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

[Dave Phillips]

Louigi Verona wrote:
>
> Your argument seems very-very convincing. But is it really?
>

Yes.

> "Yeh, yeh, yeh, artists made art before copyright. What they didn't 
> make was as much money as they now stand to make because of it."
>
> So why not make up a law that, for instance, that allows bus drivers 
> to make more money? Like, make using your car illegal. And if you are 
> a bus driver, you would also say - "if you'd own a bus, you'd support 
> that law, since before I did not get that much money, now I have great 
> income". So what? Do bus drivers need more money? Do musicians need 
> more money? Why? Why only musicians then? Why not teachers? Why not 
> make up a law to increase income of washing ladies by making washing 
> machines illegal?
>

Ah yes, Luddism. Bruce Sterling's novels investigate this impact of 
evolving technologies upon our societies. Given that any society 
includes a balance of agreements and contracts, assumed and explicit, 
there is always an imbalance of wealth. Now it favors this class, now it 
favors that one. Musicians currently enjoy more legal protection than at 
any other time in Western history. In the not-so-recent past they 
haven't fared so well. And there's no guarantee that their current good 
fortune will continue indefinitely.

Anyway, such laws are made here all the time. Everyone vies for their 
share of legal protection for what they perceive as their legitimate 
means of livelihood. That's what lobbyists do here, they push for favor 
in the formation of law. There are good and bad lobbyists.

> Looking at any law or regulation within that frame is going to deliver 
> the same result. But I firmly believe that the link between artists 
> income and copyright is made up. I am saying this because all my 
> professional musician friends make substantial money and feed their 
> kids WITHOUT selling copies of their works. I underline this. And I 
> know this as a fact because I often work with them and know all the deals.

All contracts are "made up", there's nothing especially natural about 
them. But contract law is specific to nationality. It's very nice that 
your friends can do so well there. You refer to them as professionals, 
and I would expect by definition then that they can make a living as 
musicians. So do I. But I also create work covered by copyright, and I 
happen to not agree with your assumption that what I create becomes 
yours by mere possession.


>
> And yes, we can and should count profits of people when they come out 
> of limiting our freedom. This is a serious question. And if I see 
> musicians buying houses and a teenager having to pay 15 million 
> because he downloaded an album from the web, I can and should think 
> that something is wrong here.

You exaggerate, but it helps emphasize your real point. Ultimately you 
want a cap on allowable income, i.e. after a person has made $500,000 on 
his recording - whether by direct payment or royalties - he should get 
nothing more. Even more, his work ought to be usable without further 
fees by anyone anywhere. To follow your own reasoning: Why ? If 
anything, it acts as a disincentive to create works requiring 
substantial investment of time and material resources.

You do understand that the FSF takes a strong stand on copyright 
violation ? Whatever you or I might believe about copyright law, the FSF 
clearly understands that it protects projects like Linux. Money is not 
the only issue in the misappropriation of what is called intellectual 
property. The FSF perceives stuff like Linux as intellectual property, 
entitled to copyright protection by law, and they enforce action against 
violators of the GPL, and with the same justification taken by the 
greedy record companies. It's law, and it applies to the good and bad alike.


>
> But at the end of the day I will tell you this: if a musician makes 
> music to then regulate it, I don't want his music. Seriously. I would 
> rather give up all that professional "scene" if it makes not music 
> that spreads around, but products which are "property". Maybe this is 
> just me, so I am not saying everyone should be like me. But to me 
> music is a spiritual experience and copyright ruins that experience 
> and turns art into commerce - unfortunately.
>

My music reaches maybe a few thousand people at best. I'm happy to give 
it away. My band sells CDs at our gigs, we make a little money from those.

Your statement that "if a musician makes music to then regulate it, I 
don't want his music" implies that you have an agenda that I don't 
share. I don't care in the least where the music comes from, if the 
artist is a Muslim or a Jew, or whether it's covered by license A or 
contract Z. I listen to the music, that's what I attend to. The rest is 
personal drama, more or less interesting as I have the time to attend to 
it. We may not agree on many things, but I guarantee that I will be 
utterly honest with regards to your art. The work lives its own life, 
not the life of its creator. The life-form of the work interests me, not 
its provenance.


> In fact, in my view fields like education, medicine, science and arts 
> should not be platforms for wealth generation. These fields are too 
> important to be spoiled by money seekers and when music was not a 
> fortune-making business, but a calling, composers were those who had 
> something to say. After all, life can force you to be a bus driver, 
> but nobody forces you to be a composer if you don't want it.

Earlier you economically equalized artists with wash women (nothing 
against wash women), now artists are "too important to be spoiled".

Anyway, the statement that "fields like education, medicine, science and 
arts should not be platforms for wealth generation" puts you at odds 
with probably about 95% of my fellow citizens. Your reasoning simply 
assumes that money spoils or stains these activities. I think the 
situation is not so black & white.

Btw, composers today still have a lot to say. The ones I like are surely 
saying something to me.

>
> And, in conclusion, Russia today is basically a copyright-less 
> country. The law does not really work.
> If you want, you can come to Moscow and look around. And see for 
> yourself if you can find any starving musicians' bodies lying on the 
> streets. And then you can go around, visit philharmonics, go to local 
> band shows, see what is going on in experimental, rock, folk, 
> classical scenes. All of those live without copyright. Bewildering. 
> All those musicians don't seem to notice any problems. I wonder why.
>

Because you're talking about performance, a form of work which is not 
subject to copyright.

However, in an amusing twist, the bootleg market here was booming when I 
worked in retail years ago. The store owner caught hell from Sony 
because he was selling bootleg discs of recorded shows. The corporation 
was pissed off because no-one except the bootlegger and the retailer 
made any money. Sony wanted to assert copyright violation, but they 
didn't go to court. They didn't have to, they simply threatened to stop 
delivery of Sony product to the retailer. Ah, power.

There's performance work here too. Probably not so much as in Moscow, 
but like there, no-one's making any money from copyright as performers 
here either.

And I'm out of this discussion. Not because I'm loath to write more. In 
fact, I have to write more, just not on this list, and if I don't get 
myself back to work (for hire, btw, and subject to copyright) then I 
don't get paid. I need more memory in the secondary machine, the vet 
needs paid, I gotta buy groceries this week, I just got the water bill, 
et cetera ad nauseam.

"Money, it's a gas"

Best,

dp