This is the first of a series of posts on how the internet is shaping our future. Imagine if a consortium of internet companies decided to buy out the music industry. Get rid of labels and sell music direct to consumers, cheaply. How might that change the nature of things?
Context
New Zealand’s passing of copyright law this week has sparked a fresh round of intense debate and scrutiny on how to address the behaviour of a large number of New Zealanders on the internet who are illegally downloading music, movies and other content.
Many people either do not know they are downloading illegally or don’t feel they are doing anything wrong.
And for many, its the easiest way to get access to what they want to hear or watch.
Unfortunately, the creators of that content (the artists) miss out on payment. The traditional distributors of the content, the movie studios and music labels wield considerable influence in New Zealand and around the world in convincing governments to pass strict laws to prohibit filesharing. But they are slow to develop new ways to distribute their content easily and legally to people via the internet.
But they’re not slow to use their muscle to protect their outdated business models.
What do they expect people to do? The pressure is mounting as we’re all seeing by the intense reaction to the Copyright Law this week.
What if things were to change? Would the need for such copyright laws still be necessary if people could easily, legally and cheaply access what they wanted, when they wanted it.
Consider this, an extract from a piece written by UK-based open government and open source advocate Glynn Moody
… the music industry is economically quite small and unimportant compared to the computer industry. And yet somehow – through honed lobbying and old boy networks – it wields a disproportionate power that enables it to block innovative ideas that the online world wants to try.
On a rational basis, the music industry’s concerns would be dwarfed by those of the computer world, which is not just far larger, but vastly more important in strategic terms. But instead, the former gets to make all kinds of hyperbolic claims about the alleged “damage” inflicted by piracy on its income, even though these simply don’t stand up to analysis.
… how about if Google *did* buy the music industry? That would solve its licensing problems at a stroke. Of course, the anti-trust authorities around the world would definitely have something to say about this, so it might be necessary to tweak the idea a little.
How about if a consortium of leading Internet companies – Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Baidu, Amazon etc. – jointly bought the entire music industry, and promised to license its content to anyone on a non-discriminatory basis?
At the very least, the idea ought to send a shiver down the spine of the fat-cats currently running the record labels, and encourage them to stop whining so much just in case they make the thought of firing them all too attractive to the people whose lives they are currently making an utter misery….
It’s quite possible this is based on Google spin. But it’s certainly interesting to contemplate. I’d like to see a major shake-up in both industries.
And I think governments have a responsiblity to ensure that consumers are able to access content: music, movies, entertainment legally and in a competive environment where they have choice and fair prices. And where there is a thriving environment for the creators (those inside New Zealand). The debate needs to be about how we make that happen. Yes?
A couple of charts relevant to this entire discussion
Comparison of the contribution of the entertainment industry to GDP in USA
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/1496/gdpfun.jpg
The *UNIT* sales from number of the entertainmet industries
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/4268/wutdo.jpg
This one is highly useful, as well as this one
http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/2797/38367156261210918713518.jpg
AS it shows the Music industry does not have an issue with piracy. The music industry had people over a barrel for years in that if you wanted your favourite track, you brought an album, and they made the most money, but most of the album was garbage. Now we have the ability to purcahse singles, we are spending less, but purchasing more. THe RIAA et al whinge get niave governments to change laws to protect themselves from modern purchasing choices.
Wheres our 20$ all you can listen to buffet from Zune? Oh thats right, the media companies dont want that model in NZ, as it will create a better environment for consumers and a worse one for them.
“Consumer friendly” companies that do nothing but alienate their own customers. That sounds like a successful business model.
Okay – piracy wouldn’t be such a concern if there were more convenient, unhindered (such as region, device etc.) ways of consuming the content.
However, that doesn’t at all address the fact that a copyright law was passed that puts the onus of proof on the accused and all Labour can say is “They’ve said they won’t terminate your connection”. (and I still don’t understand what this has to do with earthquake recovery).
If your content can be expressed as ones and zeroes it can be copied and distributed at no cost.
Some industries seem unable to understand this.
Nevyn,
Thats because much like National, Labour does not care that legal due process has been sidestepped. It doesn’t matter that a large proportion of all copyright claims are false.
Charging a multibillion dollar company a 15$ charge will prevent false claims occurring.
/s
“However, that doesn’t at all address the fact that a copyright law was passed that puts the onus of proof on the accused and all Labour can say is “They’ve said they won’t terminate your connection”.”
Hear hear.
I’m missing something. How come America gets this copyright law concession from us but we don’t get anything from them re our major exports – dairy produce etc.
Friendly “imagine this” discussions won’t help after you voted the way you did.
I wonder about copyright as a “property right”. The argument goes, “you wouldn’t steal a handbag”, so you shouldn’t steal someone’s copyrighted work. But if you steal a handbag you deprive the owner of the handbag, completely. If you obtain a copy of something copyrighted, you’re depriving someone of a fee, and they can always still sell their copyrighted work, over and over again. So copyright is arguably a financial interest, not a property right. (I know there are other issues with this point but bear with me). Copyright is often not held by the artist anyway, its held by a recording company. And all this is definitely an element in the minds of those who rationalise obtaining copyrighted material on the internet – it makes it “okay” to lots of ordinary people.
