David Lowery On the Ethics of Music Piracy 713
New submitter Mystakaphoros writes "Musician David Lowery (of Cracker fame) takes NPR intern Emily White to task for her stance on paying for (or failing to pay for) music. Quoting: 'By allowing the artist to treat his/her work as actual property, the artist can decide how to monetize his or her work. This system has worked very well for fans and artists. Now we are being asked to undo this not because we think this is a bad or unfair way to compensate artists but simply because it is technologically possible for corporations or individuals to exploit artists work without their permission on a massive scale and globally. We are being asked to continue to let these companies violate the law without being punished or prosecuted. We are being asked to change our morality and principals to match what I think are immoral and unethical business models.'"
hollywood account ethics? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:In a world... (Score:4, Interesting)
The Moral Amount... (Score:4, Interesting)
That is approximately $0.20 per song. I think everyone would agree that is a fair price. Unfortunately, there is nowhere that you can actually purchase music at anywhere near that price.
David Lowery suggests that $2,139.50 is fair, and yet then attempts to direct Emily to iTunes, where that collection would likely cost exactly $10,890, assuming an average cost of $0.99.
Re:for artists? (Score:5, Interesting)
If they are required to pay taxes on the 'property' every year, you will see a lot more of it make it to the public domain.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers (Score:4, Interesting)
Native Americans didn't consider land to be 'property' either.
This is probably off topic but what you say is factually incorrect. The reason that the Indians sold and gave away their land for a pittance is because the Indians the colonials were buying/taking from weren't the one's that owned the land. Like saying that guy you met on 1st avenue must not understand real estate very well since he was willing to sell you the Brooklyn bridge for just $500.
Re:for artists? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is it people who quote the constitution never bother quoting the whole sentence:
Because everyone up to and including SCOTUS seems to think the most important part of what you bolded is irrelevant?
Particularly, the word "limited."
It's certainly conducive to an attitude of "why should we unwashed masses play by the rules when the fat cats refuse to?"
Lowery is misleading about advances (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't remember his name but one US Senator called the recording industry something like buying a house and having the bank continue to own it after you paid off the mortgage.
Re:Once again, somebody misses the point (Score:4, Interesting)
This Ted Talk seems appropriate here (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:for artists? (Score:5, Interesting)
We can only hope. A world without Beebers is a dream.
Why do musicians think the last 80 years is the norm? The world is returning to the norm. They will get paid by audiences for live performances. Instead of a very few getting paid mega bucks, many will make a living. Sucks to be a 'studio band' (e.g. Guns and Roses) that can't play live.
Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers (Score:5, Interesting)
Some food for thought: All property is a legal fiction.
No it's not. Try yanking a purse from a girl on a street and see whether she opts to scream or to calmly go home and have her lawyer contact you. Personal property is way, way older than any law or religion, and is understood on a visceral level. The fact that chimps own personal tools should be a dead giveaway.
Re:for artists? (Score:5, Interesting)
Kind of, but not really. It takes time to build a house just like it takes time to make art. Just because it costs very little to copy the final product does not automatically mean that there wasn't some investment of time and effort on the front end. Copyright law seeks to recognize that original time and effort.
Most of the pro-copying arguments I've seen involve this logic: "It costs me almost nothing to copy this thing, therefore it has no value and the creating artist deserves nothing for it". I've seen it dressed up a lot of different ways but it usually boils down to that, and it's a logical fallacy. If it were true, then people wouldn't recognize a difference between listening to static, and listening to music.
Whether or not intellectual property has value can be argued all day long, but that's not at issue here. What is at issue is whether or not an implementation of an idea has value. Most people confuse those two things, simply because the music they interact with is so easily manipulated. We must be very careful to recognize the difference between a thought, and something created from that thought. Creation has value, the only question is how much value, and how to recognize it.
