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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: 1) by khallow on Monday September 09 2019, @03:33PM (11 children)
Managers aren't large labels. Instead, that's a second similar problem which also comes from good managers in the area being more scarce (due to competition for their services outside of the field, if you can manage a bunch of poor musicians, then you probably can manage something that pays better) than good musicians. Thus one shouldn't expect every good musician to have their own good manager.
And that's typically the solution to the oversupply. Most do work in other areas where their services are more valued.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday September 09 2019, @07:21PM (10 children)
The economic of the record industry is one of an obsolete business model that's completely relies on government regulation (music copyrights) to sustain itself at a time via streaming royalties when you can technically download music CDs by the thousands for free. So, when regulation is already what's keeping the industry going, supply (of artists) and demand (for records) is largely immaterial.
This is the whole premise of banning public playback of recorded music. The record industry isn't benefiting society as much as their bottom line and tax statement suggest. They're concentrating wealth out of the hand of the creative and skilled artists into the hands of the middlemen. They're poisoning Washington with lobbies demanding weakened encryption, DRM, DMCAs, campaign funds, ISP level filtering etc... Their current "success" is youtube, spotify and iTunes: Highly centralized services that are doing more for the label's talents then they are for unsigned, private artists trying to break through the recommended lists.
That's where an Uber for musicians should kick in.
But again, if copyrights weren't there, all supply would be oversupply since no one would buy recorded music at all. So, we're not talking about regulating an otherwise successful unregulated market. We're talking about reforming a failed market that does nothing to compensate its workforce and everything to deprive consumers.
Overall, this is a choice between the artists and the middlemen. And between existing regulations and laziness, the tech industry and society as a whole made the wrong choice.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 10 2019, @03:53AM (9 children)
Except, of course, that's not true and the parties with the least pricing power are the ones in greatest supply - as one would expect.
Because? I'll note that people pay for SoylentNews even though it's free.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday September 10 2019, @11:12AM (8 children)
Because we've already seen it happen when MP3s became available. Because albums aren't social but youtube / story comments are. Why do people play MMORPGs over single player RPGs? Why do kids buy cosmetics in Fortnite? Why do people post all the music, books and comics they buy on their social posts? Socialization and status signaling. When you go to a pub and pay 3 times for a vodka shot, you're not being ripped off. You know it's too expensive. That's the point. The price gauging is you sending a message: I can afford paying 3 times for luxuries for the privilege of associating with similarly well-to-dos. People want a barrier between themselves and lower social classes to feel reassured and secure about themselves. At the very least, they're satisfied to converse and be around like-minded people.
But that's the whole point. The consumers are the people buying albums. The true suppliers are the artists. The record companies are only there because the government decided it. They have no pricing power of their own without government regulation. Back when booking venues, recording and distribution justified large corporations, the public benefited from the arrangement. But nowadays it's an outdated model. Rappers are producing albums in their bedrooms. Youtube is doing all the lucrative distribution. It's technically viable to replace the managers with an online service.
Understand, you're not advocating for deregulation. You're advocating for old, outdated regulations. in this case, the corporations are the horse and buggy people while the individuals craftsmen are the car people. And right now, the laws and practices you're defending are saying each buggy has to have a horse, a license for the horse, a groomer certificate, an 1st and 2nd party insurance and a lawyer on retainer. It's really is that much of a disparity between what technology should be enabling for both the public and artist's benefits, and what the pro-corporation regulations are providing.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 10 2019, @03:39PM (7 children)
No, that's incorrect.
Understand, you're not advocating for deregulation. You're advocating for old, outdated regulations.
Like what? This isn't about Disney-length copyright or suing someone because their song sounds remotely like yours did. It's about the fact that large labels still provide services that you acknowledged occurred in the past. There are still economies of scale to various activities in this industry that large labels can provide.
Managers != large labels. This is a different role than what large labels do.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday September 10 2019, @08:02PM (6 children)
Yes it is.
Wait, what beneficial, relevant services are they still providing? My whole argument is that they have out grown and out lived their usefulness. That there's no economic of scales on their part at all if you take away their hard-lobbied protections. That the whole thing should have been redone around streaming for private homes and live shows in public without any labels and record companies at all.
Some musicians need someone to negotiate venues, advertising and copyrights. Managers, labels and record companies all took those different roles depending on expected sales and personal relations. Nowadays however, there's just no scale at the top justifying labels and record companies. What lends them economic of scales is the ability to negotiate copyrights in bulk thanks to having so many signed artists and how venues want to be able to book a whole month without having to worry about the details. But, if you'd remove the venues issue through an Uber-like service and put massive amount of musicians into the "workforce" through the playback rule I've mentioned, you'd be taking off their whole legitimacy off the table since the artists are just getting so little from the copyrights and the advertising doesn't justify such a big specialized operation.
Look, I don't think you realize how damaging this "to-scale" IP policy has been to the US economy. The current trade war where Trump is complaining about a trade deficit over the Chinese not paying enough for IP is the natural result of the US persistently inflating the value of IP for over a century to justify it. The whole nation gone Micky Mouse with Hollywood accounting to devalued labor and innovation in favor of outsourcing, trading in ideas and paper-pushing. This isn't just about a few musicians getting paid. This is about the inflation in America's top exports. It's about smartphone companies being valued at $1trillion since they own an MP3 store with lots of exclusives and patents for rounded corners. Too many minimum wage artists and scientists isn't the problem. The problem is too many middlemen skimming off the top to the point the customer is unwilling to pay and you're spending more money on enforcing the inflated prices than you are at actually innovating. That's what this whole thing is about.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 11 2019, @04:07AM (5 children)
Ok, how do you go platinum from a website? How do you market your songs to foreign countries? There's well-developed infrastructure here that you're ignoring.
