Steve Albini: The Music Industry Is a Parasite -- and Copyright Is Dead

journovampire sends word of another thought-provoking rant from Steve Albini (mentioned here last a few years back for his paean to the beauty of analog tape for recording): The veteran producer addressed an audience in Barcelona on Saturday: "The old copyright model – the person who creates something owns it and anyone else that wants to use it or see it has to pay them – has expired."

Comments

Yes, but because

[saloomy]

The industry was created to cover the cost of production and distribution. Both of which today are much cheaper and can me made by individuals who have not "made it" yet.

Re:Yes, but because

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet the industry saw fit to extract payment from radio stations who doubled as advertisers for them.

The industry has been a parasite for decades.

Re: Yes, but because

[KGIII]

I wonder if that is true or will be true in the majority of the cases. There are some artists who are marketing directly to the consumer and doing well. They are the exception and not the rule. I picture, I can do this here, being able to go the Community University and renting out one of their studios for a few hours and getting a sound engineer with that and then having production or mixing done or doing the latter yourself. I have done some playing and recording with a fairly local band and the studios at UMA were the least expensive until a friend built a decent studio attached to his bar.

Re: Yes, but because

[guruevi]

The artist who is doing well is the exception and not the rule. Regardless of marketing model, there are more artists that have served you coffee or fries than artists you may have bought an album from.

Re:Yes, but because

[smittyoneeach]

More generally, the Information Age means that we need less and less peopleware to manage data and shepherd people.
The last holdout, of course, is government.

Re: Yes, but because

[srmalloy]

The artist who is doing well is the exception and not the rule.

'Doing well' isn't necessarily a good metric to use. A few years ago, I was listening to a piece on PBS about musicians and self-publishing, and they had one artist who was talking about their switch to self-publishing; they had cut an album for a commercial label, and despite it having sold several tens of thousands of CDs over a span of three years, the label claimed that they were still 'in the hole' for production and advertising costs, and the artist had not seen a dime beyond their initial advance. Meanwhile, an album that they had produced themselves and sold through their website directly via a service (the music equivalent of an 'instant print' service) gave them about $7 per CD sold, and in one year had already produced income more than triple the value of their advance from the commercial label. Now, that artist's income from marketing their work directly may not have been 'doing well' in an overall sense, but the relative payout from working with a commercial label and independent publishing certainly qualifies, for the return on their work, as 'doing well', even if it's not of itself enough to support a 'well off' lifestyle.

Re:Yes, but because

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Because music, books and movies are part of our shared culture. You get culture for free just by being part of it.

2) Because the cost of duplication is essentially zero. So the cost of making the works has already been paid. The millions of dollars profit that some movies or music makes is evidence of double dipping, basically making society collectivelt pay more than it costs to make the work. Which is economically inefficient, BTW.

3) The people who are downloading copies are not likely to be in the market in the first place. See 1) for why people are likely to download random shit off the internet that they would never go purposely into a store to buy.

   

Re:Yes, but because

[Nyder]

The industry was created to cover the cost of production and distribution. Both of which today are much cheaper and can me made by individuals who have not "made it" yet.

I don't agree. While I don't work in the music business, I have friends that do, some successful, some not.

The music industry wants you to think it costs a lot to put out your own albums, and it doesn't. It never has. Smart artists, like Steve Albini, figured this out, and produced their own music. Cost was a few thousand dollars.

Distributing is where the record companies have it made, until internet, because they already had a presence in store and with advertising, as long as they felt your work was worth being advertised.

When you come to the record company with no demo, no master, and they sign you a contract, you end up paying way more then you would otherwise for getting that master done, and generally, unless your first album does really good, you don't make any money and don't pay off your debt to them. So you make a second album, increasing debt, etc... Sort of like borrowing money from a loanshark.

So before the internet, you could make a master, print out records/tapes for relatively cheap, but selling them was the hard part.

Now with the internet, honestly, you'd be a fool to sign on with any major recording company.

Re:Yes, but because

[Nyder]

fuck, totally replied to the wrong comment. my bad. I'm stoned and doing 5 things at once.

Re: Yes, but because

[KGIII]

I think I was pretty clear about whom I was speaking in my initial response. I may have not been erudite enough.

Re:Yes, but because

[VanGarrett]

Those who pirate their entertainment tend not to be likely to spend money on the content, to begin with. While I have no doubt that there are a good deal of jerks out there that could easily afford to pay for their consumption, the majority, I suspect, would do without, if no avenue existed to obtain the works without fee. That's really just the way the market works out. The impression I get, is that people tend to be willing to part with otherwise unallocated personal funds in exchange for such things that they like, but many just don't have those unallocated personal funds available to spend. Thus, Napster-like services are born and continue to mutate and propagate.

Downloading these things is easy for people to justify to themselves. They weren't possibly going to spend money on it, anyway; or the original copy still exists where it was to begin with, so it isn't really like actually sneaking a CD in your jacket pocket from a rack at Sam Goody at the mall. The store still has their copy to sell, you now have what you wanted, and nobody's poorer for it. See? Very easy.

Meanwhile, all the other kiddies in the class are asking each other if they've seen the new and hot feature film, or heard Taylor Swift's new album. Not being one with the tide is somewhat more difficult to justify, as that attaches more directly to one's identity. If you can't obtain or experience the cultural icons, then you may have to detach from your preferred social grouping, and toss in with some sort of hipsters or curmudgeons. This may be downright unthinkable to a lot of social drones, especially when they are very young, and as yet lack the experience needed to carve out an identity of their own. So abstaining from these musics, books and movies due to lack of funding becomes overwhelmingly more difficult to justify than obtaining copies from a faceless stranger in the night.

It's a cultural pressure we have, to consume, and the aggressive hyping and advertising the entertainment industry rains down upon us strangely promote it. The advertisements call an individual's attention to it, he tells his friend and his friend tells him back. Now it's a thing to both of them. They've connected on it. They connect with others on it. Some will have the capacity to pay for it, others won't. Those that can pay for it, by and large, do. Those that can't either get copies from those who can, or begrudgingly go without. Those who go without loose their connection with those who didn't, and become a lower caste in the social hierarchy (despite their greater integrity than the second group, which I suspect sometimes makes them spiteful-- thus: hipsters). Those who got their copies for free are then threatened by the industry over their life choices, and therefore, the cries of entitlement begin.

That's my guess at it, anyway.

Re: Yes, but because

[ckatko]

They should have gotten degrees in gender studies. At least inbetween serving coffee, they'd still get plenty of national news attention as well as a spotlight on Slashdot every week.

Re: Yes, but because

[Feral Nerd]

The artist who is doing well is the exception and not the rule.

'Doing well' isn't necessarily a good metric to use. A few years ago, I was listening to a piece on PBS about musicians and self-publishing, and they had one artist who was talking about their switch to self-publishing; they had cut an album for a commercial label, and despite it having sold several tens of thousands of CDs over a span of three years, the label claimed that they were still 'in the hole' for production and advertising costs, and the artist had not seen a dime beyond their initial advance. Meanwhile, an album that they had produced themselves and sold through their website directly via a service (the music equivalent of an 'instant print' service) gave them about $7 per CD sold, and in one year had already produced income more than triple the value of their advance from the commercial label. Now, that artist's income from marketing their work directly may not have been 'doing well' in an overall sense, but the relative payout from working with a commercial label and independent publishing certainly qualifies, for the return on their work, as 'doing well', even if it's not of itself enough to support a 'well off' lifestyle.

