Why Zune shouldn't pay blood money to Universal

By at 7:23 pm Thursday, Nov 9

Nathanael sez, "Peter Kirn of Create Digital Music has a devastating critique of just why Universal & Microsoft's new agreement for profit sharing on Zune hardware sales is bad for music and a dangerous precedent."
1. Instead of license fees covering music, they’ll cover audio hardware – with no music involved.

2. Instead of license fees being paid to the musicians, they’ll be paid to the record label. One (large, corporate) label.

3. Instead of a fair, standard license fee, that license fee will be negotiated independently by individual labels. Arbitrarily.

4. Hardware manufacturers, who theoretically ought to profit off a product they design, manufacture, market, and distribute, will now have to share those profits with a separate company that wasn’t involved in the hardware at all.

Link (Thanks, Nathanael!)

Cory Doctorow

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