Copyright, exclusive rights and credit

[Jabba The Hunt]

I've been thinking lately about the MPAA shutting down alot of websites, and similar goings on with the music industry.

 

I was pondering whether filesharing of copyrighted material could ever be justified. On one hand I have a life time of upbringing telling me that anything you create you have the exclusive right to sell for a profit, this is probably one of the most important aspects of our culture now I think about it.

 

On the other hand I have my gut feeling which says that no matter how hard you try if someone is involved in a creative processes with the aim in mind of making money (even if it is only in part), then it takes something away from the artistic creation. In all of this I dont think anyone has considered that maybe you shouldn't have the exclusive right to sell something you create. I think you should certainly always be credit for your work, and you should be able to stop others from making money from your work.

 

In the end I think I feel a comprimise is probably best, a low quality (reduce resolution picture, video or reduced bitrate sound for example) version could be provided for free (or at the cost of the production). Where as a significantly higher quality version, or being able to see it earlier (ie at the cinema) could be provided at a price.

 

I recognise not everyone is going to share my views, but I think this is the first time I've found my views severly differing from modern culture. I was wondering what everyone elses view on this was, and do you find yourself usually agreeing or disagreeing with modern culture?

[edlib]

Creative people rarely get into the arts with the idea of making money in mind. When they start it's all about the passion of expression. However, the reality is that there's rent to pay, and food isn't free. Survival means that you have to earn money. At which point every artist faces a dilemma: Starve to death and stay true to the art; go commercial and try to make money off the artistic talent you posess; or keep the art as a hobby and get a "real" job.

 

Those that take what's behind door number 2 (going commercial) tend to get territorial about it. Asking a musician to give away his songs for free, or a movie director to just sit back while people watch his movie for free is about the equivilent of asking a car dealership to give away all thier cars for free and like it. Almost worse, because of all the time that one has to spend developing an artistic talent in the first place.... all the hours spent practicing and studying to get to the point to where somebody might be actually interested in paying you money to hear you.

Personally, I have spent the equivilent of several years trying to develop my artistic talents, not to mention all the lessons (not to mention a sizable college debt) I have paid for over my lifetime. That is time and money out of my own pocket. There is nobody that I can bill for compensation for that effort. But because artists love what they are doing, and would still do it anyway even if they couldn't find a way to earn income off of it, people seem to cheapen thier efforts.

 

There are compromises that could be made to give everybody what they want... I actually have an extensive plan that could work out in everybody's best interest... but it would be complicated to implement and administer. I don't have time to type it all out right now... maybe later.

 

But even if a compromise was found, I still think there would be a lot of people who would find a way to cheat the sytem, simply because there is a large segment of our culture who just totally disregard anyone involved in persuing a creative, artistic venture (or anything that might actually be fun to do) as doing "real" work, and therefore shouldn't be given the respect of being paid for thier efforts.

[Rogue15]

i dload the songs (sometimes) and if i don't like em, dlete them. ones i like i keep and end up buying the cd. It is nice, however, that they do sell songs individually. so a 30 second sample is more than enough for me to purchase a song i think that i would like. other music, mostly trance/techno, i just download for free, cause they're live sets and you can't really buy them, well there are some exceptions.

[edlib]

edlib's master plan for saving the music business while making file-sharing perfectly legal:

 

 

Step 1: Kill the CD.

 

This is well over 20-year old technology at this point, and it's high-time that it went away. There are far better sounding technologies that are just as compact.

My suggestion: Phase out all commercial pre-recorded CD's over the course of 2 years.

 

At the same time get hardware manufactures to kill off all CD players (though not necessarily recorders) and replace them with players capable of reading all the available DVD formats. Get all the upscale car companies to place AM/ FM/ Satellite/ DVD/ MP3 players with 7.1(or better) surround speaker systems in all their models.

 

The existing stock of pre-recorded CDs should be liquidated as cheaply as possible; less than $10 for a brand new release; less than $5 for back catalog albums.

 

A new digital audio format should be agreed upon to replace the CD. It should be capable of uncompressed high bit and sample rates (24bit, 192 kHz minimum) across 8 or 10 discreet channels. The new Blu-Ray or HD-DVD formats would be perfect for this. All future DVD players must be capable of playing this new audio format.

 

All future albums should be mixed for this format. All old albums should eventually be re-mixed for this format. A remastered version of the original stereo mix of each song will also be included. Any old album that the multi-track tapes don't exist for that couldn't be remixed for surround should be re-mastered for the new format, and included with other stereo-only recordings by the same (or similar) artist(s) on a single disk, as many as will fit on the new format media.

 

The new albums will include data on the disks: Alternate takes/ songs, extensive liner notes, lyrics, high-rez scans of all the original artwork, session notes, period interviews with the artists (text as well as video/ audio clips,) etc... In short: all the stuff we have become accustomed to getting when we buy a movie in DVD format.

 

No brand-new album in this format will cost more than $12, $15 for a double-set. Older back-catalog albums will be even cheaper, around $10 or under.

