In the United States? From what I’ve read, U.S. copyright law evolved during the 19th and 20th centuries to include performance rights, copyrights on sheet music and piano rolls, and copyrights on performances and sound recordings. Today, people assert rights over musical phrases and digital samples.
Compare our tenses.
Can I just point out that filesharing is not illegal or immoral. The unauthorized downloading of copyright material is illegal. But you do not have to use filesharing to do that, and filesharing is used for many legitimate purposes.
The artist is free to participate in whatever business model they wish. If that model is not sustainable, however, it will not last.
What the artist wishes may also not be possible or possible in reality. An artist might wish that only the individual who physically purchased a CD can listen to it (to use an extreme example). But how would you enforce such a thing?
The reality now is that anyone can take a CD or an mp3 and make an exact copy of it. Even if they don’t put it on Kazaa! or whatever service the kids use now, they can burn it to a disk, copy it to an iPod, put the MP3 on a network share at work or school or email it to everyone they know.
It’s my opinion that the only time a creator has a right to completely control access to their work is if they never release to the public at all; if they keep that novel in their desk drawer, or only sing in the shower. If you put it out into the world, it’s out in the world. You should expect to be paid for it, but you shouldn’t expect to maintain absolute control. You want that, don’t release it. You pays your money and you takes your chances.
Another artist should be allowed to use it, as long as they pay reasonable royalties for it. Case in point, the Gray Album. The owners of the Beatles tracks should have been allowed to demand no more than a reasonable, non-prohibitive royalty. They should not have been able to prevent the album’s release.
We accep this trade off with people: celebrities understand that once you become a public personality, you give up certain rights to privacy. It’s just the way it is. There should be a similar model for “celebrities” of art.
Nope, definitely not.
When the Roman Empire banned Christianity, it meant that Christianity was immoral in the Roman Empire. Ditto for when some Communist countries did the same. And needless to say, Judaism was immoral in those parts of Europe that Germany controlled during WWII.
More recently, in the U.S.A., the consumption of alcoholic beverages when one is of the ages 18, 19, or 20 became immoral back in the mid-1980s.
Again, who is claiming that copyrights are a means to “absolute control?” I think that everyone here defending copyright laws, and the vast majority of people in general, acknowledge that the doctrine of fair use is well justified and not argued against.
The question really seems to be whether artists are entitled to ANY control (not absolute control as you stated) over the use of their work. You seem to be saying that artists should be paid for their work, but also that artists should have no recourse against those who use their work without paying for it. How can you square that circle?
And I’d be really interested to hear what you (or anyone else) say about the question I raised earlier, namely, why countries that observe copyright laws seem to be much more artistically productive than countries in which piracy is rampant.
You are free to put a lock on the front door of your house. However, the reality is that I could get a crowbar and break the window to get in. Am I justified in doing so just because you can’t stop me?
Thank you for saying that.
It really annoys me how the RIAA and its ilk have chosen to cast all filesharing in a dubious light because of unauthorised downloading. They do this, of course, because authorised peer-to-peer exchanges threaten their business model.
It still happens today.
Is that right? Is that why there’s no new music today that takes influences from other works? Is that why no one teaches themselves to perform music and does so for their own and other people’s pleasure in informal, unregulated settings? Is that why no one makes new versions of old music? Is that why no one creates or sells parodies of existing works?
Except that is nothing like file sharing. It involves you physically damaging something that doesn’t belong to you.
A better analogy would be if I built a house and then forbid anyone from taking a picture of it and building themselves the exact same house. It doesn’t affect me at all except now I’m upset that my house isn’t unique anymore.
What about recording a Major League Baseball game without expressed written permission? Is that immoral? How about zipping past the commercials on your TiVo?
How about if I open a store selling delicious beets from my beet farm? You buy some of my beets but instead of eating them you start growing your own beets with them? Is that immoral because I only sold beets for eatin’ not growin’?
Stealing something that doesn’t belong to you is immoral. Doing something that causes someone else to not make as much money is not necessarily immoral.
Oh, I see. If I try to refute the unsustainable/unenforceable business model argument, you respond that filesharing isn’t theft because there’s no physical property involved. If I try to refute the physical property argument, you respond that it’s an unsustainable business model anyway.
No thanks! I’m done with this thread.
In Canada the copying and distributing of copyrighted music is perfectly legal. This came about as the result of two separate decisions:
In 2003, the Copyright Board of Canada said downloading is legal but uploading is not.
BUT in 2004 a Federal Court judge ruled that uploading is legal.
