Why Only Music?

The Importance of writes "Last week, Slashdot readers provided a number of answers to the question "What is Music?" in the context of compulsory licensing. Now LawMeme asks another question about compulsory licenses: Why Only Music? Many compulsory licensing schemes have been proposed to cover music alone, but most of the arguments in favor of a compulsory license for music apply equally as well to other media types. Millions share movies, P2P can't be stopped, the MPAA hasn't provided legitimate alternatives for what consumers want, etc. If music should have a compulsory license, why shouldn't movies, software, ebooks and other media also be covered by compulsory licenses?"

Comments

Because

[Sir Haxalot]

If music should have a compulsory license, why shouldn't movies, software, ebooks and other media also be covered by compulsory licenses?
It's bad enough music having it, how would you feel about the BAA (Book Association of America) sending you emails?

OPEN SOURCE RECORD LABEL

[locarecords.com]

I don't know how many have heard of our label LOCA RECORDS but we have been releasing music Open-source for at least a couple of years now. Although our artists are small, for instance MEME, XAN, WARD and MAZ PLANT OUT, but they are all really excited about the ideas and the licenses.

Granted most people look blank or think we must be insane to do this but we are experimenting with a new business model and it is very exciting!

And as we believe in the artists and they trust us because of our licensing freedom we think in the long term the relationship can only get stronger and more artists will want to join us.

Yes, there are alternatives....

[Dan93]

Several major Hollywood studios have offered alternatives that allow people to rent movies online. In fact slashdot has ran a story about them before.

Why no compulsory licenses?

[stonecypher]

Very simply put, because I don't want to pay for other people's right to steal, I don't want to underwrite the industry's estimates of what their failing business model, i mean, technology is costing them, and I don't want to be told that this is the alternative to allowing a puny entertainment industry to infringe upon my rights.

It's their problem, and it doesn't come out of my pocket, amortized or not, period. This is not a socialism. Stop pretending.

Re:Theft is not what anybody wants

[neglige]

I think the statement refers to cheap legal download-services for music - Apples iTunes for example. No major record label actually succeeded in introducing such a service (and in some cases - Napster - it backfired). All they offer are overpriced, old and heavy DRM restricted files. So they were unable to meet the expectations of the consumers, who already had a cheap, fast and easy download possibility: P2P.

Of course you are right, creating such a service may not be the main focus of the MPAA. But it sure would have helped matters :)

I don't want the responsibility of music

[tuckerclerico]

It's suddenly occurred to me that I no longer want the responsibility of music.

I like listening to music, but I don't want to worry about whether or not I'm legally allowed to rip it for myself.

I don't want to worry whether or not I'll have to disable autoplay in order to rip a CD. I don't want to worry whether or not I'm violating the DMCA if I say something, do something, or copy something.

I don't want to have to worry about whether or not the RIAA will come busting into my house because I've downloaded -- apparently -- legal MP3s from emusic.com. I don't want to worry whether or not they'll think they're illegal.

Art and enjoyment aren't supposed to be like this. I can go into a library, check out a book, read it, and return it. I can pick up a magazine, read it, put it back on the table.

I can go into coffee shop, read a paper, leave it on the table, and not worry about whether or not (a) my privacy has been compromised and (b) I'm doing something illegal. I can just go and do it.

Music is just not worth it. It's become larger than itself and owning it -- using it -- has become too much of a responsibility. I don't want to break the law, but I probably have. But I don't want to deal with worrying about whether or not I might have broken the law. I just want to listen to it. I could give a shit about DRM and licensing.

It's too much responsibility. I give up. The RIAA wins. I won't buy any more or listen to anymore.

There. You happy now, Craig? Hilary, you happy? Jack, maybe you wanna chime in about movies, too?

Go ahead.

Becuase any other way would be mad.

[TyrranzzX]

The REASON we have free media is becuase we have free ideas. This centers around a single arguement, how free do we want our ideas? Music, computers, programming, machinery, etc are ALL versions of the same principle; the idea. Who can exploite them is answered by pantents and copyright, and those are in place to ensure the benefit of society, not the indivudal making the music.