That's where I try to buy my music, directly from the artists if it is at all possible. Recently, however, I was informed that that this makes me a luddite because I want to own copies of my music instead of having a Spotify account. The thing is that if the labels pay badly it seems Spotify pays even worse. The popular logic goes that this is the label's fault for pocketing the money they get from Spotify which implies the logic that the artists should switch to a new gatekeeper i.e. Spotify an the other streaming services (I'm sure they'd loose no time in setting up a cartel if they haven't already) but I don't see that happening quickly since the streaming services will always get raped by the people who own the rights to the large music collections because a lot of their revenue comes from serving classic popular music to nostalgic users and a streaming service will always be more sensitive to their needs and opinions than rights owners than those of an individual artist. IMHO artists are and will always be best advised to market and sell their own product and they would be best served by a heavily decentralised market especially now that anybody with a PC and the knowledge of how to do music production and recording can cobble together pretty decent product and set up their own website meaning that overheads have decreased massively. This would also have the effect of putting a sock in the mouth of people who claim they pirate music to stick it to the Studios, anybody who pirates from indie musicians who produce and market their own music is an asshole, plain and simple.

Re: Yes, but because

[MechaStreisand]

Recently, however, I was informed that that this makes me a luddite because I want to own copies of my music instead of having a Spotify account.

Who told you that, some Spotify shill? Don't listen to such nonsense. Having your own copies of music makes far more sense.

Re: Yes, but because

[Anonymous Coward]

And wouldn't listen to it if they had to pay.

Name one single market that is more oversaturated with workers.
Now, tell me again why artists deserve to get paid more than other workers.
If you don't like it, get a job that there is an actual demand for.

Serving coffee or fries is a good example of a field that isn't completely oversaturated.

Re:Yes, but because

[Anonymous Coward]

More to the point, why do people feel that the poor shouldn't have access to art or entertainment?

Re:Yes, but because

[Anonymous Coward]

100% wrong. The music industry is there to market the music. From Taylor Swift down to those "indie bands" that you guys like to listen to. You wouldn't have heard about them without the music industry marketing machine. You didn't just "discover" that "indie band". Someone was out there marketing them.

Re: Yes, but because

[rockout]

The artist who is doing well has ALWAYS been the exception and not the rule.

Re: Yes, but because

[jellomizer]

Sure some artist can make it. But that is because they have additional business skills other then their art skills. A great artist who cannot operate like a business will not succeed on their art alone, they will need help from some others in order to do such.

The classical artist were commissioned from nobility, or the church. Today you will need an agent or be diverse enough to deal with the bullshit to get your stuff sold.

The issue with music. Some music just cannot tour well (not all musians are attractive, dance, or have an appealing personality), and so they should make their money from selling recordings.

Re:Yes, but because

[trout007]

Like all Intellectual Monopoly faithful you are missing the point.

The whole concept of property rights exists to determine who has the best claim on a scarce resource. I own my car so I get to determine what happens to it. If someone steals it I can't use it.

Ideas are not property. I can come up with a recipie for a great soup and share it with you and both you and I can still use it.

By creating laws granting intellectual monopoly this violates property rights. I supposedly own my hard drive but now because someone wrote a song and broadcasted it onto my property via radio waves they now have a claim on my hard drive. They will use force against me if I arrange the bits on my hard drive in a way that represents the radio waves they broadcasted onto my property.

Re:Yes, but because

[Livius]

borrowing money from a loanshark.

That says everything about the music industry.

Re: Yes, but because

[CanEHdian]

This is easily proven. Artists On Spotify Have Dollar Signs In Eyes (you know the type, the pay-me-a-million-bucks-to-tweet-about-my-own-damn-movie type), Start Their Own Service At A Premium Charge And Withdraw Their Catalogue From Spotify. Poof. Too bad for you if you're on Spotify (and assuming the still-innocent kids are the ones who like them). This happened on Netflix too (Starz anyone? Bla bla our premium shows bla bla?

Re:Yes, but because

[Gr8Apes]

100% wrong. The music industry is there to market the music. From Taylor Swift down to those "indie bands" that you guys like to listen to. You wouldn't have heard about them without the music industry marketing machine. You didn't just "discover" that "indie band". Someone was out there marketing them.

And that is a large part of the problem. The "music industry" has a lock on all marketing avenues that matter, if you don't sign with the gatekeeper, you will 99.999% of the time fail. Even if you discover an indie band that you like, if they don't sign, they'll most likely fail.

Re: Yes, but because

[KGIII]

That is what I stated and what they argued about without giving me any reason to think they are correct.

Re: Yes, but because

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't stand music snobs. They're the reason I got out of the academic music world and just play with friends now.

"Oh, you don't play professionally? You're not a real musician."

I got news for you. The definition of "musician" is not that you get paid to do it, that's the definition of "professional."

If you make your own music, whether you or someone else wrote it, in your spare time or full time, you're musician. Period.

Re:Yes, but because

[gnupun]

Why do people who create music, books and films feel entitled to earn more then their fans would over multiple lifetimes?

Why do hotels and apartments charge rent for rooms over multiple lifetimes? Why do farmers make profit off the same land for multiple generations? The answer to all these questions is: the assets provide value to customers over multiple generations. That's why.

Originally copyright protection was for X years then it became public domain. THen it was X+10, X+50, etc.... Sometimes 'retroactive' protecting work whcih should have been public domain.

Originally copyright was owned by the authors of books. And since authors were ordinary working class folks, the lawmakers probably wrote copyright laws to limit the amount of wealth to match that of a working class man. But as time passed, publishers began to own the copyright of books, so the lawmakers rewrote laws to be more suitable for ruling class (capitalists).

There's absolutely no reason copyright should not be infinite years, other than the limit the amount of wealth to copyright holders. The limited length of copyright law is a scam to deprive the creative class of people of their richly deserved wealth, and you are an even bigger scammer to want to further reduce the copyright years.

Re:Yes, but because

[Opportunist]

Then I guess the market failed. Find a new business model.

Propping a failed business model up with laws protecting it sure ain't the right way. Else we'd still be driving around in horse carts because cars take away from their business and we'd have laws against them.

Re:Yes, but because

[Creepy]

Except that isn't true for over-the-air broadcast radio. The musicians and the studio don't actually get a penny from radio play, even sometimes the singer - that is considered promotional. Only the songwriter (they guy or gal that writes the lyrics, if any) gets paid. For many years the studios would be forced to pay money to get airplay, as well (payola).

Furthermore, musicians get screwed by the recording studios, as well. Usually the contract requires ownership rights of a recording to be owned by the studio and not the musician. Even worse, some studios make this a "work for hire,' meaning the rights never transfer back to the original artist (it is corporate owned with a longer copyright). EMI retroactively made their entire catalog works for hire, meaning bands like Pink Floyd are perpetually corporate owned. If you think that is the end of the screwing, nope - all production costs come out of the musician's cut - recording, promotion, packaging, etc. As a musician, you can sell 20000 albums and still owe money, especially if you got an advance. The studio can then go after your gear if you didn't pay back your advance (very easy to do if your band is a business, not so easy if it isn't).

I got out of the business precisely because it is unfair and leeching. I did try my hand at songwriting for a bit, but I got a Software Engineering degree and it was far easier to do that than try to peddle songs.

