Posted on 04/02/2009 11:20:43 AM PDT by a fool in paradise
According to some people who are paid lots of money to think about these sorts of things, the legal, ethical and economic questions facing the music business aren’t just about preserving the livelihoods of people who work in that industry. No, the very future of democracy is at stake....
At the heart of the debate is how to license peer-to-peer sharing of music files, widely blamed for the huge drop in sales of recorded music this decade. Sandy Pearlman, a veteran producer and McGill University professor, and entertainment lawyer Dina LaPolt raised the specter of a “darknet,” in which information and goods are shared in a closed virtual market that can neither be regulated nor monitored.
“The ‘darknet’ is here, with networking in corners of the Net where people can hide what they’re doing” and therefore not be held accountable for their actions, LaPolt said. These networkers are “part of a generation that grew up knowing only about a world of instant gratification and endless choice...”
“Social networks always start in anarchy,” said Rick Carnes, president of the Songwriters Guild of America. But he warns that if property rights aren’t respected and laws are being broken, the government will have to crack down and impose a new form of Web “tyranny.”
When the government starts putting the screws on rogue Internet traffickers, “You won’t be able to get on the network unless you have total identification,” including finger-printing and complete background information, Carnes asserted...
The anonymity afforded by the Internet “deprives us [songwriters] of the ability to make a living,” he said. “We’re on the frontier of this issue. How we solve it will define the future of democracy.”
(Excerpt) Read more at leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com ...
Does that mean Deputy AG David Ogden won’t be able to surf the internet for child porn?
“Social networks always start in anarchy,” said Rick Carnes, president of the Songwriters Guild of America. But he warns that if property rights aren’t respected and laws are being broken, the government will have to crack down and impose a new form of Web “tyranny.”
"revolution is good" (to seize power). I loathe the Left.
All animals are equal. Some are more equal than others.
These maggots think the internet is all about them!
I hope they get smacked down hard but 0bomo has very nasty RIAA lawyers coming onboard his administration and one from the Software Alliance
Through giving live performances, same as they did in the era before recordings. Recorded music is becoming a free commercial for the live performance.
That, and sucky music...
ping
Who knew that songwriters were capitalists, and are now turning into fascists?
I don’t recall the bands that played Woodstock agreeing to play “a free concert” for free. Nope, they encouraged the crowd to enjoy the free concert and still demanded their contracted payments.
...and some thirteen year old will figure out how to get around all the security precautions that are thrown up around the ‘net, nature abhors a vacuum.
And here I thought it was just because of all the CRAP that they have been trying to peddle.
Could you imagine the auto makers campaigning to stop the second-hand auto market? ha!
I know. A friend of mine owns a pawn shop. He has a display of used CD’s. Many of the artists are unknown. But when the used CD market first appeared some people in the industry panicked.
You would think that songwriters had no way of making a living before Edison
Actually when recorded songs came out, you didn’t have to pay the songwriter per copy, the money was in sheet music.
Same with people singing songs on stage.
Sheet music was like 50cents per song (that was a lot of money 120 years ago).
They would encourage you to make their songs popular so that more people would buy the sheet music.
After nearly 100 years, the music industry is demanding that radio stations pay for music.
From what I heard modern artist don't make much more than that with a CD .Most of the money goes to the suits.
I read a biography on Ben Franklin that went into copyright infringement in his day ( apparently there was a lot of it ) and IIRC Mark Twain made most of his money touring.
50cents a CD, not per song...
According the book Bootleg, The Other Music Industry, America did not originally respect European copyrights.
All of them.
It is, truly, the basis of our free market...those who create must be able to reap the benefits of their creation.
Hell, yes. To the dungeons with librarians. Government thieves!
Burn the libraries now!
Laura, we know where you live.
I can think of a much better reason music sales have gone to heck in the last decade. For about 15 years before then, the greatest music advertising service that ever existed was created.
It was called “Music Television”, and it was extremely popular, airing videos featuring the music of hundreds of musicians and performers. The average Music Television view could name 10 or 20 different musicians and performers they had seen on television. It caused explosive growth in pop music, and made enormous sums of money for the music industry.
Today, only a tiny percentage of people could name *any* new artists, even though they still remember those that were performing in the 1980s and early 1990s.
So what happened? Why did Music Television go away? A strong possibility is that the music industry was so amazingly greedy, that they couldn’t stand the idea of anyone making any money off of “their” property.
Note, I didn’t say “musicians or performers”. Because as far as the music industry is concerned, they are just “work for hire” minimum wage workers, who deserve nothing more than a small, one off payment for their music, certainly no other rights or royalties. All other profits from anything, for anything, and by anyone, the music industry wanted and want for themselves.
Even if it gave the music industry millions of dollars of free advertising.
So the music industry demanded huge sums of money from Music Television, for the honor of giving the music industry millions of dollars in free advertising. And the Music Television company refused.
And that was the end of Music Television. Instead, they just became “MTV”, which just stands for “MTV”, and not music, and they run endless amounts of insipid and mediocre programming. But little or no music videos.
Which is a great pity, and denies the public information about new artists and performers. So not knowing about them otherwise, they only find out about them via the Internet, with major performers being as unimportant as somebody’s garage band.
It didn’t have to be this way. But that’s the way it is.
Libraries PURCHASE everything that they lend and offer to read...with the exception of allowing un-fettered access to the internet.
And, in those cases it's the USER of the access that's the thief.
Additionally, copyright is not "forever". Even copyright has time limits...and usually long enough to protect the artist.
It isn't the government's task to scout for violations. It is the copyright holder's. And then you are to take them to court. Big Media should have no super legal powers to snoop on your communications to "inspect" all communications for copyright infractions.
LIMITED copyright was the founding principle of this nation. Big Media writes our laws. The RIAA's top lawyer is now in the Obama Administration. The decisions are already going their way.
Patents are limited too.
And Garth Brooks and Sony tried to prohibit the used sale of CDs.
If they'd call it "Software" and sell a "license" (agreed to upon opening the package) they COULD prohibit the sale of used merchandise.
Actually, digitial downloads are in the favor of the music industry. People pay $1, $3, $5, $10, $25, $40, $100, $1000, and even $10,000 for rare old records (post WWII, with many post 1960). The artists and the labels see none of that. There is no resale of a digital download.
Should ownership of intellectual property differ in any way from ownership of any other property?
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