BS: Should Music on the WWW be free? ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Should Music on the WWW be free? ;-)
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 23 Nov 00 - 12:04 AM

As Wolfgang said...T has been around here for awhile. I've enjoyed his posts so much that many are bookmarked, and I even referred a newspaper feature article writer to T's posts. The references are quite timely and provide lots of information and primary references for anyone trying to understand this field. As I said once before...keep 'em coming, I'm reading them.

Subject: RE: BS: Should Music on the WWW be free? ;-)
From: John P
Date: 24 Nov 00 - 09:37 AM

Okiemockbird, O.K., I went back and re-read your posts. I see that you are not saying that copyright should not exist, but rather that it should exist as an encouragement to artists to produce works of art -- not as a way for holder's of copyrights to continue to financially milk those works of art for umpteen years. I can go along with that. Sorry I jumped to conclusions about what you were trying to say. There have been so many people on the newsgroups and elsewhere who want all music to be free that I and many others are sort of touchy on the subject. Especially offensive are the ones who say "If it is folk music, it belongs to the folk" or those who believe that we need to make as many copies as possible to make sure the old songs don't get lost. Of course, most just want something without having to pay for it.

One comment you made needs some response:
"Many of the recent developments in copyright law amount to a brutal rape of the public domain, rather than its cultivation. In light of this brutality, I feel that those who complain about the free circulation of musical recordings on the web are not entitled to any words of support from me. I don't participate in the circulation of unlicensed MP3 recordings of copyrighted music, but I won't be very quick to condemn it until those who speak so piously about artists' rights show more than a perfunctory appreciation of the public's right to a constantly growing public domain in musical and literary expression."
One thing you have to remember is that, in this forum, you are not dealing with big companies who are trying to make a mega-buck. We are small-time folk musicians trying to make a living. Most of us are thrilled when our tunes and songs are mistaken for public domain works, but we are even more thrilled to get a bit of money for them. Fifty people having pirated copies of one of my albums represents a substantial financial loss for me. Yes, I speak piously about artists' rights. This doesn't mean I am brutally raping the public domain, or that I don't deserve support from you in figuring out how to deal with the problem of piracy.

I'm also unsure about the whole concept of the public having a right to a constantly growing public domain. The government supporting the creation of a larger public domain I can go along with, but I don't think I can take it as a given that the public has a right to it. Can you expand on your reasoning here?

John

Subject: RE: BS: Should Music on the WWW be free? ;-)
From: T in Oklahoma (Okiemockbird)
Date: 08 Dec 00 - 08:28 PM

For more copyright humor check out copyrighting fire.

John P., you wrote:

Yes, I speak piously about artists' rights. This doesn't mean I am brutally raping the public domain, or that I don't deserve support from you in figuring out how to deal with the problem of piracy.

If you read carefully the words of mine that you refer to, you'll see that the metaphor of a brutal assault on the public domain is not used as a metaphor for the actions of any human individual, but as a metaphor for the operation of some recently-enacted provisions of the copyright law. It's true, though, that I chose those words to be provocative: I was angry when I wrote them. Like you, I have become touchy about some issues.

I consider what we now call the public domain to be inseparable from freedom of expression. This freedom is unalienable at its core, but partially alienable at its margins. In order to enlarge the public domain we, the public, give up a marginal slice of our freedom of expression temporarily to authors in order to allow them better odds of profiting from their writing than they would otherwise face. Copyright is not an author's inherent right prior to any law: it is a sacrifice by the public of some of the public's rights to the author for a public purpose.

Those who want music to be free may be right in their instincts, since freedom is the proper condition of every human being, and to be freely available to all is the proper condition of all works of the mind. BUT: the public has made a deal with authors, agreeing to refrain from exercising its full rights in the authors' works for a time. If the deal is reasonable and fair, the public needs to hold up its end of the deal. If the deal is not reasonable and fair (as presently in the U.S.), it becomes a matter of individual conscience whether to abide by the copyright law notwithstanding, or conscientiously to disregard it. In those cases where uplinking unauthorized MP3s of copyrighted music to Napster is a mature, well-thought-out act of civil disobedience, I will hesitate to judge those who engage in it, even if I would not have made the same decision.

We might suspect that some users of Napster are not sober conscientious objectors to the copyright law, but mere opportunists. Where the copyright law has become contemptible, however, widespread disregard for it shouldn't surprise us, even if it doesn't please us. In an earlier post I described copyright as "a tax on readers for the benefit of writers." One of my critics thought this a step on the road to "madness", but those who are familiar with the history of copyright in English-speaking countries will have recognized the reference to Thomas Macaulay's speech in the House of Commons on February 5th, 1841, where he said:

The principle of copyright is this. It is a tax on readers for the purpose of giving a bounty to writers. The tax is an exceedingly bad one; it is a tax on one of the most innocent and most salutary of human pleasures; and never let us forget that a tax on innocent pleasures is a premium on vicious pleasures.

Macaulay went on to conclude his speech with a warning which I think applies to our present situation here in the U.S.:

Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men...Pass this law, and this feeling is at an end....On which side, indeed, should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress ?...The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create.

T.