Re:Yes, but because

[Creepy]

Except Taylor Swift failed to curry favor from any studio and her dad bought a studio to get her signed and recorded, so that is probably a bad example. That kind of got her a leg up, but aside from that she has earned her own success. I still say she always has been a pop artist though - if your hits are mostly I-V-vi-IV progressions (four times on this list), you are as pop as P!nk or Nickelback (she has gone full pop now, but was originally marketed as country).

Re:Yes, but because

[Altrag]

The confusing part comes in when "other people" can offer the artist's work for less than the artist can (or is willing to.)

So by taking a literal reading of your comment, the people who don't want to pay are 100% entitled to pirate the works. And it seems as if the world's consumers mostly agree with that assessment.

Previously this was compensated for by physical counterfeits being (relatively) expensive to make and (relatively) easy to trace, and thus copyright was fairly easy to enforce. Digital copying eliminates both of those limitations, making copyright very difficult if not impossible to enforce.

Re:Yes, but because

[Altrag]

There's absolutely no reason copyright should not be infinite years

There is one reason: Derivative works. Since copyright as its currently defined generally prevents derivative works, having it expire into the public domain is necessary for the next generation of artists (or currently, their great grandchildren..) to build upon those works.

How many movies and books wouldn't exist if things like Homer, Shakespeare, Brothers Grimm, etc weren't considered public domain? How much Disney (aka: the primary proponent of perpetual copyright extension) wouldn't exists without those?

How much music wouldn't exist if Bach and Beethoven and other greats weren't generally available to modern musicians (or even music schools) because their estates still held copyrights and demanded $10,000 per "performance?"

Re:Yes, but because

[ScentCone]

Apparently you do not know the meaning of the word "Why".

Are you that unable to make the connection? Nobody is entitled to someone else's work on terms not offered by the person who creates the work. The bogus, straw-man question of why someone would thing that "poor" people aren't entitled to art and entertainment is pure BS. There is an abundance of both, offered by artists and channeled through all sorts of outlets at no cost to people who want to consume it. If they want extra choices and convenience in order to get work that the people who create it would like to charge for, then not having that cash handy doesn't suddenly entitle them to that work.

I can't afford an original Picasso print. So, I should be entitled to it because I'm too poor to pay for it?

Re:Yes, but because

[bzipitidoo]

It's fine that you realize that copying is inevitable and unstoppable, but you are still talking as if copying is immoral. It is copyright that is immoral. Copying is a natural right, and the way that the universe works. A radio broadcast or a concert or even just singing in the shower creates countless echoes of information. A shining light on a painting or written page bounces photons into the eyes of anyone looking that direction. Copyright is an entirely artificial restriction on these wholly natural processes. And for what purpose? To encourage the creation of more art. That is hardly the only way to encourage artistic endeavor. As to complaints that artists will starve without copyright, no, they won't. To support art, there is patronage, crowdfunding, performance, and endorsements, to name several other ways.

For copyright to really work, we are supposed to ignore all these echoes. See the movie at the theater, then buy it on DVD (or pirate it of course) if you want to see it again and your memory of it isn't satisfactory. The day may come when we all have inexpensive devices that augment our memory, allowing us to perfectly recall anything we see or hear and copy any of that we wish to another person or data repository, and then what of copyright? Copying has become so much easier to do over the past 40 years that copyright is already absurd now. With technology like that, copyright will be ridiculously archaic and worse than useless, it will be a major hindrance to the ability of its followers, if any, to function in society. For now, copyright blocks and slows the coming of the digital public library, a huge, huge improvement over the traditional library full of bound papers. The private bookstore is dying, and good riddance. Accepting copyright is like accepting a proposition that we should all use only one arm until the holders of the rights to use our other arms grant us permission, and each time we want to use our other arm, we have to ask for said permission and pay a fee. The industry has done an effective job of pushing the propaganda that copying is stealing, and hurts artists and is therefore unfair and immoral. They've confused the public with the seductive simplification that property is property and there is no difference between the physical and the intellectual variety. It's a simple, easy way to view the matter, but it is wrong, and the secret is out now. More and more people are seeing through their propaganda, ironically helped by the industry's clumsy, extreme, and harsh enforcement tactics that earned them the moniker "MAFIAA". For yet more reason why the industry is parasitic, a broad and extensive propaganda campaign, plus a terror campaign to scare the people who weren't fooled or who don't care, is just the sort of thing one could expect from parasites.

It's not just the future in which copyright doesn't work. It never has worked well, ever. Civilization would not have advanced to where it is today had ancient civilizations been able to lock down all information. No matter how much an ancient civilization wished to keep a new battle tactic or weapon secret, once used, their enemies would see it, and the survivors would not find it hard to understand and duplicate, or perhaps counter, or even improve.

Re: Yes, but because

[Pubstar]

That's how most electronic music producers do it. There are a few major Labels in the scene (Ultra, MoS, Ajunabeats, etc), but majority of them are either self-published or with a small label (usually being a collection of friends or something). That, and these guys make most of their money doing live gigs since majority of people don't buy their music - it's mostly bought by DJs. Most of the people I know (tons of ravers) listen to most of their music from podcasts (Like Arman Van Burren's ASOT, Monstercat's weekly podcast, etc.), and download those and listen to them.

Re:Yes, but because

[Pubstar]

My dad's old band was contacted by Sony Records back in 1990 or so. Everyone wanted to sign the record deal (pretty good sized advance). My dad saw the contract terms and bailed. They replaced my dad with another guitarist. My dad still has to bust his ass at his current job, but he didn't have to file for bankruptcy like the rest of the band members had to when the albums failed to move as good as everyone hoped.

Re:Yes, but because

[Pubstar]

Those who pirate their entertainment tend not to be likely to spend money on the content, to begin with

You know, besides every study into pirate spending shows that they spend MORE than the non-pirating counterpart? On a work PC, so I cant exactly get all the google results for this, but seeing as how you understand basic /. formatting, I can assume you're smart enough to use google.

Re:Yes, but because

[Opportunist]

Create something original. Good luck tiptoeing through the mine field. I'm in that business (yes, guess what, someone dependent on copyright for income is against it in its current form) and I'm very glad that a very good friend of mine decided to become a lawyer for copyright. Which, btw, is also far more lucrative than actually trying to use copyright to earn something by creating something. But that's not the point.

You talk about an entitlement generation. I have to say that the only kind of entitlement I get to see in this field is from studios who think they're entitled to a cut from your works regardless of whether they did anything to contribute. Copyright on works has descended into something not unlike stock options at the stock exchange, where holding works is a tool to make money from doing nothing but, well, holding those works hostage. When you create something today, you better have the whole works ever conceived memorized, for if whatever you create only vaguely resembles something held by some studio, rest assured that in the off chance you actually manage to write a hit, you will be sued. On the off chance that you either cannot afford legal representation and cave in or that a judge will side with them. Yes, 8 out of 10 times he won't, but that doesn't matter. Studios can easily afford it and the ones that cave in because they can't afford the legal battle and would rather take the "deal" to have at least a little instead of nothing will easily pay for that.

And the area gets more narrow with every song in the stock option portfolio.

As for your last sentence: your quality of life is more and more dependent on pure luck. Not the amount of work oyu put behind it. If there ever was a time when working could make you rich, it's been over for a long, long time now.

Re: Yes, but because

[Brulath]

Now, that artist's income from marketing their work directly may not have been 'doing well' in an overall sense, but the relative payout from working with a commercial label and independent publishing certainly qualifies, for the return on their work, as 'doing well', even if it's not of itself enough to support a 'well off' lifestyle.

