Kazaa, Verizon Propose To Pay Artists Directly - Hillary Balks

[JackSpratts]

By Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY
Jim Guerinot, a board member of Don Henley's and Sheryl Crow's Recording Artists
Coalition and the manager of No Doubt, Beck and The Offspring, is such a fan of digital music that he has ripped his CD collection into MP3s and listens to them on his portable Apple iPod on his daily bicycle commute to work.
But you won't find any of his artists' work posted on Pressplay, the Net subscription service backed by their record labels. He removed them, he says, because the acts weren't getting paid.
The record industry has responded to the immense popularity of file-sharing — and trading of copyrighted material — by suing to close the operations down. But as one swap site shuts, others take its place, and more people are downloading now than ever.
An unlikely alliance of swap-service Kazaa and telephone and Internet giant Verizon is floating a proposal to break the logjam of lawsuits: Computer manufacturers, blank CD makers, ISPs and software firms such as Kazaa will pool funds and pay artists directly.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/t...usic-kazaa.htm

- js.

[butterfly_kisses]

(it's unclear whether costs would be passed along to subscribers)

sure they will be....whom else?

Recording Industry Association of America president Hilary Rosen calls the proposal "the most disingenuous thing I've ever heard. It's ridiculous."

to this weary file swapper my response is, "not have as ridiculous as the riaa its self"