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The Complexity of Licencing Music Services in Canada

Bob Tarantino has an interesting post on the complexity with licencing music services in Canada in light of Pandora’s comments on the high costs here.

2 Comments


  1. Good read. Tarantino ends it well.

    “…we end up with a cumbersome, expensive system which may not be well-placed to respond to the pace of change in a digital world.”

    Well, DUH!!!!

  2. A comment from our impartial friend .. James Gannon
    From the comment section of the article linked above.

    James Gannon – September 27, 2010 3:03 PM
    “If we also had a more robust system for protecting the works sold through these new distribution channels, Canadian rights holders and exclusive licensees would be far more inclined to license their works through these services at better rates. With dependable protection for the TPMs on which these services rely, owners and licensees wouldn’t mind giving favourable licensing terms to online distributors because they would know the work will be protected and not “leak” from that distribution channel into the Internet ether of free file-sharing. Because TPM protection is currently non-existent in Canada, how does an artist or label know that this service will adequately protect the licensed works? There’s no incentive to license a variety of business models when our laws lack the necessary framework to ensure their distribution will be limited to the scope intended by those models. It creates an effect where rights holders will negotiate for licensing fees with the assumptions that works available through services like Pandora will end up being distributed beyond the intention of that service provider.”

    @Crockett – “James, you know, or should know if you have talked to anyone with technical expertise, that TPMs do not prevent media from being ‘leaked’. Any TPM is crackable and will be cracked no matter what. It’s just a red herring. TPMs are for distributor control on honest customers. ‘Pirates’ don’t care and will share your stuff regardless. Customers are just inconvenienced and dinged over again for wanting to use their purchased media for private use as they wish. Pandora operates just fine in the USA and there are magnitudes more files ‘pirated’ there than Canada on any given day. Put the spin away and be honest .. oh wait, you a lawyer for the content industry .. just forget I asked 0_o”