You are possibly discounting the popularity gained by the artist through the label's marketing efforts; a random person starting to sell music online without a prior history of some level of marketing would probably experience a significantly different response.

Re:Yes, but because

[CrimsonAvenger]

There's absolutely no reason copyright should not be infinite years

Other than that phrase "for limited times" in the Constitution, you mean?

Re: Yes, but because

[Saint Fnordius]

This is even the model I used before the internet, buying at live gigs if I liked the act. Early internet, I would visit the artist's web site to see if they sold CD's.

SoundCloud, LastFM and such are where I discover non-local music nowadays, and if I like the artist, I buy directly from the artist. I don't trust middlemen.

Re: Yes, but because

[Jack Griffin]

even if it's not of itself enough to support a 'well off' lifestyle.

This is where the last 50 years has skewed expectations. Artists aren't supposed to be rich.

Re:Yes, but because

[SpaceBuggy]

There's absolutely no reason copyright should not be infinite years, other than the limit the amount of wealth to copyright holders.

I can think of a good reason:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.

Re: Yes, but because

[__aanbvm4272]

Starbucks rant?

Re: Yes, but because

[doccus]

And wouldn't listen to it if they had to pay.

Name one single market that is more oversaturated with workers.

The market wouldn't be saturated at all if these people had to be able to sing within the right octave without autotune, or had to be able to perform their material live.

Re: Yes, but because

[Whorhay]

I don't know about that, vocal talent isn't that rare. Certainly there are a lot of people who don't have that talent and are trying anyways.There are still likely more singers than our modern media distribution methods will readily support. That isn't much different than it has ever been though. The term "starving artist" has been around for a very long time and for good reason. Even among the historic artists that have been held up as the masters of their art, they have rarely had success while still alive.

I know a number of musicians that are paid to play live on a frequent basis. And all of them have some other job that brings in the money and lets them pursue their musical hobby. Turning that hobby into an actual career is rarely successful. The person closest to that which I've known is an uncle who makes most of his money from traveling the county playing folk music during financial downturns, and crafting lady's haircombs with inlays and exotic woods during upturns.

Re: Yes, but because

[suutar]

The people you are replying to both said "the musician who is doing well is the exception not the rule." what are you disagreeing with?

Re: Yes, but because

[KGIII]

Now that I re-read it (thank you) I am arguing with the voices in my head, damn it! (I read it as it being not the exception to the rule).

Re: Yes, but because

[doccus]

These aren't the kinds of musicians I was referring to. Local part time musicians that play live as a matter of course, of course can sing and perform live. These are not the bread and butter of the industry, however. . The indiustry needs to sell "videos" to the teen market, and that's where ALL their money is directed. This is alsoo where all the fraudulent representation is, and if you look at where all the litigation was it was always teen pop stars, and rap artists.

Re:Yes, but because

[VanGarrett]

There are two sides of this issue. On the one hand, piracy of this definition is inescapable. As you say, it is very easy to accomplish, and as I pointed out, it is very simply justified. It is very easy to convince oneself that there is no immorality involved. On the other hand, if the artist is to be able to survive on his art, then he really must be compensated for his work.

Don't get me wrong, here. The system currently in place, the music industry in particular, is a broken mess. The industry stifles progress in multiple directions, and completely incentivizes the wrong things. An artist's work results in a great deal of income, but the artist really only receives a relatively small cut. I suppose that those who are deeply successful still receive enough money that perhaps they just don't care, but it's a harrowing ride for those at the beginning of a career which may or may not get anywhere. The music industry doesn't only treat their consumer base with inhuman disregard, but their talent, both musical and technical, really gets abused, too.

I don't think it's wrong to implement copyright. It does have a purpose: to enable artists to be properly compensated for their work. It's been ravenously abused, though. There's way too much money involved, and the length of copyright in the modern world is outrageous. The continuous push to extend the term further toward doomsday and exaggerate the penalties for violations is an absurdity that needs to stop. You're right about one thing at least: it's harmful on a cultural level.

The lawsuits in particular, I find ridiculous. I'd wager that the music industry has lost a great deal more money as a direct result of their campaign of civil suits (both in paying lawyers and resulting boycotts), than they ever could possibly have lost to the original piracy.

Let's understand something. It doesn't matter what you do. You can implement draconian DRM measures. You can wave subpoenas around like a gun at a bank robbery. You can bribe congressmen until your overt suggestions are made law. None of these things will stop piracy. It's too easy to do, and it's too easy for an individual to justify to himself. You can never stop to piracy. The best that can be hoped for, is to mitigate it. It's better for the entertainment industry to widely express disapproval of piracy, while serenely accepting its reality in secret, than to set about wrecking the lives of individuals via law suits, and dirtying themselves by associating with politicians.

My point is this: Copyright isn't the problem. Those who would abuse copyright are the problem. As pirates and consumers, we're all up Shit Creek here, and while the artists aren't really in the same boat as us, it remains that they're still as lost in want of a paddle as we are. Without the copyright laws, they wouldn't really even have YouTube as an option.

Re:Yes, but because

[bzipitidoo]

I don't think it's wrong to implement copyright. It does have a purpose: to enable artists to be properly compensated for their work

I appreciate what you're saying, but on this point I disagree. Yes, I think artists deserve compensation. But I think artists can be properly compensated through crowdfunding, patronage, and advertising, and that therefore copyright is unnecessary. On balance, I believe copyright does more harm than good, and therefore should be abolished. I realize it always hurts to lose something, particularly a means of income. It's partly a psychological problem. People cling to what they have and know, and resist loss. Some cling so hard they go into denial and insist they still have it when it has been lost for years.

Having said that, a form of copyright could still be viable. Piracy cannot be stopped. But what may still be possible is charging for performances to the public. Many restaurants do that when they play music for their customers. Such public activities are not invisible by their nature, so it is possible to track and regulate it. However, I would like to see this called something other than copyright. And I'm not convinced it's a good idea.

Crowdfunding is still in its infancy. It needs a lot of work, and I think the sooner we get busy on it, the better for everyone. I especially would rather not rely on private corporations to provide the forums and facilities for crowdfunding. But it's workable so long as there is competition. I hear that Kickstarter keeps a whopping 30% of the funds? Wouldn't 5% be more fair? And maybe they would lower their take if they had more competition. If ever any one corporation gets close to monopoly power in such a vital market, the government should step in, and if they don't because the regulators have been captured, the people must step up and demand action.

Re:y0V F41l 17

[techno-vampire]

If that's your opinion of Steve Albini and what he's saying about the Music Industry and Copyright, I have no choice but to agree with you.

Tons of free music out there

[future assassin]

the best site I discovered is http://www.ektoplazm.com/ Obviously Trance/Goa/Spy/Etc is not everyone’s cup of tea but there are tons of net labels out there that license their music CC.

I discovered http://www.embarrassed.nl/ on Ektoplazm and their Tales of the Coin Spinner would rival any commercial electronic music release especially in the mide/late 90's style.

Re:Tons of free music out there

[Anonymous Coward]

For similar genres I'd recommend Soma FM. Also thanks to the editors for correcting the spelling of paean.

Re: Tons of free music out there

[Anonymous Coward]

Also checkout jamendo
I found some real cool stuff in there

Re:Tons of free music out there

[Anonymous Coward]

For more varied musical interests see also:
Jamendo for royalty free music, often CC licensed.
Magnatune for decent licensed music usually listenable non-commercially for free.

