UK Music Industry Calls For Truce With Technology

Stoobalou writes "The British music industry has called for a truce with the technology firms with whom it has till now fought a bitter battle over rights, royalties and file sharing. Feargal Sharkey, CEO of lobby group UK Music, told a conference in London this week that it was time for the music and technology industries to set aside their differences and strive instead toward a common goal: nothing less than the total global domination of British music."

Comments

Your capitulation is insufficient

[symbolset]

What is the best in life?

To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.

Nothing less than to abolish copyright will do. Copyrights and patents prevent progress in the sciences and the useful arts. They were an experiment that utterly failed.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[black3d]

Precisely. Which is what GP is advocating - The right of attribution is one of 7 rights which make up "copyrights". My post was tongue-in-cheek. GP opposes copyright, thus, attribution.

Unless he's suggesting he likes all the parts of copyright which don't happen to coincidentally conflict with his morals, but the other aspects can go to hell - in which case that's just all maneuvering fluff.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[MightyMartian]

Certainly there are abuses, like the one-click patent, and artist abuses by record companies, and the term for copyrights is probably too long, but these are things that can be fixed, they don't require an entire revocation of the system.

There seems to be damned little effort to fix the problems. Quite the opposite, legislators and the media industry are going out of their way to make the problems even worse. The system is broken because it no longer serves its purpose, to protect creators, but rather to protect large-scale media conglomerates who would just as happily, and do just as happily fuck over the artist.

The system needs to be replaced. I'll agree that some core principals should be ported over to the new system, but there should permanent and unalterable aspects that sharply limit copyright terms, that set up a regime of severe and economically devestating punishments for chronic abusers. There need to be guarantees that artists have absolute command of their products and sharply limit media companies ability to pretty much write legislation.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[TheLink]

There's a difference between copying and plagiarizing.

Passing off someone's work as yours involves lying or misrepresentation. And "thou shalt not bear false witness" has been around for thousands of years.

Copying someone's stuff doesn't necessarily involve lying.

Anticopying laws in contrast haven't been around that long, and their net benefits to society aren't proven.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[black3d]

While there's a difference between copying and plagiarizing - breaching copyright, which was the subject being discussed - and plagiarizing, can often be the same thing.

Interestingly (to some, I'm sure), the right of attribution is the only aspect of copyright which can't be breached on its own. It always must be in conjunction with another breach (most commonly, the rights concerning reproduction and less commonly, concerning derivative works).

So indeed, on it's own, the act of copying and the act of plagiarism are two quite different things (the latter, I agree with LikwidCirckel, is far worse), but fall under the same doctrines in the realm of copyright.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[vadim_t]

Disagree with you on the steam engine.

First, I don't think patents were the issue with getting the steam engine started, as much as the lack of need for it, and the lack of infrastructure. The first engines pumped water out of mines, you don't need such a thing if you don't have a deep mine. Manufacturing a good steam engine was probably beyond Greece's capabilities at the time as well.

The bigger problem in your argument is that patents ensured for a time that improvements to the steam engine (condender and use of high pressure) would not be combined until the patents expired, thus actually retarding progress.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[TheLink]

> Since the 18th century.

Only for a very short period have creators in general really been making money their copyrighted work. Copyrights have mostly just benefited the distributors and the monopolists, not the actual creators.

Just look at how much most musicians get from their labels after those infamous accounting methods (similar to Hollywood accounting). In the past distribution and marketing was expensive, so perhaps some of it was justified, but nowadays with technology distribution of music is cheap (and marketing just needs someone clever to make it "viral"). The distributors now provide very little value add to the creators and are more parasites than symbiotes.

If the markets have grown and the cost of marketing and distribution has gone down why has copyright protection kept getting longer and longer and more and more extensive?

Same for the movie, book and software industries. Avatar made 1 billion in about a month. Does it need 120 years? Similar for all the other blockbusters. I cannot believe the costs Hollywood and the Music Industry cite for producing stuff. There's plenty of evidence they are lying.

