Report: RIAA Could Merge with Global Copyright Authority

At least one major record label is calling for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to be merged with its international equivalent, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).

EMI's aggressive cost-cutting under its new Terra Firma management seems to be a factor. The label's new owners don't seem to think it's worth funding the global organization in addition to the RIAA in the US, and the British Phonographic Institute (BPI) in Britain.

According to Variety, the RIAA's and IFPI's anti-piracy and lobbying organizations could become a single global copyright authority:

One idea that has been floated by the majors is a consolidation of theIFPI, which represents 1,400 record companies in 75 countries, and theRIAA into a single unit. Both groups focus on piracy issues andlobbying.

Variety says EMI is using the proposal as a way to pressure the IFPI
into restructuring by March. (In a letter to the IFPI
and RIAA, the label said it would stop funding the IFPI unless itrestructured.)

The article quotes a source close to the labels:

"Thisis not about cost-cutting. Functions and structureneed to make sense to all major labels. Right now, funding them doesn'tmake sense."

Indeed, the RIAA and its member labels have other reasons to welcome a merger with the IFPI.

Aside from the RIAA's desperate need to change its initials from a public relations perspective, theorganization has been trying to convince foreign governments to adoptcarbon copies of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) since thelast millennium, as Congressman Rick Boucher told me back in 2002.