Re:Tons of free music out there

[houghi]

And then there is bandcamp.com where the money goes directly to the artists, minus a reasonable amount that is clear upfront for the artist.

But to be fair, copyright was never about the artist. It was about the copyrightholder, so unless you are a songwriter, copyright is not for you. I can imagine that is why 25 people write a song now: s they all can get a cut.

Re:Tons of free music out there

[future assassin]

I've bought stuff from bandcamp.com before from Atari Teenage Riot.

Re:Tons of free music out there

[future assassin]

Yah ok so you went through the whole website and the 1000's of albums? Idiot.

I agree and disagree

[aitikin]

I love Steve. He's freaking ridiculous. I've known him for a few years. That being said, he's a niche at best. I've never agreed that he is the mainstay, nor that his mentality is even remotely standard for the industry, but I love the way he goes. He's literally never taken "points" (percentage points) as a producer of a song/album. He sees it as he gets paid out right for it and that's that. I love that about this guy!

I can't say I agree that his mentality of musicians not holding copyright is normal or correct, but I respect the guy and love seeing him and his articles/arguments.

Re:I agree and disagree

[raftpeople]

It seems like his point on copyright is accurate in that it's kind of swimming upstream these days, it's almost impossible to control the easy flow of content.

The article doesn't say, but I would be curious if he had ideas on what kind of arrangement would allow artists to get paid and that accepts that content can't be controlled.

Re: I agree and disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

The money is in live performance and merchandising. Recorded tracks are simply marketing for that.

Re: I agree and disagree

[Opportunist]

I hope not. Because then they wouldn't tour anymore.

I'm kinda in favor of working for your money. Not working once for a few hours and then living the rest of your life off the royalties from it.

Re:I agree and disagree

[TheRaven64]

A Kickstarter-like model would work. Release a single for free, designate an amount that you think the full album is worth. If enough people are willing to pay, then you release the album for free. For the second album, hopefully enough people have copied the first that you don't need to do much to encourage them to pay for the second. As an added bonus, you can reduce your up-front costs by only renting the studio time to record the first track and only record the rest once people have paid for it.

Recording a song (at least, a song that people want to buy) requires talent, creativity, and often expensive instruments and studio time. Copying a song once it's recorded is basically free. Any business model that relies on doing the difficult thing for free and then trying to persuade people to pay for you to do the easy thing is doomed to failure. Imagine if Ford had noticed that people wanted coloured cars and decided to give away unpainted cars and charge for painting them, then bribed politicians to pass laws so that only Ford was allowed to paint cars Ford sold and driving an unpainted car on the road was illegal. It wouldn't take people long to realise that this was a stupid business model and that you could get rid of the laws and charge for the cars, but in the case of copyright people are still trying very hard to make the 'free car, expensive and exclusive paint' model work with different variations.

Sour grapes

[Anonymous Coward]

Albini has spent a career in the industry but hasn't achieved the kind of financial success that many of his peers have, and frankly, he doesn't care about money as much as many of them. Fine, but that makes his point of view rather specialized.

It's like if a journeyman baseball player said, "I don't care about making millions of dollars, I just love playing this game in front of fans, and I'd do it for a living wage." Maybe so, but that's not typical of players taking home millions of dollars (and the average MLB salary is more than $1 million/yr). And if it came from someone who spent most of his career in the minors, where players have to scramble to make ends meet much like struggling musicians, it wouldn't be credible.

"Peaon"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that anything like a paean?

Re:"Peaon"?

[timothy]

Right you are; entirely my fault, and corrected now.

Sorry, and thanks.

Why bother Steve Albini?

[m00sh]

Steve Albini has been a slashdot darling because of his outspoken nature. However, it is all empty BS that is just armchair philosophy. It doesn't look like he's involved in the guts of the music industry to provide real insight but just out there to reflect our outsider slashdot user views.

Copyright is very important. Streaming revenues are based on copyright. Digital downloads are based on copyright.

Also streaming can be as high a quality as needed. I don't know why he think it is supposed to be low quality. It can be higher quality than radio and with 24 bit audio higher quality than CDs.

They are selling billions of tracks through digital downloads, people are listening to billions of songs through streaming services and there are many services that are working on music being aggressively categorized by moods, styles and what not. Cloud management of music library and instant access to the library has been a huge.

The music industry has been ridiculously dynamic and new innovations have changed where music is heading. Maybe great recommender systems that will boost music sales. Maybe super high quality music and services that provide a great music experience are on the way that people will want to build up a huge library.

Saying copyright is not working is wrong.

Re:Why bother Steve Albini?

[Anonymous Coward]

many services that are working on music being aggressively categorized by moods, styles

That's nice, but how is it relevant?

The music industry has been ridiculously dynamic and new innovations have changed

And now you sound like a broken industry advertiser machine. Yes, they have been pushing DRM on us and bribing governments "protect the.." ...their way of doing business. Yes, paying the artist 5% of profit is piracy because you no longer distribute physical vynil disks that suffer from "breakage" -- actual term used in a contract for distributing mp3s.

If the entire industry disappeared overnight we would all be much better off, even after factoring in their unemployment checks.

Re:Why bother Steve Albini?

[loonycyborg]

Saying copyright is not working is wrong.

Yes, it works for the purpose of creating another class of rentier aristocracy. And those rentier would understanding disappointed if it was gone. It never worked towards its stated objective "to promote the progress of science and useful arts". Rentier don't have time for that. They actually mostly spend their time on pursuing copyright lawsuits and enjoying their luxury lifestyle.

Re:Why bother Steve Albini?

[MechaStreisand]

If shilling this obvious isn't at -1, there's a serious problem with the moderation on this site.

Re:And..

[Anonymous Coward]

And RIAA's rebuttal is?

me WaNt TEH MONIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

This is not a new idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." ~ John Lennon

Re:This is not a new idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." ~ John Lennon

So great that he released his music to the public domain.

Re:why are people so deluded ?

[SirSlud]

"And yet the Music Industry today is as powerful as ever."

Is it still powerful? Sure. As ever? Uh .. no.

Re:GPL and copyright

[SirSlud]

"The old copyright model [...] has expired."

Nobody is saying copyright law shouldn't exist.

copyright protects punk rockers

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyright is very important.

Copyright is what keeps Jeb Bush from using Creedence Clearwater Revival songs at his political rallies.

Copyright keeps a device company from taking artist's songs and selling them for use exclusively on their devices.

Copyright, when logically applied, is punk rock's greatest defender.

Steve Albini has a signature heavy rock sound that is forever etched in music history.

Steve Albini doesn't know shit about copyright or the music business.

Re:copyright protects punk rockers

[fustakrakich]

Copyright keeps a device company from taking artist's songs and selling them for use exclusively on their devices.

How can that happen if there is no copyright? You make no sense.

Re: copyright protects punk rockers

[Jason Levine]

If there was no copyright, someone could release a sing and have it immediately appropriated by some politician/organization who they completely disagree with for no compensation. The artist could also wind up competing to sell his works against others selling his works.

The problem is that copyright has been extended to ridiculous lengths. Drop copyright down to shorter lengths (14 years plus a one time 14 year extension) and many of the copyright problems would vanish.

Re: copyright protects punk rockers

[Opportunist]

Erh... think about that statement again. A politician takes a song from a writer who doesn't want him to. There's now two possible situations: Either the writer is not popular. Then it friggin' doesn't matter because the song would not be popular either and the politician would probably not take the song due to, well, who'd give a shit about it? Or the writer is popular. Then he'd immediately inform his fans that said politician is using his song without him wanting to support him and said politician probably just committed political suicide, with people not liking the song not liking his campaign because they don't like the song, and people who do like the song despising him for using it without the artists OK.

