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David Bowie on Music, Copyrights, Distribution
EddydaSquige writes "In this New York Times article David Bowie talks about his new album, distribution deal with Sony, and how he's "fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing." Do you think the Bowie machine has the power to make the music industry see the light?"
Sure the artist should be credited for the creation of a song but why should a corporation I dont care about make 5 times the money the writer does. IP and copywrite needs a complete overhaul. Fair use people
It is about time the bigger well established artists started acting like this. They make far more money personing than via RIAA cds
Do you think the Bowie machine has the power to make the music industry see the light?"
No. But I believe he has the foresight which many among the musicians and the industry honchos doesnt have.
Rapid Nirvana
/me goes out and buys every david bowie CD he can find
Rock on david.
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
Suck it down bitches!
Was ahead of his time by packaging and selling the rights to his current/future music back in the early 90s. If I remeber correctly, he picked up along the line of US$ 53 million from his stock sale. He has little to fear from copyright violations from a personal standpoint.
fp
Do you think the Bowie machine has the power to make the music industry see the light?
No. End of discussion. Next!
Video Game cheats, hints a
the music industry also knows this, they just don't want to accept it.
can't blame 'em though, would you die without a fight[question mark]
[stupid hp notebook has a broken shift key, i should fix it....]
Do you think the Bowie machine has the power to keep a snowball frozen in Hell?
Here's the text
David Bowie, 21st-Century Entrepreneur
By JON PARELES
IN a Manhattan rehearsal studio, Gerry Leonard seemed to be noodling on his guitar as the rest of David Bowie's band waited. He played some sustained notes and a bit of minor-key arpeggio; he worked his effects pedals, adding echoes. A digital stutter entered the pattern, and suddenly the music gelled into "Sunday," the song that opens Mr. Bowie's new album, "Heathen," which will be released on Tuesday.
Chords from a phantom chorus wafted from a keyboard, and Mr. Bowie intoned: "It's the beginning of an end, and nothing has changed. Everything has changed."
Mr. Bowie sang somberly about searching for signs of life, about fear and hope. At the end of the song, he shivered like someone coming out of a trance. "Ahhh," he said and grinned. "Good morning!" It was just after 11 a.m. and Mr. Bowie, 55, had already worked out at the gym and given an extended interview before starting the day's rehearsal for his summer tour.
Lean and affable, he was wearing a skintight gray T-shirt and stylishly understated gray pants. His gaze, with different-colored eyes because of a childhood accident that paralyzed his left pupil, has grown less disconcerting; he laughs easily. When asked what he considered the central point of his work, he said, "I write about misery" and chuckled.
Visions of cataclysm and professional aplomb: that's Mr. Bowie's life in his fourth decade as a rock star. One of rock's most astute conceptualists since the 1960's, he has toyed with the possibilities of his star persona, turned concerts into theater and fashion spectacles, and periodically recharged his songs with punk, electronics and dance rhythms. Now he has emerged as one of rock's smartest entrepreneurs.
"Heathen" is the first album from Mr. Bowie's own recording company, Iso, which has major-label distribution through Sony. In 1997, he sold $55 million of Bowie Bonds backed by his song royalties; the next year, he founded the technology company Ultrastar and his own Internet service provider-cum-fan club, Bowienet (davidbowie.com). In a nod to his art-school background, his bowieart.com sells promising students' work without the high commissions of terrestrial galleries.
His deal with Sony is a short-term one while he gets his label started and watches the Internet's effect on careers. "I don't even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don't think it's going to work by labels and by distribution systems in the same way," he said. "The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it's not going to happen. I'm fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing."
"Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity," he added. "So it's like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You'd better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that's really the only unique situation that's going to be left. It's terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn't matter if you think it's exciting or not; it's what's going to happen."
With his wife, Iman, he has a 22-month-old daughter, Alexandria, for whom he's keeping to a minimum his time away from home in Manhattan. When Mr. Bowie signed on as a headliner for Moby's Area:Two tour this summer, he made sure the schedule allowed him to return home between each of the six East Coast dates. He is also organizing, and performing at, Meltdown, a contemporary music, film and visual arts festival in London. (One songwriter he booked is Norman Carl Odam, known as the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, from whom he took Ziggy Stardust's last name in the 1970's; on "Heathen," he sings the Cowboy's "Gemini Spacecraft," about an astronaut obsessed with a girl he left behind.)
Mr. Bowie no longer expects to compete with performers in their 20's. "I'm well past the age where I'm acceptable," he said. "You get to a certain age and you are forbidden access. You're not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines, you're not going to get played on radio and you're not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth."
HIS fans among musicians, including Moby and Nine Inch Nails, have toured with Mr. Bowie, introducing him to a younger generation.
Back in 1990, Mr. Bowie tried to jettison his past. He billed an arena tour as the last time he would play his old hits. "I really did think I meant that," he said. "I got quite a way into the 90's before I started thinking, `Well, if you want an audience, David, you may want to consider putting some songs into your sets that they've actually heard.' Yes, I know, I went back on my word completely and absolutely."
He's now more comfortable riffling through his huge body of work. This week, the Museum of Television and Radio, in New York and Los Angeles, opened "Sound + Vision," a retrospective of Mr. Bowie on video that continues through Sept. 15. A restored version of "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars," the D. A. Pennebaker documentary of the 1972 tour that defined glam-rock, will be released on July 10.
"Heathen" was produced by Tony Visconti, who last collaborated with Mr. Bowie on his 1980 album, "Scary Monsters." He worked on most of Mr. Bowie's 1970's albums, including the celebrated Berlin trilogy of "Low," " `
On "Heathen," Mr. Bowie knowingly hints at his past. He echoes the song " `Heroes' " in "Slow Burn," which wonders, "Who are we in times such as these?" He revives analog keyboard sounds like that of the Stylophone, a miniature electric organ played with a stylus that was heard on "Space Oddity" in 1969 and reappears in the new "Slip Away." When Mr. Bowie starts his tour with a show for fan-club members at Roseland on Tuesday, he plans to play all 12 songs on "Heathen," followed by all of "Low." Hearing the music 25 years later "makes the hairs on my arm stand up," he said.
To make "Low," Mr. Bowie recalled: "I had brought the idea of having fundamentally an R & B rhythm section working against this new zeitgeist of electronic ambience that was happening in Germany. It was terribly exciting to know that one had stumbled across something which was truly innovative.
"At that time, I was vacillating badly between euphoria and incredible depression. Berlin was at that time not the most beautiful city of the world, and my mental condition certainly matched it. I was abusing myself so badly. My subtext to the whole thing is that I'm so desperately unhappy, but I've got to pull through because I can't keep living like this. There's actually a real optimism about the music. In its poignancy there is, shining through under there somewhere, the feeling that it will be all right."
Drug problems are long behind him, Mr. Bowie said. He now hesitates to take even an Advil because. "I have such an addictive personality," he said.
Making "Heathen," he and Mr. Visconti were leery of nostalgia. "One thing we haven't tried to be is cutting edge," Mr. Bowie said. "The other thing we've tried not to do is to delve too far into the past and rely on our known strengths, our known previous work. We do know, between us, how to landscape a song and give it a real place, an identity and a character. I guess that's the vestiges of the more theatrical things."
The album starts with "Sunday" and ends with its title song, both hushed and haunted by mortality. In "Heathen," Mr. Bowie sings, "Still on the skyline, sky made of glass/ Made for a real world, all things must pass." The album was written before Sept. 11, however, and the songs join a long line of Mr. Bowie's apocalyptic scenarios.
"I hope that a writer does have these antennae that pick up on low-level anxiety and all those Don DeLillo resonances within our culture," he said. "But I don't want to say that it was in any way trying to suggest that it was going to happen. It's not like it's something new to me. These are all personal crises, I'm sure, that I manifest in a song format and project into physical situations. You make little stories up about how you feel. It's as simple as that."
