MP3.com Chimes In On RIAA Filing

Aiming to ensure that the powerful Recording Industry of America (RIAA)
is not the only voice considered in the upcoming regulatory debate over
digital music copying, MP3.com has filed its own comments with the US
Copyright Office, piggybacking on an earlier RIAA filing.

MP3.com officials want the US Copyright Office to draw a distinction -
for the purposes of royalty payments - between electronic copies of
previously purchased music and copies of music not paid for in advance.

The RIAA is asking the Copyright Office to pass a rule governing the
amount of royalties that music publishers must be paid for electronic
copies and reproductions of music to which the publishers own the
rights. Specifically, the RIAA wants a ruling on so-called digital
photo-record deliveries (DPDs) and incidental DPDs (I-DPDs) which are
made when copies are "cached" on an Internet server.

The RIAA filing stems from a dispute between record labels - which the
RIAA represents - and music publishers over record label efforts to
download and store music on their Internet servers. Publishers want
record companies to pay for every DPD and I-DPD, while record
companies are reluctant to pay for internal server copies.

While the record companies, in most cases, own the actual sound
recordings of music performances, they often don't own the publishing
rights. In most cases record companies must pay royalties to publishers
in order to re-copy those recordings for sale.

MP3.com, which allows its customers to make digital copies of the music
that they have already purchased, either online or otherwise, does not
want their customers to be charged at all for DPDs or I-DPDs.

MP3.com officials maintain that their customers are merely making
personal copies of music they already own for their own use - much like
making a cassette tape-copy of a compact disk. Since the customers have
already paid for the music in question, publishers suffer no loss when
they make personal recordings, MP3.com government affairs chief Billy
Pitts told Newsbytes today.

While MP3.com executives say that the matter will probably not be
decided ultimately by the Copyright Office, and thus will require
congressional action, they are nonetheless adamant about defending their
business model to federal regulators.

"We want to put a marker down that we are going to (press) this issue in
every (arena) that we can," Pitts said.