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New Zealand's Recording Industry CEO Tries to Defend New Draconian Law
An anonymous reader writes "Campbell Smith, CEO of the RIAA equivalent in New Zealand, has written an opinion piece for one of New Zealand's largest daily papers, in which he tries to justify the new 'presumed guilty' copyright law. This law allows recording industry members to watch file-sharing activity and notify ISPs of users who are downloading material. The copyright holder can then demand that an ISP disconnect that user — without the user ever having a chance to demonstrate their evidence."
The ISP would then contact its user and warn them that they were breaking the law, advise them not to do it again
I agree with the proposition that users should be able to flag to an independent adjudicator anything they regard as mistaken evidence
also, he mentions that it is the 'right holder' that identifies IP addresses through the filesharing system, not the governement or anything so I'm not sure how its "Big Brother".
Having said that, I don't think its the appropriate way to handle copyright infringement.
Mod parent up. I had an economist friend years ago who calculated what songs would cost on the radio per airing, and it came out to $.05USD. At that price, I would buy large quantities of music. As it is now, CDs are too expensive and so are mp3s on iTunes. Not that I would ever pirate music. On a completely separate subject, I like limes.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
This is not an option - apparently only members of the RIANZ and affiliates can make the request. Indie artists are not protected by the new law.
Sorry, but this was blatent corruption.
Section 92 of the copyright ammendment act was written at the prompting of the entertainment industry. It was then widely criticised during public review of the proposed law, and removed. But, surprise suprise, it was magically re-inserted after the public consultation period ended.
Worse, at the prompting of the US entertainment industry in order to obtain a dubiously valued free trade agreement.
~/ One man's opinions is a lifetime of pain.
"The problem isn't copyright.
Other than a few Cathedral/Bazaar types, few people advocate for the total abolishment of copyright. We don't mind paying a reasonable price for good recordings. We wouldn't even mind paying per-Listening if any suitable billing system could be contrived."
The problem with copyright is that it benefits the distributors, which has never been the artists. Even with the Internet, copyright is never going to benefit the artists.
To provide some context to my opinion, I am an artist. I own the copyright to lots of works. I've recorded an album. I've written short stories. I've created many paintings. You know how much copyright has benefited me ? None.
In fact, WITHOUT copyright I would have the potential to benefit much more. Why ? Because if a radio station or a distribution company did not have to worry about copyrights and royalties I could get much more exposure, in theory. Of course it all boils down to whether or not my creations are any good. But copyright can not force people to pay money for bad music (all opinions about Britney Spears aside).
The fallacy with the concept of copyright is that it confuses the creative genius with the entrepreneur. The VAST majority of artists do not create for the sake of profiting from their work. Sure, there is always the dream. The dream that we will "make it" and be famous rock stars playing for sold out shows and having hoards of hot groupies wanting to have sex with us and die at a young age from a drug overdose. But the minute you start talking business and economics with artists you destroy the entire process of "creating" for them.
I'm in a unique position because I happen to be self-employed as well. But that hasn't enabled me to make lots of money from my work. Nor has the ability to maintain a monopoly on the distribution of my work ever been an incentive to create. The two have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Business and art are worlds apart. While I can not speak for all artists, I know that this is true for every single musicians that I have ever had to pleasure of creating with. Some of them are pretty good at making money playing shows or doing studio work for hire, but when it comes to writing their own material, to creating, the business side of it never enters into the equation (unless they're under contract, and that has arguably destroyed more creative minds than has helped - inspiration can not be turned on with a switch and trying to do so often results in writer's block which can financially ruin an artist who is under contract).
The argument for copyright (for the artists' sake) usually boils down to this: morally speaking we don't want "greedy fat-cat rich capitalists" to be able to profit from our work without compensating us. While I can certainly understand this principle, I think that it would actually be in every artist's best interest to allow those entrepreneurs to do so. Why ? Because if the artist is lucky enough to get "picked up" and distributed, and the venture does well enough to earn the entrepreneur a profit, the artist is now famous. Without having to do a damned thing. Now, having the fame, the artist has been given a gift and can do with it as he/she pleases. They can package all of those songs that the entrepreneur is distributing sans-royalty, add a couple of new creations (one song, or some behind the scenes stuff or whatever) and then out-compete the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur has made a profit, the artist can now make a profit that he/she could not have made prior etc. Yet as long as the entrepreneurs has to worry about copyrights and royalties they will only concern themselves with those artists who are willing to enter into ridiculously one-sided contracts because the artist wants to get famous, nothing else matters.
The Internet changes very little. Yes, it is WAY easier for an artist to earn him/her-self exposure on the Internet now. However, copyright does not help that at all. It hinders it. No website can put up music without the artist's permission. So exposure for new artists is still entirely limited by how business-savy and/or lucky the artist is.
Very interesting point of view you have here, it outlines a quite different business model than I am used to. A business model though that makes sense: about ten years ago I was quite involved in the local pop scene, and learned that many bands while under a record label were barely making any money from album sales. And quite some considered albums (and certainly singles) as pure promotion, not something you make money off.
They made money off concerts fees, and merchandise sales during the concerts (t-shirts with the band logo usually).
Some made money from albums, but even the better selling ones barely got an income out of it. It went all to the record company that made the investment in recording the album. Most bands even didn't care about it: they got famous, they got the gigs, made a reasonable income out of it (almost none would get rich). When Napster came along some bands even started promoting the use of this network, but that caused friction with the record company of course.
The problem without copyright is how to make sure you can get back your investment on a recording. Studio time is still expensive, even though it's falling rapidly, recording an album is still quite an investment. Having copyright on the recording would guarantee a limited time (5-10 years is more than enough I think) to make up for your investment. Without copyrights the making of recordings I think will become really hard, and thus hurting the exposure of a musician. No recordings means no exposure.
Where the business model should change is the freedom of the artist. I think it's kind of what you mean, but it's not written explicitly. The artists should not sign for a record label - they could create a song, and then sell/license the song to the record label: the record label then invests in the recording and promotion of the song (or complete album), and the artist is free to arrange their own gigs. Or maybe have the record company help with that, or a separate booking office.
This won't work of course because of greed: artists will happily sign a seven-album contract because they think they will really make it. Only to be dumped after the first flops, and being unable to make more albums because they are still under contract. Greed - from the record label side but at least as much if not more from the artist's side - is why we have the current situation. And that won't change soon.