Canadian Music Stars Fight Against DRM

An anonymous reader writes "Some of Canada's best known musicians, including Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlin, Sum 41, and Barenaked Ladies, have formed a new copyright coalition. The artists say in a press release that they oppose file sharing lawsuits, the use of DRM, and DMCA-style legislation and that they want record labels to stop claiming that they represent their views."

Comments

Re:Serious question

[sinclair44]

It may not have been her choice, or she may have not even known about it until it was too late. I imagine that the people in charge of such things don't really care what the artists think, as long as they get their piles money.

My first guess.

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be a question to ask Sarah McLachlan, and as far as I am aware, Sarah McLahlan does not read slashdot. If you ask the question here, she will not see it.

However my guess would be that it is something along the lines of

1. Her label did it, not her
2. She is opposed to her label having done it, and
3. This is why she is starting a public pressure group specifically designed to get her label to stop doing such things.

Perhaps you will suggest that Sarah McLachlan should have used her leverage as an artist with the label to prevent them from engaging in such practices with her music at the time the CD was released. If you do this, I will laugh until I pass out from lack of oxygen.

Re:My first guess.

[AdamD1]

You may be half right on some of those. It's important to note that "she" (McLachlan) is not the one actually starting it. However she is among the artists who support it.

First: most of those artists are either on the Nettwerk label (McLachlan) or are managed or co-managed by Nettwerk (LaVigne, BNL, McLachlan, Raine Maida, Kreviazuk, Sum41). That makes it pretty obvious that two things are actually happening:

1) The artists, while feeling pretty hosed about how much rampant downloading is still going on, are not so hard-hit by that action that they feel outraged.

2) They do actually have some say about this since they are money-making artists on predominantly major-distributed labels.

I think that second point is key. Every major label artist, by that I mean one signed directly to an international major label, featuring international mass distribution, has either remained silent about this issue or has been so outspoken against downloading in particular that they've greatly damaged their fanbase ([cough]Metallica[/cough].)

Yes, most of these artists are on independent labels (biggest exceptions: Lavigne is on Arista, BNL are on Warner.) However that does not exclude them from major international distributorship (Nettwerk is distributed by EMI. Sloan is distributed by Sony / BMG. Most of the others have major distributors for their releases.) Whether you like Avril Lavigne's music or not, she is a top-five-selling artist who has joined this group of artists to make it known: she still doesn't agree with the tactics her major label is claiming to represent by suing her fans.

If it were a smaller artist - say: Harvey Danger, who actually allowed full on torrent files of their album to be released with no restrictions whatsoever last year - the attention payed to that motive is slight, and the response is usually "Big deal, who's heard of them? What difference will that make?"

I get the feeling that this is more likely a management / publishing mandate, with some artist buy-in. Nettwerk also handles or has a great deal to say about the publishing for all of these artists.

Interesting development. Maybe we'll finally get the music industry that consumers actually want, instead of this cat and mouse crap. Anything that goes a step or two towards evening the playing field when it comes to this industry is definitely a good thing. The last thing we need (which we have now) is another five Nickelbacks getting mass airplay on radio and then hearing them and their label and agents complaining that sales are down strictly because of downloading.

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"Piracy" is good for the RIAA

[javacowboy]

I was going to blog about this, but I'm feeling lazy tonight.

First of all, like RMS, I hate applying the term "piracy" to non-commercial copyright violations, so I won't use that term. Instead, I'll call it what it is, unauthorized copying.

Unauthorized copying is to the RIAA what "terrorism" is to the Bush Adminstration, namely, a scapegoat and a straw man argument with which to justify draconian legislation and to garner (barely) sufficient public support for any new legislation favoured by both institutions.

As the Bush Adminstration maintains the conditions (ex: War on Iraq) to indirectly promote terrorism, it justifies renewing the Patriot Act on the basis that it will "help stop terrorism". To make a blatantly obvious statement, the goal of the Patriot Act does not in any way, shape, or form have anything whatsoever to do with stop terrorists, but is instead intended to grant the government the ability to further spy on and control its citizens.

In the same vein, I believe that the RIAA wishes to maintain a certain level of unauthorized copying because it will allow them to justify legislation such as the DMCA and the broadcast flag. The goal of such legislation is not to eliminate or even substantially reduce unauthorized copying, but to maintain control over the industry and keep out fledging competitors, such as independent artists who would have otherwise been promoted through P2P, and to maintain their antiquated business models, which for all intents and purposes should have become obsolete.

So, it's all an elaborate shell game on their part.

Excellent news

[Infonaut]

It looks like at least a few artists have come to realize that the music industry cartel's stand on DRM is not helpful to artists. If they can get more artists on the bandwagon, they may be able to influence the debate. It's a helluva lot more difficult for the labels to convince people that DRM "helps artists" when the artists themselves are against it.

Re:Not suprising from Avril Lavigne...

[brian0918]

Whoosh (the sound of a joke going over your head)

Re:Hypocrisy with Barenaked Ladies?

[Kadin2048]

So at least one of them is against sharing/downloading.

Actually, they could all be against sharing and downloading: nothing in their stance says "we think it's OK for you to download music without paying for it." What they've said is that they think the RIAA lawsuits are wrong, which is a totally separate issue from whether you think downloading music is morally wrong or right in the first place.

You can still be an artist, and dislike it when people steal your music, but think that the RIAA has gone way too far. Likewise, I'm against shoplifting but I wouldn't want them to start chopping people's hands off for it; I can be against chopping people's hands off and still be "anti shoplifting."

The black and white attitude where anyone who's anti-RIAA or anti-lawsuits is automatically pro-filesharing is just what the RIAA would like you to believe. It's an automatic "with us or against us." I'm not necessarily saying that you said that, but I think a lot of people make that assumption and I was just taking your comment as an opportunity to clear it up.

Just because somebody hates the RIAA/MPAA doesn't mean they think it's necessarily right to just go on Kazaa/BitTorrent and download stuff without somehow compensating the artists for it.

Re:It's a shame its too late for Sarah's last albu

[shutdown -p now]

That's funny, because you could also just as well have pirated it without returning the product

But if he did that, the distributor and the artist would just assume that he doesn't mind DRM'ed music (or at least, not enough to stop him from giving them money). No, what he did was exactly the right thing to do: it sends a clear message (in form of lost profits) to everyone involved in production of that album that DRM is considered an unacceptable "feature" by at least one of their customers.

Re:well duh

[Mo Bedda]

Do you content that the Diebold voting machines are programmed in a way that makes them favor Republicans over Democrats?

That is really beside the point. The fact that they make wholesale tampering so much easier and so less traceable. When Diebold comes in and "upgrades" the machines with un-certified code before an election, they could really hand the election to whomever they wanted. Is this a good situation as long as they hand the election to the highest bidder or the candidate least likely to regulate voting machines?

Actually, a government law that obligates a company to change how they do business is anti-free market. All the DMCA does is give formal protection to DRM software that precedent normally gave them anyway.

The DMCA very much obligates companies to change how they do business. The DMCA was needed because these controls were not at all supported by precedent. If I wanted to evaluate wall safes, I could buy a bunch and try to break into them. While the DMCA can't currently prevent me from trying, it can certainly prevent me from sharing my findings.

By your definition, all IP, and really all law in general, is anti-free market.

At any rate, you've been quite thoroughly convinced that copy protected music will lead a multitude of other things. Is there anything other than speculation to back any of those up, or is it just hyper-paranoia?

You obviously haven't been paying close attention. DRM is already extending much further than music. The DMCA has already prompted law suites in areas such as printer catrideges and garage door openers. Trusted computing has a lot of potential change how computers can be used.