Month: April 2024

On the Internet, “Partners” Don’t Hear You Scream: Daniel Ek Makes a “Bundle” From the Value He Won’t Share

Here’s a quote for the ages:

MICHAEL BURRY

One of the hallmarks of mania is the rapid rise and complexity
of the rates of fraud. And did you know they’re going up?

The Big Short, screenplay by Charles Randolph and Adam McKay, based on the book by Michael Lewis

I have often said that if screwups were Easter eggs, Daniel Ek would be the Easter bunny, hop hop hopping from one to the next. I realize that is not consistent with his press agent’s pagan iconography, but it sure seems true to many.

The Bunny’s Bundle

This week was no different. Mr. Ek evidently has a “10b5-1 agreement” in place with Spotify, a common technique for insiders, especially founders, who hold at least 10% of the company’s shares to cash out and get the real money through selling their stock. The agreement establishes predetermined trading instructions for company stock (usually a sale and not a buy so not trading the shares) consistent with SEC rules under Section 10b5 of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 covering when the insider can sell. Why does this exist? The rule was established in 2000 to protect Silicon Valley insiders from insider trading lawsuits. Yep, you caught it–it’s yet another safe harbor for the special people.

As MusicBusinessWorldWide reported (thank you, Tim), Mr. Ek sold $118.8 million in shares of Spotify at roughly the same time that Spotify was planning to change the way the company paid songwriters on streaming mechanicals by claiming that its recent audiobook offering made it a “bundle” for purposes of the statutory mechanical rate. That would be the same rate that was heavily negotiated in 2021-22 at great expense to all concerned, not to mention torturing the Copyright Royalty Judges. The rates are in effect for five years, but the next negotiation for new rates is coming soon (called Phonorecords V or PR V for short). We’ll get to the royalty bundle but let’s talk about the cash bundle first.

As Tim notes in MBW, Mr. Ek has had a few recent sales under his 10b5-1 agreement: “Across these four transactions (today’s included), Ek has cashed out approximately $340.5 million in Spotify shares since last summer.” Rough justice, but I would place a small wager that Ek has cashed out in personal wealth all or close to all of the money that Spotify has paid to songwriters (through their publishers) for the same period. In this sense, he is no different that the usual disproportionately compensated CEOs at say Google or Raytheon.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge Mr. Ek the opportunity to be a billionaire. I don’t at all. But I do begrudge him the opportunity to do it when the government is his “partner” as it is with statutory mechanical royalties, he benefits from various other safe harbors, has had his lobbyists rewrite Section 115 to avoid litigation in a potentially unconstitutional reach back safe harbor, and he hired the lawyer at the Copyright Office who largely wrote the rules that he’s currently bending. Yes, I do begrudge him that stuff.

And here’s the other thing. When Daniel Ek pulls down $340.5 million as a routine matter, I really don’t want to hear any poor mouthing about how Spotify cannot make a profit because of the royalty payments it makes to artists and songwriters. (Or these days, doesn’t make to some artists.) This is, again, why revenue share calculations are just the wrong way to look at the value conferred by featured and nonfeatured artists and songwriters on the Spotify juggernaut. That’s also the point we made in some detail in the paper I co-wrote with Professor Claudio Feijoo for WIPO that came up in Spain, Hungary, France, Uruguay and other countries.

The Malthusian Algebra Strikes Again

It’s not solely Mr. Ek who is the problem child here, it’s partly the fault of industry negotiators who bought into the idea that what was important was getting a share of revenue based on a model that was almost guaranteed to cause royalties to decline over time. This would be getting a share of revenue from someone who purposely suppressed (and effectively subsidized) their subscription pricing for years and years and years. (See Robert Spencer’s Get Big Fast.). If I were a betting man, I would bet that the reason they subsidized the subscription price was to boost the share price by telling a growth story to Wall Street bankers (looking at you, Goldman Sachs) and retail traders because the subsidized subscription price increased subscribers.

Just a guess.

Now about this bundled subscription issue. One of the fundamental points that I think gets missed in the statutory mechanical licensing scheme is the scheme itself. The fact that songwriters have a compulsory license forced on them for one of their primary sources of income is a HUGE concession that songwriters have been asked to agree to since 1909. That’s right–for over 100 years. A decision that seemed reasonable 100 years ago really doesn’t seem reasonable at all today in a networked world. So start there as opposed to streaming platforms are doing us a favor by paying us at all, Daniel Ek saved the music business, and all the other iconography.

