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from the Gets-worse-before-it-can-get-better dept.
How low can copyright law go? Much further if the current lawsuits being flung around are any indication. Ed Sheeran is taking a hiatus to deal with a copyright claim from Sam Chokri against his song Shape Of You. The suit accuses Sheeran of stealing the Chorus from the song Oh Why after Chokri voluntarily submitted it to Sheeran's management. The resemblance between the tracks is said to be 'very slight', but this is not the first time Sheeran has been challenged in this matter, with the previous accusation being resolved by adding songwriting credits for parts borrowed from TLC's No Scrubs. Sam Smith caved in to Tom Petty's claim that his song Stay with me was in some way related to I Want Back Down, which must take a musician to spot, while Katy Perry lost a suit filed by a Christian hip hop artist who claimed that her song Dark Horse infringed on Joyful Noise due to that they both have "a slightly similar sharp stabbing synth and a basic trap beat" which resulted in Petty's lawyer commenting that “they’re trying to own basic building blocks of music, the alphabet of music that should be available to everyone.” With these big names being taken down by claims of similarity of the "feel" of the music this may be the beginning of the end of the music industry shooting itself in the foot.
Money better spent on hookers and blow.
See also, the short story Melancholy Elephants by Spider Robinson.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday September 09 2019, @01:23AM (2 children)
You're already modded to 5, so I'll reply. You put that in an excellent, succinct way: "The weight of the old culture is stifling the new."
I think that's true of many of our other systems right now. It's true in finance, it's true in business (conglomerates stifling startups), it's true in research & development (to wit: the patent wars), it's true in politics (witness how geriatric the crop of Democratic presidential candidates is). It's not a constant rate of clamp-down, though, but rather accelerating. The pattern reminds me of the concept in economics of the "velocity of money," where the rate at which money changes hands accelerates as a harbinger of inflation. All these systems clamping down on the new at increasing velocity is a harbinger of something I can't quite put my finger on, but its aura is a vague horror.
Your post has crystallized a notion that has been tumbling around my subconscious for months. When the weight of the old culture is stifling the new, what is one to do? When absolutely every economic transaction becomes a form of progressive entrapment, how does a person live? Karl Marx described a phenomenon in Das Kapital of alienation, whereby workers on production lines become drones producing empty objects, and it seems the same notion would map pretty well to every aspect of our lives as consumers now. Instead of every acquisition enriching us and empowering us, each diminishes us and entangles us. Creating music is not now bringing something new and joyful into the world to celebrate life, but the first step on an enslavement to a rapacious recording industry, with its agents and MBAs and lawyers each worming their vampiric tendrils into your heartblood.
So, walk away. If playing the record industry game is rigged, don't play it. Create the music for yourself and your friends. If they like it, they'll share it. If they share it, maybe you'll get enough interest to be able to sell tickets to small venues for a live performance. My wife follows a band called Girly Man that does that. They have wonderful songs that you'll never hear on the radio or car commercial, but it packs the crowds in for the small venues. The fans buy the CDs and merchandise every chance they get because they know 100% of it goes directly to the band. DIY, in a nutshell.
DIY takes more effort, but it's the best antidote to alienation and the weight of the old culture I've been able to come up with yet. It's not a panacea, but it's enormously satisfying to do something yourself exactly to your own liking and tell the world of bankers, lawyers, politicians, and all other varieties of parasites to take a hike at the same time.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Monday September 09 2019, @07:39AM (1 child)
thanks I appreciate this response.
What if I told you I did this and it has been enjoyable, but on days where I run out of money or have problems finding a tolerable dayjob that doesn't actually harm me, it feels really, really absurd to look at my stack of creations and contributions that are impossible to market or in some way use to prove that I actually don't deserve to starve like someone who has never lifted a finger in their life.
This is actually where I am, today. I am scrambling to find a new job, waiting for unemployment to even decide if I get it, literally out of money, buying today's food with coins i stored in a jar.
I've written and self-published 20,000 words this year, I performed a 2 hour free concert at my street's summer fest, I performed 5 times at an open stage at the local theater for big laughs. I write here to some pretty high ratings and I think a lot of people see it. Last year I wrote a collection of short plays, no theater or publisher has responded to my inquiries.
I am effectively demonotized by the system, pre-demonitizsed in my case, I didn't even get to the first stage of facegag success. Any number of agencies could actually just record all of my successes and wait for me to die, then hand the precrafted comedy and music bits as suggestions to some 17 year old stooge. It's not even I can't get past the gatekeeper, I can't find one.
This is unspeakably evil, to deny any success to actual creators on ideological grounds(we can't let people outside of our contro accrue power!) then taking the creations of bankrupted middle aged people dumb enough to dare criticize the cultural hegemony, and using it to give moeney to someone who will get to live a life of leisure off of it, wow that's evil.
But this is where we are headed and it seems to be by design.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 09 2019, @12:47PM
it sounds to me like you just want society to pay you because you like making music.
either you're incapable of doing anything else, in which case you are disabled and you should be supported somehow, or you choose not to do anything else.
"tolerable dayjob that doesn't actually harm me"... I'm not sure what you mean by that, but I'd guess there's around a billion people out there who would call you a lazy asshole for uttering such a sentence.
so you can't make money by doing the thing you love.
get over yourself and do something else so that you get a minimum wage.
if that's not possible, only then start complaining that you can't get money for food.