4 ms·

Dues are $2500/y if you have revenues of $1-5MM, $5000/y if you have revenues of $5-15MM, and "contact us" beyond that: https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/

by geofft 6y ago

Dues are $2500/y if you have revenues of $1-5MM, $5000/y if you have revenues of $5-15MM, and "contact us" beyond that: https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/RIAA_ApplyForMembership-2.pdf https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/RIAA_ApplyFo... Since one presumes that Microsoft does not sell much music (didn't they shut down their music store a few years ago?), I can't imagine they've negotiated dues that scale linearly on Microsoft's total revenue - so, in fact, I'd expect that $1M is well beyond their RIAA dues. Now, it's possible that MS is contributing money other than dues to the RIAA, but you can bound that a bit from their Form 990: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/131669037/201930469349301928/full https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/131... For 2017, they got under $100K in "contributions and grants" and $29MM in "program service revenue," which is later determined to be dues. They received no other significant revenue. So no donor could have possibly given them more than $100K. (... also, why did the RIAA give $4K to the Kenai River Sportfishing Association?)

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boogies 6y ago
Unfortunately it seems difficult to discover how long they’ve been a member: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24902985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24902985 They could theoretically have donated $2MM at $50K a year if they had joined back around the time when Bill Gates was railing about ‘theft’ of his BASIC (and others were replacing it with a superior ‘@copyleft all wrongs reserved’ one) ~45 year ago. (Edit: of course cash is only one form of value.)
kenny87 6y ago
I just find it quite ironic that their site is running WordPress, a "free and open-source content management system".
- geofft 6y ago
  Why? They're complying with the license. It shouldn't be surprising to see them taking advantage of copyright law when it benefits them, then turning around and taking advantage of copyright law them it benefits them. It's quite a bit more benign than Disney making movies off of public-domain stories while lobbying to keep Mickey Mouse under copyright, since they didn't even lobby for it. The WordPress developers just gave them the code for free. Free and open-source software isn't subversive. It's innovative, which isn't the same thing. It's certainly a new model, but the way you get a GPL violation removed from GitHub is with a DMCA takedown notice. Free and open-source software is a different and nicer use of the copyright system, but it's all still the same system at the end of the day. And now that they've had a couple decades to get over their discomfort and they've realized that there's nothing subversive there, people who love copyright are totally fine with free and open-source software, because it furthers their goal of making money.

by geofft 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

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boogies 6y ago

Unfortunately it seems difficult to discover how long they’ve been a member: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24902985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24902985 They could theoretically have donated $2MM at $50K a year if they had joined back around the time when Bill Gates was railing about ‘theft’ of his BASIC (and others were replacing it with a superior ‘@copyleft all wrongs reserved’ one) ~45 year ago. (Edit: of course cash is only one form of value.)

kenny87 6y ago

I just find it quite ironic that their site is running WordPress, a "free and open-source content management system".

geofft 6y ago
Why? They're complying with the license. It shouldn't be surprising to see them taking advantage of copyright law when it benefits them, then turning around and taking advantage of copyright law them it benefits them. It's quite a bit more benign than Disney making movies off of public-domain stories while lobbying to keep Mickey Mouse under copyright, since they didn't even lobby for it. The WordPress developers just gave them the code for free. Free and open-source software isn't subversive. It's innovative, which isn't the same thing. It's certainly a new model, but the way you get a GPL violation removed from GitHub is with a DMCA takedown notice. Free and open-source software is a different and nicer use of the copyright system, but it's all still the same system at the end of the day. And now that they've had a couple decades to get over their discomfort and they've realized that there's nothing subversive there, people who love copyright are totally fine with free and open-source software, because it furthers their goal of making money.