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
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