Makes no sense to use that song, does it?

Re:copyright protects punk rockers

[sithkhan]

Copyright is what keeps Jeb Bush from using Creedence Clearwater Revival songs at his political rallies.

Wrong. Most artists have a system either through their label on their own called licensing. If someone wants to pay an artist to promote a product, or be used to present a lifestyle that is attractive to potential customers or voters. When these political campaigns purchase a license, most artists don't have a veto over it, and take to the court of public opinion to shame the politicians into not using their music. Fuck those artists. If they want to sell their product to a specific ideological crowd, they should say that up front. Those that are 'all about the music' and 'taking a message of $PEACE$LOVE$WHATEVER to the people', and then cry when someone with some media exposure uses their product in a legal contractual way should be given an Iron Maiden treatment. Fuck. Them.

Re: copyright protects punk rockers

[Jack Griffin]

Or the writer is popular. Then he'd immediately inform his fans that said politician is using his song without him wanting to support him and said politician probably just committed political suicide, with people not liking the song not liking his campaign because they don't like the song, and people who do like the song despising him for using it without the artists OK.

Makes no sense to use that song, does it?

I take it you haven't followed any election anywhere in the last 30 years. They are littered with cases of pollies using music without permission and ignoring any complaints from the artists (Reagen and Born in the USA is one that comes to mind. I think Tony Blair did a similar thing in the UK). There are no political consequences because politics is mostly like religion. Even if you fuck children, or fly planes into buildings, the great unwashed will shrug and carry on with whatever they believed yesterday.

Re: copyright protects punk rockers

[bingoUV]

Either the writer is not popular. Then it friggin' doesn't matter because the song would not be popular either

Wrong. Writer is not popular because no one knows him. But the writer is good. Now the politician takes the song, and STILL no one knows the writer. The song becomes popular because of the exposure given by the politician.

There will be no possibility of the writer's fans in this case as you can understand.

re: Empty B.S.?

[King_TJ]

No.... I think it's actually pretty accurate to make the basic statement that "copyright is not working". I'm not saying the entire concept needs to vanish. But I think it's pretty clear that the way it works today, copyright only benefits a relative few people at the top of the "pecking order" for a given business pedaling intellectual property.

As we see the increase in popularity of streaming music services/subscriptions, for example? Copyright as a means to ensure an artist gets compensated fairly for his/her work starts looking like an utter joke. What compensation do they really receive? Fractions of a penny each time a song of theirs is streamed! The only people who stand to do well with this model are the services doing the streaming itself, who collect money for the subscriptions no matter what the subscribers listen to (and a rate that's the same whether they listen to a lot or barely anything at all in a given month).

And who is copyright working for when you have people simply trying to build emulators so people can run 20+ year old games again for nostalgia, but it's technically illegal to distribute the software collections due to a (now non-productive) copyright preventing it?

IMO, the only real value of copyright for a creator of a work is in providing some INITIAL protection when the work is still new. The lion's share of income is normally when a work is brand new and nobody has access to it yet. You want to encourage people to keep creating new things by letting them earn that big, initial profit when the new movie, book, video game or music album/single is a "new release" without it being hijacked .... But once the I.P. gets "stale", meaning almost everyone who wants to view/read/listen to it has pretty much done so? It's time for copyright protection on it to wind down.

i'll happily donate.... if you let me.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've gone out of my way to make donations to bands that release their music to the public under CC license or anything else similar.... as long as I can just download an unencumbered mp3 or wav or whatever.

I'd like to do this for TV shows and movies I like. But they won't provide them in any way except with onerous DRM, sometimes so severe it will only play on one vendor's device, say, an Apple, which I don't even own.

Use the music model, give up the DRM, let me play it anywhere on any device without trying to restrict and control me, and I'll give you my money just because I like what you do and want to see more of it. Otherwise... not so much.

He's Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyright will be here for quite awhile. It's just how it's used will change. More and more will shift into the creative commons and copyright will be used to control which version of the creative commons license is used.

He's also wrong about contracts. They are important. Penn Gillette said it best when he said, never sign a contract with someone you wouldn't trust with just a handshake. The purpose of the contract is to write everything down so if one party thinks the other isn't following the deal, they can refer to the contract and figure out who is correct.

The current contract mess has been created by lawyers to try to either screw one party, prevent anyone from being screwed, or comply with some regulation or another. The second two cases are actually worthy uses of a law degree. Unfortunately too many lawyers think it's all about the first.

Re: Don't forget -- /. supressing SF malware bundi

[kuzb]

Directx bundles bing bar and auto selects it on install. What do you think that's for?

Re:GPL and copyright

[0123456]

Copyright law is what underpins the GPL license. Take it away and you kiss GPL and its protections goodbye.

If there was no copyright on software, few people would care about the GPL.

It's the best part of twenty years since I wrote any software where we cared about copyright. Everything I've written since then has been useless without our hardware, and that's where we make the money.

Re:GPL and copyright

[fustakrakich]

Nobody is saying copyright law shouldn't exist.

Nobody?? I don't think so...

Re:And..

[srmalloy]

me WaNt TEH MONIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

That's oversimplified. "We believe that individuals should pay for our granting permission for them to listen to music whose copyrights we hold, and if there were some way for us to guarantee that you would be charged each time you listened to the work, or idly whistled or sang it in a public place (a 'public performance' in violation of copyright), or even sang it in your shower where someone else could hear it, and prevent them from listening to or performing the work if they declined to pay, we would be throwing billions of dollars into trying to buy enough politicians to enact laws to make those controls mandatory for all works we hold copyright on." would be a better approximation. And that still doesn't plumb the depths of their greed.

not as long as you can afford lawyers ...

[dltaylor]

As long as your industry can afford to bleed everyone with legal parasites, you'll remain in business (see SCO).

In addition, when you can buy entire governments (see USofA, the TPP, ...), you will never go away, because they will guarantee your revenue stream.

The corporate industry just stagnates music

[LostMonk]

I wholly agree with Albini, the corporate music industry as a whole just stagnates music. The industry cherry-picks a tiny few young presenters, suit them with what is believed to be the most likely to succeed set of styles and hype their image beyond all proportion.
And in the background everything that is deemed "not popular/unlikely to succeed" is simply ignored. This how you get crap-loads of songs and music videos that are practically indistinguishable from one another.
Not too long ago music artists earns their living from live performances only, recordings changed that and allowed top performers to become very rich. Nowadays we might see things go full circle... A good artist should be able to make a living off her art, there's no law that says she's supposed to become a millionaire (and certainly not her manager).
Music has been around since humanoids could bang two sticks together and hum along, its not going to disappear -- hurting the industry is not "Destroying Music" like some would want us to believe -- Doing anything to damage the music industry in its current form will only do good for music in the long run.

Re:The corporate industry just stagnates music

[LostMonk]

I never said indie music is necessarily of higher quality, when anyone can sing to their comp and upload it to YouTube in a sec, the heaps pile up pretty high... but at least it's more diverse crap.

Re:For God's sake proof your damn articles

[DrJimbo]

I feel your paean.

Re:The current system is fascism

[freeze128]

The best we're going to get is when you find out that your favorite song is being used in a car commercial. Most people will just hum along with it. A small percentage will be annoyed at this tragedy. Only a very few wackos will actually protest or march because of it.

