> I'm a trained attorney who specialized in intellectual property law, and I happen to know a little about both the performing arts and software industries.
To be frank, it sounds like you are part of the problem, and that your income may partly be derived from rent-seeking via the intellectual property regime. Is that correct?
> You wrote "copyright is serving exactly nobody today." If that's not what you meant, choose your words more carefully next time.
Well, I suppose it depends what sorts of engagement we can understand as "serving". By "serving", I do not mean merely enriching. Of course we all recognize that there are massive industries which are enriched by this system; where we may disagree is whether any actual services in rendered to the folks doing the writing and recording and touring in exchange for that enrichment.
At present, I think it's perfectly reasonable to observe that _musicians_ are not _served_ by this configuration. To the contrary, it has spawned a complicated system of publication, with many musicians facing the subpar customer service experience of services like distrokid and cdbaby facilitating distribution to services like spotify and apple music, while the RIAA and MPAA employ legal threats and harassment to the more musician-friendly DRM-free and direct-to-consumer counterparts.
I think it's also fair to say that, since the beginning of music, no musician ever has wanted a system whose function is to call the cops of their fans. And ultimately, that's what copyright is - it lets me send the cops in to fuck with fans who... try to share my music with their friends? It's awful from first principles, even if the implementation weren't as rotten as it is.
You said, "Except for nearly everyone who writes anything (including software) or other artistic pursuits to make a living" in response to this statement. So I think you have no leg to stand on in terms of demanding disambiguity; your statement is flatly and demonstrably false. Every musician I know (including, I'll bet, musicians you listen to) - and I'll bet, every one that you know too - has seething daily contempt for lawyers who make these asinine claims.
> To be frank, it sounds like you are part of the problem, and that your income may partly be derived from rent-seeking via the intellectual property regime. Is that correct?
That is not correct. My current role is a technical one, not a legal one.
> where we may disagree is whether any actual services in rendered to the folks doing the writing and recording and touring in exchange for that enrichment.
Besides studio time, connections to expert studio musicians, producers, engineers, advances and royalties? You may think the amount of support is insufficient, but that's different from claiming it's zero.
> no musician ever has wanted a system whose function is to call the cops of their fans
Have you ever heard of Metallica, Dr. Dre, or Slipknot? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallica_v._Napster,_Inc.) While they didn't call the cops on their fans, they fought hard against businesses who facilitated mass copyright infringement and made it known they were vehemently against piracy. They took a lot of heat for it from entitled children, but the vast majority of fellow artists quietly supported them.
> Every musician I know (including, I'll bet, musicians you listen to) - and I'll bet, every one that you know too - has seething daily contempt for lawyers who make these asinine claims.
Of course they do, but they sure as shit aren't giving up their advances and royalty checks that feed themselves and their families.
I would humbly suggest you spend some time among professionals in Hollywood (music, movies, and TV). You'll learn a lot. There are entire neighborhoods--not just posh ones in the hills--of people who earn their daily bread in the industry. I know; I grew up among them. Middle class, salt-of-the-earth folks.
> That is not correct. My current role is a technical one, not a legal one.
Well then I apologize for my presumption.
> Besides studio time, connections to expert studio musicians, producers, engineers, advances and royalties?
The first four of these have nothing to do with IP schemes and are widely available to those of us who grind not only our music but our social connections. I publish all of my music as CC0 or CC-BY-SA (and of course all DRM-free, as is nearly all bluegrass now), and I think my studio records and collaborations show quite clearly that I have not suffered from lack of access to top talent. If anything, the notoriety of my IP activism and development of p2p tools seems to have made me _more_ interesting to most of my favorite bluegrassers; I'm not sure I'd have been able to make either of my studio records without the good will that has come from this.
Royalties are obviously a complex topic with a strange history, but I see no reason to lose confidence that we can engineer a system by which funds flow form fans to musicians in a way that is at least as just (and is more direct) than royalties.
Advances are obviously an issue, I grant that. And it's not just the check getting cut, but the negotiating power from the label side to do the tour launch, get on the studio and mastering calendars, push to playlisters and radio stations, etc. - a lot of these activities are (in my opinion, cringely) crosswired with the systems of contracts and advances.
