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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?"
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
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
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. =)
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There is a certain amount of truth to this... I heard somewhere that youth culture is cyclical... perhaps the 2010's will yield more activism. I blame "cool" apathy. That detached generation X-ish look that has been promoted in all media for the last decade.
I blame the uber-PC view: "Be accepting of everyone and everything that is different." We have been trained not to care. No wonder everyone is so detached no one cares, everyone accepts. It's a mandate enforced and reinforced through 12--16 years of societal-normalization camp, err... I mean school... It's fallout from the 60's, and it doesn't taste as good 4 decades later.
Then there's all the messages being broadcast directly into our frontal lobes by large corporate sponsors. "Good consumer... good boy! sit, stay, be happy, buy stuff." Almost all of the urgent messages that bombard us are of no real importance. The real important stuff is mysteriously absent from the news... unless it somehow has to do with 9/11. You have to blow up a building or no one cares. What a sad world.
I wish I could make everyone read No Logo and Fast food nation. At least peruse Adbusters. *sigh*
I'm glad Slashdot exists.
Great authors eat because they have to eat. With no income, they have no food.
Who said they would have no income? There are a variety of ways they could get income that may or may not be directly related to their writing.
Why is this ALWAYS an argument? What are these people supposed to do for a paycheck? Work at the Arco Station on the corner?
You're pretty unimaginative. First, they could actually have day jobs. Robert Burns was a farmer and excise collector. Who knows what Lewis Carroll's day job was? Second, they could use strategies like the street performer protocol or individual or corporate grants. Third, there are a variety of ways to turn intellectual works into "performances" which can be paid for: plays, interviews, signings, etc.
From one of your posts in another thread
Ok, tell you what. You go spend two years of full-time days (and nights and weekends) to write a novel and then give it all away. You have
absolutely no idea how much work is involved in writing or developing "cool stuff."
Actually, I did write a book and I did take about a year (not two) off of work for it (across several editions). If there was no copyright law I would have approached it very differently but I still would likely have done it. First, I would have seen it as a calling card, not something that would make me money directly. Second, I would have taken longer to do it, working on nights and weekends. Third, I would wait until the area of technology (it was a tech book) calmed down rather than expecting people to buy multiple editions as technology changed.
Overall, I would have radically changed my business model for the project. And in the end, that's my point. There is no one true business model for writing books or making widgets or anything else. The way the market works is to find ways to connect people who want something with those who can provide something. If a particular way of making that connection is blocked (copyright) then other ways will be found. That's why we had creativity before there was copyright and will have creativity after copyright disappears.
If there are authors who absolutely refuse to change their business model to adjust to changes in technology and society, then that is their problem, not society's. There will be other authors who will choose to adjust and they will thrive.