Has anyone seen them in the same room at the same time?

The problem that I have with the Spotify move to bundled subscriptions is that it can happen in the middle of a rate period and at least on the surface has the look of a colorable argument to reduce royalty payments. I think if you asked songwriters what they thought the rule was, to the extent they had focused on it at all after being bombarded with self-congratulatory hoorah, they probably thought that the deal wasn’t change rates without renegotiating or at least coming back and asking.

And they wouldn’t be wrong about that, because it is reasonable to ask that any changes get run by your, you know, “partner.” Maybe that’s where it all goes wrong. Because let me suggest and suggest strongly that it is a big mistake to think of these people as your “partner” if by “partner” you mean someone who treats you ethically and politely, reasonably and in good faith like a true fiduciary.

They are not your partner. Stop using that word.

A Compulsory License is a Rent Seeker’s Presidential Suite

But let’s also point out that what is happening with the bundle pricing is a prime example of the brittleness of the compulsory licensing system which is itself like a motel in the desolate and frozen Cyber Pass with a light blinking “Vacancy: Rent Seekers Wanted” surrounded by the bones of empires lost. Unlike the physical mechanical rate which is a fixed penny rate per transaction, the streaming mechanical is a cross between a Rube Goldberg machine and a self-licking ice cream cone.

The Spotify debacle is just the kind of IED that was bound to explode eventually when you have this level of complexity camouflaging traps for the unwary written into law. And the “written into law” part is what makes the compulsory license process so insidious. When the roadside bomb goes off, it doesn’t just hit the uparmored people before the Copyright Royalty Board–it creams everyone.

Helienne Lindvall, David Lowery and Blake Morgan tried to make this point to the Copyright Royalty Judges in Phonorecords IV. They were not confused by the royalty calculations–they understood them all too well. They were worried about fraud hiding in the calculations the same way Michael Burry was worried about fraud in The Big Short. Except there’s no default swaps for songwriters.

Here’s how the Judges responded, you decide if it’s condescending or if the songwriters were prescient knowing what we know now:

While some songwriters or copyright owners may be confused by the royalties or statements of account, the price discriminatory structure and the associated levels of rates in settlement do not appear gratuitous, but rather designed, after negotiations, to establish a structure that may expand the revenues and royalties to the benefit of copyright owners and music services alike, while also protecting copyright owners from potential revenue diminution. This approach and the resulting rate setting formula is not unreasonable. Indeed, when the market itself is complex, it is unsurprising that the regulatory provisions would resemble the complex terms in a commercial agreement negotiated in such a setting.

PR IV Final Rule at 80452 https://app.crb.gov/document/download/27410

It must be said that there never has been a “commercial agreement negotiated in such a setting” that wasn’t constrained by the compulsory license so I’m not sure what that reference even means. But if what the Judges mean is that the compulsory license approximates what would happen in a free market where the songwriters ran free and good men didn’t die like dogs, the compulsory license is nothing like a free market deal. If they are going to allow services to change their business model in midstream but essentially keep their music offering the same while offloading the cost of their audiobook royalties onto songwriters (and probably labels, too, although maybe not) through a discount in the statutory rate, then there should be some downside protection or another bite at the apple.

Unfortunately, there are neither, which almost guarantees another acrimonious, scorched earth lawyer fest in PR V coming soon to a charnel house near you.

Eject, Eject!

This is really disappointing because it was so avoidable if for no other reason. It’s a great time for someone…ahem…to step forward and head off the foreseeable collision on the billable time highway. I actually think the Judges know that the rate calculation is a farce but are dealing with people who have made too much money negotiating it to ever give it up willingly. If they are looking for a way off the theme park ride run by the evil clown, grab my hand on the next pass and I’ll try to pull you out of the centrifugal force. It won’t be easy.

This inevitable dust up means other work will suffer at the CRB. It must be said in fairness that the Judges seem to find it hard enough to get to the work they’ve committed to according to a recent SoundExchange filing in a different case (SDARS III remand from 2020) brought to my attention by Mr. George Johnson.

