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Recently, the two divas — along with artists including Paul McCartney, Kings Of Leon, Steven Tyler, and Lionel Richie –have signed a petition urging Congress to reform the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which was signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1998.
The petition — organized by music manager Irving Azoff — believes that tech companies have used the law to make money while singers and songwriters get zilch.
“It has allowed major tech companies to grow and generate huge profits by creating ease of use for consumers to carry almost every recorded song in history in their pocket via a smartphone, while songwriters’ and artists’ earnings continue to diminish Music consumption has skyrocketed, but the monies generated by individual writers and artists for that consumption has plummeted The growth and support of technology companies should not be at the expense of artists and songwriters.”
He does have a valid point!
On the flip side, The Internet Association — a group that represents companies such as Netflix and Facebook — asserts that DMCA is working perfectly fine!
“The Digital Millennium Copyright Act creates safe harbors for Internet platforms by ensuring they will not be liable for what their users do, so long as the platforms act responsibly These smart laws allow people to post content that they have created on platformssuch as videos, reviews, pictures, and text. In essence, this is what makes the Internet great.”
YouTube defended their practice, believing their current model benefits everyone.
“The overwhelming majority of labels and publishers have licensing agreements in place with YouTube to leave fan videos up on the platform and earn revenue from them Today the revenue from fan uploaded content accounts for roughly 50 percent of the music industry’s YouTube revenue. Any assertion that this content is largely unlicensed is false.”
Only time will tell whether Congress will reform the law or not!
[Image via WENN.]