that the burden of proof for a fair use defense rests on the accused infringer.

They also whine that the newly amended version of that ruling took out the random dicta that an automated takedown system could meet the standard.

Believe it or not, that's just a sampling of all the ridiculousness in the comment. It's simply not a reality-based document. One hopes that the Copyright Office might actually recognize that, though that seems unlikely.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, dmca 512, liability, notice and staydown, notice and takedown, safe harbors, steve metalitz
Companies: ascap, nmpa, riaa, soundexchange

YouTube Fails In Explaining Flood Of Takedowns For Let's Play Videos

from the not-how-to-do-this dept

Last week, there had been some rumors that YouTube was changing its policies around so-called "let's play" videos, with some arguing that "Google was implementing SOPA" when it came to let's play videos -- and that all videos would have to be previewed first to make sure there was no use of copyright-covered content. That seemed like a clear exaggeration, but over the past few days there have been numerous reports from a variety of different sources about how many of the biggest video game channels on YouTube were suddenly getting inundated with copyright claims, many of which people felt were bogus.

So what's happened? Well, it's not that YouTube "implemented SOPA." Rather it appears to be a combination of pushing out its ContentID "scanning" program to channels that are listed as affiliates to so-called "MCNs" (Multi-channel Networks). MCNs are effectively "collections" of independent YouTube channels, banding together for certain advantages, such as cross-promotion and ad sales across all videos. While most people are familiar with ContentID, as far as I can tell (and despite repeated attempts to speak to multiple people, no one seems interested in explaining the details), it appears that ContentID generally works on newly uploaded videos, whereas going back and scanning existing videos is more targeted. And, it's that back scanning that has been "enabled" here. In other words, if those videos had been uploaded very recently, they might have been hit with the same ContentID claim, but these were "back catalog" videos in many cases, which sort of grandfathered them in. That explains the sudden influx. Going back over all those old videos has turned up a bunch of matches.

Then there's a separate issue: which is that many people claim that the claims are completely bogus. Even though they're on let's play videos, they're not coming from the video game companies, but other third parties. In fact, the big video game companies, like Ubisoft, Capcom and Blizzard say they have no problem with let's play videos and are actually trying to help those impacted in figuring out what to do.

This move is almost certainly a result of the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) suing Fullscreen, a big MCN, claiming copyright infringement. There are some generally interesting legal questions about whether or not an MCN is actually liable for any infringement by an independent YouTube producer, but some of these MCNs have grown to be quite large, and the publishers want money. YouTube is likely trying to clean up the videos associated with MCNs in one big move to avoid any future issues.

What that means, however, is that it's likely one of the reasons that people aren't recognizing the names making the copyright claims is that the matches aren't on the game play, but rather the music either in the video games themselves (likely in many cases) or that video makers add to their videos in general. To their credit, it appears that many of the gaming companies are actually helping video creators clear that music.

The whole thing is a bit of a mess, but not as crazy as it first appeared. And it's certainly not a case of "SOPAfying" YouTube videos. It's just extending the ContentID scanning to those channels to try to clean out problems and, hopefully, avoid future lawsuits against those MCNs.

That said, YouTube's communications over this have been dismal and have greatly contributed to the problem. The company has put out the identical statement to everyone who's asked (including us):

We recently enabled Content ID scanning on channels identified as affiliates of MCNs. This has resulted in new copyright claims for some users, based on policies set by the relevant content owners. As ever, channel owners can easily dispute Content ID claims if they believe those claims are invalid.

That's... somewhat useless. It doesn't address the reasons or the concerns of the video makers, and has many scared. That is not the best way to explain the situation, and only lends credence to the exaggerated claims that YouTube is helping to kill off let's play videos, when that's not the case at all. It also presupposes an extraordinary level of knowledge that most people don't have of Content ID, copyright, MCNs, licensing, publishing and more. It's basically the opposite of providing the information that video makers actually need -- leaving them freaked out about a massive influx in copyright claims they don't understand. Without a better, more honest and clear explanation, most users are blaming the most obvious party: YouTube.

