Slashdot Mirror
A Composer's-Eye View of the Copyright Wars
bonch writes "As an experiment, composer Jason Robert Brown logged onto a site illegally offering his sheet music for download and contacted hundreds of users, politely asking them to stop listing the material. Most complied, some were confused, and a few fought back. Brown chronicles a lengthy exchange he had with a teenage girl named Brenna, which provides an interesting insight into the artists' perspective of the copyright debate. He also responds to several points raised in comments to the article and says, 'I don't wish to be the enemy; I'm just a guy trying to make a living.'"
Amazing. slashdot is of course a tough crowd for proprietary IP advocates. Here's my own story. My ten year old got a CD from a friend who is a record producer in Hollywood. He liked it and wanted to make copies to give a few friends. I advised that he ask the producer for permission to do so. The producer, bein' from Hollywood an' all, of course said no. If they wanted a copy they could go to the music store and buy one. So my son, disappointed, did not share it with his friends, stopped listening to it, and no additional copies were ever made. OR SOLD! The fallacy seemed to be the belief that the kids would rush out and buy the CD if they couldn't get it for free. Of course they didn't. They went home and played with their Wii. The album died on the junk heap of history, as most do. And without at least a half a dozen potential ardent young fans.
Hello there Jason.
Let me explain a few things to you, since you seem to have wrong information regarding "copyright" and other fictitious concepts.
Copyright isn't an inalienable right. It isn't real property. It is imaginary property. Copyright is a recent concept. As recent as the Renaissance. Before that, you could own physical property, but Ideas were free. If you created a magnanimous work of art, that work of art belonged to the human kind. Then, you could earn a living by performing live, doing work for hire, etc. During the Renaissance, the catholic church, in their unstoppable hunger for power, tried to control the output of printers. They already had a very tight control on scribes, and they wanted to extend that control over to the modern press. The motive: To ban unwanted books. In a word: Censorship. This concept of owning ideas and controlling what you did with them was nothing but lies, just like the rest of christianity.
Later, governments jumped in on the boat, trying to control the press, for mostly the same reasons. Many, many years later, with the church mostly obsolete, and government under the control of corporations, our beloved corporate overlords wanted to hold the almighty power over free speech. So they were the ones that wrote the modern copyright laws.
Nobody owns ideas. Nobody owns art. They belong to the human kind. Period. Any attempt to control ideas is nothing but another fascist atempt at control of this Orwellian society.
But I do understand the POV of the creator. I do, because I am a creator too. And yes, we need to make a living just like anyone else. Now, there is a hugI de difference between the NEED to make a living, and some stupid god-given right to be given money just because we create. That won't work because a) there is no god and b) we have no such right. We decided that we wanted to create. Great. That doesn't allow us to control ideas. I do believe, like many other creators, that our creations are like our childs. You don't own your children. You have to feed them, care for them, and protect them until they are mature enough to have a life on their own. And then they are gone. They are as free as you are. Our need for food and shelter (read: money) doesn't change that basic principle.
You CAN profit from what you do, but always remember, you DON'T own your creations.
P.S: Regarding your screwdriver analogy, it doesn't work. It's been debunked several times before. Basically, your screwdriver is a physical object. A more valid analogy here would be if you made a house that was a replica of the house your friend was building. And it would be totally ok.
Sincerely,
Sebastian.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Eleanor is justifying her own behavior, clearly. I enjoyed the "I'm not saying you're not right but you're totally wrong" line. I actually though his "photocopy my book" argument was quite compelling.
I will say, I understand Eleanor a bit. Sheet music seems amazingly expensive to me. Why does it cost $4 to download and print sheet music?
I can buy a large orchestration of a song, made with 100 musicians and a 50 person choir, for $1. But the sheet music, which is reduced to be played on one or two instruments, costs $4? That just seems off. The only good argument I could see would be to make up for people performing the music, but that requires a separate license payment (doesn't it?), so that can't be it. Actually, a song for Rock Band often costs ~$3. That's a full, high quality 5.1 sound, in 5 tracks, translated into 4 note custom note charts in 4 difficulty levels. That's a ton more work than went into the sheet music, but it's still 25% less money.
