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Eric Baptiste Weighs In On Copyright Summit Issues
With the upcoming biennial summit of authors and composers in Washington DC, The Register has an interview with Eric Baptiste, head of the International Confederation of Authors and Composers Societies (CISAC), that touches on some of the hot issues. "There's no one-stop shopping anymore. We were working to put that in place in the Santiago Agreement [2000] which got struck down by the European Commission [in 2004]. It would put together all the world's repertory and enable one society to grant a worldwide license. That was a very bold move. It's a pity it was not appreciated at the time by the European Commission."
"Put together all the world's repertory and enable one society to grant a worldwide license..."
He's talking about torrents, right? ;)
No, you don't know how to make your world spin with those rules. They seem to be working fine for software developers, for instance. And last I checked, Trent Reznor wasn't exactly living in grinding poverty.
Translation: "If you just want to stream content (notice it's about listen or watch one piece of media, not own a copy of) from some centralized repository that's maintained of your control, don't worry your pretty little head about whether the artist is getting anything, because it's all going to a 'society' or 'agency' with a bunch of letters in its name. We need to obfuscate it so nobody sees it. If it's B2B, then we can finally nip that Artist-to-Consumer thing in the bud."
Again, the perspective whereby neither the people creating the music, nor the people listening to the music, are customers. They're the products. The user or customer is always some form of middleman, distributor, or licencing society.
"I don't like arbitrage. Arbitrage makes it very difficult for us middlemen to maintain the value of 'our' rights. All those users would buy it somewhere else, for cheaper. That's an irrational business for middlemen -- middlemen aren't supposed to compete against each other for customer dollars or artists' contracts. We're supposed to be a cartel, all of us working together, competing only insofar as to the degree as to which we can rip off the artists and listeners within our individual fiefdoms."
Fuck that noise, Eric.
Now it's like physics - value is never destroyed, it goes somewhere else.
Unfortunately, the rest of his comments came across as clueless. He seems to waffle on any direction to take, and instead provides half-hearted statements about possibily, maybe, some-day, exploring something different. IMO, there's nothing else new here, but a general feeling that he wishes the copyright situation would just return to "normal."
What is it with these 'copyright holders' that makes them think they're supposed to live forever of one weeks work.
Wouldn't it be better for the community if they worked their entire life producing new stuff for whoever wants new media.
No, you don't know how to make your world spin with those rules.
Correct. What the Internet has wrought is extremely simple copying and distribution. What this does is make the RIAA and all their middlemen completely irrelevant. Hello, record companies: We don't need you. We don't want you. Go away.. Yes, there is room for promoters, but there is no reason why need record companies. We don't need records, hence we don't need record companies. It's just that simple. Record companies provide zero value add.
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This content is worth nothing without an audience, and our intention is to make it widely available - but at the right price, a price that rewards the labour of people who are producing those great works.
I like this line, because it sort of encapsulates the paradox of trying to force your audience to pay for content when they are pretty clearly demonstrating a willingness to either "steal" it or jump to other content that is provided for free if you make it at all expensive or inconvenient for them. Your content has no value without them, but you want to be able to screw them over at the same time, essentially. Seems like a pretty clear case of trying to have your cake and eat it too.
Now, granted, I'm only an amateur artist/writer/composer, but I am pretty content just to have the audience. As a thousand other small content creators have said on Slashdot in a thousand similar comments before, this notion that people are going to stop creating stuff just because they aren't getting paid for it is demonstrably false. A lot of us do it because it's fun, like fixing motorcycles or watching television is to other people. You can make some sort of argument that the existing system provides "valuable" gatekeeping and quality control if you want, but then you are getting into the murky waters of subjective tastes and preferences, not to mention the vested interest in not having to compete that the "established" artists and composers who are the membership of these societies possess.
The short of it is that the old business models just won't work anymore and these guys are kicking and screaming on the "artists'" side in the same way that the various publishing/distribution associations are. This guy points out himself that concerts and live broadcasts are still doing pretty well. These are clues about the sort of thing that have actual monetary value now; it will take more experimenting and time before new models are worked out and clear paths are found to monetizing content that does not require some sort of physical presence to experience.
