It December French MPs backed a move to allow internet users to download as much material as they want in exchange for a small fee. Story here.
The MPs are due to vote again on the issue next week.
If this actually makes it into French law the consequences could be far-reaching. As other governments see this they could also enact similar legislation. the record companies are panicking about this.
As new methods of distribution open up it seems to me the record companies should be embracing them rather than trying to limit them.
If this holds up in court then I’d like to take the time to thank all those artists who’ve sold me their wares in the past and wish them well on their next job.
If an artist wants to make their music available on some sort of global license, whats to stop them now. It is a stupid law if it’s affect is to force others to do so.
It’s time for thieves to realize that people will not put a lot of effort into something they get nothing for. That’s why communism failed in the arena of personal/economic growth.
User fees are absolutely the best idea (at least for the artist) but that is not what the article is talking about. Charging a couple of Euro’s a month for unlimited use of someone’s creation is not a user fee and nowhere in the article did it suggest anyone was trying to stop the internet. What is being discussed is theft on the internet.
However you feel about internet thieving/file sharing, it will not stop. I truly believe this is a “can’t beat’em, learn to exploit’em” situation. The industry must adapt.
France’s solution is not the best, which is what I meant when I wrote 'user fees may not be the best idea". I agree that a couple of euros is not enough to compensate the artists.
I am in favor of some sort of mandatory licensing for most media, but so far this plan doesn’t seem particularly well-defined.
“A few Euros a month” is almost certainly not enough to make up for current revenue. I’m not sure what a reasonable amount would be, but it’s pretty important to get it right if you’re going to enshrine it into law.
There’s also the really important question of how to split the money up, which hasn’t been thoroughly addressed in any plan I’ve seen.
I think it’s short-sighted to approach the problem of copyright violation as one of “owners” and “thieves”, because it forces the economy of content culture to be zero-sum. There’s no reason that the right construct couldn’t result in more money for content creators and more freedom to enjoy content for the public and reduced costs for distribution, and probably a few more societal boons as well. I’m not sure that this proposed plan is going to get there, but I do strongly believe that treating copyrights the same as property rights in perpetuity is not the best way to go about it.
I imagine, somewhere, there are people who enjoy writing/singing/playing music for its own sake. If the Debian Project can pay for its servers, I wonder if these artists can pay for their instruments?
I don’t imagine it, I’m sure of it but I think we’re talking apples and oranges. When I get my web site up it will contain all kinds of information that I donate to the cause but that’s of my choosing. Someone who wishes to play music for a living needs to make money or we don’t get the quality that we’re so use to hearing.
I could just as easily say “Someone who makes music needs to do it for a better reason than that they need a job, or we don’t get quality music”. Your position assumes that unless someone is getting money for their work, their work will be of poor quality. Given the example of free software packages that are sometimes superior (by various measures) to equivalent software made by paid staff, it would seem this assumption does not hold to the software industry.
What reason is there to believe that it holds to the music industry? Why should we necessarily assume that people who make music because they enjoy it or find value in it will necessarily produce lower-quality music than what the commercial music industry has offered us? I dispute the idea that “people who are getting paid do good work”. I’ve seen municipal workers slacking off and heard awful commercial music, volunteers who put their heart into their tasks and folk musicians of great skill whose style wasn’t suited to the current mass market trend.
As far as “making a living” goes, if the people at Debian (and OpenOffice, and K Desktop, and GNU, etc…) aren’t starving, and are producing good work and giving it away, why can’t musicians? And meanwhile, peoplearestillselling software and making a buck off it – suggesting free products can coexist with stuff that costs money. So musicians who prefer to sell their product conventionally need not go extinct.
Apples and oranges? People make a desirable piece of intellectual property that lots of people want, either selling it for money or offering it free. The product can be easily distributed on the internet to anyone who wants it, or it can be bought in a store in a box. There’s a spectrum of quality, and a great deal of variation in popularity, across the various products. Which am I talking about? Music, or software?
There are ways to make money from playing music besides charging for copies of a song, though. Treating music as a product to be packaged and sold in discrete units to consumers simply isn’t going to work for much longer; copyright is impossible to enforce in the age of the internet, and that business model will collapse without copyright propping it up.
Instead of focusing on the end product, look at what’s really valuable: the talent and time that an artist puts into creating a song. You can’t copy that. If only the artist could charge for the time he actually spent working on something (you know, like everyone else does, from barbers to accountants) there would be no problem.
The common objection to this plan is that no one person can afford to pay for the production of an album; critics say it would be like the historical times when paintings and music were commissioned by a few rich patrons. But I believe the internet, by making it easy for thousands or millions of people with common interests to work together, can solve that problem. Political candidates can raise millions of dollars from individual contributions–money that the contributors know will be wasted if their guy doesn’t win–so why can’t musicians do the same thing? More people vote for American Idol than vote for President!
There is an argument that musicians will lose out if this idea is implemented, but how much would a musician get from a record sale anyway? Most of the cost of a CD is taken up in producing/distributing/marketing costs, or so the record companies would have us believe.
A global licence at least generates some revenue for an artist, which may be more than they are getting now.
And you seem to have missed the quote from the original article.
Either these musicians don/t think they will lose money because of it, or they are willing to lose out.
Perhaps they are the more obscure artists ? The middlemen like the record companies do act as gatekeepers; if none of them is interested, you can’t get published.They musicians might think that the present system has nothing to offer them, or is actively hostile to them ( whether it true or not, mind you ).
I listen to live music every weekend. If I’m really lucky I’ll get to catch someone like Jason Ricci passing through during the week. But if the money isn’t there, he won’t be there either or I’ll have to travel 600 miles to hear him in a larger venue.
Because of the number of bands I listen to I’ve befriended a fair number of musicians. I’ve had many many discussions on what they do (musically) and where it’s gotten them. It would be an understatement to say they invest a lot of time and money in their profession. Playing in a band is something above and beyond individual music skill. It’s an interaction that requires a lot of practice.
Music sales are a big part of successfully breaking into the profession full time. They go hand-in-hand with sponsorship. Bands are promoted on their perceived ability to generate record sales. Record sales for a new band are almost always generated from new material. The difference between a part-time musician and a full time musician is usually the difference between cover songs and individual creations. If you take this money out of the mix it will reduce the number of viable, professional musicians.
That’s simply not true. I have a stack of CD’s produced by local bands (5-state area). They are produced using computer equipment owned by the individual band or friends of the band. Getting it distributed is a function of promotion, not the physical movement of the product. If I told you Michael Hedges was a tremendous guitar player (God rest his soul) you’d probably say “who”? He was promoted by an obscure label who happened to get him on the CD-of-the-month for a major distributor. That probably did more for his career than a year of touring.
He was doing pretty good until the car accident. He could fill a college theater by himself which makes the split pretty good. Saw him 3 times and was more impressed each time. He was one of those musicians that other musicians came to listen to.
So are you gonna share some of these secrets or what? I got hungry friends who could use some help. It’s a tough business to get into. I know of only 2 bands that are in the transition from part time to full time and they work their f!#$ing asses off. Public appreciation doesn’t pay the bills.
Seriously, money is no different in the music world than any other profession. If it’s not there then there is no incentive to achieve. I’d hate to think of a world without modern music.