It appears that YouTube briefed some MCNs on the basics of this change, which is why those rumors came out last week, as the MCNs tried to explain the issue to the affiliates -- but generally did so badly, because this stuff is complicated enough as is, and then you add a game of legal telephone where the people passing on the details don't really understand the issues either. YouTube could have done a much, much, much better job laying out the details of what it was doing and why (and even how that actually should help MCNs by avoiding lawsuits like the NMPA's. But instead, it's got a ton of people freaked out and its communications to those people are almost non-existent other than the cryptic statement which, while accurate, fails to portray the full situation.

Filed Under: contentid, copyright, flagging, licensing, mcn, takedowns, youtube
Companies: google, nmpa, youtube

Copyright Lobbyists And The $1 Trillion Fallacy

from the even-if-we-take-the-bogus-stats-at-face-value dept

Well, here we go again. Earlier this week, the IIPA (a sort of uber copyright maximalist lobbying group, made up of other copyright maximalist lobbying groups, including the MPAA, RIAA, BSA, AAP, NMPA, ESA and IFTA) released a new report on the economic impact of "the Copyright Industries." This report comes out every few years, written by the copyright maximalists' favorite economist, Stephen Siwek, who is well known for both these reports and another set of reports in which he tries to calculate "losses" due to infringement using the most ridiculous and misleading methodology imaginable. This report is slightly different. There's not much in the way of direct methodology: he's basically lumping together a bunch of industries as "core copyright" industries, and presenting some stats around them. There are also the "partial copyright" industries, which are kind of laughable, since it includes things like "furniture."

The report is incredibly misleading (and is being used in a misleading way), but we'll get to that. Instead, let's start out by taking the report at face value, and assuming that it is accurate. The claim that the backers of the report (including NBCUniversal, which funded it) are latching onto is the big round number: the claim that:

for the first time, the contribution of the core copyright indus- tries of the U.S. economy surpassed one trillion dollars in 2012

One Trillion! Big number. So big that the IIPA was even able to get the head of the Copyright Office, Maria Pallante, to highlight it in her presentation that coincided with the launch of the report. She apparently put that number on a single powerpoint slide and asked people to remember that number.

As we'll describe, that number doesn't actually say what Pallante and others are pretending it says, but even if it did... doesn't it suggest that the industries are doing fine? Even as infringement has continued to be a major issue, and there are new ways to share content around the globe, the data in the report suggests that the "core copyright industries" have continued to grow and thrive at a very consistent pace -- completely contrasting the supposed doom and gloom these same folks tell us about how piracy is supposedly killing these industries.

Instead, the report shows a steady increase in revenue within these industries, a steady increase in employment and a steady increase in the salaries of those employed in those industries -- in which they make more than people in many other industries. Basically, every chart in the report suggests that the "core copyright industries" are thriving, especially compared to the wider economy. Take, for example, the compensation chart: And yet, during those same years, we were being told, repeatedly, that those industries were dying, that jobs were going away and that we needed much stricter new copyright laws. This chart seems to debunk all of that.

But... of course, that's not how the IIPA and its supporters are spinning this report. Instead, they're using it to argue that "the core copyright industries" are "so important" to the US economy that they need to new laws and protection:

"This study represents a milestone," said Steven J. Metalitz, counsel to the IIPA. "In order to preserve and enhance jobs, exports and economic contributions, it is critical that we have strong legal protections for U.S. creativity and innovation in the U.S. and abroad."

[....] "This report makes it crystal clear that workers in the creative industries make a huge contribution to America's economy," said Matt Loeb, international president of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represents crew members on movies and TV shows. "It also underscores the urgent need to do more to build, strengthen and protect employment in this dynamic part of our nation's economy."

But... neither of those claims follows from the numbers presented. If these people knew anything about basic economics, they'd know that protectionism doesn't help grow markets -- it constrains them. The way you "strengthen" employment in these markets is by allowing competition and innovation to flow, which is the exact opposite of the legal regime they're pushing for. Of course, everyone knows what this is really about. The report is supplied by a few legacy players in this space, the ones threatened by innovation and upstarts. It's being pushed by the gatekeepers who don't want to compete. They don't want there to be more competition and innovation, because that tends to allow artists and creators to go direct -- and not to have to rely on gatekeepers, who take an 85% cut of all revenue.

