The Featured Artists Coalition Syndrome seems to be spreading.
Britain’s FAC at first came out strongly against the corporate entertainment industry Three Strikes and you’re Off The Net business plan it’s trying to have introduced around the world, then did a complete reversal, saying they supported it afer all.
UK peer Lord Ralph Lucas became an instant hero when, in a GooTube video , he stated:
“People have got used, and I think it is entirely reasonable, to a reasonable level of sharing between friends and within a small community of copyright material so that it doesn’t have to be purchased again at every incidence rate it’s used …”
But now he, too, has gone the other way.
The damages-quantification amendment he recently proposed for the UK digital economy bill would’ve forced copyright holders to “detail the exact damage they [allegedly] suffered when trying to force alleged infringers off the internet will drop the plan,” says OUT-LAW.com.
But “Lucas told OUT-LAW Radio that copyright law was ‘a necessary evil’,” says the story, quoting him as stating >>>
The precise way I had looked at doing this does not work because I had been listening too much to the language being used about this being a Bill that was about people who downloaded copyrighted material. This bit of the Bill is not about that, it’s about people who make their material available for upload.
The only way the copyright industry can establish transgression is to go on to these peer to peer services, to download material themselves and can make a note of where it’s coming from. There is no known technology which will within the limits of the Computer Misuse Act and the Data Protection Act allow somebody to know who has downloaded material from a peer to peer network. All you can see is who has made material available for upload.”
The transgression we’re going to be dealing with is making music or making copyright product available for downloading by others [so] the question how do you decide what people are above and below the threshold becomes really pretty difficult and I don’t know that the Government has clear ideas on that and we will have to pursue them further. The idea under those circumstances of trying to put a value on the transgression won’t work. I’m not going to pursue that as a concept.
Lucas added:
“I think the key to protecting copyright in a digital age is to offer the customer something more than they can get for free. “e have to make copyright effective but at the same time copyright holders have to live in the real world.”
Stay tuned.
January 17th, 2010 at 12:19 pm
Let’s look at this semi-positively. He’s suggesting (as a lot of musicians have) that content needs to be valuable again. Here’s where it’s still a question over whether copyright is required or not. Bottom line is that musicians provide a product and service. Does a home inspector recieve a payment every time a home owner shows their inspection report? Do the people who developed the Magic Bullet receive payment for every party drink it serves? In the end it’s demand that’s required.
If people really and truly want the product you provide they will pay for it, but it has to be of value to them. The advantage has to outweigh the cost or people will continue to download singles etc for free. Take pride in your product and service. Believe you are the best you can be and let yourself tell you that not your friends and parents. Musician’s need to remember that this is a business. Run your own business! Keep your own contacts and understand what is going on financially, managerially, publically etc. Keep the money in your pocket and stop supporting third party weasels. This is the business you are choosing so learn how it operates.
On a side note there is validity in the need for some form of taxation, copyright, levy or otherwise to cover those that are offering the opportunities for downloads. I work a tech support job for a major cable company in Ontario. The amount of money that they are making off of bandwidth use each month is astronomical. Also they are not naive about it at all. They know people are downloading copywritten content and they are happy to provide…and charge $$$ for the ability for them to do so. These ISP’s are cashing in ten fold while the creators of the content are suffering. There is no reason why ISP’s should be given this monopolistic right over content providers. Similarly any download service, website, etc should be held accountable for using a piece of art in it’s original state. Private sharing of files is one thing but utilizing someone elses work for your own personal gain should prove beneficial to both parties.
January 17th, 2010 at 3:08 pm
I believe that a lot of artists will agree with Chutney.
January 17th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
@ Chutney
“On a side note … ” What do you suggest we do about the ISPs?
Meanwhile, I doubt very many people will argue with “Private sharing of files is one thing but utilizing someone elses work for your own personal gain should prove beneficial to both parties.” You say transgressors should be held accountable. But in what way? And by whom?