Between his own ruminations, he borrows "Gemini Spacecraft," the Pixies' "Cactus" and Neil Young's "I've Been Waiting for You"; in songs like "Afraid" and "I Would Be Your Slave," he sings about love, insecurity and transience.
"I tried to make a checklist of what exactly the album is about and abandonment was in there, isolation," he said. "And I thought, well, nothing's changed much. At 55, I don't really think it's going to change very much. As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I've got left?
"When it's taken that nakedly, these are my subjects. And it's like, well, how many times can you do this? And I tell myself, actually, over and over again. The problem would be if I was too self-confident and actually came up with resolutions for these questions. But I think they're such huge unanswerable questions that it's just me posing them, again and again."
Nice comment "see the light". So you envision the enlightened world were intellectual property rights do not exist. I'm sure you assume that that world's members do not intend to screw up each other, eh? or everything is milk and honey?
Maybe Mr Bowie should produce everything himself, but for some reason he sticks to Sony. Oh, everything is in theory (like communism) ah?
http://www.majcher.com/nytview.html might come in handy for some
- Do you think the Bowie machine has the power to make the music industry see the light?
Yeah, the executives will see the error of their ways and stop accepting the bags marked with $ signs that keep pouring into their offices. Davie Bowie's opinion means more to them than profit and shareholders ever could. </sarcasm>I'd love to hear more of what he has to say about media decentralization and the gargantuan shift from megastars to niche artists. Can we try and do one of those "ask Bowie 20 questions" thingies?
I still think there's room for artists to sell music in a physical medium, with disks, nice cover art, books, perhaps a box set. I've downloaded just about everything by Tommy Guerrero but I'm collecting the CDs anyways... better sound quality, more permanent, nice cover art, and the pleasure of owning them and knowing I've contributed something to the artist. (TG does amazing grooving downtempo Cali-Latin style funky jazzy ambient blues, kinda like Booker T meets Tortoise with a bottle of wine on Carlos Santana's back porch.).
G
Geeez! The little, almost insignificant media company, The New York Times, is slashdotted. I sure glad that huge company Slashdot can handle peak loads well. One day even the NYT will be able to afford a server like Slashdot's.
So for all of the belief that Bowie has a clue intellectual-property-wise, what are the chances that his CD is one of the broken "copy protected" ones produced by Sony these days?
I recommend DeLillo's book "White Noise" for insights into Bowie's mindset. It's very much in keeping with the comments in the NYT piece about Bowie's emotional space. And an easy read for a postmodern novel.
In 1997, David Bowie issued bonds to pay interest from his old song royalties. Prudential Insurance Co. of America bought them all. Read about it, and David Pullman, the guy who helped him do it. The offering "allowed Bowie to collect $55 million up front, using some of the money to buy out a former manager and keep control of his music."
If you're looking for Bowie's musings on copyright and intellectual property, this isn't the article you want, as the quote in the post is pretty much all he says on that topic.
The problem is that our current distribution model for intellectual property, especially music, does not work given the nominal distribution costs of internet-based music distribution. No digital form of distribution provides an equivalent level of moderation provided by the music industry, it is almost impossible to find the best quality content out of the giant databases like IUMA or MP3.com. We still need some way to sort the good stuff from the banal. It probably makes sense to use Gnutella to download pop music today, but from a long term perspective, we need to create an entirely new paradigm for music proliferation.
"...What is good for General Motors is good for America." -Charles Wilson, Secretary of Defense and fmr President of GM
Though he's a great musician,
:)
this is also the man who made his
own bank and electronic currency.
Did it work ?
Or maybe you didn't know he tried this stuff ?
Exactly my point
I have the same attitude most other /.ers have towards NYTimes's registration process, i.e. a 'no thanks' sort of attitude. I wrote to their privacy department a while back asking why they require registration, and here is the response I got:
Thanks for your letter inquiring about our registration policy.
Different news organizations on the Web do different things in order to earn enough revenue to provide their services. The Wall Street Journal, for example, charges $59 a year for access to its site. Several others request a zip code or a birth date in order to use a particular service, or gather information about readers and their viewing habits gradually through "cookies" as they travel a site. Some sites do nothing at all; many of those sites are losing not insignificant amounts of money.
In our case, asking a few questions of our readers is the "price" we charge for access. As stated in our Privacy Policy, linked from the bottom of our home page http://www.nytimes.com, the information we gather from our individual readers is kept strictly confidential. The major use of this information is to allow advertising banners on our pages to be shown to the readers for whom they are most pertinent. This means that readers see advertising that is most likely to interest them, and advertisers send their messages to people who are most likely to be receptive, improving both the viewer's experience and the effectiveness of the ads.
The information we gather also allows us to learn how various types of users respond to the features we provide, helping us to improve our services.
We understand that some people find our registration questions too intrusive to answer. For those people, access to The New York Times is available by purchasing the newspaper, which can be obtained on many newsstands or delivered by visiting our home delivery web site at http://1-800.nytimes.com.
Thanks for your interest.
Do you think the Bowie machine has the power to make the music industry see the light?"
/. An aging artist,
writing in the NYT will convince an
industry to turn its back on monopolistic
profits? Was this an honest question? /. needs to cut this crap out of the stories.
It adds nothing to the story.
Get over yourself
No copyright for you! Come back! 10 years!
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
Does anyone out there buy a record because it's on Island vs. Maverick vs. Sony? (Okay, Maverick is owned by Madonna, which may make me think twice...). Through the selling of bonds, his ISP, and now these comments, it's obvious he's making himself a brand that people know and trust, and therefore are willing to pay for. When music is a commodity in the post-copyright world (which is coming, whether the RIAA likes it on not), the people who have a distinctive style that engenders brand loyalty will have the following willing to pay for music instead of getting it for free. An example of this from the last two decades was The Grateful Dead.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Copyright is necessary as incentive for the creation of new works. I and others are happy creating GPL'ed software, but we are a very small minority of people producing creative works. So, I don't see copyright going away anytime soon.
What will have to change, however, is our perception of copyright. At this point, copyright is considered (however incorrectly) an inalienable right that often trumps even the first amendment. This situation is untenable. What I already see happening is the start of a movement to put the teeth back in the public side of the copyright bargain.
In the best case, I see copyright terms decreasing significantly and fair use rights being enforced by law. The first increases the incentive to produce by shortening the term of the artificial monopoly we the People grant to authors and artists.
The second means that the People's right to use works protected under copyright in any reasonable way they choose will be formally encoded, perhaps even to the point of outlawing fair use prevention technologies (what is usually called "copy protection") on works protected by copyright: this would restore the same balance that used to exist for patents before the DMCA.
I'll leave the worst case to others. =)
[ home ]
Not in 10 years. This is going to take a legislative policy change... there could be some changes in the courts, but as we all know, court decisions will probably come down on the side of those with the most money (large corps/very rich individuals with a lot of IP to lose). Most of the public is simply not aware enough of IP issues, and most legislators probably beleive in a conservative view of IP.
I think it'll have to get worse before it gets better in order for the public to start examining it. But I also think in about 20 years, we'll start to get a crop of legislators that are not quite so corporate. I think it's partly a demographic thing.
Of course, it will help if the average slashdot guy becomes a little more activist. Should you run for congress?
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
I was surfing nytimes.com right before I clicked onto slashdot. I noticed this article about David Boies on the front page.
David Boies, you know, the famous lawyer who represented the government against Microsoft, and Al Gore versus Florida.
So when I read the blurb on slashdot, I figured that someone important had something logical.
My mistake.