Re:The current system is fascism

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! And why can't architects charge for everyone who looks at their buildings?

And painters at their works of art?

And my boss, who creates most of the content we produce at work (a TV station), anything he creates? He does it with his own spare time, sometimes with his own equipment, and often enough his own money (or ours, if we work for free yet again)! Therefore, we own it not the company that feels they do...

Re: the amount of ignorance is amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd suggest that picking law related to just about anything and you're likely to find a similar result - it's complex, difficultly worded, open to interpretation, usually slow-moving, and probably thought of as pretty boring to a lot of people, including those it covers.

The problem with copyright (or any other law) is that lobby groups and industries are nearly always more powerful than their consumers, and it's not a level or even the same playing field when engaging in any debate. The internet has raged for years about music copyright, patents, copyright infringement/piracy, but the various industries hardly engage directly. Instead, they exercise their power by lobbying, getting laws made to protect their changing industries and business models, and then taking their consumers (I'll use that term quite loosely) to court.

Like many others, I wonder what will become of it all. Can everyone just get along? No, probably not.

Re:why are people so deluded ?

[Anonymous Coward]

"And yet the Music Industry today is as powerful as ever."

Is it still powerful? Sure. As ever? Uh .. no.

Whenever they want a new law they get it, whenever they break a law they get away with it.

That is more power than the POTUS has.

Re: Empty B.S.?

[SuricouRaven]

Copyright, in its current form, is unenforcable. Look how long the Bay has been in operation - and ten thouand lesser services. An unenforcable law is a bad law, and must be either abolished or revised into a more practical form.

Re:GPL and copyright

[Mandrel]

It's the best part of twenty years since I wrote any software where we cared about copyright. Everything I've written since then has been useless without our hardware, and that's where we make the money.

You're lucky that you've got closed hardware to act as a dongle for your software. But does this mean people who want to earn a living writing software for open hardware are SOL? I think such people should be able to put a (fixed, non donation) price on use of their work, but at the same time keep the software open so that users can tinker.

Big words from the Rapeman guitarist

[gatkinso]

Nonsensical, but big nonetheless.

Re:The current system is fascism

[ScentCone]

You really don't actually think about the things you say, do you.

Technology can make things obvious

[EmperorOfCanada]

To me one of my pet peeves with patents is that often people are patenting the obvious even though patents are supposed to be non-obvious. So if say the em-drive were to be brought to market as a high efficiency thruster it makes sense to give a patent to the brilliant inventors. It doesn't make any sense to give a patent to the person who puts it into an airplane, or space-craft, or a toy, or anything that would obviously be made better by having a thrustless thruster in it.

To me the same roughly applies to music. When new genres of music come out and new musical technologies arrive If someone composes an entire piece then they should be granted some copywrite over their entire song. But a single riff or other short distinctive part should not be copywritten. And there are many examples of where one artist would manage to sue another because there was some underlying musical aspect that had been "copied".

But even at this point it makes no sense that people can't play games with early Beatles songs. Why can't the "transformative" aspect that is protecting that instagram rippoff artist apply to some rapper who wants to redo Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds?

But in the interm I have a suggestion. That only an original artist unencumbered by contract can own a copyright for real any length of time? That minimally we end the ability of a corporation to own a copyright pretty well indefinitely as they do now. Make it like patents.If a corporation owns a copyright then they get 20 year and then lose it.

The beauty of this would be that things like Star Wars and Star Trek would now be going public domain and that would be cool. Does anyone here have any genuine hope that Disney Star Wars is going to be anything but a mixture of eye-candy and pablum?

One need for copyrights

[VikingNation]

I can see his point somewhat regarding intellectual property for music. However, artists should have a mechanism to control what they create. Artists must maintain a "brand" and you would not want someone on a major level covering songs and destroying this brand. Copyrights provide a means to help them maintain this brand.

Music is a parasite

[magi]

Music itself is largely a social parasite that feeds on various cognitive triggers for opportunities or rewards. It is much like a masturbation device used to trigger sexual reward mechanisms. At its best, music relieves frustrations.

I only say largely, as music also has social functions, akin to giving a masturbation device as a gift to others, or using a masturbation device in group sessions to further social cohesion. Only coincidentally, music concerts are more popular than "jackathons".

Going further with the analogy, music industry is not very different from porn industry, neither in how it abuses people's primitive reactions, nor in its ruthlesness. And to say that music industry is just as dependent on musicians, like Albini, as porn industry is on porn stars. They are free to do something else, but they choose not to.

Donations

[ArcadeMan]

I agree, donations are a good idea!

If you liked my comment, please donate 5 Dogecoins to D9scjyKETYZesSmhjCR4vye4bc6iDqXPd6.

Copyright shouldn't be free-as-in-beer

[CanEHdian]

One of the problem is that copyrighted works can sit on a shelf for 100+ years and it doesn't cost the rightsholder a cent. So yeah, sure, increase copyright terms. Please. At zero cost, even a trillion-in-one chance of a work-on-the-shelf ever making any kind of money is still better than zero.

Even a use-it-or-lose-it system won't work, as you'll see extremely-limited runs just for copyrights' sake. NOT any other.

A proposal is to limit copyright to (compared to the current situation) a very limited time, say 10 years, with an optional extension -at a fee and with registration- for another 10 years. This would total 20 years, the same as inventors get to exploit their ingenuity and creativity at the cost of filing for a patent. This would level the playing field between the two, open up a gigantic public domain, and still give creators a full 2 decades to exploit works.

The most vocal opponents of this proposal will be: (1) the copyright industry, (2) "made men" (dead or alive) that somehow still cash in today for what they did many decades ago and (3) the Hordes Of Entertainment Lawyers that make a good penny with all the legalities, paperwork, clearances, etc. that comes with the actual use of copyrighted works.

Re:Copyright shouldn't be free-as-in-beer

[endymon]

Even 10 or 20yrs at max is WAYYYYYY too long given how fast technology and culture is moving along. Either something that is around 1 year in time or perhaps measured in how much profit it has generated could be a more useful measure. Perhaps an unregistered copyright lasts 1 month while a registered copyright lasts 1 year, or until the costs entered on the copyright registration form have been 200% met. Whichever comes first. I think a 200% profit is more than enough incentive to keep producing new works without allowing anyone to rest on their laurels for too long. I think copyright infringement would dramatically go down if the public had any sort of reasonable expectation that they could get the product for free at some point in the foreseeable future. Piracy is a symptom of a system that is so far out of whack as to be ludicrous.

no money for lawyers ... or engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

The music biz used to be a job engine. While I shed no tears for the demise of the corporate music business lawyers there used to be a pretty good living to be made helping others make records or perform. There's much less money now in setting up microphones, either in a venue or a studio.

There's another issue: The public just doesn't care anywhere near as much. One could argue that popular music ran out of steam and has all the energy of a boring runway show in a strip mall (and I'd agree). The top YouTubers make 1+ mill US a year with screen casts of their Minecraft sessions. Music in a nightclub or restaurant these days is most likely the bartenders ipod. DJs replaced bar bands and were then replaced but ..." whatever ...".

Yeah you can own protools for a couple hundred over the cost of your laptop and distribute - mostly give away - your tracks via the net and find the like minded into your niche. It's a good time to be an artist, but not a good time to be an artist that quits their day job and gets wasted works on their music all day.