That’s not uncharitable–I’m merely noting that when dozens of lawyers in Phonorecords proceedings engage in what many of us feel are absurd discovery excesses, you are–frankly–distracting the Judges from doing their job by making them focus on, well, bollocks. We’ll come back to this issue in future, but I think all members of the CRB bar–the dozens and hundreds of those putting children through college at the CRB bar–need to take a breath and realize that judicial resources at the CRB are a zero sum game. This behavior isn’t fair to the Judges and it’s definitely not fair to the real parties in interest–the songwriters.

Tell the Horse to Open Wider

The answer isn’t to get the judges more money, bigger courtroom, craft services and massages, like a financial printer. Some of that would be nice but it doesn’t solve what I think is the real problem. I’d say that the answer is that the participants remember that the main this is that the main thing has to be the main thing. Ultimately, it’s not about us in the phonorecords proceedings, it’s about the songwriters. How are they served?

A compulsory license in stagflationary times is an incredibly valuable gift, and when you not only look the gift horse in the mouth but ask that it open wide so you can check the molars, don’t be surprised if one day it kicks you.

Grifting Under Heaven: What happens if TikTok Shuts Itself Down?

It finally happened–Congress passed the  Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act that prohibits the distribution, maintenance, or provision of internet hosting services for applications that are directly or indirectly operated by foreign adversaries. This legislation would include applications owned by ByteDance, Ltd. (the company that owns TikTok) or social media companies controlled by foreign adversaries that pose a significant threat to national security.

According to a Reuters exclusive, the response from Bytedance is that they would rather shut down TikTok than sell it–if the sale included the TikTok algorithm:

“The algorithms TikTok relies on for its operations are deemed core to ByteDance’s overall operations, which would make a sale of the app with algorithms highly unlikely, said the sources close to the parent….

TikTok shares the same core algorithms with ByteDance domestic apps like short video platform Douyin, three of the sources said. Its algorithms are considered better than ByteDance rivals such as Tencent and Xiaohongshu, said one of them.

It would be impossible to divest TikTok with its algorithms as their intellectual property licence is registered under ByteDance in China and thus difficult to disentangle from the parent company, said the sources.”

Well then. Of course, one of the primary national security arguments supporting any First Amendment defense on a challenge by TikTok to the content neutral, time, place and manner regulation will involve both the data privacy and foreign actor mass media manipulation evidentiary hearings. I don’t know how you make that defense without access to the algorithm. So why so secretive?

One could therefore plausibly argue that refusing to put the algorithm on the table is as good as admitting that TikTok is manipulating US users through algorithmic emotional targeting and scraping their users private data to do so. That would directly undermine their First Amendment attack on the US government and be a big step toward proving the government’s case.

And, of course, that secret algorithm uses music as the honeypot to attract users from the very young to the not so young. Remember, if this issue ever comes up in a court as a defense for the government, it will likely be because TikTok brought the underlying lawsuit that gave rise to the defense, and then refused to comply with a subpoena for the key piece of evidence. We call that “bootstrapping” in the trade.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve been supporting a version of the foreign adversary divestment legislation since 2020 and did so publicly that year when I moderated a great panel at the Music Biz conference on this very subject. If that panel or this topic made you uncomfortable, it may be because you felt such a strong…let’s say attraction…to TikTok as either a marketer or user that you couldn’t imagine living without it. Or maybe you bought into the “exposure” benefits of TikTok. Or maybe you’d had no reason to think about the larger implications. More about that another time.

After the legislation passed–despite a US lobbying campaign against it worthy of The Internet Association…ahem–people are asking, now what? So let’s think about that.

The Universal Connection

TikTok’s future cannot be well understood without taking into account the withdrawal of Universal’s recordings and songs from the platform for commercial reasons. That withdrawal now looks even more prescient given the foreign adversary divestiture legislation. Is it materially different to make a deal with a company that is just another piggy Big Tech company that doesn’t value music and considers it a loss leader to get to the really big bundle of cash like Spotify stock, or to do a deal with that piggy company who has also been declared a tool of a strategic foreign adversary of the United States by none other than the President of the United States?

I think it rather is. So the two events are in some ways quite connected.

First of all, in the short run I would expect TikTok to immediately expand their direct licensing campaign which evidently has already snared Taylor Swift and do it quickly before anyone noticed that what was just a crappy licensing deal the day before President Biden signed the legislation into law, now is a crappy licensing deal from a declared foreign adversary of the United States. How that twist will affect the brand of Miss Americana remains to be seen.