If that is the case, if someone obtains a copy of something they simply wouldn’t be able to get by any other means, legal or otherwise, they haven’t stolen anything (or don’t feel that they have stolen anything) because they haven’t deprived the owner of a fee that the owner would have got.
If someone obtains a copy of something they could have purchased, but there is a mechanism for paying a low “amnesty” fee directly to the artist/copyright holder, which would be a defence in all courts, not everyone would use this, but some would.
I’m not sure if these are the answers! But if we want real solutions in this area, we do need to think outside the square. We won’t stop piracy ever, but we need to find some way of channeling some of the potential revenue, which is otherwise lost, back to the artists, so they can afford to keep up their work. I think that is the ultimate aim, isn’t it?
Suggesting that Google might want to pick up EMI from the receivers is one thing. But when Moody proposes that Google buy “the music industry” it really only says that he has no idea what the music industry is.
One company is going to buy everyone’s copyrights? Really? Every indie label? What an awful thought.
It’s not just music downloading that will be caught in any copyright laws. I’m also not keen on a monopoly of legal online provisions by a big multinational or US-based corporate because they are likely to perpetuate the inequalities and ideological dominance in representation already dominating offline media.
In my networks, I see some women (mainly lesbians & bisexual women) who tend to download TV programmes (also sometimes movies) that are not so readily available in their country – and it’s especially tempting for such women in NZ. Such women are often quite frustrated of the respresentation of women & lesbian stories on mainstream TV and will access anything available online that fills the gap.
Also see how viewers reacted to TV3 pulling The Good Wife without notice a couple of weeks ago (a quality drama with an intelligent woman lead). There were some viewers commenting on the TV3 site, amongst mmany angry & frustrated viewers, who were advocating going straight to the web to download the show (illegally) rather than put up with the shoddy treatment from MediaWorks.
I agree that copyright holders should be getting more of the payments, which are at the moment going more to the IPs. However, I’m very wary of a major multinational corporate dominating legal access to downloading, which may lead to narrowing the diversity presently available online.
“And I think governments have a responsiblity to ensure that consumers are able to access content: music, movies, entertainment legally and in a competive environment where they have choice and fair prices. And where there is a thriving environment for the creators (those inside New Zealand). The debate needs to be about how we make that happen. Yes?
Who is ‘we’?
The horse has bolted and the stable door is wide open, but it now has a tripwire for the slower horses to stumble over. Once their legs are broken they will be put down. Sorry lengthy analogy. Suggest you look at this:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/rachel_botsman_the_case_for_collaborative_consumption.html
and this:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_gansky_the_future_of_business_is_the_mesh.html
“Unfortunately, the creators of that content (the artists) miss out on payment.”
Disclaimer: Perhaps my outlook is skewed because I pay attention to current events in technology related news.
When I see everyone from musicians to authors to graphic artists able to make a living using distribution and promotion opportunities offered by the internet, I find it extremely hard to see how someone could speak (or type) the above-quoted line with a straight face.
The only artists missing out on payment are those who do not offer any way to take payments from fans.
‘Pirates’ spend more money than ‘traditional buyers’: http://torrentfreak.com/pirates-are-the-music-industrys-most-valuable-customers-100122/
Sure, if you sit there whinging about people ‘stealin’ ur copyrights’ while making no attempt to reach out to those people and give them reasons to buy — and channels through which to make it happen — then you’re missing out on some sales.
This does not immediately imply that you’ve lost ‘payments’; you can’t do RIAA Math and assume that a person who would never have bought your work — or heard of you at all — counts as a lost sale when they access a copy of your work. That makes sense when dealing with physical goods; in a medium of information that literally does not exist without ‘file sharing’, there is no analog and no amount of legislating will change that.
The default assumption is simply wrong. Not just kinda wish-washy weasel-words wrong, but verifiably, empirically incorrect.
The internet provides new opportunities. If you don’t take advantage of them, then any losses you incur are your problem. It’s not up to the government to legislate your way forward — or up to the public to sacrifice civil liberties for your convenience.
Clare you really should disclose your previous activity in the Media Arts and Entertainment Alliance and your position on the MEAA NSW Executive when you make proclamations about copyright law, given that one of the MEAA’s key functions is to lobby government regarding copyright.
Legislation is slow and ponderous and will obviously be circumvented by internet technology before any bill is passed.
If I ‘buy’ a track/song off the internet what is stopping me from putting it on my portable hard drive and going to my friends house and giving him the song/track for free? Nothing can stop me. There are also ways of masking your torrent seeding/leeching and many other ways to download content for free with no danger of getting a warning from The Man.
If I do ever feel any overwhelming guilt towards the artist then I will go out and buy some of their work or make a donation in some way although this hasn’t happened yet.
I don’t know why Clare is worried about NZ music artists missing out as New Zealand music has been completely crap for at least the last 5-8 years. Annabel Fay and Brooke Fraser pass for NZ music nowadays and they are horrendously awful.
