Death to Copyright

Poststructural Pub
1

Tell me where I’m wrong in thinking that if music copyright went away, it wouldn’t hurt.

Most professional musicians do not make their livelihood from music copyright, from CDs being produced by record companies. They make a living by teaching, giving lessons, day jobs, and performing. The death of the “music industry” would mean that 50Cent and Carrie Underwood wouldn’t be able to become millionaires in 2 weeks from recording a couple of CDs. Ok, so Marilyn Manson has to sell a home or two and get an apartment. It would mean that capitalists wouldn’t be able to make big money from major music labels. Music by a wide range of musicians would be available for little or no money on the Internet, as now but more so.

At the same time the ability to control the distribution of recorded music is going away, it is increasingly cheap and easy for musicians to create their own recordings with a good mic, a laptop, and some software. So, nobody will be able to argue that people won’t be able to experience recorded music anymore.

Ok, books. The majority of people who write books don’t make their living at it. Only the writers of best sellers can make a living at it. Otherwise, most authors teach at universities or whatever to make a living. Etc., etc. big publishing companies, etc. etc., distribution of written material on the Internet, etc. etc., see “music” above.


Where am I going wrong in my thinking here?

2

I wouldn’t work. The children of famous artists might actually have to work for a living.

3

There is rarely ever a way back from more restrictive to less restrictive.

Copyright as we know it may well be dying; the music industry as we know it actually appears to be dying, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that it’ll make much difference to you and me when it happens.

There will be legislation, there will be regulation, there may even be government bailouts for the industry’s bigwigs…there will be new “better” media formats…and at the end of the day, trading and swapping tunes will still be illegal, the ridiculous penalties will only get stiffer, the outrageous fines will only get higher…

…and it’ll be “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

Oh, by the way, the day is coming that every time you use your computer, you’ll be billed in realtime for the amount of CPU time and resources you used while you sat there doing whatever you do on your computer…but that’s a different story, for a different thread. :wink:

“Welcome to City Seventeen! You have chosen, or been chosen...” :wink:

Have a nice day.

–James

4

Dale, this is a very political post. I’m surprised you put it here.

5

Where were you in the 80s and 90s when the U.S. saw massive waives of deregulation?

Copyright as we know it may well be dying; the music industry as we know it actually appears to be dying, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that it’ll make much difference to you and me when it happens.

There will be legislation, there will be regulation, there may even be government bailouts for the industry’s bigwigs…there will be new “better” media formats…and at the end of the day, trading and swapping tunes will still be illegal, the ridiculous penalties will only get stiffer, the outrageous fines will only get higher…

…and it’ll be “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

Isn’t this a needlessly messianic? And at that moment swapping tunes is getting legaller and legaller and the penalties are getting harder and harder to impose. It even looks like the RIAA is running out of steam, because their funding is being cut.

6

I’m full of surprises, no to mention the power to move it as necessary.

7

Can’t you stay on topic at least in your own thread, Dale? Bloody threaddrift.

8

I’m not opposed to private ownership of property, but music and ideas are not property. I do not believe they can morally be said to belong to anyone.

9

Bravo. BRAVO! Couldn’t agree more, the whole Intellectual “property” thing is propaganda of those who have controlled distribution for decades. Walden for President.

10

Speaking as someone who doesn’t make a living writing books, I wish to point out that neither “teaching at universities” nor “whatever” actually pays people to write books: they both pay to do other things, and from experience get downright shirty if you, instead, spend your time there writing books. In consequence, every minute I spend doing “whatever” is a minute I’m not writing a book.

11

They are intellectual property!

12

How can that which is intangible be property?

13

Ok!

I’m full of surprises, no to mention the power to move it as necessary.

This comment Copyright 2008 by Dale Wisely and 3Fish Productions.

14

For the most part, American colleges and universities certainly tend to reward faculty that publish and certainly encourage that they spend time on payroll working on the research that can lead to publication.

15

I agree, most musicians aren´t great geniuses or famous composers. They earn their living playing at weddings, bar mitzvas or at street corners. Never the less, I belive we should uphold the copyright laws. Let me give you an example. I friend of mine is a music teacher (in an elementary school). 20 years ago he decided to write textbook for the kids “Introduction to world of music”. Not very revolutionary stuff, but a very nice book and the kids liked it. Since the he has earned a small but steady incom from his book. (something like $1.500 a year). What if there were no copyright laws? Anyone could have stolen my friends work and just published it again on his own company without paying my friend a nickel! Is that fair?