Even worse, the report is incredibly misleading -- in effect allowing Siwek, the IIPA, Maria Pallante and other copyright maximalists to blatantly use the success of others who did not rely at all on copyright to support their notions that we need more copyright. That's because of a basic fact that is totally ignored in the report: just because you produce "copyright" covered content, it does not mean that you needed copyright to do so, or that you require copyright laws to do so. Instead, the report and its supporters are falsely claiming that every bit of revenue from the "core copyright industries" is because of strict copyright law. That's provably false. Hell, technically, the revenue that this very site that you're reading now produces is almost certainly included in that "$1 trillion." We're very much a part of the "core copyright industries." And yet we don't rely on copyright. At all. In fact, we dedicate all of our content to the public domain.

And it goes beyond that. A significant portion of the revenue they're discussing actually comes from computer software: But that's an industry where there's tremendous support for changing copyright laws so that there's less protection and more sharing. The growth of the open source movement, and the fact that it powers so much of what we do today, is hardly an argument for stricter protectionism and ratcheting up copyright laws. But, by lumping them all in as "core copyright industries" and then pretending that means you need strict copyright laws to create that content, Siwek, his funders and their friends get to actually use the innovations and business models that show why stricter copyright may be a bad idea... to argue for stricter copyright law.

It's not just blatantly dishonest, it's co-opting the economic activity that disproves their argument to pretend it supports their argument. That Maria Pallante would quote that number and support it suggests serious problems in how the Copyright Office views things today. This kind of report has no business being taken seriously, let alone being used in any policy arguments at all. But, if it is, at the very least, people should point out that, if taken at face value, it pretty clearly shows that the copyright maximalists have been flat out lying about their industries struggling, and how they need things like SOPA, TPP and other legal changes.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright industry, copyright maximalism, core copyright, economic impact, fallacies, stephen siwek, steve metalitz
Companies: bsa, iipa, mpaa, nmpa, riaa

When Is A Lyric Site More Than A Lyric Site?

from the used-for-commentary dept

Honestly, if there's anything more stupid than the music industry and song-writers going after lyrics sites, I can't imagine what that thing might be. We've talked in the past about how short-sighted it is for the profiteers of interest in songs targeting websites that do little beyond promoting interest in those same songs. Even the most obviously single-purpose lyric site that does nothing but post song lyrics is likely innocuous at worst and beneficial to all involved at best. Yet they're constant targets. Blech.

But sometimes this goes beyond blinder-vision and moves into a complete mis-targeting. That seems to be the case with the inclusion of RapGenius.com on the National Music Publisher's Association hitlist of sites from their press conference on Monday. The NMPA insisted all sites immediately pull lyrics off the site. RapGenius, for those of you not in the know, is much more than a lyrics site. But, according to one guy that I think I've heard of before:

David Lowery, a veteran of the bands Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker who has tracked the sites in his research for the University of Georgia, says they are big business.

“Unlicensed lyric sites are largely ignored as copyright infringers, but in fact these sites generate huge web traffic and involve more money than one might think,” he said. “The lyric business is clearly more valuable in the Internet age.”

What?!? First, it's hard to square these sites being ignored with their constantly being targeted and sued. Second, to understand what a site like RapGenius is and does, you actually have to look at the site. A cursory glance shows that the entire point of the site is to foster a conversation and commentary around lyrics (and more), their meaning, and their interpretations. This is done through user annotations, fostering a back and forth that often times includes the songwriters themselves. As RapGenius founder Ilan Zechory notes:

“Rap Genius is so much more than a lyrics site! The lyrics sites the NMPA refers to simply display song lyrics, while Rap Genius has crowdsourced annotations that give context to all the lyrics line by line, and tens of thousands of verified annotations directly from writers and performers. These layers of context and meaning transform a static, flat lyric page into an interactive, vibrant art experience created by a community of volunteer scholars. Furthermore, music is only a small part of what we do. Rap Genius is an interactive encyclopedia for annotation of all texts — anyone can upload and annotate texts relating to music, news, literature, religion, science, their personal lives, or anything else they want,” he concluded.