I have read many posts about the "evil" corporations and uselessness of copyrights, but never figured out how this could be a good thing. If I produce software, music, or writings, these are the results of my work and efforts, and nobody is entitled to steal them! Intellectual property is no less than private property. How would you feel if someone stole your computer because presumably they have a better use for it? Sure, it would be nice if artists could bypass some middlemen and we could buy a CD for a couple dollars, it doesn't mean we should steal music because CDs are too expensive. If no-one would buy them over $10, the producers would have to lower their prices, simple law of supply and demand. About corporations, don't forget that they are not faceless entities. Many corporations are the result of someone risking the little money they had in starting a business and working their ass off for many years before succeeding. Corporations pay your salary, they turn theories into reality. Do you think you could get antibiotics to save your life if medicines were free? Not a chance, nobody would produce them. Same goes for anything else. Intellectual property should be affordable, but not free. What about open source software you'll ask? Open source software is great, but don't forget that it is produced by people who have another occupation to pay the bills; I don't mean your cable TV bill here, I also mean buying food to eat. Artists won't produce music if they can't eat. Sure you'll be able to download free music from the net, maybe enough songs to fill a whole cdrom... The day intellectual property is abolished will be a really sad day indeed, not that I'll care, the next morning I would be sailing off!
PGP public key at: http://keskydee.com/gil.asc
How many garage bands could use some Bowie consulting services?
Was ahead of his time by packaging and selling the rights to his current/future music back in the early 90s.
Unfortunately, BowieBanc didn't fare as well ("Bowie bank leaves the stage") -
On the other hand, it seems the Thin White Duke had a way with words back almost two years, with respect to digital piracy -
Visionary, or just outspoken?
It's kinda ironic that you violated the NY Time's copyright to cut and paste and article about copyright issues isn't it?
/. with the DCMA in it's fist.
I don't like the required registration BS either, but you know what I do about it? I haven't registered and therefore don't read the Times (or their advertisers)... voting with my eyeballs.
I would be wise if people stop doing stupid stuff like this. I would be interesting (in a bad way) to have the Time's come after
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
Copyright is necessary as incentive for the creation of new works
Tell that to Bach, Shakespeare or any one else before probably 1900.
It may in a few instances encourage people to produce new works, but I bet in more cases it discourages people from using established works as the basis for new works. I bet it's a wash whether copyright helps or hinders in the grand picture.
All it really does is enable a few to get filthy rich while not helping the other 99.99% at all. Especially considering the few plagiarism cases that come to trial, where some rich artist (or corporation) is sued by some nobody for stealing his idea. The big guys can afford to steal and violate copyright because they have the lawyers to beat down the poor guys.
Infuriate left and right
All off his new CD's will be autographed on the outer rim with a sharpie :)
the full story for those who dont want to register
David Bowie, 21st-Century Entrepreneur
By JON PARELES
IN a Manhattan rehearsal studio, Gerry Leonard seemed to be noodling on his guitar as the rest of David Bowie's band waited. He played some sustained notes and a bit of minor-key arpeggio; he worked his effects pedals, adding echoes. A digital stutter entered the pattern, and suddenly the music gelled into "Sunday," the song that opens Mr. Bowie's new album, "Heathen," which will be released on Tuesday.
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Chords from a phantom chorus wafted from a keyboard, and Mr. Bowie intoned: "It's the beginning of an end, and nothing has changed. Everything has changed."
Mr. Bowie sang somberly about searching for signs of life, about fear and hope. At the end of the song, he shivered like someone coming out of a trance. "Ahhh," he said and grinned. "Good morning!" It was just after 11 a.m. and Mr. Bowie, 55, had already worked out at the gym and given an extended interview before starting the day's rehearsal for his summer tour.
Lean and affable, he was wearing a skintight gray T-shirt and stylishly understated gray pants. His gaze, with different-colored eyes because of a childhood accident that paralyzed his left pupil, has grown less disconcerting; he laughs easily. When asked what he considered the central point of his work, he said, "I write about misery" and chuckled.
Visions of cataclysm and professional aplomb: that's Mr. Bowie's life in his fourth decade as a rock star. One of rock's most astute conceptualists since the 1960's, he has toyed with the possibilities of his star persona, turned concerts into theater and fashion spectacles, and periodically recharged his songs with punk, electronics and dance rhythms. Now he has emerged as one of rock's smartest entrepreneurs.
"Heathen" is the first album from Mr. Bowie's own recording company, Iso, which has major-label distribution through Sony. In 1997, he sold $55 million of Bowie Bonds backed by his song royalties; the next year, he founded the technology company Ultrastar and his own Internet service provider-cum-fan club, Bowienet (davidbowie.com). In a nod to his art-school background, his bowieart.com sells promising students' work without the high commissions of terrestrial galleries.
His deal with Sony is a short-term one while he gets his label started and watches the Internet's effect on careers. "I don't even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don't think it's going to work by labels and by distribution systems in the same way," he said. "The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it's not going to happen. I'm fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing."
"Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity," he added. "So it's like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You'd better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that's really the only unique situation that's going to be left. It's terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn't matter if you think it's exciting or not; it's what's going to happen."
With his wife, Iman, he has a 22-month-old daughter, Alexandria, for whom he's keeping to a minimum his time away from home in Manhattan. When Mr. Bowie signed on as a headliner for Moby's Area:Two tour this summer, he made sure the schedule allowed him to return home between each of the six East Coast dates. He is also organizing, and performing at, Meltdown, a contemporary music, film and visual arts festival in London. (One songwriter he booked is Norman Carl Odam, known as the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, from whom he took Ziggy Stardust's last name in the 1970's; on "Heathen," he sings the Cowboy's "Gemini Spacecraft," about an astronaut obsessed with a girl he left behind.)
Mr. Bowie no longer expects to compete with performers in their 20's. "I'm well past the age where I'm acceptable," he said. "You get to a certain age and you are forbidden access. You're not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines, you're not going to get played on radio and you're not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth."
HIS fans among musicians, including Moby and Nine Inch Nails, have toured with Mr. Bowie, introducing him to a younger generation.
Back in 1990, Mr. Bowie tried to jettison his past. He billed an arena tour as the last time he would play his old hits. "I really did think I meant that," he said. "I got quite a way into the 90's before I started thinking, `Well, if you want an audience, David, you may want to consider putting some songs into your sets that they've actually heard.' Yes, I know, I went back on my word completely and absolutely."
He's now more comfortable riffling through his huge body of work. This week, the Museum of Television and Radio, in New York and Los Angeles, opened "Sound + Vision," a retrospective of Mr. Bowie on video that continues through Sept. 15. A restored version of "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars," the D. A. Pennebaker documentary of the 1972 tour that defined glam-rock, will be released on July 10.
"Heathen" was produced by Tony Visconti, who last collaborated with Mr. Bowie on his 1980 album, "Scary Monsters." He worked on most of Mr. Bowie's 1970's albums, including the celebrated Berlin trilogy of "Low," " `
On "Heathen," Mr. Bowie knowingly hints at his past. He echoes the song " `Heroes' " in "Slow Burn," which wonders, "Who are we in times such as these?" He revives analog keyboard sounds like that of the Stylophone, a miniature electric organ played with a stylus that was heard on "Space Oddity" in 1969 and reappears in the new "Slip Away." When Mr. Bowie starts his tour with a show for fan-club members at Roseland on Tuesday, he plans to play all 12 songs on "Heathen," followed by all of "Low." Hearing the music 25 years later "makes the hairs on my arm stand up," he said.
To make "Low," Mr. Bowie recalled: "I had brought the idea of having fundamentally an R & B rhythm section working against this new zeitgeist of electronic ambience that was happening in Germany. It was terribly exciting to know that one had stumbled across something which was truly innovative.
"At that time, I was vacillating badly between euphoria and incredible depression. Berlin was at that time not the most beautiful city of the world, and my mental condition certainly matched it. I was abusing myself so badly. My subtext to the whole thing is that I'm so desperately unhappy, but I've got to pull through because I can't keep living like this. There's actually a real optimism about the music. In its poignancy there is, shining through under there somewhere, the feeling that it will be all right."
Drug problems are long behind him, Mr. Bowie said. He now hesitates to take even an Advil because. "I have such an addictive personality," he said.
Making "Heathen," he and Mr. Visconti were leery of nostalgia. "One thing we haven't tried to be is cutting edge," Mr. Bowie said. "The other thing we've tried not to do is to delve too far into the past and rely on our known strengths, our known previous work. We do know, between us, how to landscape a song and give it a real place, an identity and a character. I guess that's the vestiges of the more theatrical things."
