This is a brief excerpt from an article written by Janis Ian for Performing Songwriter Magazine, May 2002
I apologize Ms. Ian for not publishing this article in its entirety but due to space limitations I will paste this hyperlink to the full article. http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html

Excerpted . . .

“If you think about it, the music industry should be rejoicing at this new technological advance! Here’s a fool-proof way to deliver music to millions who might otherwise never purchase a CD in a store. The cross-marketing opportunities are unbelievable. It’s instantaneous, costs are minimal, shipping nonexistant…a staggering vehicle for higher earnings and lower costs. Instead, they’re running around like chickens with their heads cut off, bleeding on everyone and making no sense. As an alternative to encrypting everything, and tying up money for years (potentially decades) fighting consumer suits demanding their first amendment rights be protected (which have always gone to the consumer, as witness the availability of blank and unencrypted VHS tapes and casettes), why not take a tip from book publishers and writers?

Baen Free Library is one success story. SFWA is another. The SFWA site is one of the best out there for hands-on advice to writers, featuring in depth articles about everything from agent and publisher scams, to a continuously updated series of reports on various intellectual property issues. More important, many of the science fiction writers it represents have been heavily involved in the Internet since its inception. Each year, when the science fiction community votes for the Hugo and Nebula Awards (their equivalent of the Grammys), most of the works nominated are put on the site in their entirety, allowing voters and non-voters the opportunity to peruse them. Free. If you are a member or associate (at a nominal fee), you have access to even more works. The site is also full of links to members’ own web pages and on-line stories, even when they aren’t nominated for anything. Reading this material, again for free, allows browsers to figure out which writers they want to find more of – and buy their books. Wouldn’t it be nice if all the records nominated for awards each year were available for free downloading, even if it were only the winners? People who hadn’t bought the albums might actually listen to the singles, then go out and purchase the records.

I have no objection to Greene et al trying to protect the record labels, who are the ones fomenting this hysteria. RIAA is funded by them. NARAS is supported by them. However, I object violently to the pretense that they are in any way doing this for our benefit. If they really wanted to do something for the great majority of artists, who eke out a living against all odds, they could tackle some of the real issues facing us:

• The normal industry contract is for seven albums, with no end date, which would be considered at best indentured servitude (and at worst slavery) in any other business. In fact, it would be illegal.
• A label can shelve your project, then extend your contract by one more album because what you turned in was “commercially or artistically unacceptable”. They alone determine that criteria.
• Singer-songwriters have to accept the “Controlled Composition Clause” (which dictates that they’ll be paid only 75% of the rates set by Congress in publishing royalties) for any major or subsidiary label recording contract, or lose the contract. Simply put, the clause demanded by the labels provides that a) if you write your own songs, you will only be paid 3/4 of what Congress has told the record companies they must pay you, and b) if you co-write, you will use your “best efforts” to ensure that other songwriters accept the 75% rate as well. If they refuse, you must agree to make up the difference out of your share.
• Congressionally set writer/publisher royalties have risen from their 1960’s high (2 cents per side) to a munificent 8 cents.
• Many of us began in the 50’s and 60’s; our records are still in release, and we’re still being paid royalty rates of 2% (if anything) on them.
• If we’re not songwriters, and not hugely successful commercially (as in platinum-plus), we don’t make a dime off our recordings. Recording industry accounting procedures are right up there with films.
• Worse yet, when records go out-of-print, we don’t get them back! We can’t even take them to another company. Careers have been deliberately killed in this manner, with the record company refusing to release product or allow the artist to take it somewhere else.
• And because a record label “owns” your voice for the duration of the contract, you can’t go somewhere else and re-record those same songs they turned down.
• And because of the re-record provision, even after your contract is over, you can’t record those songs for someone else for years, and sometimes decades.
• Last but not least, America is the only country I am aware of that pays no live performance royalties to songwriters. In Europe, Japan, Australia, when you finish a show, you turn your set list in to the promoter, who files it with the appropriate organization, and then pays a small royalty per song to the writer. It costs the singer nothing, the rates are based on venue size, and it ensures that writers whose songs no longer get airplay, but are still performed widely, can continue receiving the benefit from those songs.

Additionally, we should be speaking up, and Congress should be listening. At this point they’re only hearing from multi-platinum acts. What about someone like Ani Difranco, one of the most trusted voices in college entertainment today? What about those of us who live most of our lives outside the big corporate system, and who might have very different views on the subject?
There is zero evidence that material available for free online downloading is financially harming anyone. In fact, most of the hard evidence is to the contrary.
Greene and the RIAA are correct in one thing – these are times of great change in our industry. But at a time when there are arguably only four record labels left in America (Sony, AOL/Time/Warner, Universal, BMG – and where is the RICO act when we need it?)… when entire genres are glorifying the gangster mentality and losing their biggest voices to violence…when executives change positions as often as Zsa Zsa Gabor changed clothes, and “A&R” has become a euphemism for “Absent & Redundant”… well, we have other things to worry about.
It’s absurd for us, as artists, to sanction – or countenance – the shutting down of something like this. It’s sheer stupidity to rejoice at the Napster decision. Short-sighted, and ignorant.