So, the questions are pretty obvious. First, why is the NMPA going after a site that is clothed in several layers of Fair Use armor? And second, why is an association that is supposed to protect the rights of all their songwriting members going after a site that many of them appear to enjoy using. Finally, what the hell kind of good is supposed to come of any of this? I'm not sure what the end-game is supposed to be for the NMPA, but this looks like a massive swing-and-a-miss to me. Oh, and it should be noted that people appear to have posted Techdirt articles to RapGenius as well, and everyone at Techdirt thinks that's great. We'd actually be really pissed off if some misguided attempt to squeeze money out of the site meant that our own content was held back and less widely distributed.

Filed Under: annotations, copyright, fair use, lyrics
Companies: nmpa, rapgenius

Legacy Recording Industry Claims Pandora Is Playing A 'Sick Joke' In Seeking The Same Rates Others Pay

from the really-now? dept

The ability of the record labels and RIAA front groups to flat out lie about the internet is really quite incredible. There's been some buzz recently about the crazy fact that Pandora just bought a small terrestrial radio station in South Dakota. Now, you might wonder, why would an innovative company that basically seems to be focused on making terrestrial radio stations obsolete need to own such a station... and Pandora is rather upfront in its answer: because the music collections societies, like ASCAP and BMI discriminate against internet companies, in direct violation of an antitrust agreement that ASCAP signed. Furthermore, ASCAP not only won't offer Pandora the same rights, but it engaged in highly questionable negotiation practices, such as refusing to tell Pandora what songs it was pulling the rights to, such that Pandora risked huge statutory awards for copyright infringement:

During negotiations, ASCAP and the publisher increased the pressure by refusing to provide Pandora the list of tracks that were being withdrawn, exposing Pandora to copyright infringement liability of up to $150,000 per work. At Pandora’s scale, such liability would be enormous. Faced with such potential liability, Pandora negotiated an agreement that resulted in increased rates. Shortly thereafter, additional major publishers took steps to withdraw their catalogs from ASCAP, again with respect to Pandora.

ASCAP created additional ways to circumvent its antitrust consent decree. Our motion also describes how ASCAP refused to provide Pandora a license under the same terms as the iHeartRadio service, for only one reason: iHeartRadio is owned by a terrestrial broadcaster.

All of this is in direct violation of the antitrust agreement ASCAP has with the DOJ, in which it's supposed to make sure that ASCAP can't use its monopoly power over compositions to discriminate against certain players. Yet, ASCAP is clearly trying to discriminate against internet streaming services, by charging them significantly higher rates.

So, Pandora has bought the station in order to get the same rates as other streaming radio stations that are owned by terrestrial stations. As Public Knowledge points out:

This is a perfect example of the twisted incentives and strange results we get from a music licensing system that is based on who wants a license instead of just what they want to do with the music they’re using. This makes no sense. The law should treat like uses alike. Regardless of how high or low you think performance royalty rates for webcasting should ultimately be, there is no logical reason to give preferential rates to certain companies just because they arrived at the negotiation table first.

And this is only about composition rates, not even getting into the rates that Pandora has to pay for sound recordings, which is infinitely higher than terrestrial radio. Buying the radio station won't help on that front, because the internet streams are charged differently than terrestrial radio no matter who owns it, but just the fact that it's paying different rates than everyone else seems ridiculous.

And, of course, the incumbents try to twist all of this. First up, we see that BMI has sued Pandora for buying the radio station. I'm not joking. I can't see on what possible grounds a lawsuit would make sense. Are they saying it's illegal for a company to seek to get the same rates that BMI offers radio stations?

But, even worse than that is the reaction of the RIAA front group, MusicFirst, a lobbying group set up by the RIAA and SoundExchange solely for the purpose of lobbying against internet companies and seeking ever higher rates for those companies, to make sure no internet music company can stay in business. That this is short-sighted and stupid never seems to occur to MusicFirst, who is always quick with a blog post arguing that internet companies are up to no good. In this case, it accuses Pandora of playing a "sick joke" in making this purchase:

This has to be some kind of sick joke. Pandora bought an FM radio station to game the system in order to pay songwriters less?

Pandora continues to find new ways to give artists and songwriters a raw deal from the bottom of the deck. In their race to the bottom to see how little they can pay music creators, they have stooped to misleading legislation, bait and switch petitions, and now fronting as an FM radio station.