I go back to the position I’ve held since I got into this argument in 2002: most people will pay for what they use if they’re given a chance to do so. And please don’t bring up iTunes. It’s a scam under which users are being cheated, day in day out. It isn’t a service. It’s gone from a loss-leader to a user-funded online loading system for Apple iPods and similar devices. The other ’services’ peddling corporate downloads are just rip-offs.
I say here http://a2f2a.com/2010/01/10/music-fan-manifesto-2010/ “When conditions are reasonable and prices are fair, people can — and do, and in their millions — buy online music. The proof is the success of AllofMP3.com and the sites which sprang up in its wake, many of them selling by download size, not per ‘item’.”
Some people will do everything they can to get out of paying for what they use. But most people simply buy whatever it is they want from traditional and accepted outlets.
The problem with music (and movies) is: there’s a new form of distribution which isn’t being allowed to develop and mature naturally. It’s artificially constrained by vested corporate interests. In it, there’s no such thing as competition or a healthy cross-section of prices. For the most part, you pay .99 cents (and up), a fake price point, to download from a small number of companies who sell identical product from the same sources in a totally closed market.
When MP3s first went online, a lot of people — many of them brilliant innovators, some of whom I know — tried to set up competitive outlets. But they were closed down, all of them, by the corporate music industry. Now the mainstream online market is a barren, arid place, “a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free”, as Hunter S. Thompson once said. And he wasn’t talking about file sharers. Extreme? Not at all. It’s the truth. Joni Mitchell once said very much the same thing.
Here’s the situation as it exists: A) buy very limited ‘product’ at exorbitant prices, or B) get it, plus tons of other good stuff, for free. There’s no middle ground.
Most people aren’t stupid.
Cheers!
January 17th, 2010 at 6:12 pm
@jon What you’ve pointed out is exactly the problem. The corporate industry, rather than accepting and granting licenses to those early models, chose to pass and protect the sales model (because they still believed they could.. at the time. And granted, they could back then because there was still a market for plastic and even vinyl back then.) Now, they’re sales model is dilapidating fairly quickly. They’ve ridden that wave for more than a decade and your high street shops, for the most part, aren’t buying into it any longer. During this shift, we’ve seen the high street price for cd’s fall to around £5 (obviously still with a 50-100% mark-up by retailers.) Now’s the time for the shift. The recording industries need to drop the sales model. People are now accessing music online and the websites and ISPs who are using & exploting media. The competition is more attention-based. Media is being extensively used by new and emerging corportate entities who are profiting from the public’s interest in that media without compensating the creators of the media that they use. When it comes to digital media, I don’t believe it’s even a question of ‘price’ anymore. It’s more a question of fair use and fair compensation from these corporate entities who use other people’s works for their own gain. It’s never been about the ‘file-sharers’, it’s more about the google’s, yahoo’s, myspaces, microsofts. The new ‘big business’ who know that traffic and attention is queen because content is king. If musician’s are meant to provide ‘free’ content for all these massive corporations without any compensation, something simply doesn’t ring fair and in contrary to Crosbie or Steelwolf’s point of view. It’s simply wrong.
January 17th, 2010 at 10:39 pm
” These ISP’s are cashing in ten fold while the creators of the content are suffering. There is no reason why ISP’s should be given this monopolistic right over content providers. ”
Right. That’s only because of ‘illegal downloads ‘.
Why are the labels given monopolistic rights ?
An isp tax is still bullshit.
” Similarly any download service, website, etc should be held accountable for using a piece of art in it’s original state. Private sharing of files is one thing but utilizing someone elses work for your own personal gain should prove beneficial to both parties. ”
These specific sites should be charged fairly, absolutely.
not the ISP. The ISP is a conduit nothing more. The SITES that use the specific media ( not the ones that just host links ) should be charged.
@Indiana
” I believe that a lot of artists will agree with Chutney. ”
And ‘believe’just as many don’t.
An ISP tax, levy, whatever you want to call it today is still bullshit.