The album starts with "Sunday" and ends with its title song, both hushed and haunted by mortality. In "Heathen," Mr. Bowie sings, "Still on the skyline, sky made of glass/ Made for a real world, all things must pass." The album was written before Sept. 11, however, and the songs join a long line of Mr. Bowie's apocalyptic scenarios.
"I hope that a writer does have these antennae that pick up on low-level anxiety and all those Don DeLillo resonances within our culture," he said. "But I don't want to say that it was in any way trying to suggest that it was going to happen. It's not like it's something new to me. These are all personal crises, I'm sure, that I manifest in a song format and project into physical situations. You make little stories up about how you feel. It's as simple as that."
Between his own ruminations, he borrows "Gemini Spacecraft," the Pixies' "Cactus" and Neil Young's "I've Been Waiting for You"; in songs like "Afraid" and "I Would Be Your Slave," he sings about love, insecurity and transience.
"I tried to make a checklist of what exactly the album is about and abandonment was in there, isolation," he said. "And I thought, well, nothing's changed much. At 55, I don't really think it's going to change very much. As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I've got left?
"When it's taken that nakedly, these are my subjects. And it's like, well, how many times can you do this? And I tell myself, actually, over and over again. The problem would be if I was too self-confident and actually came up with resolutions for these questions. But I think they're such huge unanswerable questions that it's just me posing them, again and again."
and he's very much a good businessman and artist. he was ahead of the herd with musical styles and fashions and he's very likely right on this one as well. of course, he's in a position to not care that much, since he's got control of his back catalogue, a huge fanbase, other businesses (bowienet, etc) and lots of unreleased stuff in the can just waiting for a boxset release.
FreeBSD for the impatient.
In a world without copyright, I still think that RMS and FSF would be happy.
Still, totally abolishing copyright is not a stated goal of the FSF. They just want more rights for the users of published software.
If I produce software, music, or writings, these are the results of my work and efforts, and nobody is entitled to steal them!
But CDs aren't the results of your work. The music, or words, are. If I, as an artist, burn a CD of my music, and give it to someone, I have lost nothing other than the 50 cents for the media. The music in my head has not gone away.
Intellectual property is no less than private property.
Yes, intellectual property is arguably property, but the mistake is in treating it exactly like physical property.
The problem is not in the idea of "intellectual property" (referencing the originator of a work, acknowledging the creativity that went into it), but in the mistake of using the word property which has connotations that don't directly apply to the very different ideas of a physical thing (a piece of land, a car, a radio), and an idea.
How would you feel if someone stole your computer because presumably they have a better use for it?
If someone stole my computer, I would no longer have the use of my computer. But if I write a song and someone tapes me singing it, what have I lost?
I write music, and I make no money off of it, because I like the idea of people listening to my music. Artists will produce music even if they can't eat off money made from selling CDs. "Artists" who are paid to manufacture generic music for mass-sale will probably go away, but that won't stop real music from happening. It will just stop non-musicians who have a career in music.
Now it may be that in the future, society will agree as a whole that using someone else's intellectual property (singing someone else's song, manufacturing drugs using someone else's formula) will be considered a form of stealing, but it is a mistake to consider it the same form of stealing as taking another person's computer, or stealing their car. That is what exists now, it's too rooted in laws of physical appropriation for it to apply to reality, and that is where these arguments start. When people discuss "stealing" IP they're really talking about two different things.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
Particularly with regards to this: If I produce software, music, or writings, these are the results of my work and efforts, and nobody is entitled to steal them! Intellectual property is no less than private property.
That's not how it works. We have copyright laws in order to benefit the public. If this happens to satisfy artists, that's great, but not necessary. Benefits to artists are merely a 'carrot' used to extract useful works out of them. They didn't earn it merely by virtue of the act of creation. Were this so, the lack of copyright anywhere in the world prior to roughly 300 years ago would be entirely inexplicable.
The public benefit comes first and foremost. Anything else is merely happy chance.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Without the record companies, you wouldn't have ever heard of any of the artists you listen to today. The costs involved in producing and massively distributing an album are so high that no startup band could ever hope to afford them. Your local garage band may be able to produce a record or two in their garage, and then distribute it to a couple of local stores, but without the financial backing of a major record company, they have precisely a snowball's chance in Hell of distributing nationwide.
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
Posting anonymously to avoid childish karma-whore flames.
why register?
why should i bother, i just want to read the story, i dont want regulalry read the website, by the time i next want to read it i will probably have forgotten my passwords.
I am invariably going to lie on the registration form and i will totally ignore all their advertising, so i truth i am saving them bandwidth.
PVRs and computerized audio recording are going to eliminate any need for "Prime Time", or for any sort of scheduled broadcast entertainment.
Time shifting will give control of life-scheduling back to the public.
If the machines skip commercials, then broadcast entertainment may be doomed, unless something like the British television-licensing model comes into play. Cable rates would have to jump by a hundred dollars per month to keep the same revenues going into the system.
P2P won't make so great a dent as to obviate copyright. Mass-market bandwidth is too low, and it's too easy to recognize the traffic signature of illegal file traders. The Xerox machine didn't kill publishing, and Napster didn't kill the RIAA.
--Blair
evidently, ":)" doesn't count as a comment.
anyway, thanks for posting the article, it saves me from remembering yet another pointless login.
An artist, a rather good one at that, has stepped forward and made a move for the greater good.
Now the question is, will the Slashdot community - a group always bitching about these issues - use its large, unified presence to mirror that good act? I was just discussing with my girlfriend that we ought to go out and purchase the CD as soon as it becomes available.
If there's a huge show of support for Bowie's move here, it will reflect that his ideals are good ones. Others will follow his lead (lots of other artists have - but after seeing his success). So go out and actually buy a disc with confidence that most of the money is going to the artist, instead of some rich old wind-bag's pocket.
Why bother.
These artists are brave enough to prove the future of the music industry does not need to include the "industry". This has been a long time comming and I hope that the general population supports this mentality so that music can be appreciated based on its true value, which is not how much money the big labels can thow at the flavor of the week, but on pure talent.
Sound waves should be free!
I meant "thought", not "though" :)
Why bother.
is irrelevant. I grant you that artist have rights to that which they worked and sweated over. No doubt. (no pun)
However, a more interesting question in my mind is how to regulate this. Quite frankly I don't think you can. I am fairly technically savvy, and I don't think that they will come up with a way to stop people from copying music, video, and writings.
Given that you can't regulate it, what does it matter if it's illegal?
I think that artists will just have to deal with the fact that they will be creating things which will not bring them income. Although all artists are not in this game for the income, it seems to me that all the one's that are complaining are the ones who only care about the cashola. Maybe a new breed of artists is how it will be in the future.
For the record, I pay for my DVD's (right now) and I pay for all of the CD's that I listen to. However, I have downloaded MP3's and I would honestly say that if the CD player in my car played MP3's, then I would be burning my own.
Regardless of the law, people are going to break it. Mostly when they really want the payoff, and there is little or no punishment. It's a gamble, just like speeding, but right now there are very few speed traps.
My 2 cents
If the Bowie model of doing bonds makes more money than the current revenue model, then the record companies might start to listen, but Bowie's catalog is reasonably consistent. Ziggy, Aladdin Sane, Pinups, and The Man Who Sold the World are (presumably) all steady sellers. We're not talking Pink Floyd or The Beatles here, commercially, but still...
Point being, you can't apply this model to an artist that doesn't have that kind of track record. Try floating "Britney Bonds" or "'Nsync Notes" and see how far those fly. They won't, because they don't have any chance of producing the kind of steady cashflow that Bowie's sales produce over time.
Even looking at more relevant bands of this era (choose your own), they are ALL likely to fade within 10 years, and won't provide the sheer volume of Bowie's output. I happen to love the Pixies, but I have trouble thinking that anybody's chasing down "Bossanova" in their local Tower Records.