Oh really now? It's a "sick joke" to try to get the same license rate that ASCAP and BMI offer terrestrial radio stations? How so? It's a "sick joke" that the company doesn't think it's fair for ASCAP and BMI to discriminate against internet streaming radio services? The only "sick joke" is MusicFirst pretending to represent artists as it seeks to kill off new and innovative internet services that are helping artists build bigger fan bases. No wonder the RIAA-funded MusicFirst has to resort to silly claims like this. The RIAA has never wanted to adapt to an internet world, and is, once again, looking to spread completely bogus propaganda in an attempt to stifle internet progress, which tends to help independent artists, such that they don't need the RIAA labels any more. What's incredible is that the RIAA, which set up MusicFirst, has it pretend to represent the interests of "artists" when it's never been anything more than a big-label front group. If there's any "sick joke" it would be MusicFirst's pretend concern for artist's rights, that just so happen to align entirely with the interests of the big labels.

Meanwhile, David Israelite, the lobbyist for the music publishers has piled on as well, claiming that this is about Pandora "going to war with songwriters."

David Israelite, CEO of the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA), tonight interrupted his state-of-the-industry speech at the group's annual meeting in Manhattan to lash out at Pandora's decision to acquire a radio station in South Dakota. "Pandora is going to pursue lawsuits and gimmicks," Israelite told the hundreds of songwriters and composers in attendance. "Pandora is hoping to fraudulently sneak in the back door. Any shred of credibility that Pandora had is gone. They are at war with songwriters "

Once again... huh? Asking for the same rates that radio pays to stream music online is "going to war"? How does that compute? It's as if the music publishers, collection societies and the RIAA can't help but lie because they have such distaste for Pandora actually figuring out a service that people like online, when they've spent so many years trying to ensure that online services fail. If there's any "war" going on here, it's the legacy recording industry against online services that fans seem to love.

Filed Under: discrimination, licensing, lobbyists, music publishers, radio, recording industry, royalties, streaming
Companies: ascap, bmi, musicfirst, nmpa, pandora, riaa

Music Publishers: We Need Strong Copyright Laws Because We Don't Like The Consumer Electronics Association

from the um,-what? dept

A few folks have sent over a Forbes article by David Israelite, the head of the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA), provocatively entitled: We Need Strong Copyright Laws Now More Than Ever. I read it carefully, expecting an argument to discuss concerning copyright law... but it never comes. Instead, the entire article appears to be about how the Consumer Electronics Association is big, and the NMPA is small. So, copyright.

Technically, the article is a "response" to another Forbes piece, by Gary Shapiro, the head of the Consumer Electronics Association, in which he notes that a series of recent issues suggests that copyright law is not serving its proper function, and the time is right to take "a fresh look at copyright laws." The article makes the case that copyright laws do have a purpose, and it even celebrates some actions by the entertainment industry to seek to innovate and embrace some new technologies. There's actually very little that I think anyone on any side of the debate should find particularly controversial. So, without an actual argument possible to make, Israelite decided to just focus solely on the fact that CEA is bigger than NMPA.

The first eight paragraphs of the article are just attacks on CEA. Then there's finally one paragraph that actually talks about copyright. Just one:

Copyright significantly contributes to the trade balance for our nation. A song written decades ago in Nashville can be heard, legally, in Japan, and today’s American hits instantly become top international downloads. Products associated with copyright, and this goes beyond music to include television, movies, newspapers, magazines, books, and computer software, are one of the few sectors expanding internationally. The most recent data finds copyright industries outpacing aircraft, auto, food, and pharmaceuticals in sales and exports. And as our economy gets back on track, consider the power behind songwriter-driven small businesses that provide jobs in every state.

Of course, there are multiple problems and misleading aspects to this paragraph. It assumes that copyright is the same thing as the music itself. While the music may contribute to the economy, that does not mean that copyright itself contributes to the economy. Second, he assumes that "stronger" copyright laws would somehow increase the ability of those sectors to make money, when there's little evidence to actually support that. There's just a big correlation/causation error. Either way, nothing in the post actually touches on the title of the article. It basically is just a piece to bash the Consumer Electronics Association because Shapiro mentioned in his article that the NMPA supported SOPA last year, and how that was a move in the wrong direction.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright reform, david israelite, gary shapiro, music, music publishers
Companies: cea, nmpa

Are New Streaming Royalty Rates A Way To Backdoor DRM Into Copyright Law?

from the dangerous dept

We recently wrote about how different parts of the music industry -- the RIAA, NMPA and DMA -- had come to an agreement on new royalty rates, as well as designating royalties for "new classifications" of services. While the groups celebrated this solution for being "flexible" for new providers, the details suggest a different story. We already expressed concerns about what are apparently licensing requirements for services that shouldn't need any license (i.e., personal music lockers). However, that was just based on the press release. When you look at the full details (pdf and embedded below), it gets even more troubling -- to the point that the whole agreement should probably be rejected.

