Alternative Airwaves: ASCAP vs Free Culture
2 comments:
Jonathan Stowe said...
Basically ASCAP have let the cat out of the bag by mistake here, they (and the BPI and the other guilty parties) have spent years, since "Home Taping Is Killing Music", trying to kid everyone that it was what they describe as "Copyright Theft" that was destroying the business, whereas in fact they have correctly identified (albeit by mistake) that new models of distribution based around freedom are actually what is killing them. According to some recent statistics (which I can't source right now but I think it was in either The Times or The Guardian,) people are actually spending *MORE* money on music now, it's just they are spending it on going to see live shows and quality merchandise and not on the recorded product. More money is going to the artists. This is a good thing.
The music publishing companies that are making the most noise about the rise of freely available music have business models that are largely unchanged since the days when sheet music and player piano rolls were in the ascendant: when they largely controlled the means of production of the "distributed media" and the distribution channels, an artist, a composer had little choice but to sign away most of the rights to their material if they wanted it to see the light of day.
Nowadays, a talented and savvy individual with access to a computer and the internet can equal the quality and breadth of distribution that might come from one of the music industry mega-corporations and they can do it without giving up their rights to decide how the product is used or distributed. Of course ASCAP, SOCAN and the BPI are frothing madly like any good capitalist institution with the shareholders of their members to be worried about foremost, certainly before they artists they claim to represent and their customers.
In the end of the day it should be everyone's own choice under what terms the publish their creative work. I certainly don't advocate re-distributing work for free that wasn't published for free any more than I would suggest someone should walk into a record shop and help themselves to a bunch of CDs and walk out. On the flip side the music industry should stop trying to portray me, and people like me who choose to give away our music for free as extremists or, by association with "illegal music piracy", as criminals.
Sorry for the long comment, I was going to reply on my own blog, but posterous couldn't quote the original text for some reason.
June 28, 2010 3:12 PM
Thanks for the comment - you bring up good points, so it is appreciated regardless of length :)
But yeah, I agree that free culture != giving your work away for free. But I think that's part of the problem, a lot of people will probably buy into that description as portrayed by the music industry and those trying to protect their income streams. They have more weapons at their disposal to get that belief out there.
June 28, 2010 3:20 PM
I was going to make the comment here, but posterous wasn't picking up the original article, read that first then my comment :-)