A summary of the Canadian state of affairs:
[ul]
[li]I buy a CD - legal[/li][li]I copy that CD to my computer for my person use - legal[/li][li]I install filesharing software on my computer - just as legal as installing a photocopier in a library[/li][/ul]
So far no laws have been broken. But, you say, anyone who accesses my legal files is doing so illegally? Not in Canada. We pay a surcharge on blank media - CDs, tapes, MP3 players. From the first article above:
So when download a song from your server, I’ve prepaid for it when I bought the blank CD I’m copying it to.
The True North, strong… and free!
well…bye.
When come back, bring better analogies.
To answer Autumn Almanac’s question for all those who did not storm out in a huff, you can’t take what doesn’t physically belong to you.
The business model refers to how the artists and record companies actually make money. People make money because they are able to provide a good or service. If it costs nothing to copy and distribute music, you can’t expect to make money copying and distributing music. If you live on a coconut tree filled island, you aren’t going to make money buy selling coconuts locally because anyone can just grab one of the ground. It sounds to me like Canada is approaching it in the right way - anyone can copy the music but not everyone can manufacture CDs or MP3 players.
So the bottom line is if you want to make money, charge the things you can actually charge and stopy trying to legislate unenforceable laws hoping people will do “what’s right”.
[QUOTE=Ravenman]
Again, who is claiming that copyrights are a means to "absolute control?"QUOTE]
We’re discussing real world facts about copyright law. The fact is that Kate Bush tried to pay for the rights to passages from James Joyce’s Ulysses to use in her song “The Sensual World,” but the Joyce estate refused, and prevented her from using the passages at all. Prince has done the same thing, IIRC, and of course there’s the other example I’ve already mentioned, Danger Mouse’s use of the Beatles tracks on The Gray Album, and the subsequent injunction against releasing that album.
I’m saying it happens, and that I don’t think it should be allowed to happen.
What thread are you reading? I said that an artist should be able to demand payment, but should not be able to prevent use.
Regardless of your tense, your phrasing was painting it as though the labels buckled in and let radios play songs for free. That’s simply not true. At the moment there is no legal way to transmit a song for public consumption for free. You must pay a licensing fee for each time you transmit the song, regardless of whether the people listening would ever buy the song or not, and regardless of whether there is only one person listening to the station or two thousand.
Anyone uploading music is guilty of theft, for not paying a licensing fee for public performance of the song. Anyone who requests and downloads such an illegal file, is knowingly accepting stolen goods.
Having accepted stolen property, the RIAA is entirely in it’s right to say that you owe the full price of the song. Regardless of whether you would have purchased the song, you did accept a full, unimpaired version of the song. You accepted owning something that has X value, just you didn’t pay $X. That you never expected to have to pay $X isn’t a defense for why you shouldn’t be liable for it when you’re caught accepting stolen property.
Yes. It was also fattening. 
They sure as hell want you to think so.
Ah yes. Just as we should demand that you don’t rape women, but shouldn’t be able to prosecute you for doing so. It is after all more important that people be able to choose what they want to do in life, than to protect them from the choices of others.
Sort of like a movie theater that charges admission, but it shouldn’t be allowed to hire an usher to see if the patrons have bought tickets?
If seller and buyer can’t agree to terms, what then? If you’re not willing to concede that an artist cannot prohibit someone from using something they made if the other will not pay for it, you’ve established a system with a built-in contradiction. Users have zero incentive to pay because they are allowed to get the milk for free, as it were. You may question what thread I’m reading, but I’m wondering how you explain this glaring logical hole in your proposal.
With respect to these anecdotes about Kate Bush and Ulysses and so forth, how would you propose that a value be set on the use of someone else’s work in such ways? Does someone have to sue to get a judge to sort it all out? Or should there be established a Bureau of Fair Compensation to issue regulations on what things are worth? I just can’t conceive of an easy answer. In my view, the fair price of this use is whatever seller and buyer agree to. If they cannot come to terms, there’s no sale and no use.
Let me ask you a related question, and then wrap this around to the OP. I write a screenplay for some big blockbuster movie, start shopping it around Hollywood, and then Jerry Bruckheimer tells me, “Sorry kid, I’m just not going to pay you for your work, but I like your ideas so I’m going to make your movie anyway.” If the newest Nicholas Cage movie comes out and it mirrors my storyline exactly, and lets say my name is included in the credits so it is not outright plagerism, would this be an acceptable use of artistic works in your book? If so, what incentive does anyone have to write, compose, or create anything if they can’t make a living doing it?
Finally, a point of clarification relating to the OP: if you concede that artists should be paid for their work, do you agree that everyone who has downloaded music from Limewire or whatever owes the artists money?