Here's the big concern. This is a settlement among a few parties, who certainly don't represent the entire industry. Yet, if the Copyright Royalty Board and their (typically out of touch) judges accept the settlement, the details of the settlement become law. And that's problematic, because this thing is pretty crazy with restrictions -- some of which are nearly impossible to understand. If you think the tax code is confusing, you haven't tried to figure out what you have to pay to license certain services. Let's just say you want to set up a locker service that allows users to buy music which automatically goes into the locker. Well, among a ton of other rules, try this sucker on for size:

In the case of a purchased content locker service, the percentage of subpart C service revenue applicable in step 1 of &sec;385.22(b)(l)(i) is 12%. For the avoidance of doubt, paragraph (l)(i) of the definition of subpart C service revenue shall not apply. The minimum for use in step 1 of &sec;385.22(b)(l)(ii) is the appropriate subminimum as described in paragraph (b) of this section for the accounting period, where the all-in percentage applicable to &sec;385.23(b)(l) is 18%), and the sound recording-only percentage applicable to &sec;385.23(b)(2) is 22%, except that for purposes of paragraph (b) of this section the applicable consideration expensed by the service for the relevant rights shall consist only of applicable consideration expensed by the service, if any, that is incremental to the applicable consideration expensed for the rights to make the relevant permanent digital downloads and ringtones.

That's on page 40 of 44 pages. And is just one paragraph. Good luck figuring out the rest of the rules without a cadre of lawyers (oh wait... perhaps that's the idea).

But the bigger issue is that this agreement is a way to actually sneak DRM into copyright law. While existing copyright law has anti-circumvention rules, it makes no statement on how DRM actually impacts royalties or requirements (beyond anti-circumvention). Yet, this "agreement" has multiple sections that define types of DRM and with different rules for those specific cases. That is, the agreement defines the idea of a "limited download."

Limited download means a digital transmission of a sound recording of a musical work to an end user, other than a stream, that results in a specifically identifiable reproduction of that sound recording that is only accessible for listening for—

(1) An amount of time not to exceed 1 month from the time of the transmission (unless the service provider, in lieu of retransmitting the same sound recording as another limited download, separately and upon specific request of the end user made through a live network connection, reauthorizes use for another time period not to exceed 1 month), or in the case of a subscription transmission, a period of time following the end of the applicable subscription no longer than a subscription renewal period or 3 months, whichever is shorter; or

(2) A specified number of times not to exceed 12 (unless the service provider, in lieu of retransmitting the same sound recording as another limited download, separately and upon specific request of the end user made through a live network connection, reauthorizes use of another series of 12 or fewer plays), or in the case of a subscription transmission, 12 times after the end of the applicable subscription.

(3) A limited download is a general digital phonorecord delivery under 17 U.S.C. 115(c)(3)(C) and (D).

Is this really what we want in the law? A specific legal definition of DRM that applies to others despite not being a part of the negotiations? The main issue is that this is a standard contract between private parties. That's fine if it only applied to those parties who were subject to the negotiation. But thanks to the CRB process, the end result may be to stuff this private contract between private parties directly into the law, and that will expand copyright in highly questionable ways.

There are lots of other concerns about the document as well. It has lots of "this or that" calculations -- all of which default to the "greater of" option -- meaning that the rates are going to keep going up. Also, the agreement repeatedly defines "minimums" but we'll be waiting a looooooong time for you to come back with where the "maximums" are. The whole thing is crazy confusing, and while it may be perfectly fine if it were just a contract among a few players, the second it becomes part of copyright law, we should be concerned.

Filed Under: copyright royalty board, drm, royalties, streaming
Companies: dma, nmpa, riaa