It seems one of the RIAA's jobs is doing unpopular things and taking the blame. The recording studios can keep them at arms length and stay reasonably spotless while they are the real responsibles for these actions.

I don't think the studios care either, it's the artists that are at the forefront. As long as their image is not spoiled the rest doesn't really matter, I doubt many people buy (or don't buy) an album because it's published by Sony Music or Universal.

I know laymen that otherwise wouldn't care, but would not buy Sony Music. Sony ruined some hardware back in the day. I don't think that anyone I know personally had hardware ruined, but they heard of it and learned to stay clear of Sony Music.

Yep. Sony has been on my 'do not buy anything Sony" for almost 20 years now.

I used to buy lots of music and video. I deliberately stopped buying anything in that line way back in the early 2000s. Roughly at the same time as my Sony boycott.

The ticketmaster value proposition

Blame-as-a-Service. The business model of many management consultants.

Agreed. If the people behind these take-down requests actually ended piracy, they'd be out of a job.

Don't be naive.

When they are done with open piracy they will move to other stuff.

Did you whistle a copyrighted tune in the elevator? You owe us money now.

(If you think I'm joking, look at Japan who jails musicians for 10+ years for playing covers at parties without paying royalties)

Citation needed. All I can find are jailed musicians in Japan for drug possession.

I don't think you're joking, but I think you're making pretty terrible assumptions.

A party large enough is effectively a broadcast/performance.

It's not as cut and dried and greed-filled as all that.

For large acts and musical pieces that have moved into the larger cultural milieu, sure—there's a discussion to be had about the place of the work in that society. (And then maybe the society as a whole should compensate the artist they've so benefited from more directly)

Those licensing and copyright laws were designed to protect journeyman musicians from having their life's work robbed by large publishers and broadcasters and it still serves that purpose.

Imagine proprietary software from your work was lifted and incorporated by a potential client. I'm certain in most cases that would be grounds for litigation in most peoples' minds. (Or, for example Robert Kearns' case)

IP protection laws are completely overgrown though, in the way a bacteria out of balance harms it's host, or a plague of locusts destroys the environment.

10 years, not a second more! For all IP .. no exceptions.

Lifetime wasn't the discussion at hand, though. The topic was the validity of protections at all.

People have a lingering hatred on for the RIAA, and maybe rightfully so, from the Napster trials and so on from the early 2000's and I think they let it blind them to the history of music and creators' rights in North America.

The assumption that musicians are all a bunch of greedy sods making it filthy rich, undeservingly, is pretty awful. The reality is they get robbed often.

(And people get all hot under the collar when it comes to licensing of performances and broadcasts because they want to rant about the RIAA, but that's not really their wheelhouse—that's more the domain of organizations like SOCAN, ASCAP, BMI, etc, and they do a lot for artists).

But who am I kidding. It's 2020. Everywhere I look, people want their music, films, and journalism for free while they proceed to whip the creators for whatever faults they find with the creation or research...