One solution I would expect to get floated in coming days is the need for TikTok executives to register as foreign agents under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. According to the Congressional Research Service:

In 1938, the Foreign Agents Registration Act (22 U.S.C. §§611-621; FARA) was enacted to require individuals doing political or advocacy work on behalf of foreign entities in the United States to register with the Department of Justice and to disclose their relationship, activities, receipts, and disbursements in support of their activities. The FARA does not prohibit any specific activities; rather it seeks to require registration and disclosure of them….In 1966, FARA was amended to shift the focus from political propagandists to agents representing the economic interests of foreign principals. These amendments were partially the result of an investigation by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee into foreign sugar interests and other lobbying activities. The 1966 amendments changed several definitions in the law, prohibited contingent fee contracts, broadened exemptions to ensure legitimate commercial activities were not burdened, strengthened provisions for the disclosure and labeling of propaganda, and required the Department of Justice to issue regulations on the act (28 C.F.R. §5.1 et seq.).

FARA enforcement languished for a bit over the years. However, FARA enforcement against those who fail to register as a foreign agent has had a resurgence in popularity at the Department of Justice. I think it can fairly be said that requiring TikTok executives to register would be consistent with DOJ’s actions and is worth a discussion. The policy underlying FARA is for the public to be aware of who is whom–disclosure not imprisonment, or at least disclosure first.

Enter the Miasma of Angst

There is something of a miasma of angst around passing the foreign adversary divestment legislation as applied to TikTok which is partly due to an extraordinary amount of commercial activity between the US and China which may tend to mask the underlying kinetic tensions between our countries. It’s quite difficult for Americans to grasp this kinetic part due to the Great Firewall of China, the language and cultural barrier, and China’s own propaganda which is way, way more effective and long lasting than anything the Nazis dreamed up. TikTok is, after all, a danger close propaganda missile battery.

The legislation seems to assume that China is an “adversary” and not a “belligerent”. Is that actually true?

There are other rather inescapable events that suggests that the U.S. is already in a war with China, at least as far as the Chinese government are concerned. It helps to understand that when people say the Chinese Communist Party or “the CCP”, they mean the Chinese government and vice versa, a government ruled by Chairman for Life Xi Jinping. The Chinese constitution is, for example, the Constitution of the CCP.

Always remember that Usama Bin Laden declared war on the US but nobody took him seriously. Nuff said.

Why is that relevant to TikTok? Well, here’s another declaration of war on the US that nobody noticed. On May 14, 2019, the CCP government declared a “people’s war” against the United States as reported in the Pravda of China, the Global Times operated by Xinhua News Agency (the cabinet-level “news” agency run by the CCP):

“The most important thing is that in the China-US trade war, the US side fights for greed and arrogance … and morale will break at any point…The Chinese side is fighting back to protect its legitimate interests. The trade war in the US is the creation of one person and one administration, but it affects that country’s entire population…In China, the entire country and all its people are being threatened. For us, this is a real ‘people’s war.'”

What is the “people’s war”? It is an old Maoist phrase (remembering that Xi Jinping’s father fought with Mao during China’s Communist Revolution). It has a very specific meaning in the history of the Chinese Communist Party according to Wikipedia:

People’s war, also called protracted people’s war, is a Maoist military strategy. First developed by the Chinese communist revolutionary leader Mao Zedong (1893–1976), the basic concept behind people’s war is to maintain the support of the population and draw the enemy deep into the countryside (stretching their supply lines) where the population will bleed them dry through a mix of mobile warfare and guerrilla warfare. 

So in the dimension of “unrestricted warfare,” what end state would the CCP like to see? Bearing in mind that they will avoid a shooting war in favor of the various other dimensions of civil-military fusion and following Sun Tzu’s admonishment o subdue the enemy without fighting. One way would be to impose economic damage on the United States.

The Unrestricted Warfare Dimension

What is this “unrestricted warfare”? That is a much bigger topic and I cannot emphasize enough the importance for every American and really everyone to understand it. Literally “Unrestricted Warfare” is one of the most important books on military strategy and geopolitics that nobody has read.

