Eric Baptiste Weighs In On Copyright Summit Issues 75
With the upcoming biennial summit of authors and composers in Washington DC, The Register has an interview with Eric Baptiste, head of the International Confederation of Authors and Composers Societies (CISAC), that touches on some of the hot issues. "There's no one-stop shopping anymore. We were working to put that in place in the Santiago Agreement [2000] which got struck down by the European Commission [in 2004]. It would put together all the world's repertory and enable one society to grant a worldwide license. That was a very bold move. It's a pity it was not appreciated at the time by the European Commission."
Transparency. You keep using that word. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you don't know how to make your world spin with those rules. They seem to be working fine for software developers, for instance. And last I checked, Trent Reznor wasn't exactly living in grinding poverty.
Translation: "If you just want to stream content (notice it's about listen or watch one piece of media, not own a copy of) from some centralized repository that's maintained of your control, don't worry your pretty little head about whether the artist is getting anything, because it's all going to a 'society' or 'agency' with a bunch of letters in its name. We need to obfuscate it so nobody sees it. If it's B2B, then we can finally nip that Artist-to-Consumer thing in the bud."
Again, the perspective whereby neither the people creating the music, nor the people listening to the music, are customers. They're the products. The user or customer is always some form of middleman, distributor, or licencing society.
"I don't like arbitrage. Arbitrage makes it very difficult for us middlemen to maintain the value of 'our' rights. All those users would buy it somewhere else, for cheaper. That's an irrational business for middlemen -- middlemen aren't supposed to compete against each other for customer dollars or artists' contracts. We're supposed to be a cartel, all of us working together, competing only insofar as to the degree as to which we can rip off the artists and listeners within our individual fiefdoms."
Fuck that noise, Eric.
What's wrong with a monthly salary? (Score:5, Insightful)
What is it with these 'copyright holders' that makes them think they're supposed to live forever of one weeks work.
Wouldn't it be better for the community if they worked their entire life producing new stuff for whoever wants new media.
Sharing isn't the problem Eric makes it out to be. (Score:1, Insightful)
Eric would like you to believe that, "there is no business if everything is for free.", which is not simply true, and not really the issue. In fact, there were a lot of successful artists and art long before copyright ever came along. Copyright is a good thing, but not when it's been corrupted and misused by corporations and non-contributing freeloaders. The real truth is that an artist could do quite well with the seven years of being the sole legal owner of the right of reproduction of their art. The founding fathers were smart enough to limit the term to a reasonable number of years, why can't we respect their original intentions? Furthermore, aren't we risking the very usefulness, and relevance, of an up to date public domain?
Re:Transparency. You keep using that word. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you don't know how to make your world spin with those rules.
Correct. What the Internet has wrought is extremely simple copying and distribution. What this does is make the RIAA and all their middlemen completely irrelevant. Hello, record companies: We don't need you. We don't want you. Go away.. Yes, there is room for promoters, but there is no reason why need record companies. We don't need records, hence we don't need record companies. It's just that simple. Record companies provide zero value add.
I Love this guy! Such Chutpah (Score:4, Insightful)
Manages to contradict himself!
"It happened with YouTube here in the UK.
We have a dialog with them to try and understand what they need - because they are very relevant. But based on what I know, when they decided to pull all the UK premium content - despite the PRS not requesting that - that was not helpful. It gives the impression that rights societies are difficult to work with and willing to withdraw works from the public. But nothing could be further from the truth. This content is worth nothing without an audience, and our intention is to make it widely available - but at the right price, a price that rewards the labour of people who are producing those great works."
and a little further...
"We need to rely on a mix of understanding licensing terms, and being able to experiment, and if the business has no turnover the rights owners should not subsidize the business by giving the content away for free. If you don't pay your electricity bill you'll get cut off."
I guess that HE wants the power to turn it off, but doesn't want to let others make the decision. But I just love the direct contradiction.
And I just love this -- in reference to ISPs and the pricing of broadband:
"That's another aspect of the destruction of value. If you wanted to price them at fair value you would at least need to be an order of magnitude higher than it is now."
So, I guess my broadband should be $400 a month, and $360 of that should go to him?
Wow, just... wow... Unbelievable.
Re:A one-stop shop? Sounds great! (Score:3, Insightful)
Already have a one stop shop [thepiratebay.org]
More hot air ... (Score:3, Insightful)
And it should be transparent. If you're a member of the public and you just want watch a movie or listen to a song, you shouldn't need to be a copyright expert.
Then why not let people use the media they bought how they wish?
You shouldn't need to worry how much is going to the society, and how much is going to the real people behind those entities.
So he wants the content industries to be able to screw the artists without anyone ever finding out?
It would put together all the world's repertory and enable one society to grant a worldwide license.
And who gets to set how much does a license costs? Eric? Governments? The UN? The content industries? Whoever does end up setting the costs, it wont be the artists themselves or impartial members of the public.
If they want to have a global society then do it properly and with realistic limits.
. Set copyright to 20 years on ALL works.
. Stop requiring massive licenses for every 15 second piece of media played in a video/movie.
Maybe something like a standard rate of x% then for each additional piece its 50% more.
. If the copyright holder is not the person who created it then the copyright ends when they die.
. If you're going to have a single global society then content companies cant restrict where you buy your media.
No region codes & no country specific limitations.
Re:Paradox (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't entirely disagree with you. I take no offense at the implication that I lack masterful proficiency at creating art - although this is a separate conversation full of discussion about how much of the work of "polishing" content to make it appear "masterful" - from music to movies - is now done by individuals other than the actual content creators or originators of the ideas. This is another can of worms entirely, albeit a relevant one since it's unclear whether any one person can really be an "expert" anymore in the sense you seem to be implying.
I do think it's important to be careful not to overrate the importance of experts, though, because barring outright unbearably bad content, a lot of this becomes a matter of taste, as I implied in my original post. Much of today's most popular content both online and in traditional media has been created by people who were just messing around in their free time and who certainly haven't put 10,000 hours (a figure which, while it amuses me, is certainly not scientific) into content creation - in many cases, the creators are simply too young to have had that much free time, for one thing (university, full-time jobs, etc.)
Essentially the "old" system was a "chance" lottery, where publishers and producers took a chance on new artists fully expecting to take an actual financial loss on most of them while they hoped for a few superstars, and I don't really see that it was fundamentally superior or produced more "experts" than the internet has done so far. I think even if you look at successful artists in whatever medium as defined by the old system, you can see clear progression in skill in earlier works versus later ones, and I see no reason why you should expect anything else in the emerging new system.
Just my two cents, anyway.:)
Re:Transparency. You keep using that word. (Score:3, Insightful)
Hardly self-defeating. You are aware that getting things on to iTunes or Amazon is incredibly easy if you're independent, correct? Even going through an aggregator isn't that difficult. And the RIAA et al aren't doing much in the way of promotion any more. Most artists don't get music videos unless the song's already popular, since the music video channels don't run many videos any more, unless the artist is popular. Most people don't listen to regular radio, but either speciality stations or internet radio, again, both can have independent music submitted to them. The only time it would be useful is if you're playing large (stadium-type) concerts, and most artists never get that far. Record companies as they currently exist aren't there for the little artist. They're focused on the stuff they *know* can make them money. They don't wanna promote something that might tank.