Eliot Spitzer, the New York State attorney general, has issued subpoenas to the world’s leading music companies in an effort to discover whether the industry has broken any laws regarding the wholesale pricing of digital music downloads.
The subpoenas were issued to all four major music companies last week, people involved said, but the probe is still at a preliminary stage. “It is too early to call it an investigation,” a spokesman for Mr Spitzer said. “It is a preliminary enquiry for information.” He added that any decisions related to the probe were still “many months away”.
The probe comes amid rising tension over digital pricing between the major music companies and Apple, which dominates the legal download market through its iTunes service.
Spitzer wants to be president, one of these years. Not that this could have anything to do with his legal standards. Gosh, I’m such a cynic.
I’m getting a good bit of free music these days. The download music prices do seem to be fixed. I don’t use music download services. The devices are too expensive, there is DRM which is nasty stuff and it supports a new monopolistic business model. As for any decisions being many months away, he should be able to reach some fairly quick conclusions using general observations like something is rotten in Denmark. Steve Jobs is calling the music industry “greedy” the story said. I think some of the musicians are greedy. Nobody is more greedy than the technology industry. It is trying to take over the music industry. These people would kill free FM radio and you would need a $200.00 device to pay for songs at a buck a pop. The greedy musicians will be able to sell direct and make more money than ever.
I’m all for them making all they can. It beats paying a tech tax to listen to a good tune. Share your talent and you can make things happen.
If there is something going on to be investigated, it is an interstate commerce issue. So what does this have to do with any single state’s attorney general?
I absolutely believe that the federal government steps on the state’s toes too often with invalid use of the interstate commerce clause, but I don’t see how sales over the internet could be anything other than. Unless of course you could prove that none of the data transmitted between the seller and consumer crosses state borders.
Dvorak reader: musicians greedy? Hardly. Most musicians, no matter how superstar they are, make their money on touring and licensing their music, not on record sales. Despite that almost 100% of the overhead, distribution, etc. is taken out of distribution on iTunes, musicians see the same amount of money per sale as when physical copies are sold. If musicians’ greed is part of this model, they aren’t getting what they want.
I’m guessing you meant the labels are greedy? On most contracts, they are the ones that have money to make or lose on music downloads, not musicians themselves (directly anyway). These new experimental e-labels (and e-label branches of major labels) are more musician-friendly though.
Yes, Mr. Spitzer shall be running for the Governor of NY State. Bravo. Mr. Spitzer appears to be, through a long body of work, have no problem not sucking up to the Lobbyist / PAC money and actually going after the Bad Element of Big Business. Yes, he is a politican and of course, is thinking Long Term on his career. But when the US Government takes the Lobbyist money and does not pursue avenues it should – then it is up to each state’s attorneys general. Mr. Spitzer is rare in the area that he’s willing to seemingly go after anyone – regardless of how important or rich that person or market sector is. My solution to the horror of MSFT windows? They have made xxx $ billion dollars selling a defective product for 10 years. If a car is sold and is defective, the US government fines/sues the maker and the car is fixed via recalls. It is the job of the US Commerce Dept. So for 10 years, 100 Billion Dollars? 200 billion? of revenue was received by Microsft for selling a product they knew was 1) Defective 2) did not work properly 3) when used, has caused untold billions of dollars of waste and massive problems for its users via virus, security holes, hours spent patching, etc. I’d love to see what Spitzer would have done if he was running the DOJ – my idea: Fine MSFT $50 million per day until they FIXED the defects in the products they have sold since 1995 (When Windows 95 came out). Think of ANY other industry – that you pay serious money for defective products and the government does not act on behalf of the nation’s consumers. Vista isn’t even out yet, and they are viruses out there for it.