We think the book was published in Mandarin In 1999; it could have been earlier. It was written by two colonels in the Peoples’ Liberation Army of the Peoples Republic of China and entitled Unrestricted Warfare. The title is variously translated as Unrestricted Warfare: Two Air Force Senior Colonels on Scenarios for War and the Operational Art in an Era of Globalization, or the more bellicose Unrestricted Warfare: China’s Master Plan to Destroy America. 

Why is this important? You must understand that when the colonels say “to destroy America” they actually mean that very thing. China’s military and civil goal is to replace the United States as the global hegemon under the “mandate of Heaven.” (See 2050 China: Understanding Xi Jinping Thought.)

No kidding.

The thesis of the book is that it is a mistake for a contemporary great power to think of war solely in military terms; war includes an economic, cyber, space, information war (especially social media like TikTok), and other dimensions–including kinetic–depending on the national interest at the time. I think of Unrestricted Warfare as an origin story for China’s civil and military fusion policy, later expressed in various statutes of the Chinese Communist Party that were on full display in the TikTok hearings before Congress.

Although the book was translated and certain of the cognoscenti read it in Mandarin (see Josh Rogan, Michal Pillsbury and Gen. Rob Spaulding), it was largely unnoticed until recently. Except in China–the CCP rewarded the authors handsomely: Colonel Qiao Liang retired as a major general in the PLA and Colonel Wang Xiangsui is a professor at Beihang University in Beijing following his retirement as a senior Colonel in the PLA (OF-5).

The point of both Bin Ladin’s 1998 fatwa and Unrestricted Warfare, and the 2019 people’s war declaration, is both that each of them declared war on America, and that no one paid attention. We know where that got us with bin Ladin, there are movies about it.

To War or Not?

So the first question is what is the argument that we are not at war currently with China under their definition? Particularly given that they declared war on us with just enough plausible deniability to make you feel bad about shutting down TikTok–see what I did there? (I think the CCP declared war started much, much longer ago, but let’s stick with their people’s war declaration as a recent tangible event to keep it manageable and ignore, oh, say island building, expanding to the largest navy in the world, and the rest of it. (Read The Hundred-Year Marathon and see what you think. It may be worth reviewing the history on the Anglo-German Naval Agreement indirectly referenced in a Noël Coward song.)

Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans by Noël Coward is reflective on “excessive humanitarians”

It is also worth remembering that should open hostilities with China actually break out, i.e., in the colonels’ words should the current level of unrestricted warfare go kinetic, CCP-owned companies operating in the US will fall under an entirely more intense level of scrutiny. This is permitted by international laws of armed conflict and doesn’t even require additional US national laws although there surely will be many.

In the first instance, is the ostensibly private company actually private? What if good old chummy Mr. Tok turned out to be a colonel in the People’s Liberation Army and just didn’t get around to telling anyone? (I don’t think anyone in Congressional hearings ever asked him.)

And what if TikTok complied with the CCP laws that apply to Bytedance for sure and may apply to TikTok that require there to be a CCP cadre in each company? (See Article 19 of China’s “Company Law.”) If a private company’s staff members are also members of the armed forces of a state or have combat functions for an organized armed group belonging to a party in the conflict, they are not considered civilians.  Further, if a private company is directly involved in military operations (e.g., cyber attacks or psy ops), it may lose its civilian status and become a legitimate military target under the Geneva Conventions. (Further reading, an excellent article from West Point on topic. I don’t think anyone ever asked Mr. Chew if he was a serving member of the PLA.)

So if China invades Taiwan and the US comes in on the side of Taiwan, but TikTok assists in even psychological warfare ops to support that war effort for China against Taiwan (and possibly the US), then what happens? What if it turns out that senior Tiks are reservists or active duty in the Peoples Liberation Army that they just kind of didn’t mention before? Good old Uncle Chew? This kind of thing can also get you sanctioned if you try hard enough. Remember this came up with Elon Musk when Starlink allegedly thwarted an attack by Ukraine (which he denied for other reasons).

So about those licenses….Do artists really want to be used as a honeypot? Especially if TikTok keeps its algorithm, ostensibly shuts down in the US, but parks outside the US and still assaults US users?

