This copyright zealot is one of those for whom a lifes work life has been a failure so its only fair he gets some kind of pat on the back
https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8456450/riaa-cary-sherman-presidential-award-music-biz-2018RIAA chairman and CEO Cary Sherman became the first music industry lawyer and lobbyist to be presented with the presidential award at the annual Music Business Association conference.
The mid-1990s provided the most overwhelming disruption of all -- the digitalization and compression of music files, which meant music could be freely distributed on the internet, leading to a "veritable explosion of FTP [file transfer protocol] sites hosting illegal music files for people to take at well," Sherman recalled. "And in 1999, along came Napster and Kazaa and Grokster and Aimster and Streamcast and Morpheus and Limewire and more. We had to begin lawsuits and litigate them all the way to the Supreme Court to establish once and for all that those services were illegal."
Sherman, who will step down from his RIAA position at the end of the year, said it took a while, but the industry finally got key legislation in 1995 [the Digital Performance Right In Recordings Act] and again in 1998 [the Digital Millennium Copyright Act], establishing the right to be paid for what is now online streaming. "And also the right to negotiate marketplace deals with services that streamed on demand ... with the subscription streaming services that are producing the bulk of our revenues today," he added.
That legislation passed because the industry secured the rights it needed "before powerful technology companies emerged that would oppose the legislation," he said. "There are still big gaps in the law that need to be closed, gaps that only became obvious as technology forced a change to our business model. Figuring out what those gaps are and how to fix them, that's the key to ensuring that the music business stays in business
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Obviously Cary looks at the Music business from the perspective of a recording industry lawyer and so doesnt really address the requirements of the artists at all bar figuring out how he and his colleagues can profit from the work of others as middlemen and gate keepers.
This old model is being swept away as artists are now directly interfacing with fans and gathering decent amounts of revenues without selling their souls or the rights to their music for cost inflated services traditionally due to ignorance of what a major record deal was all about, that is thankfully no longer the case for many and fans will always purchase good music, that never changes.
