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

[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.

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..