Neato model, points to Bowie's finance team for developing it, but applicable in a miniscule number of cases. If Bowie, in fact, owns his own IP, it might even be unique.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
two words: grass roots
You know, that thing that allows you and people all around the world to see these words? And I don't even have the backing of a major publisher!
:)
The Internet is the way that music is going to be distributed in the future. The record companies are welcome to come along, but they aren't needed anymore. Which makes your argument even more ironic.
The enemies of Democracy are
He sold BONDS which were to be paid back from the royalties earned by his music.
I f he really believes copyright will be dead in the near future, then he will probably be on the receiving end of a pretty darn hefty fraud investigaion.
It would be like oh Donald Trump selling Bonds to finance a new casino in Atlantic City, with the casino revenues to repay the bonds all the while expecting the state of New Jersey to outlaw all casino gambling 5 years after the casino opens.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
Would I be upset if somebody stole my computer? Yes. But would I be upset if somebody copied my computer? I don't think so.
Actually this is probably a troll, since this argument about IP is so easily made to look ridiculous.
http://www.majcher.com/nytview.html
if it doesn't work the first time, try again
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Nevertheless, I've never seen any mp3s on his web-site.
Besides, with Bowie's Al-Gorish claims to geekdom in the past, and a webpage that insists I go get a new plugin... Hey, where's the non-flash version?
This sort of eyecandy whoredom that goes with most bands' web-sites is rather quite sickening. If you're in a band, what would your fans want?
I refuse to believe that if you're in a band, that your fans really want lots of eyecandy that's just that--eyecandy.
If you're an artist in the visual sense, then perhaps some eyecandy is to be expected. But in a band--no. And flash? Flash might do some okay things, but it's never used right....
Bowie has had some interesting quips in his day, but he seems altogether too self-absorbed. Okay, the music is okay, some of it. But his 15 minutes of fame are over.
Don't get upset at the copyrights, get upset at the contracts these corporations impose on the artists, and the monopolies they have with major distribution chains.
Try to find your local indie band at any national record chain, and chances are unless they're on MTV or Clear Channel, they'll not be found. This is because the national chains go through publishers or huge distributors, where only the top publishing houses can sell through.
You'd have to go to a local chain or a mom and pop store to find indie artists most of the time, or just to the artists themselves.
What we need is an overhaul of the music distribution chain. Sites like eMusic and MP3.com were set to do that until they were bought out by big publishers. They weren't bought out because they were failing, they were bought because they imposed a threat on the distribution network.
Hell, if you want to be rich, it's not making a religion, it's not winning the lottery, is threatening legally the bottom line of a multi-national conglomerate. Find a better, legal way to do what the publishers do, and they'll find a way to offer you money to go away.
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
According to Bowie, rock musicians better get used to a lot of touring. Well, that's the ONLY way most rock musicians make money. Even if you get signed by a major label, they are under no obligation to promote your band. YOU have to promote YOUR OWN music BY TOURING. And you had better get on it, because you have to pay back that big advance the record company floated you to buy new equipment, which you needed for all the TOURING you're going to be doing! Also, I've been in three rock bands, and made lots of IMHO excellent original music, and never turned a significant profit. So I guess people will make music for reasons other than insatiable greed.
Do you think the Bowie machine has the power to make the music industry see the light?"
Do not doubt the power of David Bowie's Area
I think it would be a great idea to do one of those slashdot interviews with Bowie! He's a visionary artist with a lifetime of experience in the industry and he actually understands the technology that the entertainment industry fears so much. I'd really like to hear more of his take on things. Is there a form or something for suggesting interviewees?
-m.
PS I got Area2 tickets! Woo hoo!
I'm serious: Take for example the only people you see speaking out in public against the idiotic "War on Terror"--they are old! Even academics who find it just as stupid as I do keep their mouths shut, even if they have tenure.
The same goes for this "Intellectual Property" debate. I would be shocked if there weren't many young artists who agree with every word that Bowie says about the subject. Still, they keep a low profile and don't rock the boat, because we live in a climate where that gets you severely punished. I wasn't there, but I suspect in the 60's and 70's people faced the same dilemmas, but they said "fuck it, I'll say what I think and see what happens." But then again, maybe the government and the corporations have us under a tighter clamp now than any other time in Western history since constitutions started being written.
Sure, we all have a right to free speech, but the system has made it so that speaking freely is severely against our interest. This means that even though we won't go to jail, we will get fired, spied upon, harassed, and vilified as friends of terrorists. (How long will it take before somebody argues that abolishing IP laws would be "caving in to terrorism"? Surely they will find some stupid, tenuous connection.)
Anyway, this era makes me sick. You people suck. I might as well burn my books now to save you the trouble, because when these old-school rebels die, nobody will raise their voice in protest.
I'm sorry to go offtopic here. But didn't Bowie look like Jane Curtin for a while there, with that womanly haircut? You know, the lady from Kate and Ally (and old Saturday Night Lives)?
guyz g2school
thx
I wish slashdot would stop posting stories with links to NYT and their lame ass registration.
Or at least get some illegal mirroring up, c'mon guys, give us a damn illegal mirror heh.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
The word "theft" does not apply to unauthorized viewing or copying of "IP". In fact, the word "property" in IP does not even fit as well. It is mere information, a mere idea.... something which very easily and naturally "propagates" and multiplies. It is more of an abstration than something that can be owned.
but it is a mistake to consider it the same form of stealing as taking another person's computer, or stealing their car.
Yes indeed. Very apt analogies.
Artists won't produce music if they can't eat.
I know plenty of great recording artists who actually lose money on their work. They do it for the love of the work, not to make money.
Sure you'll be able to download free music from the net, maybe enough songs to fill a whole cdrom
You have no idea what you are talking about. Napster contained many many hours of songs that were never sold to begin with.
"What's so wrong with someone wanting to protect what they've created?"
If you want to protect what you created, never do anything but play concerts in your own house after you frisk everyone who enters for recording devices.
Otherwise, if you let strangers listen to copies of your music, don't be surprised if they make more copies. That's life. Don't like it? Tough.
So unless we want 'art' to become merely the realm of the fabulously wealthy, copyright is indeed a good idea.
-
"...can you hear me major tom..." is coming out of my television! Space Oddity providing part of the soundtrack for a Renault ad. So he must still be collecting reasonable royalties.
and to prove it, I'm downloading his new album "HEATHEN" from KaZaa right now! Information WANTS to be FREE!!!!
First to go is the definition of Copy.
Not the mechanical act. That is now cost free and not sustainable as an economic base (Sorry xxAAs but you're gonna die. There's no reason for you to exist anymore. When I'm picking up the cost for storage on my own box and the cost of transmission to my own, the thing is MINE, not yours.)
Copyright is going to go, uh, right, back to the _person(s)_ who created the work.
Given the economies of scale (the internet makes China look like a local market,) and of distribution, (got a [hosted] server hooked up to a T3 switch? You're a media giant,) and the ability to charge for one-time or subscription access to a web page with content scaled for content (sampling, scaling,) combined with the IPv6 capability to identify exactly where a message or some content originated from, the artists are about to start raking in the money themselves.
I think that the packaged album is going to be a casualty if this shift though. If there's only ONE song you want to listen to, you shouldn't be stuck with the other ones that the company decided they wanted to use to fill out the rest of the CD.
The xxAAs are going to wither on the vine. I don't think that Hillary Rosen could hum anything I'd want to hear. Nor do I want to see Jack Valenti's holiday slides.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
spot on rebuttal.
Maybe he's changed his mind since, but didn't Bowie sue Vanilla Ice for sampling "Under Pressure" without paying royalties? And now he's arguing that copyright is obsolete? WTF?
And further, much of his revenue came from live shows. How is one supposed to use that with a medium that does not lend itself to live performance? Such as books or articles.
-
Pull your head out of your ass, idiot. Artists have every right to copyrights, distributors have every right to profit, and downloading freeloaders like yourself have NO RIGHT to their creations/products for free.
