There are so many comments here that act like recording industry is like 2 scummy lawyers and an evil executive with a too-sharp goatee. But the truth here is t

There are so many comments here that act like recording industry is like 2 scummy lawyers and an evil executive with a too-sharp goatee. But the truth here is that it's an absolutely massive 100 year old industry that has asked and answered this question and pretty much every other one in this thread through contracts, courts, and tradition. Their investment, as a whole, is making cool music and getting it to people while supporting the livelihood of artists (and captial). This new wave of sophisticated content generation is raising some new questions, which is something that happens all the time (see the rise digital sampling and hip-hop in the 1980's), and as always the industry is trying to sort out how best to answer those questions in the context of what's already been established. And of course there's power jockeying as well because open questions are always an opportunity for somebody to either seize or secure a stake in whatever's coming. This action is mostly about public "folk" outside the industry being able to too easily cloud and exploit brands by viralizing "Eminem's Rap for the Russian Empire" -- these brands have a lot of value in being particular and controlled and people's livelihoods are involved. The industry is just working to figure it out and (in some cases) trying to stomp on the breaks so they have time to do so. That's not saying that RIAA is faultless, or that some of the power plays they'll make and that others make won't be transparent and scummy, but there's a lot of legitamate complexity here that people seem deeply invested in ignoring rather than learning about.