Posted on 05/07/2010 2:01:58 PM PDT by a fool in paradise
...computational neuroscientist Anders Sandberg recently noted that although we have strong instinctive feelings about ownership, intellectual property doesn’t always fit into that framework....
..Optimists argue that the music industry has coped before with disruptive new technology. Until recordings came along, songs, not singers, were Big Business. So while copyright law allocated royalties for performances, it said nothing about what happened when you recorded those performances and sold thousands of copies of the recording. Only after protracted legal maneuvering did we work out an arrangement that allowed both businesses to thrive.
...collectors switching from cassette and vinyl to CD swelled the music industry’s coffers in the 1980s and ’90s, so the eventual softening of sales is hardly surprising. The concert industry is indeed booming despite the downturn. And people who admit to downloading music illegally may actually spend more money on recorded music than people who don’t. One assumes they plump up concert revenues as well.
...Concert-promotion mogul Michael Rapino has said that just 2 percent of Americans attend more than a couple of concerts a year...
...To be sure, today’s 20-something file-sharer may someday pay $200 to watch Vampire Weekend rock the Astrodome. Or maybe not; the Internet tends to fragment audiences. Generation X, of which I am a member, was probably the last to grow up with the Top 40 and only a few TV stations—and the kind of common taste that this structure instilled. The bounty of the World Wide Web encourages niche interests....
But the broader music industry, like other entertainment fields, has always worked on a tournament model: a lot of starving artists hoping to be among the few who make it big....
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Keep in mind this is the same record industry that tried for the better part of a decade to shove disco down our throats, and after ultimately failing at that, turned right around and handed us a steaming plate of rap.
I remember when Disney got that extension on their copyrights from a republican congress. The GOP was so stupid to believe that Michael Eisner would suddenly be so “grateful” as to start giving generously to republicans. How’d that generosity work out?
The record companies had their chance and blew it. They could have built a digital distribution infrastructure that gave people a chance to pay a fair price for music, but they ignored the technology (except for lawsuits) and dragged their feet. The original Napster operated from 1999 to 2001 and demonstrated the market for digital downloads. But not until Apple opened the iTunes Music Store in 2003 did people have an easy option for buying music online. That was at least 4 years during which the record companies could have built their own stores, but didn’t. If they had, maybe people wouldn’t have grown so used to taking stuff for free.
They could also have figured out a way to let you “trade in” your old music for the new format. Turning a vinyl album into an MP3 is tricky, but I’ve done it; but it’s a lot easier to look for the album online and download it instead.
“rights that last much longer and are far cheaper to secure than patents”
Patents and copyrights are not, nor ever have been, the same thing.
I’ve discovered, thanks to the Internet a lot of great acts from outside of the US. There’s a whole world of great music out there.
“computational neuroscientist Anders Sandberg recently noted that although we have strong instinctive feelings about ownership, intellectual property doesn’t always fit into that framework”
This I’ve never understood. never mind about copyright extending beyond a person’s lifespan. Disagreement over that makes sense. However, this arbitrary distinction between property and “intellectual property” is tenuous at best. All property is “intellectual.” Otherwise, what is mine would only be what I could physically possess and physically defend.
Take me house, for instance. I occupy it. It is physical, so am I, and we have a physical relationship to one another when I’m in it. But often, and sometimes for long stretches of time, I’m not in it, and our physical relationship disappears. Suddenly, any ownership I might be able to claim logically becomes nothing but “intellectual.” Tell me, how is my relationship to my house any different, fundamentally, from a novel I wrote when I’m not in it?
Well put.
The socialist freeloader mentality advocated by the entertainment industry has dark consequences for life in America. They preach hate for the free market and for all moral law. Then they get upset when they are victimized by their oppressive ideology and gutter preaching. I am glad it comes back to them so directly.
The evidence of the truth of that is the sold out concerts by the bands from the seventies and eighties.
I watch the Moody Blues and think that there is not one 'band' out there now that can even imagine the complexity of a song like "Nights in White Satin".
He’s got a point. Copyright has generally expired around 75 years or so. That would mean music from 1935- onwards would be free to distribute. It would also mean that in 30 years, Beatles stuff would start to be distributed, and Chuck Berry, in about 20 some years.
So, if record companies will respect copyright law, then the filesharers should too.
Both are grouped under the category of “intellectual property”
Copyrights are used to protect not just literary pieces, commercial logos, artworks, and the like, but also computer code.
Copyrights cost next to nothing to register. Patents cost more than $400 to secure— not including attorneys fees, which can push costs above $10,000 when all is said and done.
A patent takes about 4 years to finalize. It lasts 10— 20 years. Copyrights last 50 years.
