Hi, I have not posted in a while (I am very busy right now) but I thought many of you might be interested in a discussion about the way the music industry might work without copyrights. I have recently become addicted to a podcast about free and open source software called Lugradio. They normally do not talk about music a great deal but they recently have been discussing the topic in a two part conversation about the topic in two separate podcasts. A warning with those who have small children or who do not like course language. These podcasts do have course language. But they are very well done and it is an interesting discussion from the point of view of people who are knowledgeable about the way free and open source software works. If you are not interested in Linux you may wish to fast forward or skip untill they start talking about the music industry. The first podcast can be found here. The second podcast can be found here. The website for the music project they talk about is here.
Yea! That time I got rid of the code at the top of the post!
Intellectual property is not a valid form of property.
Without copyrights, musicians can still earn a living.
They can sell tickets to live performances.
They can still sell DVDs and downloads. If it was cheap and convenient to buy from a band’s website, why would you buy from someone else? Even if 90%+ of the people are rude and download for free or elsewhere, you only need a certain percentage of people to buy from you in order to profit. If I make 10,000 sales and there are 990,000 people downloading for free, then those 10,000 sales are enough to earn a decent living.
If you’re an amateur or obscure artists, offering free content helps you gain an audience. If you’re not well known, you WANT people copying your stuff!
Musicians can sell memorabilia, such as signed T-Shirts.
The business model for a mega-star is based on the fact that their work is being promoted by the mainstream media propaganda engine. An amateur artist doesn’t have that advantage.
While I agree that copyrights aren’t necessary, this point is completely irrelevant. It’s the same sentiment statists express when they decide that it’s okay to tax the rich and re-distribute their wealth because they can afford it. It matters not whether or not the person can still make a living, only that it is just.
It it possible to enforce copyrights without a government? No. Therefore, copyright is not a valid form of property.
Suppose musician A sells a copy of a song to B. B then gives a copy to C. Suppose A makes B sign a contract that says “I agree to not let others copy.” How can A prove that C copied from B? How is A even going to know that C has a copy, without spying on B and C all the time? Even if C has a copy, how can A prove it was copied from B? A can use digital watermarking, but people will find cleverer and cleverer ways to frustrate digital watermarking.
There’s no way to enforce intellectual property rights without a government. Therefore, intellectual property is not a valid form of property.
“Copying a song” is not the same as “stealing a car”. If you steal my car, I can say “Where’s my car?” If you copy a song, that doesn’t damage the original.
I don’t recall saying copyright was a valid form of property. But you could probably make a living if I only stole a couple dollars off of you every once in a while, that doesn’t make it right.
I thought copyrights were primarily used in the music industry as a recognition of one 's product of labor. I can copy a bands song, but I can not claim that I created that song. Metallica made “Enter Sandman”. I download a song on file sharing by X band, but it ends up being “Enter Sandman” perfectly recored as Metallica’s. But X band did not create that song, hence it is technically fraud.
The amount of labor that goes into song writing and the specific set up of millions of possible combinations of notes is utterly impossible for another set of humans to create off hand without prior knowledge. Copyrights are, at least the way I view it, a claim to the creation of that piece of sound.
Copying that is not valid as theft since you can not own ideas. But claiming that you created one’s work then selling it is fraud. Musicians life work is based on reputation. No one could make a living being a professional recording artist if they are not recognized as the creator of their piece of music. No one
Like products, once they are invented everyone is free to create them in a free market. But a song is not a typical product because there is no deduction or explanation that can claim that someone else could have came up with the exact same song on a rational basis, as there is in invention arguments.
Therefore a song has valid criteria as property, but does not muster up to the definition of ownership, because you can not dispose of it. I believe that most IP laws are creations of the State and the would not exist in a free market. But I have problems with music because it does involve labor
If copyright isn’t a valid form of property then what exactly is being stolen?
The master reels? Physical CD? The ‘performance’?
If some ‘pirate’ makes a hundred billion copies of a Metalica CD what physical property has the band been deprived of exactly?
This topic comes up quite a bit so if you want to know the ‘truth’ then I suggest finding one of the other threads where this has already been answered.
Just like any other kind of intellectual creation, it involves the arrangement of pre-existing concepts (in this case notes and lyrics) to create a new concept. The only difference with other intellectual creation is that the value of the concept doesn’t derives from the production of a good or service based on the concept but from the concept itself. That being the case, the only legitimate way that one could profit with a concept of this nature would be by creating a product or service associate with this concept (i.e. live shows, witch can be stolen or reproduced with exactitude by someone else).
And even if copyright were legitimate to any extend, how could they be enforce without the coercive power of the state?
Absolutely nothing. As I’ve said twice now I completely agree that copyright should be done away with, I just took issue with the way he made his argument. It’s meaningless to say you aren’t depriving the artist of making a living, because I could say the same thing for theft, which obviously violates the NAP.
I’m having a hard time figuring out what you mean here.
Are you saying that the ‘freeloaders’ are depriving the artists of making a living because they don’t buy their CD in preference to downloading a bit for bit exact copy of their music from the internets?
Musicians make the bulk of their money off of tours anyway. You can give away the album for free and do some tours and still earn a fat living. For example, in 2006 Madonna earned approximately $193.7 million for doing 60 shows. The Rolling Stones earned $437 million in 2006 and U2 earned $333 million. Now, granted most bands will never be as big as Madonna, the Rolling Stones or U2, that doesn’t change the fact that it is possible to earn a living giving away your albums and paying a lot of shows to earn a living.
No, I’m saying that whether freeloaders are depriving the artist of making a living or not doesn’t matter at all to this discussion.
I have often thought it odd how many artists (though not all) rail against capitalism (as understood by them) and yet will not complain at all if they earn tons of dinero through the economic system they call capitalism (even though, as most of us know, it is not true capitalism).
What difference does it make how capable they are of earning their livings in other ways? Either copyright is valid or invalid and should or shouldn’t be protected.
That is a good point - either it is valid or not. I may be able to survive despite the income tax but this does not make the income tax valid.
What are guys implying I’m saying here? That I support copyrights? How did you arrive at that conclusion?
I wasn’t implying anything at all, and I had this same discussion earlier in this thread also. It doesn’t matter whether you do support or don’t support copyrights. On either side of the issue making the point that the artist can/can’t make a living with or without copyrights is completely irrelevant to the argument. It’s pointless, I could justify stealing, taxes, and even physical abuse in the same way. It doesn’t make any of them right.
No, just as Stoltz said that justice does not derive from the ability to survive alone. Unlike some, I do think that IP could exist without government - it would simply be more flexible. Also, some might not wish to exercise their IP rights.