This isn't bad or good, it just is. Signed former professional who still gigs but writes code for a living.

Re:And..

[Opportunist]

What rebuttal? Why'd they talk to us plebs? They learned long ago that it's not what they say but who they bribe that determines the laws.

Re: Empty B.S.?

[Opportunist]

Copyright in its current form is not only not enforceable, it's actually harmful to artistry in general.

The idea behind copyright was to encourage to create. Before copyright, you needed a patron. Either that or you were busy running from one bar to the next with your new song to play it yourself before someone else copies you. Back then, the main danger was someone else playing it (that was long before the means of reproducing sound and moving image), not someone "copying" the song itself. It was more to protect composers against what happens now constantly: Some orchestra playing a song composed by Mozart, Beethoven or Bach. With the difference that these people were still alive back then. So the best they could get without copyright was to be the first to perform their new compositions.

It was worse for writers who really had to hurry from printing to selling because often before the first batch of books was sold reprints would appear, then of course cheaper because there was no artist who wanted money. Actually, it was worse for printers (producers) who actually bought books from artists. And they were also the ones pushing for legislation in this area.

Or, in other words, copyright was never intended to protect the artist. It was from its very start an attempt of publishers to protect their investment in artists.

But I digress. Original copyright was 7 years, and that was pretty tight back then because then it took a long while for things to get published and noticed by the public. But 7 years was enough to be an incentive for publishers to actually buy books from writers. And later to buy songs and even movie ideas.

Today, in a time when publishing, advertising and selling content has reached the level where it's measured in days and hours rather than years and months, we have a copyright of 70 years. Counting not from the moment of its creation but from the moment the author died. That's pretty much the lifetime of a person. I will probably not see the copyright expire of an artist who died when I was born. To give you an idea just how long this is, James Brown had his first hits just after WW2. He died in 2006. His works would enter public domain in 2081 if this law had been already in existence when he created it (actually, the insanity only dates back to 1978). Another thing that a lot of people probably know is "White Christmas". It's near impossible not to know it. Copyright expires under this law in 2051. That's over a century after its creation.

Who, I have to ask, is to be protected by a copyright that outlives the content's creator? His heirs? Why should essentially three generations of descendants be entitled to royalties of something their grand-grandfather created? Do you even know your grand-grandfather? Imagine you still got money from something that guy once did.

Nobody can tell me that this has any roots in reality. This is insanity.

Missing the point here

[Simonetta]

The endless discussion on the advantages of analog over digital recording always gloss over the fact that a customer has to pay $10-20 for EACH album purchased in the vinyl analog format, while a $10-$20 64Gb SD card stores 1200 albums (@12 songs; @ 5Mb per song in 256BPS MP3 format) for the same price. Plus 1200 albums fills the wall of a house and weighs 100+ kilos, while a 64GB SD card is the size of a thumbnail.

The question of preserving sound quality on different media is like being concerned that a Mozart symphony would disappear if the paper that Mozart himself wrote the symphony on crumbled. Instead we just get a new symphony orchestra to play the same notes that Mozart wrote down with the same instruments. And the symphony sounds the same 250 years later without using any recording technology.

It's the musical experience that is important, not the recording of the musical experience.

Re:Missing the point here

[CanEHdian]

The endless discussion on the advantages of analog over digital recording always gloss over the fact that a customer has to pay $10-20 for EACH album purchased in the vinyl analog format, while a $10-$20 64Gb SD card stores 1200 albums (@12 songs; @ 5Mb per song in 256BPS MP3 format) for the same price.

Not just that, there's 24 bit / 96 kHz or even 192 kHz PCM FLAC, or 1-bit DSD (2.8224 Mhz) bitstream, which is equivalent to 20bit/96 kHz PCM if you want to use the SA-CD format. Plus quite a number of albums ("DDD" in CDDA parlance) have been recorded digitally so the mixed/mastered in the actual source digital format version is best. There's a bit more trouble compressing the sound to death in vinyl.

You never know, we now have the bionic eye that gives better than 20/20 vision, next might be the bionic ear that gives you 10Hz-40kHz range

Please start uning my new site: Slashdot.com

[goombah99]

Since copyright is dead I just created an new web site called slashdot.com. It copies all the content from slashdot.org and uses that site as its backend. I just replace the ads with my own, but you won't notice any difference really. Oh and it also deletes all the Dice Astroturf articles for added value to you my viewers. So please start using my new site instead of the old one. You can check it out while you are pirating some music or videos in this age of copyright nullity.

Re:Please start uning my new site: Slashdot.com

[goombah99]

No I use a bigger font so it's an new work of art

Re:GPL and copyright

[pollarda]

This isn't quite true. Copyrighted works copyrights only expire if it isn't a "work in progress". In other words, if the publishers re-edited Steamboat Willie and other works, they would not expire -- ever. The same goes for code. Sure, if nobody edits or adds to the code for a whole bunch of years, it probably should fall into the public domain. Of course, the onus of responsibility is for the publisher to keep updating it and making substantive changes.

This is why I'm not sold on the idea that copyright terms need to be extended past the original amount of 27 years. If the publishers think these works are valuable, then they can put a bit of effort into them once in awhile.

Re:GPL and copyright

[Altrag]

The trouble with that is, when given the option of paying or not, the vast majority of users will choose "not," at least given a wide enough target audience (some niches may be filled with more generous people of course..)

So it becomes a question of opportunity cost: That is, your software price has to be low enough to warrant your customer paying you directly rather than just grabbing the source and compiling for themselves. And since people generally don't value their time anywhere near what its actually worth, that's probably going to be a fairly low dollar amount in most cases.

Would it work for some businesses? Sure. But likely not for most of them. Sure you could give away the software and charge for support, but that only really works when your customers are large firms that can afford multiple-thousand-dollar support contracts. For everyone else, they'll try Googling for an answer first and if they can't find one or can't make sense of it, they'll just uninstall your software rather than paying $10-50/hr for a off-contract support call.

Keep in mind we're living in a world where its difficult to get people to pay $1-2 for an app on their app store of choice -- most people either won't bother with it at all, will find a way to pirate it, or will just stick with the free version (which isn't all that bad for the developer cause ad money, but its a bloody disaster for the industry as a whole given how obnoxious and untrustworthy most of the ad farms are.. not to mention requiring the developer to waste time building and distributing a completely separate "free" version and integrating with ad farm APIs and whatever that could otherwise be used to better their core product.)

Re:GPL and copyright

[Mandrel]

The trouble with that is, when given the option of paying or not, the vast majority of users will choose "not," at least given a wide enough target audience (some niches may be filled with more generous people of course..)

I agree that it's hard to sell application software to individuals. But it's much easier to sell application software to businesses (including software that helps make individuals money), and to sell system software (components and tools). Business have both the money and a desire to preserve their reputation, so most will go legit even if the software's open, especially if support comes with the purchase.

So there's no reason why this sort of software shouldn't be open, particularly as such customers are the ones who are most interested in tinkering. I doubt RMS would have started GNU/FSF if that printer driver had been open source but not free of charge.

Re: Empty B.S.?

[tingentleman]

Who, I have to ask, is to be protected by a copyright that outlives the content's creator? His heirs? Why should essentially three generations of descendants be entitled to royalties of something their grand-grandfather created? Do you even know your grand-grandfather? Imagine you still got money from something that guy once did.

Nobody can tell me that this has any roots in reality. This is insanity.

This is the same as all inherited wealth, money being the obvious example.