[LAU] ASCAP Assails Free-Culture, Digital-Rights Groups

[Mark Knecht]

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 10:55 AM, Andrew C <countfuzzball at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mark,
>
> For what it's worth, if you download (for free) a Beatles/Stones/Pink Floyd
> album, they aren't exactly losing royalties, y''know? Also, if you are
> downloading one of their albums and NOT other starving artists' albums, then
> there is no lost sale toward that artist.
>

There isn't any lost revenue to anyone if you would _never_ buy the
product anyway, but there are royalties still going to the
Beatles/Stones/Pink Floyd for every CD you buy of theirs on Amazon or
in the iTunes store.

Problem with this is that it's a slippery slope. People fill up their
iPods with music and movies downloaded with BitTorrent or other tools.
They start with a few things that are free and appropriate and end up
with only things that should cost them money but they took because
they could.

> On a similar note, shouldn't we just totally lobby against youtube for
> copyright violations and loss of sales etc for hosting videos containing
> songs by these young, screwed-by-the-record-label artists (Lady Gaga for
> example). But, last time I checked, nobody seems to, and neither are any of
> the visitors to the pages that contain the videos getting sued for illegally
> downloading copyrighted material etc.

YouTube is an interesting case. I didn't read what the decision was
but I hear they won a judgment against (I think) Viacom a few days ago
allowing them to keep posting stuff, or at least to leave it online if
someone else posts it. There's a big mix of things going on within
YouTube and (to some extent) I think the music producers see it as a
marketing tool using lousy quality video and audio. (Much as they
allowed VHS to continue without copy protection until it died for lack
of interest.)

Most bands have web sites. Lots of these sites allow us to play their
music. In some cases all of their music. They quality isn't always
great but we can listen. But instead of that we find people not
satisfied with what they can get for free deciding to take liberties
to make their life better/more convenient and (I think) unfortunately
not willing to pay a penny.

Anyway, I don't suppose my views are very popular among the majority
of folks that might be reading this. I actually think it's very
important that artists be paid a living wage. Once we start bringing
the 0.1% of them that are monster money makers into the discussion it
gets pretty crazy pretty quickly but the 99.9% of them that cannot
make a living really are, in my opinion, hurt financially by all of
this.

Keep in mind that this is not _only_ about the headliner - it's also
about composers, arrangers, back-up musicians, etc, that never make a
penny from the band playing live.

But again, that's just me.

>
> Also, I do agree with Louigi. Should there be a mandatory price on
> creativity?

I agreed with a lot of Louigi's points, but disagreed with a couple
and felt it was coming from a POV I couldn't quite understand right
now. Personally I didn't think I could answer it well at this time.

Cheers,
Mark