 

With an affordable, super high quality new format for the die-hard audiophiles, and that will allow the record labels to practice their traditional business models, we are now ready for:

 

 

Step 2: Make MP3 file-sharing legal... even encouraged.

 

 

While in the process of upgrading their entire catalog to the new audio format, all the record companies should rip their entire catalog (including albums out-of-print or that will not be upgraded to the new format) to super-high quality MP3s and throw them up on a website, or release them directly to a file-sharing outfit.

 

Reinstate the classic file-sharing software, like the original Napster, with one difference: all the new file-sharing clients must be capable of tracking each song downloaded and/ or shared and reporting the stats back to a master database. This should be easy... if there's one thing computers are good at is compiling data such as this.

 

Set up an agency to handle this data and track who is being downloaded. This is similar to the way royalties are handled for radio-play: every month radio stations report who has been played and how often, as well as send a check for their royalty payment. The agency then breaks up the funds they collect and divide it among the musicians who got radio play that month depending on how often each was played.

 

But where is that money coming from for file-sharing? In radio the stations get their funds by selling airtime to advertisers between songs,.. But no good analog for that exists with file-sharing. So How?

 

Simple: In order to download and listen to MP3s you need a lot of high-tech hardware, a connection to the internet, somewhere to store all that data, etc... You build in a fee or tax on every item or service that could, even theoretically, be used in the transfer, storage, or organization of music, and move that money to the newly created agency.

 

How much per item? Well, it couldn't be too much, or people would flip out. Best to make it small amounts spread across a wide array of items, based on a scale of how likely the item in question will be used to play music that was transferred in this way.

 

Example: An iPod or other MP3 player-- bigger fee, say 5 or 10 dollars per player sold, or maybe base it on the mega- or giga-byte capacity of the player. A smaller iPod would have less of a fee attached to it than a larger one.

 

Something like a computer video card, on the other hand would have only a tiny fee attached to it since while file sharers need to see and organize their collections on their screens, the item could be used for other purposes not involving music.

 

Everything that could be used for sharing music should be taxed though: From a penny per blank CD and DVD, several dollars for massive hard-drives, several bucks a month for every high-speed cable or DSL connection, from computer speaker systems and ear-bud headphones to the lowliest patch-cord at Radio-Shack. Everything. Maybe you could get a bargain on purchasing complete systems.

 

"But wait!" you're saying, "I don't want to have to pay extra money on my hardware when I don't file-share! It's not fair!"

 

Tough. Too bad... you should start sharing. Share up a storm. Download the entire catalogs of every artist you've ever been the slightest bit interested in... then go out and buy a couple of massive hard-drives, some new speakers for your PCs, a new portable MP3 player, a new car system capable of playing MP3 disks, lots and lots of blank disks, cables to connect your whole house together, upgrade your connection so that you can download and upload even more.

Every purchase you make helps support the artists you like.

 

 

 

Perhaps something similar could be formulated for the movie industry...

 

It will never happen though. It's too big, involves too many different industries with no real interest in helping one another, way too much bureaucracy... but it's one way to make file sharing not only legal, but something that record companies would really encourage. Maybe... no, then again, probably not. They're too damn greedy to see how giving away samples in one format might actually lead to sales in another.

[Gold leader]

Wow, new layout and all, coming across some interesting posts I apparently missed out on...

Actually, a year or 2 ago I wrote an essay on the ethics of file sharing. The interesting pointe of it was that according to classic utilism (a type of ethics), there's nothing wrong with file sharing because the total increase of "happiness" is far greater than the decline (public vs artist). But more realistic ethic considerations (the ones not demanding extreme altruism or encouraging exploitation, like Kant's philosophies) do not approve of file sharing, unless the artist isn't bothered by it. Now there are some who actually encourage the sharing of their music, The Offspring for example. Personally I don't see a problem with sharing their songs in that case too.

But for songs by other artists...well...the treshold to share their music is too low, the moral appeal just not strong enough, so I totally agree with edlib's plan here. I also think artists should emphasize more that people can support them by visiting their concerts, I'm under the impression that with gigs the performers get alot more of the money they're entitled to compared to cd sales.

 

Anyway, I for one am in a more comfortable position than most of the US dwelling members of these boards, as according to Dutch copyright laws it is perfectly legal to download music or books for your own use without paying for them, as long as you refrain from uploading.

[Kylilin]

I think the big dilemma is when does a song become property and whose property. When I buy a CD, I don't like to think that I am renting it. The songs on the CD should be owned by me, I forked over the fifteen bucks for some crappy album that most of the time has only three or four good songs out of twenty, why shouldn't I put them on my computer for other people to share? To use the car analogy as ed did, when I buy a car, do I have to charge a fee for someone to use my car? I can, but it is my decision, not the car manufacturer's. Finally to the music industry I say this: if you want people to stop the file sharing of specific songs, try making albums where the whole album is good, and worth buying, I'd gladly pay a few bucks to download an album or buy it at the store if I know I was getting my money's worth.