The internet provides new opportunities. If you don’t take advantage of them, then any losses you incur are your problem. It’s not up to the government to legislate your way forward — or up to the public to sacrifice civil liberties for your convenience.
If you could pop down off your high horse for a moment …
What about the indie band that does it all right: engages with fans, gives away sample tracks, streams the new album, does a deal with an aggregator, puts it all up on Bandcamp for $5, $10 or name-your-price … is it a decent thing to go and snaffle their catalogue from Pirate Bay?
Is that fair to the little indie label whose owner has spent money on the band? Because if you want a world where people who love music are involved with its creation, you actually have to think about these things.
We all, from the person who watches an infringing YouTube clip on up, breach copyright. I certainly do. But I also buy music online from half a dozen different places. I’m excited about the control and the returns offered to artists by the likes of Bandcamp. Basically, if you want a world where things like that can happen, your rhetoric has to get better than “You suck!”
According to Russell, not wanting to be a criminal and having civil rights given precedence over corporate profits is a “high horse”. Quite illuminating.
In any case:
“What about the indie band that does it all right: engages with fans, gives away sample tracks, streams the new album, does a deal with an aggregator, puts it all up on Bandcamp for $5, $10 or name-your-price … is it a decent thing to go and snaffle their catalogue from Pirate Bay?”
Define “decent”. Does it cost the band money? Or does this ‘snaffling’ result in 10,000 new fans who buy every subsequent album this band releases, for substantially greater lifetime revenues?
I’m almost certain I covered this, but I suppose asking for clarity amongst our authoritarian friends is asking for a lot.
“Is that fair to the little indie label whose owner has spent money on the band? Because if you want a world where people who love music are involved with its creation, you actually have to think about these things.”
Turns out I did and you’ve gleefully ignored it. Funny, that.
“We all, from the person who watches an infringing YouTube clip on up, breach copyright. I certainly do. But I also buy music online from half a dozen different places. I’m excited about the control and the returns offered to artists by the likes of Bandcamp. Basically, if you want a world where things like that can happen, your rhetoric has to get better than “You suck!””
I see, so instead of providing a long-term solution, you default to the position of admitting you don’t abide by your own rules and then moralize to the rest of us.
What I find most funny is that you admit you buy the music you pirate — which is the entire point of my ‘high horse’ argument about civil liberties. There is no ‘crime’ to penalize here.
Back to my stables.
Take a look at http://flattr.com/ for a system to make it more easy for creative people to feed themself..
Oh come off it, Russell.
For years and years the recording industry has used copyright ruthlessly to separate artists from a return on their intellectual property.
And if that wasn’t enough, they acted to separate music in particular from the creative communities in which it was generated so that they could turn it into a product.
They responded to technological change by going feral on us. It’s hard to feel any sympathy for them. They’re not on our side.
That Indie band you’re talking about is doing great sales in live performance – and maybe we should be asking ourselves whether it’s a coincidence that the live music scene is great at the moment instead of trying to support the redundant business model of the recording industry. They’re selling T shirts and tea towels at their gigs and they’re making their own music videos which they’re putting up on YouTube.
The problem is that it isn’t as easy to buy their songs at the moment as it should be and this is because there isn’t an infrastructure in place that helps us do that.
This is a problem of market failure, which is what happens when property rights can’t be effectively and exclusively assigned. And market failure makes the case for an innovative public sector initiative.
Legislation is not the public sector tool that is going work here because legislation has to be supported in the community.
Context
“And for many, its the easiest way to get access to what they want to hear or watch.”
or only way
a random quote
“So the stated goal of copyright is only being fulfilled by massive copyright violation.
What have you learned?
— music article comment fm churchHatesTucker
”
and
“It’s like they’re just begging me to pirate music.
I can google the name of an album I want, find a link to it on Rapidshare or MegaUpload, and download the whole thing for free with no DRM of any kind.
The stupidity of their business model is overwhelming.
They’re ensuring that the most attractive option for me to get new music is to ‘steal’ it.
– Matt Blodgett”
I guess you are trying – at least skirting around asking the question of why people (allegedly) infringe copyright.
try ‘relevance’ and ‘market failure’
“Unfortunately, the creators of that content (the artists) miss out on payment.”
Thats the traditional distributors standard cry anyway
supporting their ‘influence to get strict laws passed’.
OTOH, supposedly (music) creators currently seem to get a small percentage of their income from distributors anyway (I’ve seen 6% quoted but it could still be 10X that and still be disproportionate).
Whatever, same tired old arguments
Existing copyright law is obsolescent, aimed at a different age with different/greater constraints on creation, aggregation, distribution, discovery and fulfillment.
If the original reason for having copyright is still valid then thats what needs fixing, not patches providing state mandated support to rent-seekers business models in the face of failure to adapt to market/system change
or a vain hope that a white googling knight will ride from the west replacing a multitude of intermediaries with a single (benevolent) one.
There are many good presentations discussing whats broken with existing copyright, why and how to fix it – some even crop up here
Otherwise I refer you to the writings of Lawrence Lessig.