If I produce software, music, or writings, these are the results of my work and efforts, and nobody is entitled to steal them! Hell yeah if someone where to take the master tapes and recordings leaving you with just the happy memories of the hours you spend in a recording studio (if you still make music becouse you like doing it that is!) That would suck, that would be plain theft. And it is not that far from what some recording companies do with some of their less valued artists. Ie everyone who works their ass of making music and sees most of their money disapear in martketing britney to ten year olds. This while if said coorporations actually looked at the numbers the riaa gives them in research they paid for instead of making "piracy numbers" up to get the dmca-v2 trough, then they would see these ten year olds are not the most likely demographic to buy cd`s, (thats the >20 group btw)
So, the recording companies need to stop thinking of their job as selling cd`s but rather think of it a licencing music and distributing it in any way they customers want it. They could stop the mafia pratices amongst artists, just to see what heapons
If no-one would buy them over $10, the producers would have to lower their prices, simple law of supply and demand.Yesss. but now enter the world of "intelectual property", the whole point of copyright is to provide a "limited" monopoly on a particulair work, do you see any of this magical "same product, ten bucks cheaper" competition for microsoft? Same goes for music, there is no competition amongst these, let alone a supply-and-demand kind of relation. I think its time to discus these limitation on copyright monopolies, and to discus it withous listening to huge copyright holders who simply claim every bit of income they lose in due to "piracy" without even looking if they might simply be having problems with the price/quality of their products (like getting diverse artist to atract a big audiance, instead of marketing the one-size-fits-all,if you push britney bands to everyone).
Since his very first hit in the sixties (called 'changes' by the way), Bowie has always been on the cutting edge, but in a more subdued, British (read: classy) way.
I think that if things were to naturally evolve, he would be absolutely correct....
BUT...(unfortunately) we have Congress and the courts putting their noses into the water where they really shouldn't. What they're doing is akin to passing laws requiring all electronic equipment to have at least three vaccum tubes so the vacuum tube industry doesn't fall to obsolence...or to require at least one buggy whip on every horseless carriage.
What's really ironic is that the mantra that our leaders have had the past few years (and what they seem to go to over and over and over to justify all the deregulation they've done) is:
"Let the marketplace decide!". Why then do they seem to want to apply this selectively then?
I think the answer is: $$$$$$$$$. They want the flow to continue into their wallets and Swiss bank accounts.
I think, as the legendary CmdrTaco once said, it will be somewhere inbetween.
There is so much FUD and flaming about the future and viability of OpenSource and FairUse on the one hand and ClosedSource and IPR on the other these days that it is really difficult to make up one's mind as to what one supports.
As artists or a coders, a lot of us seem to have that idealistic streak in us that we like to share our creative efforts and quite a few of us enjoy being able to look at the sources of works without having to fear harrasment from some omnipotent Agency or company. On the other hand we need to eat and most of us wouldn't say no to high salary or royalty checks. The problem is that it seems that the big salary and royalty checks mostly go to those who control the big companies or organisations, not to small artists or codeslaves in their cubicles. I think that Bowie is right in that the situation will change, but not in the direction it will take.
It seems, gathering from the J Carroll-esque and MS funded FUD that the boys in Redmond are very, very frightened of the effect that OSS is having, even if they probably wouldn't really stand to lose much in real world terms because of their huge dominance on PC OS's. The same for the big Labels and Studios. They seem scared. I can't imagine that the amount of money that these companies and organisations are spending on their campaigns is negligable and they do stand a good chance of using their massive lobbying presence in the law and media to eventually sway a lot of things their way.
On the other side the sheer inescapability of the fact that the GPL keeping code alive in spite of attempts to kill the projects and the true benefits of many people doing small tasks on a large project and peer review and feedback means that OSS is steadily gaining ground. There is no way that Linux/Moz or OpenOffice are going to go away. And the non ownership means that people who are scared of being blackmailed by corporations can use it without fear and this fact seems to be a major factor in the industry. With musicians starting to realise that they stand to gain much more in terms of "street credibility" by releasing their works over the net, and having very little to lose in any case, the big labels are getting caught in a bind. Do they try to fight these musicians whom they don't usually treat with much respect in any case, and risk boycott actions snowballing against them (where is Metallica today?) or do they go with the flow.
I think that companies like Apple with it's open core OS, Darwin and closed UI, and SuSE's UnitedLinux and RedHat moving to models that comply with the GPL but no longer do everything for you for free (compile it yourself) are starting to address some of the shortcomings of the everything for free as in beer model. Likewise I think that the music industry, in the end will probably go for a compromise where lower quality recordings are available for download and if you want something better you pay.
There is a lot to be said for compromise.
magazines got their articles from indepedent authors and paid them accordingly. however, some unscrupulous editors would steal articles from other magazines and not compensate the authors. as such, these magazines could charge cheaper prices and would outsell those legitimate magazines that did pay their authors.
Who got screwed? The author. This is why copyright exists, and why it will not go away and why it should not go away.
You completely ignored the magazine article author, which is the principal form of most writers' income.
-
Yea, only 1 out of 100 artists that get signed actually make it. This is why the companies try to make so much off of single artists, because the other 99 were only liabilities.
How many of you know someone who has 'gotten signed' to 'some big record label' but never got anywhere?
Tibbon
tibbon.com
I mean really... when these are either too filmsy to hold up to the force of ./ or have logins like this... is it legal to post these? Not that I care.
Hey even Karma Whoring is ok from time to time...
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Concerts are definately the future or the music industry. Of course just about every artist today has concerts, but that's where the money will be generated if all the record companies and distrubution go to hell.
Anyway, most artists make a great deal of their income at concerts. Record companies don't tap in as much, the tickets are 60 dollars, instead of 1x.99 for the CD at the store.
Another thing that will happen is the dissapearance of 'one hit wonders'. They will go the way of the typewriter, because people will only download their stuff, not go to their concerts, etc..
I mean don't most of you buy the CD anyway if you REALLY like it? I have many CD's that I bought that I have downloaded the whole thing, just as a 'thanks' to the artist. But do you really buy someone that only has one good song? Or go and sit through a three hour concert with only liking that one?
This whole thing will really change the industry even more than most people realize currently
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Man, you really got 'em with this one. haw haw
your != you're
ugh /. people are soo incredibly clueless .. the corporation creates the distribution, the marketing(VERY Expensive), they pay for the hotels, the "release parties" (to name a few small things the corporations do)
most of which, without it the artist would mean nothing. that costs FUCK LOADS of money, and if you think otherwise you are somewhat rather mislead.
ever tried doing a press release without money ?
(and no I don't mean the selected-by-admins process of the "slashdot effect" nor biast newsforge stories)
Basically the corporations do the business work, the musician just sits on his fat ass and creates tunes.
If you don't get it by now, then you're plain dumb.
That has been the justification for some of the stupidest decisions in our history. Lets make sure we are not rebelling, but are in actuallity preserving what this country was founded for (and by). If you do not like what this country stands for (and I am talking about in relation to its founding principles not what it has changed into) then please leave this country and let other enjoy it. Just as I would never walk into your home and demand you let me in, feed me the food I love and let your daughter and wife have sex with me... I do not accept any attempt to destroy my liberty and freedom by 'well meaning' individuals.
Notice though that 'well meaning' is the chant for how we got into this mess in the first place, so it is not an issue of left vs right, or any other crap like that. It is a 'let me be or not' fight.
Should IP be done away with, or like violent crime should the abuse and misuse of it be what is dealt with. After all, who doesn't use knives in their homes. Who does not drive? Yet cars and sharp objects (including sticks) are the leading causes of accidental death, that includes drunk drivers and rage drivers as well. Then we have murder stats... tisk tisk tisk. Like 'hate crimes' we must ensure that we do not end up watering down the existing 'responsibility contract' more than it already has. (i.e. all murder/beatings are hate crimes, why water those down by introducing ideology?)
