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

[davester666]

Hilarious article

[referring to their 3-strikes law] 'This had helped restore the equilibrium between creativity and technology that had, said Sharkey, been out of kilter. It was but a single "stepping stone" toward the music industry's goal of having people "remunerated for their talent time, effort and ability".'

I'm pretty sure 'people' have been remunerated for their talent time, effort and ability before the internet existed, and continued to be up to the present day. I note they make no mention of how the music labels have in the past and continue to systematically rape their 'talent' in every possible way.

'Our future is now totally dependent, totally entwined, totally symbiotic'

Hmm, I'm not sure how exactly ISP's and/or the internet is in any respect dependent on any part of the music industry. If the music industry completely died tomorrow, the internet and ISP's would continue to function just as well if not be slightly faster. Now, the music industry executives coke and whore habits may live or die depending on how many people they can threaten with having their internet connection being disconnected.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[phantomfive]

There seems to be damned little effort to fix the problems.

This is true, but it is because most people don't care about copyright. The people who care about it primarily are content creators, and people who deal with that industry. Many more people are worried about whether Obama is a muslim than the subtleties of copyright.

Even people here on Slashdot, who rage about copyright, often only are aware of a small subset of the copyright law. You may be one of those people. There is a centuries long history of fighting over royalties between song-writers, performers, and publishers. They approach copyright from a point of view that benefits them, just as you approach it from a point of view that benefits yourself. But you aren't willing to put your money on the line in campaign contributions, or by starting a PAC. Those people are, which is why the legislation ends up being slanted towards them.

Meanwhile most people don't care as long as they are able to listen to music or watch movies or whatever. And that's why the system is how it is.

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

[Znork]

there are a lot of benefits of copyright and patents.

Patents and copyrights are essentially taxation systems, and as with all such transfer systems there's some party benefiting and other parties paying the bill. Compared to other taxation systems, the efficiency grade of 5-20% is horrifically low; imagine if that percentage of funding for any other government scheme was all that actually went to the purpose (ie, the payoff/investment in the creators).

Outright having the state pay for the R&D or pay for music/writing/etc on a per-use base or similar would divert 5-20 times as much money towards the purpose at the same cost to the economy today. Or we could have the same level of production as we have today at a fifth to a twentieth of the cost.

That is fairly concisely summarized as an abject failure. And that doesn't even start to go into the really damaging parts of the system that create problems for derivative or combined works, which are the foundation of creativity. Imagine the number of works we wouldn't have today if Shakespeare or HC Andersen had had permanent copyright...

but it wasn't until patents made it profitable to invent things that people began applying them...

It's always profitable to invent improvements to your production. Saving money means more profit. Whether or not it's profitable to spin off a separate business around that improvement and/or publish it may vary.

But it's more likely that the spread of information is the main driver behind the accelerating pace of invention and creation; more inspiration, more access to necessary knowledge, more improvements by example, etc. Patents used to have a mitigating factor there, as they worked to disseminate knowledge in the previous century. Today, the chance that any invention for which there is an actual application would stay unknown and not get invented half a dozen more times for the duration of a patent is unlikely. Far below the chance that your average invention will be torpedoed by a half-dozen other patents that will prevent it from actually being monetized.

Personally I tend to advocate a system which removes the damaging aspects of copyrights and patents, ie, the exclusivity, and moving over the monetary incentives to something akin to a per-use automatic payout system/mandatory licensing scheme. Instead of getting the right to sue someone who uses your invention you'd get a check from the patent office if someone used your invention, and instead of getting screwed by the media corps you'd automatically get a set percentage of the revenue from anyone selling/profiting from the work. Such funds should further be managed within the government budget (so they can be audited and analysed for cost efficiency and tuned to maximize benefit (do people write more after they're getting $500k per year? or would a payout ceiling pushing the incentive further down the chain create more value for the economy?)) like any other tax/benefit scheme and not hidden away like the current ones are.

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.

Re:Your capitulation is insufficient

[TheRaven64]

Since someone will no doubt reply asking for a citation, here is an article which describes in some detail how patents on early steam engines delayed the industrial revolution in Britain until after they had expired. It also describes how the James Watt attempted to get patent terms extended several times. He did get the original patent term extended to over 30 years, and tried to get them extended even longer. Sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?

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..

global domination of British music

[Errol backfiring]

Britannia Rules the .WAV!

I hate to break it to you, but...

[hoggy]

...UK Music are not the UK music industry. Sharkey is a lobbyist with a bunch of artists on his side, but he doesn't speak for any of the publishers/labels.

I mean it's a refreshing opinion, but it doesn't represent any grand outbreak of common sense.