from the don't-they-have-those-songs-anymore? dept.
The National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) has asked the courts to allow it to double its claims against exercise bike and treadmill startup Peloton, after discovering more unlicensed music — including songs by Taylor Swift and Kesha — being used in workout videos that play on the bikes' built-in screens. It's now seeking $300 million in damages, as reported by Forbes.
The original complaint, filed in March, accused Peloton of using over 1,000 songs without getting the proper license. At the time, NMPA requested $150 million in damages. After the lawsuit was filed, the offending songs conveniently disappeared, upsetting connected exercise equipment owners who'd gotten used to their beloved playlists.
But not all the songs disappeared, as reported by The Verge. Here's what the NMPA now has to say about that:
Indeed, it is only as a result of initial discovery in this lawsuit that the full scope and extent of Peloton's unlawful infringement has started to come into focus, revealing more than 1,000 additional musical works [...] those newly discovered works include some of the most famous and popular songs ever recorded, such as "Georgia On My Mind," "I Can See For Miles" and "I Saw Her Standing There."
Related Stories
Peloton Outage Prevents Customers From Using $2,500 Exercise Bikes:
Peloton hasn't been having a great run lately. While business boomed during the pandemic, things have taken a sour turn of late on a bizarre host of fronts.
[...] adding insult to injury, connectivity issues this week prevented Peloton bike and treadmill owners from being able to use their $2000-$5000 luxury exercise equipment for several hours Tuesday morning. The official Peloton Twitter account tried to downplay the scope of the issues:
We are currently investigating an issue with Peloton services. This may impact your ability to take classes or access pages on the web.
We apologize for any impact this may have on your workout and appreciate your patience. Please check https://t.co/Dxcht2tQB0 for updates.
— Peloton (@onepeloton) February 22, 2022
[...] For much of Tuesday morning the pricey equipment simply wouldn't work. While the company's app still worked (For some people), Bike, Bike+, and Peloton Tread owners not only couldn't ride in live classes, they couldn't participate in recorded classes because there's no way to download a class to local storage (despite the devices being glorified Android tablets). The outage (which occurred at the same time as a major Slack outage) was ultimately resolved after several hours, but not before owners got another notable reminder that dumb tech can often be the smarter option.
Perhaps one day in the future, scientists will invent a way to make exercise machines that do not require internet access. Such a fantastic invention would be locked up behind patents.
See also:
Peloton Admits It's in Hot Water With DOJ, DHS, and SEC Over Its Treadmill Mess
Peloton treadmill owners will be able to run again without a subscription
Peloton disabled a free running feature on its treadmills, forcing owners to pay up
Peloton disabled a free feature on its $4,000 Tread+, forcing owners to pay a $39 monthly fee to use the machine
Peloton faces backlash after disabling free running feature on its $4,000 treadmills
Music Publishers Say Peloton Stole Even More Music, Ask for $300 Million
Peloton's Countersuit Against Music Publishers Over Song Copyrights Just Got Thrown Out
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday September 16 2019, @06:13AM (4 children)
I positively hate the MAAFIOSA and their "intellectual property". Screw all of those bastards into hell, and leave them to stew.
But, Peloton is obviously a commercial entity. They were profiting off of legally misappropriated music. Maybe some of it was morally misappropriated as well, but definitely legally so. Mehhh, burn 'em, I guess. Hellfire and brimstone not necessary, just burn 'em to a nice crispy overdone. Save all the really terrible stuff for the MAAFIOSA people who really deserve it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by theluggage on Monday September 16 2019, @06:49AM (1 child)
Yeah, just file a few zeros off the end of that damages claim, exclude all the songs that should have been out of copyright years ago, and it would be a fair cop.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday September 16 2019, @03:11PM
While Peloton may be legally and ethically wrong, the RIAA (and MPAA) are far worse.
The damages they are asking for is patently ridiculous. In what way do they think their market value was damaged by such an absurd amount? Would anyone have actually paid that much to hear these songs on their exercise machines? Only in the RIAA's dreams.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Monday September 16 2019, @04:43PM (1 child)
This is a complicated one, for sure.
First, copying is not stealing. I keep hammering on that point. So this time, where did "stealing" get snuck in to the story? Far as I can tell, the NMPA did not cry "thief". They carefully kept the language of their complaint confined to "infringement". It's The Verge that did it. Said "stole" right there in the title of the story. Damned drama queen media is at it again. Possibly there's an element of self-interest, since they are of course a publisher themselves. I think they ought to face a $10,000 fine for inciteful language that is technically incorrect.
Second, as we've all seen, it's impractical to go after individuals for using Bittorrent and other methods to engage in piracy. To make it practical would require unacceptable levels of surveillance and a massive expansion of law enforcement, themselves impractical for many reasons, and it still wouldn't be possible to close every gap. What's to stop people from exchanging music libraries by leaving a flash drive in a cache in a public park or bathroom or pretty much anywhere else? What's to be done when the day comes that we all have recording devices embedded in our bodies? And that's not considering that our brains are pretty good at remembering songs and story plots. More than that, copying is a natural right. Copying is nothing less than the foundation of our civilization, the means by which we stand on the shoulders of giants. It should be recognized as such.