So nowadays the main benefit copyright provides to a creator is you don't have to compete against your old stuff as much. Once you stop supplying your old stuff, your fans/users will have to do with your new slightly crappier stuff. How does that encourage people do to better?

Supposedly copyright is so that people would be creating more works. But you can see for yourself, great musicians, artists, programmers, etc will create stuff whether or not they are paid for it. They will create stuff for fun, or even because they feel internally driven to do it.

> > and their net benefits to society aren't proven.
> What would you consider proof? How would you go about proving or disproving it?

Copyrights won't scale well and would put a greater cost on us when we have artificial memories and virtual telepathy. This is not far off given that neural interfaces are improving. We are already in the prelim stage with smartphones and other tech. Monopolists will try to charge us more than a penny for "their" thoughts, whenever we try to recall or share something. They will try to DRM our brain and body augmenters, but for what benefit and whose benefit? You would be paying more for less functionality and freedom. Compare email vs SMS.

Is it worth taxing or even crippling more and more people for the benefit of a few? I say no.

In theory copyright can benefit society, in practice does it? And in the future I claim it will cost society more than it benefits it. Hosts can certainly survive with parasites sucking their blood. But just because they can doesn't mean the parasite is providing a benefit to the host, and doesn't meant things can't be better.

If you are a creator and want to make money from your stuff:
1) make it easy for people to find out about you - obscurity is your enemy
2) make stuff many people will like
3) make it easy for people to pay you

The Monopolists don't really help with 1) - often their interests are not aligned with yours, and they want too much for their "help". They want you to be their slave.

Provide better samples

[Sirusjr]

I really wish the music industry would realize how important it is to users to have an idea what they are getting before they buy it. I buy tons of music from small film music labels who put out limited edition soundtracks and they are by far the best when it comes to providing samples of their new releases. Film Score Monthly posts 1 minute clips for each track on their new release, in low bitrate but at least it usually gives me a good idea what I am getting into. Labels should provide moderate bitrate (192kbps) streams of the music online (or at least half of a new album) and offer lossless downloads for a reasonable price and users wouldn't need to download as much. As it is, most of the time I find the only way to discover a new group is to download an unknown album and give it a listen. I've purchased a number of debut albums and albums from independent artists after downloading their music if I find that it is impressive. There is way too much music out there to do otherwise and still have the finances to support quality music. If labels provided better samples, I would be able to discover the same groups without resorting to downloads.

If you can't beat 'em, join them?

[cheros]

I see that the call is not to end the war on consumers, then? I note with interest the semantic twist when they talk about "sustainable business models" - it's the music industry that got it wrong (yet again, and again) when it comes to new technology, so there is a mild lack of credibility if they want to tell ISPs and service providers how to make money.

If they would have spent the money that have waisted on unwarranted prosecution, no, pERsecution of their potential customers on researching collaboration from the start we would not have a whole generation of their customers who have seen their friend's lives wrecked by taking the money they needed for school away on frankly spurious arguments, methods evidence and calculations that have now been shown to be so far off the mark it ought to trigger automatic retrial. It sure is a novel way to engender people to your products, but there too I would forego their advice.

Ditto for the film industry. As a legitimate buyer I am getting exceptionally fed up by DVDs taking control of my player so I cannot skip the "you should not steal" bit every time I play a DVD (anything from Disney is worse as it goes straight into marketing afterwards). I bought the real thing with real money, so f*ck off. If I ever have to present to such organisations I swear I will lock the doors and spend 10 minutes droning in the worst possible way about why they should not copy and distribute my material. Every time. Oh, and that they won't be authorised to read it in any other country..

I do not copy music, but I am fed up with being treated and lectured to as a potential criminal regardless.

Oh, and Sharkey? I don't think he really needs to worry about anyone copying *his* music, I can see why he changed jobs..