Which form of “intellectual property” has rewarded society most?
The problem that has evolved is the audience demanding everything for free, in blackmail that they won’t buy anything unless they get free stuff first. Then the artist / creators HOPES they buy something. And many then do not.
Expecting something for free and leaving the producers to hope for payment eventually has been pursued by the RIAA on file sharing, but Obamacare is part of the same mentality. They want doctors and creative types to put out for free, and the state / collective might eventually feed them.
I say this as an author who publishes digitally.
You’d think a new system of “universal license” could fix the whole thing - pay $5 a month on top of your ISP fee, paid into a publishing pool, and distribute accordingly. Just like ASCAP, BMI, the BBC, etc.
It’s a model that would generate more money for the “industry” and everyone would get paid — except the record company execs would have to share instead of working collusive and monopolistic deals.
How dare they call those undocumented record/movie owners freeloaders. They work hard figuring out how to get all those songs and movies uploaded and downloaded.../s
I grew up in the days of cassette tapes and remember just how CRAPPY they were...they cost the labels something like 25 cents, yet I had to pay $6.00, or more. Just to have them fail on me. In some cases I bought the same album 3 times.
It’s now payback time, as far as I’m concerned.
“but also computer code”
That’s a mistake. Should be covered by patents, in my opinion.
“Which form of ‘intellectual property’ has rewarded society most?”
Though extending or reducing terms is not strictly a matter of determining what most benefits society, which reeks of utilitarianism at best and socialism at worst, is not necessarily the central concern, there is a perfectly practical reason patents should be shorter than copyrights. Techonological advancement is important to human welfare, and is propelled by the market, and as such it is important to ensure optimal innovation. To do so, you must balance protecting people’s flashes of genuis while promoting quick turnover. If patents were to hold for 75 years, laziness would take over, and innovation would suffer.
Patents and copyrights are fundamentally different. One is in the infitely more measurable and comprehensible world of technology. The other in the more nebulous world of art. One is extremely responsive to new things, each idea building on the one which came before. The other, who knows? Literary innovation, for instance, starts and stalls lord knows why. In short, long terms definitely stifle patent innovation, but by no means is the same true of art and entertainment.
I’m not sure how to explain it accurately, but there is a canyon between the discovery of a new combination of circuits for a patentable electronic device and the writing of a new novel. Not just because the ideas for the new novel come more ex nihilo than the new electronic device (which invariably will more closely follow the innovations upon which its creator built), but because the electronic device no doubt consists of a very specific new arrangment. Put this and this and this together, and you have. No one may have seen it before, but they’ll be able to put it together immediately once they do.
A novel, contrarywise, could have the exact same premise, with a piece here and a piece there, of another. But it’s newness does not lie, like the electronic device, in some discreet combination of a few little things. It exists in every single word, every single punctuation mark. The novel as a whole had to be created as a whole (unless it were plagiarized, in which case it wouldn’t be copyrightable). Every part nonfungible.
That’s not really the point, though. Your point about patents having rewarded society justifying them vis a vis copyrights is wide of the mark. They’re more beneficial because of the perpetual turning-over of the marketplace, which means that for the sake of society they ought to have shorter, not longer, terms of protection.
With the exception of the Seattle Bands from the early 90s...Pearl Jam et al...and a little further back to Metallica from SF.
They were the last generation of good rock from what I can tell.
I sure wish somebody would prove me wrong.
We’re focusing on the wrong point on this thread.
The problem is Megan McArdle, she is a stupid fake CINO who writes stories way above her paygrade, her paygrade is closer to local newsrag obit writer, and for some reason she keeps getting promoted above her competence level.
FR has had plenty of threads regarding filsharing, and the music industry, and I can tell you right now McArdle is just NOT intellectually and musically curious, she belongs to a social group that is not intellectually and musically curious, she writes for an audience she thinks is not intellectually curious, and she doesn’t even comprehend that she lives in a little self imposed box.
How has the music world changed? My local library supports concerts from musicians from Cajun country, Quebec, Scotland, Russia, Israel, New ENgland, Nashville each year through sponsorships.
The local music clubs bring in groups from Europe and Japan and recently Vancouver, and the entirety of the East Coast US.
The local dance club plays mixes from musicians the world over, and brings in DJ’s from the East Coast and Europe regularly.
The concept of the performer getting royalties on recorded performances is a historical and economic anomaly in the Western tradition.
The music industry in this country will not revive until the club culture is revived in as many markets as possible, the best way to revive American music,... remove the smoking bans, zoning laws, etc from club owners so a performance space can allow people the freedoms they can now only enjoy in their homes.
/longwinded
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