I have almost no familiarity with the motion picture industry, and only a passing connection to soundtrack musicians.
But I have repeatedly been shocked to find that even when one of my friends writes a big hit, they receive what seems to be a joke in terms of financial compensation.
Yes, of course Metallica made that fuss. But they didn't outwardly say, "we want our fans arrested" - they dressed up their complaint as a qualm toward an industry too tolerant to the presence of p2p file sharing (what today we might even call freedom of general purpose computing).
In other words, they kept the quiet part quiet. And in any case, if that's the closest thing we can picture to a band wanting to call the cops on their fans, I feel reasonably secure in my assessment.
Much of your comment seems designed to question why I want to take money out of the pockets of these entire neighborhoods of salt-of-the-earth folks. I don't. My contention - the obvious observation I believe - is that the framework of casting their work as intellectual property has impoverished rather than enriching them, and that a better way is coming.
If you stand on the east bank of the Cumberland and look west, I hope you notice that nearly all of the glitzy logos atop the high-rises are financial firms - Third Fifth, Wells Fargo - I can't immediately remember the rest. Obviously the batman building notwithstanding. :-)
The intensity of financial firms in and around downtown Nashville is a testament to how many billions have been diverted from their fan-=>artist path and have instead made their way into the pockets not only of studio execs, but their underwriters and insurers.
Since the internet seems wont to route around IP laws anyway, I feel strongly that we live at a moment of opportunity to right this wrong.
> the framework of casting their work as intellectual property has impoverished rather than enriching them
Some hit artists might disagree with you.
Besides, the ones who flopped don’t owe the rightsholders money from their own pockets. It’s not a “heads I win, tails you lose” situation for the artists. In some ways an advance is a better deal than a typical business loan. In fact, a business loan is a pretty good approximation of a typical early record deal. The challenge is that it’s often difficult to get artists to understand that.
> The intensity of financial firms in and around downtown Nashville is a testament to how many billions have been diverted from their fan-=>artist path and have instead made their way into the pockets not only of studio execs, but their underwriters and insurers.
Well, yeah. For every hit artist there are thousands of flops. Someone has to bear the risk of developing the artists, building repertoires, fronting the money to make first records, and marketing. It’s an axiom of capitalism that the party that takes the biggest financial risk gets the biggest share of the rewards.
I think what you’re really saying is that you think artists deserve a bigger share of the profits. That’s a fair position to hold, but it’s a rather differ one from the statements I was previously responding to.
To be frank, it sounds like you are part of the problem, and that your income may partly be derived from rent-seeking via the intellectual property regime. Is that correct?
> You wrote "copyright is serving exactly nobody today." If that's not what you meant, choose your words more carefully next time.
Well, I suppose it depends what sorts of engagement we can understand as "serving". By "serving", I do not mean merely enriching. Of course we all recognize that there are massive industries which are enriched by this system; where we may disagree is whether any actual services in rendered to the folks doing the writing and recording and touring in exchange for that enrichment.
At present, I think it's perfectly reasonable to observe that _musicians_ are not _served_ by this configuration. To the contrary, it has spawned a complicated system of publication, with many musicians facing the subpar customer service experience of services like distrokid and cdbaby facilitating distribution to services like spotify and apple music, while the RIAA and MPAA employ legal threats and harassment to the more musician-friendly DRM-free and direct-to-consumer counterparts.
I think it's also fair to say that, since the beginning of music, no musician ever has wanted a system whose function is to call the cops of their fans. And ultimately, that's what copyright is - it lets me send the cops in to fuck with fans who... try to share my music with their friends? It's awful from first principles, even if the implementation weren't as rotten as it is.
You said, "Except for nearly everyone who writes anything (including software) or other artistic pursuits to make a living" in response to this statement. So I think you have no leg to stand on in terms of demanding disambiguity; your statement is flatly and demonstrably false. Every musician I know (including, I'll bet, musicians you listen to) - and I'll bet, every one that you know too - has seething daily contempt for lawyers who make these asinine claims.