Royalties *are* taxed. Next argument? (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, don't be absurd. Different types of property are taxed differently. For example, I own a car. I paid tax when I purchased the car. I also pay a licensing cost (a type of tax, in that it goes to the governement for the purpose of supporting public services) to legally operate the car. However, I certianly don't pay tax on it every year. I also own a number of books, which were subject to sales tax when I bought them but nothing else (and certianly no ongoing tax).
On the flip side, you have the various producers of copyrightable works ("artists" for brevity). To an artist, their (intellectual) property is their source of income. That is, of course, taxed (on a continuous basis... assuming they are selling anything from it). Nothing special about that. In the case of the modern publishing industry, artists receive royalties for the copies of their property that the artists have allowed a publisher to create and sell. Those royalties are taxed as income. Often, there's also a contract (occasionally, there's a contract but no royalties) where the artist is paid a lump sum up front. Those payments are also taxed as income.
Your argument is completely empty. A warehouse doesn't pay tax on everything it contains on an annual basis. A farm doesn't pay an annual tax on its livestock, despite those unequivocally being the property of farm. Why in the world should artists pay an annual tax on their intellectual property? Forget empty; your argument is ludicrous...
Re:for artists? (Score:4, Interesting)
To harken back to a previous arguement I made, ethics can trump economics. If not, we'd still have slavery.
Your arguement does point out a flaw that both sides are making however. They are equating the distribution of CDs and the distribution of Digital copies as if they were two different processes for the same result, that could be weighed vs each other. They are not the same thing.
The CD (cassette, album, whatever) always included in it's retail price the distribution cost, the advertising cost, the production cost, the management cost, and the payment to the talent for the original creation. They could get away with this method of bundling costs simply because until the mid-90s, CDs were not easily copied.
now that we have digital distribution (and digital copying), the industry will need to find a new way to monetize the other portions of the bundle, the advertising, the production, the management, and the talent payment. they need to find a way to do this not because their original method was the wrong way to do things, but only because it is now obsolete. A lot of people in the comments here are equating "0 price for distribution" now as "0 price for music, period", and that's simply wrong-headedness.
We've got a chance here to shape the way an industry and a cultural medium we all love (or else we wouldn't be in here) is reborn in the face of a new paradigm, and we're spending the time saying "lol fuck you mafiaa" instead.
Re:Royalties *are* taxed. Next argument? (Score:4, Interesting)
In the United States they do. In the US, companies will often destroy goods (and equipment) by scrapping because it's cheaper to destroy them than pay tax on the inventory. This is also why companies will periodically hold inventory-clearing sales with items at stupendously reduced prices.
I don't know about farms and livestock though.
Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
Producing the music and advertizing it costs money.
The main reason why producing and advertising costs so much is because the people who write the checks and the people who cash the checks are the same people. Here, read this. [negativland.com]
What do you think would happen if you had a manager and you told him, "Hey, we think these advertising costs are a bit much. I'd like to hit a few ad agencies on my own for quotes and see if I can find a better bargain." Do you think that would be met with, "Okay and jolly good! Let's try to save some money!" I'm betting not.
The real issue here is the middlemen. They've had a fantastic time of it so far, haven't they? They lock down bands with contracts as the barrier of entry into a closed system. It's closed because they have lobbied for it to be closed. That's why it's closed. Then they set the rules for who gets paid and how much. Then they write checks to themselves in whatever amount pleases them. Then they have the audacity to claim they are "protecting the artists". Then finally in a move of unmitigated gall they complain about the ethical implications of people who try to avoid their protection racket!
I'd love to pay the artists, but currently there isn't a legal way to do so without paying these parasites in the middle. And I think you'll find this to be a fairly popular idea. But the current system is so broken you can't sing Happy Birthday in public. Or how SoundExchange can collect royalties on songs they don't own. Even one you make up and stream yourself - they want royalties for that, and they are legally entitled to them.
It's like telling someone saying how important it is to obey the law. And then realizing Emperor Palpatane is running things. Makes the ethics a little fuzzy.