Then there's the fact that the sheet music is a byproduct of the process of making music. To make the "easy piano" version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" takes extra work, but the full version of the guitar part was already written for the song. By the same token, do you think Elton John never would have produced sheet music for "Candle in the Wind" if he didn't want to sell the sheet music? He would have made it either way.
I like tinkering around on my keyboard, and playing simple songs. But sheet music is expensive, when you can find it. Can you even find piano arrangements of video game themes/music in stores?
He certainly deserves to be paid, I'm just not sure the price is in line with the relative value... which is why I don't buy much sheet music (and when I do, it's usually large collections).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
And then there's these composers who are TOTAL PRICKS, like (cough) Philip Glass (cough) whose work is simply not for sale. You have to RENT the score to his work with the assumption of public performance, and renting a score of his is like $4000. No. shit.
so if I want to sit down and learn that crazy keyboard part from Einstein on the Beach, I have to fork over $4k! What a bunch of bullshit.
I would LOVE to find a sheet music sharing site. If anyone knows of some good ones, please let me know.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I make my living writing software that retails for approx $1000 per license... and done fairly well at it... recently I was directed to a hacker site that had cracked copies of my code... I lurked for a few days to get a sense of the place and give myself time to think about how to react. The site's users were in two camps... those who use the software in an educational (usually self education) and those who are using it as a tool in their professional arsenal. Once I revealed myself I found that neither group said they would be willing to pay or stop using, even when edu discounts were offered... but the students were really cool about it and asked lots of informed questions and pointed out that when they moved to professional life they would recommend the tool... the others were really abusive.
In the end I decided to give the students my blessing as long as they didn't come seeking support... no lost sale, no money changing hands, no big deal and a potential for future sales. The love-wave that came back from those guys felt almost as good as actual sales.
The so-called professionals were anything but, their attitude was that in business it's all fair and if using cracked software gave the a competitive edge then it was crazy to do otherwise... no love-wave.
Yeah, anecdotal I know but this composer chappy has got the wrong end of the equation and 'elenor' is on the right track... I for one will be telling my musical friends how much of an a-hole this guy is and hopefully he will have more lost real sales.
"Rental or purchase of sheet music or the purchase of a record does not authorize its public performance."
Not saying I agree with that, but there are a lot of intricacies to public performance. See also: NFL threatening suit against bars that have Superbowl[tm] parties and show the game to their clientele. They also tend to sue (or threaten to) people who use the word "Superbowl," which is why all the radio stations promote their "BIG GAME PARTY!" in January, and not any sort of party having to do with bowls that may be super. But that is trademark law and outside the scope of what we're talking about here.
The point is whether he has the right to control what is done with his work. Whether people can make copies of it. Generally, I think the answer is yes. However, I think the real question is: do we want to live in a society where money is what motivates art? The true genius filmmakers, composers, they aren't doing it for the money, and if they are, well, I'll be disenchanted with their work when I find that out. Make art for art's sake. Artists and doctors, two professions that should be about sharing with your fellow humans, about the common good, not about profit. (*imho, of course — and my money is where my mouth is, I'm a filmmaker and people openly pirate my films. Huge pieces of them are on YouTube. I'm okay with it.)
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Creators are a part of said society.
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
Wolfram Research claimed copyright on the proof of the Turing completeness of the "Rule 110" cellular automaton. It obtained a court order excluding author paper from the published conference proceedings.
No, you disagree with my point and the easiest way to destroy it is to twist my words into something logical.
What I said is that creating something via the use of money does not give it an intrinsic value. The value is decided by the market, well it is in most markets, in the entertainment industry it's given an arbitrary value that does not reflect the real cost of production. When a market decides your product is worthless or not worth the asking price, you are not entitled to a cent, you are entitled to make something worthwhile/adjust prices or go out of business. The real straw man was created by the GP.
Once again you do not understand. No they are not entitled to get paid, they may get paid if the market decides it is worth their asking price.
Now this is a real straw man. You've create a fictional scenario where the artist is actually paid for CD sales. This is not true, the artist earns money by touring, now this is something that cannot be re-created thus has an intrinsic and measurable value. Have a read of this and try to tell me that the artist will starve, you are repeating stale and inaccurate propaganda as their true income source, the live shows and merchandise will not disappear even if copyright ceases to exist.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.