They still do. Again managers aren't large labels nor would it ever make business sense to do so. There's too much conflict of interest there.
This has nothing to do with your assertion that regulation explains why the little guy gets little revenue. I've already acknowledged that there's big problems here. But when your product is something that any kid with a guitar can produce after a few years of hard core practice, then it's not the labels standing in your way.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday September 11 2019, @06:15PM (4 children)
How is going platinum beneficial or relevant? That's just pointing on the one lottery winner and saying lottery pays. Take all the album sales and profits and now subtract the true costs of copyright litigation and enforcement that the tax payers cover indirectly. Also note just how much geopolitical capital the US spends on getting its IP legislation matched and enforced globally. Did you forget how the last couple of trade treaties fell apart? Or maybe where the US currently stands versus China in the trade talks? This a very convoluted form of the broken windows fallacy where all the loses are absorbed by the public and all the profits are sent to the top with little to nothing going to the artists.
Yes it does. Regulation that act as a barrier for entry shift costs to the point where little guys can't compete and become dependent on large entities that can, and do, pay them as much as they'd like. Pharmaceuticals... Automobiles... Infrastructure and Energy... In many industries it's necessary due to safety and public health concerns. Even the regulation I suggested to ban public playback would have shifted costs to business owners to pay salaries for the musicians performing which would have shifted costs to the people visiting those establishments. What it comes down to is whether the end result is sustainable and whether the public befits sufficiently from it. And I'm confident in saying another salary in every McDonald's and Starbuck would hardly make a difference when compared to the costs associated with litigating and enforcing music copyrights.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 11 2019, @11:04PM (3 children)
Because that's what a lot of people want, just like that's the reason that a lot of people play the lottery. Not any point to the rest of your paragraph because that's not the services offered by the large label.
You just assured me that going platinum (and other such things) wasn't relevant. Now there's barrier to entry for these irrelevant things?
It's grotesquely anti-democratic and violates the right of free speech. Remember you were complaining about how the large label depended on regulation and law to sustain their business model? You're doing the same here.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday September 13 2019, @06:46PM (2 children)
So those people should pay for it. Not the public. The state lottery is justified as an illegal gambling to deny criminals a revenue source and because it being profitable means the money is then used to fund public projects. The subject was debated and tested repeatedly before it got the wide adoption it has now. Copyrights aren't there.
Relevant to whom? Under what conditions? You keep taking everything I say out of context and expect serious replies. Making platinum records is irrelevant to the public interest. It's irrelevant to the musicians as a group. It's only relevant to the record companies and a few musicians. And to get there, there are barrier of entries.
1. Copyrights are a limitation on free speech by definition so of course anything discussed regarding them and their execution is going to violate one definition or the next of free speech. The only question is whether it's limiting political discourse.
2. You're already required to get a "performance license" from the copyright holder if you want to playback works in public. The state can just tax such licenses by a factor of a million. Nothing illegal there.
3. This isn't about speech. It's about playback of speech in public. Music specifically. Try blasting music via your speakers on the street and you'll be arrested for some disturbance of the peace or something. There's already time tested laws working in that domain from rallies and demonstrations putting demands for permits and such. If you want to playback something in a political convention, go ahead.
That's not what I was complaining about. All industries depend on the government for protection in form or the next and regulations are just that. My complain was that they depend on regulations to sustain a business model that doesn't benefit the public. When businesses need the public to pay to police downtown, it makes sense. When book authors need copyrights to be able to keep writing, it makes sense. When musicians need(ed) copyrights to make a living, it made sense. But that's not the case anymore. The musicians aren't living off the recordings. They only use them to promote their performances. So the protection is no longer required.
Regardless, you seem to refuse to read anything I write in the context it was written forcing me to repeat myself without raising any new arguments. So, I'm out.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 13 2019, @10:36PM
Sorry, I don't buy that the limitations copyrights create on free speech are equivalent to the limitations provided by "ban public playback". After all, copyright only applies to the works of the owner, and they can choose to waive their copyright. One can't waive a ban on public playback.
Except of course when the musicians are living off of the recordings. Not everyone performs as well as they record. In fact, most don't. And it's very possible to create music that simply can't be performed (unless of course your idea of performance is playing a recording in public with flashing lights and whatnot). Then what?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 14 2019, @12:31AM
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Sorry, you wrote that first paragraph. When someone says "This isn't about speech. It's about playback of speech in public.", then they're missing something really big. The context that you wrote that in is that you don't have a fucking clue what you just wrote nor of the freedom of speech. Of course, playback of speech is speech. It's insane to start picking and choosing what expressions and implementation of speech are or aren't actually speech when it's obvious that they all are speech. It's speech if you say it. It's speech if you sing it. It's speech if you type it out with a computer or reading it on a remote computer connected by a wired-based network apparatus. And it's speech if you are playing it back in public. Getting something so fundamental to our exercise of freedom of speech so wrong is a strong indication just on its own of how much else you are getting wrong in this thread.
And it's funny how the people complaining that I'm putting words in their mouths are the same ones with these massively dysfunctional beliefs. A huge part of the context of what you write is what you write. Take better care of that, if you want the context to be sound.