We have come to a crux in our developement. Do we realize our best hope for survival is with eachother, stop fighting and start working and trusting eachother, or do we break up into nitpicky intrest groups and rip eachother apart? It's seeming a lot like the ladder of the 2, although most would prefer the primer of the 2 and go with the first one. The whole reason our goverment prosecutes [insert thing here] is becuase they don't trust them. I for one trust most people and most people trust me. We don't ened this bullshit. All they're trying to do with this is tear us up into little nitpicky groups and while we're all distracted by briteny spears' new album they'll fuck us over some more. When we finally awake, we'll find our headphones blank and useless, the computer moniter black, and the books in our houses turned to ashes. Read 1984, you'll get the idea of what I'm talking about.

If we give up free media now, we give up our human right to communicate and to freely share ideas. If we give that up, we lose our humanity. What makes a person robust is their experiences, their ideas, aspirations and ideas. Without stimulation in the form of books, beauty, music, logic, and others we won't be anything but sacks of useless robotic meat. I for one refuse to become like that, and I'll start blowing shit up before I let it happen as would most hackers.

I'm a fucking human dammit and I'm not going to just let you take away the ideas I thrive on. Fuck your system, fuck your way of thinking, and damn the lawers to hell who actually fight for this. I'd figure there'd be a point where any human would think "you know, mabye I'm going a little too far". These people are psychopaths, there seriously needs to be a mental condition for excessive greed so we can lock these assholes in a mental institution so they can't do anything to us.

The problem with IP.

[ciphertext]

You highlight an excellent problem with intangible assets. Specifically, how can a business survive (that is stay in business) when their livelyhood depends on the sale of intangible assets.

When I purchase some bit of media, do I *own* it, like we've all assumed for the last couple of centuries... or have I purchased the *rights* to use the content?

I think the correct answer to that question is "no, you don't own the rights to the music". What you do own, or more exactly what you have paid for is, a medium of delivery (CD, Vinyl, Super8, VHS, paper, etc.) and a limited personal use license. You should have the ability to make an archive copy of your product and enjoy unlimited, acceptable-use rights that are fully transferrable with ownership.

This is the scheme that businesses have developed to allow a business based on intangible assets to exist and have received legislative and judicial support in accordance with the practice. Essentially, the business owners are looking for a way to protect their existence as a business.

As it has been said before, the problem with Copyright law is that it is outdated. It was written when the concept of a computer or digital media, let alone the internet never existed. Now, we have technological means to easily supplant copyright restrictions. In the past the traditional distribution lines (suppy chains) for the copyrighted materials were easily regulated and were often cost prohibitive for an average individual to maintain. Now, everybody (nearly) has access to the internet and the freedom to upload/download whatever is available to them virtually unchecked. There is also an abundance of software equivalents to UPS, FedEx, DHL, and freight companies that are readily available for free (P2P software is an example) to "ship" your copyrighted/pirated material across the internet. Before the internet, you would need to go to a bookstore, a recordstore, or a movie theater to purchase/view copyrighted material. The pirates did not have a supply chain that was distributed enough to avoid detection, or large enough to provide to the masses. Essentially, the pirates had sales out of the trunk of their cars and only to a small subset of the population. There are/were of course examples of more sophisticated and organized pirate operations that functioned more as a business. The mafia in the U.S. and certain cadres of citizenry in Russia and China are good examples. The citizenry examples existed mainly due to the difference in copyright laws here in the U.S. and abroad. The problem of piracy didn't really begin to "show up on radar" until the following conditions were met.

• the "cost of entry" for a pirate became significantly low enough that everyone could be a pirate (cheap supply chain and distribution network, and low cost of ownership for required tools to pirate the material)
• the cost of doing business with a pirate (i.e. the accessability to pirated material, monetary costs if any for material, low potential of being caught, etc...) became significantly low enough to make it easier for an individual to retrieve a pirated version of material.
• the growing popular perception that bussinesses aren't acting appropriately towards customers.
• the perception that piracy is justified when pirating works from corporations that are perceived to be "stealing" from customers.

I suspect that copyright law will be "revamped" that include restrictions that are adequate for our day and time and potentially, if the writers have any foresight, far into the future. Perhaps the better question to ask would be; "what should be copyrightable, and what should be public domain?". Perhaps societies view are changing on that question, and we should (at least here in the States) review what we consider to be acceptable to sell.