“That’s a real nice song you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.”

Re/code’s Peter Kafka interviewed RIAA CEO and Chairman Cary Sherman about the music industry’s ongoing issues with YouTube and the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

This particular bit stuck out:

Re/code’s Peter Kafka: The labels do have deals with YouTube. If they don’t like those deals, why not negotiate better ones or walk away? All of them expire this year.

RIAA head Cary Sherman: The way the negotiation goes is something like this: “Look. This is all we can afford to pay you,” YouTube says. “We hope that you’ll find that reasonable. But that’s the best we can do. And if you don’t want to give us a license, OK. You know that your music is still going to be up on the service anyway. So send us notices, and we’ll take ‘em down as fast we can, and we know they’ll keep coming back up. We’ll do what we can. It’s your decision as to whether you want to take our deal, or whether you just want to keep sending us takedown notices.”

That’s not a real negotiation. That’s like saying “That’s a real nice song you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.”

Interesting interview.