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Edison to Hillary Rosen - Parts 3, 4 and 5
An anonymous reader writes "MP3newswire.net has the follow up to the first two chapters of its series "Thomas Edison, Intellectual Property and the Recording Industry". These articles show that the controllers of the media bullied folk back then as they do now - and it didn't work. The last installments of the 5 part series include; Chapter 3 -- The Industry Evolves, Chapter 4 -- Copyright and the Grand Illusion, and closes with Chapter 5 -- Bringing the Past Into the Present"
I have a question. Which time period had more diverse media? Today we have huge corporations that own parts of many types of media and have overwhelming control because of all their money and their corporate privilages that the US government has so graciously granted since Edison's time. But back then the media was much more limited. There was no TVs or Internet so people had fewer mediums to through which to be bullied. If someone controlled one or two of these mediums they could probably do a decent job of bullying. So, it might not have worked back then, but is it more or less likely to work today?
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I am going to have to respectfully disagree with you. In my opinion, it is not the record label that takes the risk but the artist. Many (if not all) of the artists signed to record deals already have a number of songs -- songs that they created at their own risk -- with their own money. So when a record label signs an artist they are not just signing an artist that has no portfolio. Instead they sign the artists with the strongest portfolios and thus incur the least risk for themselves.
Furthermore, in a standard record label deal the artist agrees to pay all the costs of recording, promotion, production, transportation, food, etc out of their royalties. What is the record label going to pay for? Honestly, it seems to me that the only risk the record label assumes is the fact that the artist may bomb and owe the label millions. In that case, which seems to be very rare, the artist is bankrupt and the label has taken a profit hit.
Are you still entirely sure that it is the labels that assume the risk? Personally, I think that, unless my sources are very wrong, the artist takes the greatest risk -- by far.
Oh theres alot of Jazz musicians that would debate the point.
If you get into older music youll find that the copyrights the record companies want indefinitely extended were acquired by means little better than theft.
Look at leadbelly or many of the other seminal roots of American music. Willie Nelson is a more current example. Youll see artists that were treated worse than I treat toilet paper. Youll also see record companies that are still selling their music and paying their heirs nothing. Whats worse Their are whole swaths of music that are locked up in vaults and may never be released.
Now lets look a hundred years into the future. DRM has been in place for nearly a century. For the sake of argument it actually works. The collected works of artist X are due to come into the public domain. Guess what it doesn't matter anymore. They can't. The DRM is protecting them the record companies don't want someone contributing to the culture that they aren't making a profit on, so the recordings are just left to die. Even if you could bypass the "Strong DRM" it doesn't matter because thats illegal.
Record companies aren't about creating or expanding a market for music, they are about controlling an existing market. If you don't believe that look at what they do to used record and CD dealers.
As long as the means of distribution are thoroughly under the thumbs of the large labels they will be able to pressure artists to sign whatever kind of garbage passes for a contract with them. The fact that their are counterexamples just means that occasionally a few lucy or gifted can win at a rigged game. The game is still rigged.