Chronology: The Week in Review: Search is Ripping Us Off Again, this time for AI; #FreeJimmyLai; the MLC loves the MLC almost as much as the NMPA

In case you think that infringement of copyrights in AI training happens only to rock stars, photographers, record companies or movie studios, let me give you a personal anecdote that might cause you to reconsider. I asked Bing’s Copilot AI tool to list the deal points in a record producer agreement, and this is what I got back:

Copilot

Certainly! When negotiating a producer agreement, several key points should be considered. Here are some common negotiation points from the artist’s perspective:

  1. Scope of Engagement:
    1. The producer is generally engaged for one album project at a time.
    1. Clarify the scope of work, including the number of songs or recordings to be produced.
  2. Budget and Compensation:
    1. Determine the budget for the project (e.g., $10,000 in your case).
    1. Agree on the producer’s compensation, which may include an upfront fee, points on sales, or a combination.
  3. Ownership and Rights:
    1. Address ownership of the master recordings:
      1. Will the artist own and control the masters?
      1. Does the producer retain any rights?
  4. Credits and Royalties:
    1. Specify how the producer will be credited on releases.
    1. Discuss any royalties or backend points for the producer.
  5. Recording Schedule:
    1. Set a timeline for recording sessions.
    1. Define the two-week period for your project.
  6. Logistics:
    1. Determine where the recordings will take place.
    1. Outline the artist’s approval process.
    1. Define the producer’s deliverables.
  7. Termination Clause:
    1. Include provisions for termination if either party breaches the agreement.
    1. Address payment for work completed up to that point.

Remember that each negotiation is unique, and it’s essential to tailor the agreement to your specific needs and circumstances. Legal advice is recommended to ensure compliance with local laws and industry standards1 3 4.

Source(s)

1. An Artist’s Guide to Negotiating Record Producer Agreements – Medium

2. Negotiating a Music Producer Agreement: 7 Key Issues

3. 5 Things to Look for in a Music Producer Agreement – Lawyer Drummer

4. How to Negotiate: Steps, Phrases & Tips to Win the Deal – Selling Signals

Notice that Copilot lists “Source(s)” and that source #1 is an article from Medium.

My article.

I’ve written a number of articles about negotiating producer agreements and I can categorically say I haven’t given permission or been asked to give permission for any of those articles to be scraped and used to train AI. So how did it come to be in Copilot’s training materials?

My guess is that Medium (and probably a lot of other sites) were crawled by Bing’s spider and that copies of Medium pages were stored in Bing’s (or Microsoft’s) data centers. When Microsoft launched its Copilot AI tool, one could imagine that the temptation would have been strong to use those copies as part of the training tools for Copilot. In fact, the Verge reports that “companies around the web are using your site and its data to build massive sets of training data, in order to build models and products that may not acknowledge your existence at all.”

Are you surprised then that two of the biggest operators in the AI space are the search engine operators Google and Microsoft? This is another example of how Big Tech helps itself to your data and work product without you even knowing it’s happening. So now what? Now I know I’m being ripped off, and I’m wondering if Medium is in on it.

The Verge tells us:

The ability to download, store, organize, and query the modern internet gives any company or developer something like the world’s accumulated knowledge to work with. In the last year or so, the rise of AI products like ChatGPT, and the large language models underlying them, have made high-quality training data one of the internet’s most valuable commodities. That has caused internet providers of all sorts to reconsider the value of the data on their servers, and rethink who gets access to what. 

Ya think?

#FreeJimmyLai

In case you were wondering if the Chinese Communist Party is serious about using TikTok to collect data as they please, Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai is a perfect example of what happens when a company refuses to cooperate. The CCP took over Jimmy’s Apple Daily newspaper and arrested him. Jimmy has been in prison for three years and has still not come to “trial” (whatever that means under the CCP).

Blake Morgan sounds off in Hypebot on how TikTok uses music as a honeypot to hook innocent users

The MLC Reup

The MLC gets a five year review of how they are doing. The Copyright Office conducts that review of both the MLC and the DLC. The public (that’s you) gets a chance to weigh in now because the MLC and the DLC filed their respective written statements about their respective awesomeness.

One of the most interesting exchanges happened between Graham Davies (who essentially is the public face of the DLC and is the head of the Digital Media Association) and the NMPA. Graham offered muted criticism of the MLC which irked the easily irked NMPA who offered a rather scathing response.

The most interesting thing about the exchange was that it was the NMPA–not the MLC–that responded to Graham. Tell you anything?