I don't think anyone actually has all the answers yet. I have some friends who are semi-professional content creators (musicians, mostly) who are grappling with this more directly, and even they don't have all the answers, but they seem to be doing okay performing locally and giving away their recordings essentially as advertising to fill seats at gigs. For my part, I'll just keep making stuff and throwing it online. I figure if the audience gets big enough, I might be able to eventually do it full time, which is enough of a dream for me.
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Manages to contradict himself!
"It happened with YouTube here in the UK.
We have a dialog with them to try and understand what they need - because they are very relevant. But based on what I know, when they decided to pull all the UK premium content - despite the PRS not requesting that - that was not helpful. It gives the impression that rights societies are difficult to work with and willing to withdraw works from the public. But nothing could be further from the truth. This content is worth nothing without an audience, and our intention is to make it widely available - but at the right price, a price that rewards the labour of people who are producing those great works."
and a little further...
"We need to rely on a mix of understanding licensing terms, and being able to experiment, and if the business has no turnover the rights owners should not subsidize the business by giving the content away for free. If you don't pay your electricity bill you'll get cut off."
I guess that HE wants the power to turn it off, but doesn't want to let others make the decision. But I just love the direct contradiction.
And I just love this -- in reference to ISPs and the pricing of broadband:
"That's another aspect of the destruction of value. If you wanted to price them at fair value you would at least need to be an order of magnitude higher than it is now."
So, I guess my broadband should be $400 a month, and $360 of that should go to him?
Wow, just... wow... Unbelievable.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Already have a one stop shop
And it should be transparent. If you're a member of the public and you just want watch a movie or listen to a song, you shouldn't need to be a copyright expert.
Then why not let people use the media they bought how they wish?
You shouldn't need to worry how much is going to the society, and how much is going to the real people behind those entities.
So he wants the content industries to be able to screw the artists without anyone ever finding out?
It would put together all the world's repertory and enable one society to grant a worldwide license.
And who gets to set how much does a license costs? Eric? Governments? The UN? The content industries? Whoever does end up setting the costs, it wont be the artists themselves or impartial members of the public.
If they want to have a global society then do it properly and with realistic limits.
. Set copyright to 20 years on ALL works.
. Stop requiring massive licenses for every 15 second piece of media played in a video/movie.
Maybe something like a standard rate of x% then for each additional piece its 50% more.
. If the copyright holder is not the person who created it then the copyright ends when they die.
. If you're going to have a single global society then content companies cant restrict where you buy your media.
No region codes & no country specific limitations.
So let's pick a niche band that is utterly dependent on piracy (their own words). It works for all types of artists, if you do it right. The trick is that you actually have to work and keep writing new songs and doing shows and such instead of writing one hit and sitting on your ass collecting a toll every time someone listens to it somewhere.
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I agree. His cluelessness (or dishonesty) is deep.
there is no business if everything is free
Free? No. Far less expensive than in the recent past, thanks to technological advances, but not free. Storage space and bandwidth costs money. But content monopolists seem unwilling to share any of this bounty, this technology dividend. They also are unwilling to allow the technology to be used to its full potential, for fear of losing control they have already lost anyway. This severely limits its value to all of us. He can't see it. He'd rather rake in 90% or more of a small pie than 1% of a pie 1000 times the size, all the while whining that they deserve 90% of the big pie.
in many new countries the courts don't understand copyright.
He talks as if toll booths are the only way to make money. All this babbling about rights and value and licensing. And then this insulting talking down as if 3rd world countries don't understand copyright. As if he does. They understand it alright, far better than he. They know very well that intellectual property is a tool that rich nations used to wring even more from poor nations.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Hardly self-defeating. You are aware that getting things on to iTunes or Amazon is incredibly easy if you're independent, correct? Even going through an aggregator isn't that difficult. And the RIAA et al aren't doing much in the way of promotion any more. Most artists don't get music videos unless the song's already popular, since the music video channels don't run many videos any more, unless the artist is popular. Most people don't listen to regular radio, but either speciality stations or internet radio, again, both can have independent music submitted to them. The only time it would be useful is if you're playing large (stadium-type) concerts, and most artists never get that far. Record companies as they currently exist aren't there for the little artist. They're focused on the stuff they *know* can make them money. They don't wanna promote something that might tank.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.