The same goes for drug companys. If anyone could just copy a new drug on the market, what would be the incentive to develope new drugs? But these patent are just for ten years or so.

On the other hand i think 70 years after the death of the composer is a too long a period. It should be something more like 25 years or so after having published your work. Paul McCartney was born 1942 and he wrote Yesterday 1965. If he leads a normal life (to become 85 or so) he will probably pass away around 2027. Yesterday will accordingly be a free piece then around 2094! Huh… If we had copyright laws like patent laws Yesterday would be a free piece of intellectual property today, which I think it should be!

16

This is true. At most universities you have three jobs:
teaching, research and service (the latter being serving on
committees that help run the university).

If you don’t do research and publish it you don’t get
tenure–you lose your job. After tenure they can’t fire
you but if you don’t do research and publish it you
don’t get raises and promotions.

17

This activity is largely focussed on academic journals, not books. Publication in peer-reviewed journals is where the score is being kept, in any case. Only a small fraction of academic papers ever see trade publication, and usually for good reason: academic writing is a different skillset.

18

I would like to see someone with a vested interest in music copyright make a statement about this. It’s easy to take a slice out of someone else’s pie.

e.g. What about the cost of education? Wouldn’t education be so much more available to everyone if we stopped paying all those who work for a school board?

djm

19

My band recently released a CD. Our modest goal is to have this musical hobby of ours pay for itself; i.e., we’d like to break even. There are a number of costs associated with making a CD. Even though we recorded at our banjo player’s in-home studio, there are equipment costs, and the cost of having the CD professionally mastered and printed, and booklets with pictures and lyrics printed. If everyone burned copies of CDs and gave to their friends rather than buying a CD, the little guys like us would never recover the costs of making the CD, and we wouldn’t be able to afford to make another one in a few years. Just because we aren’t ever going to make our living off of music doesn’t mean that we’re independently wealthy and can afford to lose a lot of money on it. That’s one good reason to respect copyright.

I only wrote one tune on the CD, but I do feel that it is my intellectual property. If you and your buddies want to play my tune, great – I’d be thrilled if other people liked it enough to want to play it. But if you take my tune and make tons of money on it, I expect a cut. I don’t think anyone should have the right to sell my creation without giving me a share of the profit.

20

My first reaction is to agree with Dale and Walden and say stuff copyright.

Actually, that is my second reaction as well.

My third reaction is to say that I could live with a more reasonable, less corporate form of copyright than that often encountered.

OK, so someone has put a lot of time, creative steam and maybe (if we’re lucky) soul into creating a piece of music or a story. I think it is reasonable for them to expect to be credited with the creation of the work. I think it is reasonable for them to want to make sure that no one makes money by pretending they (the crook, not the author) created the work. I think it is reasonable to ask for payment for physical copies of the work. I do not think it is wrong to write or compose for a living.

Without some of the professionally created works I have enjoyed, I think my life would be the poorer. No Tom Waits albums, no Kurt Vonnegut books. Bummer.

However, I do not think that copyright should be transferable, nor do I think it should last beyond the death of the author, nor be renewable. Copyright, if there at all, should be to help the author to benefit from the works he has created - not for parasitic corporate exploitation.

On the whole, if people were to want to play my songs, record them, whatever, I would not be bothered about making money. I would be pleased to have my songs work their way into whatever musical tradition might still be evolving. I would still like to be remembered as the songwriter, however.

(Sadly, few of my songs are good enough for even me to want to play them, let alone other people…)

I feel a little differently about creative writing and copyright. I write semi-professionally, and in my experience, writing a short story often entails more and harder work than writing a song. Writing a novel takes a year or more and is the hardest work I can think of that doesn’t involve whips and pyramids or salt mines.

Literature is created and enjoyed in a very different way to music. The two media are as different as they are similar.

I think copyright for literary works should, again, be non-transferable and should expire with no possibility of renewal, on the death of the author.

Of course, one is then left with having to tolerate one of the following scenarios:

a) If copyright disappears or passes into the public domain after the author’s death, then publishers are free to make money by publishing new editions of the work without paying any royalties - and corporations end up leeching of the creativity of others.

b) If publishers are prevented from exploiting the work, then new editions will not appear, and eventually the work will be lost forever.

c) Some magic solution thing wot I haven’t thought up yet.