If only a fictional character. A corporation is a LEGAL FICTION or FICTION of LAW...therefore has rights & responsibilties as a composite (non-corporeal)body EQUAL UNDER THE LAW to a single flesh & blood PERSON. It results in INEQUALITY though especially when CONSUMER NEEDS are not met or when a number of consumers, or even 1 single consumer is disadvantaged by BAD CORPORATE PRACTICES. Copyright abuse in my view has engendered EVIL CORPORATIONS such as Sony is trying to be. But David Bowie KNOWS that GOOD will ALWAYS PREVAIL OVER EVIL...it wont happen overnight...it MAY take 10 years...but it WILL HAPPEN
I could be wrong, but I believe Bowie was the first mainstream artist to distribute his music video on CD-ROM, through CD-ROM Today, which was my favorite computer mag in the early 90s.
/. crowd's general persective. :-)
He's always been noted as progressive and in-touch with technology. A real good guy from the
"He who has the Gold MAKES THE RULES FOR THOSE WHO AINT GOT ANY GOLD AT ALL" Sony has GOLD, Bill Gates has GOLD but he aint gonna share code (OR GOLD) with any loosers who come here to read /. The best things in life are FREE and in Bill Gates case he stole stuff according to Eric Raymond. I guess the best things in life are free even if you HAVE TO STEAL THEM from some poor sod who doesn't realise he has created something VALUABLE...some poor sod who has no GOLD AT ALL. Now that FREE DISTRIBUTION of music is the flavour of the month I say go 4it cos not many people (in terms of world population) own a computer or can even afford BROADBAND. Which raises the subject of CAPITALISM. There is no SHORTAGE of GOLD, or FOSSIL FUELS. CAPITALISM simply *CREATES* an articficial scarcity, either with warfare or the Coporate Application of the GOLDEN RULE. Right now the Telcos have *created* BANDWIDTH (artificial) SCARCITY with unlit optical fibre, known as DARK FIBRE NETWORKS...Conspiracy by Default? or THE GOLDEN RULE of CAPITALISM? Ask Bill Gates.
$53 million, oh that's so decimal. Are you too stupid to use a more interesting radix, like balanced ternary? I think you are. Reply to this with a better radix.
Do you think the Bowie machine has the power to make the music industry see the light?" No. But the man has my respect for setting an example and putting more than idle chatter behind it. His bowieart.com project, for example, is another way of using his power to give back to the kinds of people he was and hung out with (art students and new artists). He's an expert at the uses of media, and open to trying new ideas. I think the Creative Commons initiative is also a good similarly-minded idea to look at.
Copyrights are through
:)
And there's nothing you can do
(cheesey, yes, but somebody had to do it
If you're looking for thousands of young people marching in D.C. or holding sit-ins on college campuses, then yes you're going to get the impression that there aren't any young rebels. I, and I'd suspect many other young people, have no interest in being on the receiving end of tear gas, a policeman's nightstick, incarceration, or hot lead in the name of idealism when it's unlikely to result in any real change or even significant media attention. I'm a rebel, but a pragmatic one. I know plenty of others and they are similarly pragmatic. We'll speak out when there is an opportunity for real change to occur and take what individual actions we can take to work for incremental changes. It makes no sense for Gen-Xers to take on the system directly. Just from the standpoint of demographics, we're vastly outnumbered by aging boomers (who are now the supporters of the status quo). We change what we can, subvert the system when given opportunity, and bide our time until the "Me Generation" steps aside so we can fix the world (if the planet is still inhabitable).
Lewis Carroll, who's real name was Charles Dodgson, was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University. He was a brilliant logician and mathematician. His works are basically extended symbolic logic expositions, for those who are into that.
FYI, the Lucasian chair was also held by Isaac Newton, Paul Dirac, and is presently held by Stephen Hawking (unless he retired from the post, which I haven't heard).
Happy Monday,
Thumper
Well, of course Bowie doesn't give a fuck if music gets commodified or not. He's going to be able to pay the rent for then next 5,000 years.
As for the rest of us struggling musicians, _yes_ it sucks that you only share in part of the proceeds from the promotion and packaging and distribution of your work, but it beats _the hell_ out of what we manage to sell on the net and at live shows.
The courts are slow and inefficient, even when they are honest. I have not heard of a single case where copyright has been enforced. Every so often, the police do a big public action where they raid the CD markets, but the same sellers spring up somewhere else. The record companies do a bit of anti-piracy advertising but in general, I think that they have realize that there is not much that they can do, so they have reduced the prices of official CDs, and just resigned themselves to it. This means that artists make money, as far as I can see, by advertising, and by touring. There are five or six big casinos who hire big name Russian artists, and very small-name Western artists (e.g. Boney M) to play as a means of attracting punters. This works for the bands that appeal to an older audience, and you get some of the bars hiring the younger bands. The teenybopper bands spend most of their time doing regional tours, as far as I can see. This presumably means that the record companies take a more direct role in their acts, especially in the tours, since this is the main revenue source. They all have videos, and these are paid for in order to increase profile for the touring audience. Presumably the record companies are investing in acts now in the hope that they can also make some money off the official CDs (there are people who prefer to be honest, or certain of the product's quality) and will make more, when they find a way to beat the illegal CD market. I think that this is not that different from Bowie's vision of the future, and I can't be sure if it will make it harder or easier for small bands to develop. It seems to me that you still need record labels, or management companies, or some corporate entity that can help an artist become famous, just as they do now. For one thing, most artists make bad businessmen or women, regardless of their field. Of course, there are exceptions, like Madonna, but these are basically exceptions. There was another good article in the NYT over the weekend about how hard it is to persuade newly rich artists to properly handle their finances. Bottom line - corporates will always find a way to make money, but they will have to be flexible in doing this. It probably means that the music corporations will get bigger, not smaller, and will start to look after artists' tours as well. And all their image rights, and publicity appearances - I'm sure there's something in William Gibson about all this.
The music industry has seen the light with great clarity for quite a while. That's why we got the DMCA and why we're getting the too-long-to-pronounce law. Don't phrase this as a matter of clueless old farts who should "see the light" and join the internet age. It's a matter of an entrenched, wealthy, intelligent elite which will fight to the death to preserve and enhance its privileges and income.
The implication of this "see the light" comment is that the music industry should adapt to changing conditions. But an excellent quote which I can't find right now says, in effect: "Individual organisms do not adapt to changing conditions - the species adapts via the death of ill-adapted organisms".
Gee, 99% of the 60s radicals wanted an excuse to do drugs and have sex. They railled against society and used it as an excuse for permiscuity. They were all then extremely comfortable moving out to the suburbs to live in an all-white community without minorities. From these comfortable homes, they shielded their children from society, voted for tough-on-crime measures, and support the war-on-drugs. They are extremely concerned that their children will be exposed to sex and drugs. In a word, the 60s as a culture has been invented by an entire GENERATION of spoiled brats. The "greatest generation" spoiled their children, and to this day they need to assert their superiority over everyone else. Notice that the same "hippies" that spit on our servicemen returning from Vietnam and protested Vietnam are all flying the USA Flag on their SUVs in suburbia?
I watched the past 6 years, it was amazing. We saw young technologists unleash disruptive technology that turned out understanding of retail and markets upside down. Sure the dumb money caused a boom-and-bust, but such is capitalism. There are numerous people publishing on the web, providing information. Sure most of the "clicks" are with a few major companies, but so what. Most of the time I don't need unusual information, major news sites handle my needs, but the wealth of information available when I am looking is astounding.
Look buddy, I have nothing against 17-22 years old that idolize the 60s and rail against the establishment. Good for you, have fun. Just try to realize when you're sitting in a coffee shop talking about the establishment being pathetic that you are full of shit. I love my lefty friends, but I also know to laugh at them when they talk about the evils of corporate America while sending the credit card bill home to daddy and spending his money.
The thing that makes America work is our willingness to get shit done. The French sit and whine, wanting a 35-hour work week, never to see battle, and a seat at the UN Security Council. Americans understand that when it comes time to do the heavy-lifting, its going to fall on us. While lefties (American and European) seem to have unlimited amounts of energy to bitch and moan about people benefiting from this heavy-lifting, most Americans realize that if the rock is going to move, we're going to move it.