Third, there are many other lesser things wrong with copyright. The concept is full of incorrect assumptions, and it's very unfair. The 80-20 rule also applies to the popularity of art. A few big songs and books hog all the limelight, about 10 times as many are second stringers, and the vast majority never chart. Counting the number of sales or likes or whatever and using that as the only "fair" way to reward artists for making great art is very unfair to the rest of the community, full of those who could not get exposure for whatever reason. And one big reason is that it can take time for word to get out. Many great artists died before their works hit the big time. We really need a more balanced system that doesn't concentrate such ridiculous levels of wealth at the top, as in the case of a famous author such as J. K. Rowling. That woman is worth over a billion. It's unhealthy. She can't possibly use all that wealth sensibly, it's simply too much. Nor can she avoid being used. Whether she wants it or not, she's the poster author. You hear whispers that you too could write the next big hit book, just like Rowling, and leap from struggling single parent about to be evicted for the rent being past due, straight to Club 0.1%. It's the real contract with the Devil. Just sign on to unconditional support of copyright, in exchange for your shot at the author and musician lottery.
This brings up another bad assumption implicit in copyright: extreme individualism. No artist creates in a vacuum. Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings owe a great deal to the traditions of fantasy stories. Fantasy is Medieval Romanticism, full of knights in shining armor, princess melodrama, and good and evil magic. But somehow, that doesn't matter. The rule is, One Author to get All The Credit.
Still another big problem with copyright is that it pushes our buttons. Scares artists into fearing that they are or will lose the money they deserve for their hard work to evil, heartless, thieving pirates. Further, since no one can say what art is really worth, they've successfully lobbied for extremely high valuations. Statutory damages are absurdly high. The valuations are also partly based on the costs of publishing 50 years ago, and very wrongly ignore the incredible drop in those expenses that technology has brought us all.
With all that said, this particular case is a very public infringement of artists' rights. It is practical to enforce copyright in such an instance. Peloton cannot hide, and is not an individual with reasonable expectations of privacy. Copyright stinks, and should be replaced. But in this case, I'm on the artists' side. I don't know if $300 million in damages is too much, but given the industry history of outrageous demands, I suspect it is. Peloton should pay, and not a little token amount either, it should be significant. Maybe $10 million? Well, the exact amount I'll leave to the justice system.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday September 16 2019, @08:10PM
The problem is, it's not the artists that would be rewarded, it's the MPAA (or the RIAA?). Otherwise I'd call your post insightful...except that the "justice system" isn't concerned with justice, only with law...and, of course, corruption, but whether corruption is happening in this particular case would be difficult to determine.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday September 16 2019, @06:21AM (5 children)
You get what you can, right?
What would have happened if these machines just had a radio?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @06:24AM (3 children)
No multi-billion dollar IPO with an old timey exercise radio.
They should have just hooked it up to YouTube.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Monday September 16 2019, @11:29AM (1 child)
> They should have just hooked it up to YouTube.
Or connect to user's spotify account, or any other streaming music provider.
But it looks like they gave users the ability to create their own playlists on the bike instead, why? - well I guess this is the bit where the user is the product and the user-music data was intended to have some value, when sold. Trouble is, it's a bit tricky selling data about stuff you didn't license back to the people you didn't license it off... someone really didn't think this one through.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 17 2019, @04:29AM
If users did the infringing then go chase them
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 17 2019, @01:21AM
Make it based on Android.
Ship with Xender/TrebleShot preinstalled.
And instructions how to use it.
(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Monday September 16 2019, @06:28AM
Or would just allow you to connect to the personal file-locker on Megauploads? Oh, wait...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday September 16 2019, @07:24AM (1 child)
Anything is only worth what someone manages to charge for it (what someone else is willing to pay)
Property, data, music, anything.
With music, asa with many other produts, there is a skewed market, because of "copyright"
Tl;dr, can we just get rid of "labels", now?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @01:28PM
> can we just get rid of "labels", now?
Probably not. Marketing (letting masses of people know something exists) does work, and artists are not often good at marketing--which is where the music labels come in.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Monday September 16 2019, @08:40AM (2 children)
Is "startup" the new work for a company?
Yes, OK, they all have had their startup : like General Motors Startup, Heinz Startup, General Electric Startup, The East India Startup.
(Score: 5, Funny) by choose another one on Monday September 16 2019, @11:32AM
> like General Motors Startup, Heinz Startup, General Electric Startup, The East India Startup
Not really - The General Motors only starts up when it feels like it, and Heinz has Ketchup, not Startup.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Monday September 16 2019, @03:13PM
Heinz more interested in slow down rather than startup. See their 1970s tv commercials.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.