The American people aren't pathetic, you are. Waxing philosophical about the irony of another Cold War ally taking our training and using it against us doesn't help. Facts not in dispute: Hussein (who, along with his sons, is a truly evil individual; which has nothing to do with our hegemonic reasons for fighting Iraq, but his family DOES consist of truly evil people) was dealt with 10 years ago, and may need to be dealt with again. Bin Ladin took our training and build an army for holy war, which is especially ironic given that our friends the Saudis fund it (and they ARE our friends, we back the House of Saud, they keep the oil flowing).
So, we created our nightmares? What's the point? We did what we had to do to win the Cold War, and we did win the Cold War. There are some costs that we are paying now. Most Americans realized that we were going to have to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and head off to stop Al Qaeda. Sure most Americans don't understand Islam, have a trivial understanding of why they hate us, but have a terrific understanding of something that you are lacking "They hate us AND our way of life," at least when our way of life involves stationing troops in Arabia to keep the corrupt House of Saud in power (which we explain as keeping Iraq out of Saudi Arabia).
These "old radicals" were absurd in their day, and absurd now. The difference is that they were revered by the suburbanite middle class when they were "hippies" so they get to go on camera and be silly.
Geeze buddy, grow up.
Alex
Bowie Machine? There is no Bowie Machine. Bowie cannot sell a song to save his life. Thank goodness. This is just another of his pathetic trendy futile attempts to get noticed, when most of the world regrets ever having paid any attention in the first place.
Of course all you Village People fans out there - all you American BOYS - probably have another opinion. But at least that cannot be hereditary.
didnt you used to be David Bowie?
The creator's point of view. And not just any average creators.
;)
in the article, did david say he's going to give away his future creations for free, in the name of public good? nope. so does that mean this mega mega talent is pro-RIAA? don't think so too. to david bowie - based on my reading anyway - it's not a black [RIAA darth vader] or white [supposedly altruistic free-music advocate] issue. it makes perfect sense to me that bowie is neutral on the issue. afterall, he has survived 4 [!!!] decades as a multi talented, multi-disciplinary artist, and seen it all.
i'm a working professional creator for more than a decade now, and have quietly watched this copyright and intellectual property ownership media/internet war go on for a few years now. i observed one extreme side milking the creations to death in the name of greed-is-good and the other extreme side's [not any better] wish to enjoy the goods for nothing, in the name of......"public"[yeah right] benefit.
ironically, opinion of one most crucial party - the creators of the fought-over goodies - are rarely sought. and when they do speak out occasionally, for their slavemaster recording company or their own [very very valid because it's very very limited] financial self-interest, they get public wrath...
still, am glad, finally, bowie speaketh.
so where does an accomplished, artist of this calibre really stand in this?
let's take a good look at these excerpts from the david bowie article:
-"I'm fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing."
keyword: bashing.
generally, the word "bashing" implies that the speaker thinks that there's unfair/unjust treatment of that particular object/subject. either bowie thinks this, or at most, he's neutral. what is certain is, he is not the one doing the bashing
- "Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity," he added. "So it's like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again.
keyword:"take advantage of"
obviously, bowie perceives copyright ownership and having control over his own recorded works an "advantage", something positive, at least for him
but then, why would he perceives ownership of his creative babies any other way? of course having control over his own work is an advantage - to him, to begin with. but the question is, are fans and new technology going to deny him that possibility? his verdict is, yes. but he didn't say it is right or wrong. he just says, i'm facing an inevitable. he did not say whether this free-flowing-ness of musical information is going to do him good or bad, but he certainly said he needs to take advantage of whatever little time he has left. doesn't that mean he actually implies the opposite: that free-flowing-music arnachy is not an advantage?
is the future brighter for david bowie? at least, the recording companies pay the creators *something*, however pathetic the ratio to real profit. still that's definitely better than the [a] non-creatives [b] wannabe creatives who preach "all private creations should be owned by public" and "be made freely avaible by law"?
it's understandable if we think those damn CDs cost too much - but have we consider the interest of the creators - who create the stuff we desperately want? don't know about you or mary or tom, but i got a feeling, my own genuine feeling, that i do not want my musical idols to suffer for his/her wonderful, inspiring, valuable creative urges. i may have received and enjoyed mp3s from my family and friends, but i will not advocate for free goodies.
david bowie uses an interesting analogy of music [or created art works in any form] as water or electricity. do we ever get [or expect to get] these vital things, water or electricity, for free? right....but why?
the most important question, for the "real general public which consist of creators, producers, endusers, and marketing and distribution gurus, will we continue to see newer and more inspiring david bowies in the future, if the RIAA continues its short-sighted tyranical ways and the "fans" insist on wanting all these enjoyment for free?
these are the questions i ask myself....
my 2.2 cts
I believe Bowie is right on target. With the ability for individual's to download basically anything they want off the internet for free, why wouldn't you see the current state of Copyright law disintegrate. I believe that each individual artist will need to look into new technology and ways to brand their image and promote their music. Technology and the internet will provide that, if they are willing to use it to their advantage. It's just like everything else in life, it goes through stages of evolution and if they don't keep up with it, they'll get left behind.
I refuse to make yet another login for every single damned web page I visit. Just say NO!
Bowie laughs, says, "Because they're crazy. I don't care about any format; I download it from the Internet."
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
It always amazes and saddens me when someone is so mis-guided.
> 99% of the 60s radicals wanted an excuse to do drugs and have sex. They railled against society and used it as an excuse for permiscuity.
APPENTLLY according to you, no one in the 60's or 70's cared about anyone other than themselves. Everything that happened in that period was just about sex,drugs and rock 'n roll. The injustice of the country at that time didn't effect people at all.
From 1955 to 1985 our culture became VASTLY more open and equal. In that time frame the country changed drastically. Women entered the work place. Blacks rights were protected by law. The voting age was brought down to the same age as the draft.
Sure,some people were purely self-serving and base. For those people there was and always will be only one reason to do anything. However many other people thought it was wrong for a black woman to have to stand on a bus based on her skin. Many thought it was wrong the USA could make someone go to war but that person couldn't vote. Many thought it was wrong that women did not have the same choices in life that men did.
Many of the people that spoke out had a TERRIBLE life during those years. Spied on, jailed, beaten and abused by their government & fellow citizens. They were a minority then and still are today.
THEN however they were very vocal and for good reason - There were terrible injustices in this country. Today things are quite - there is no "great" injustice on par with what was present then. While copyright, the WTO and Gays are all important issues BUT they are not quite on the same scale as the rights of a black man, the rights of a woman, of someone having to go off and DIE because their government picked their name out of a hat.
> Notice that the same "hippies" that spit on our servicemen returning from Vietnam and protested Vietnam are all flying the USA Flag on their SUVs in suburbia?
You are a lucky person. You can tell, at a glance, what someone's views were 30 years ago just by looking at their car!! AMAZING! I was under the impression that there were a large number of people in the 60's and 70's who LIKED and approved of the war then. I don't even NEED to mention that the "War on Terror" is JUST LIKE the Vietnam war.
Somehow I am guessing that if we started killing 50,000 people a year in Iraq or anywhere else people might feel differently. If thousands of our troops were dieing every year people might feel differently.
And speaking of feeling different: Can a person change their view during their life without being a sell-out? A person who's view do not change as they age is a moron,dogmatic or (most likely) both.
Oh,and we REALY "won" the cold war. That is if by "winning" you mean that an un-just and un-workable system collapsed in upon it's-self form probelms inherint to the system. Copyright will likly collapse the same way one day. It is a model that works for certain things and not for others. When it does collapse and trasform into something new, many poeple will say they "Won". The battle will be won because it has to be,because the is no other long term answer.
There is just so much more that is so SAD in your post. So much that screams to be addressed. You even mention the FRENCH!!! So much that I really wonder if your post is nothing more than a joke.
What do you say to the man that has nothing? Cast it away!!