Scaring students conscious
The NYT reports on an unintended consequence of the filesharing lawsuits brought by the RIAA against students: political activism.
In this article from the New York Times (may require free registration), the group ‘Students for Free Culture’ is introduced as a political movement against what they describe as digital feudalism.
The group is named after the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig — which, incidentally, I thoroughly recommend to you. It’s free to download online, or you can pick up a dead tree version in the New Music Strategies bookstore.
Their position is that copyright is entirely broken (where have I heard that before?) because the law has not kept pace with technology. I’m inclined to agree. Lessig says that too many copyright restrictions ‘dampen creativity’. Sounds like sense.
Copyright is important
Don’t get me wrong: copyright is very important, but not because it’s a device through which corporations can make massive profits and sue students, dead grandmothers and pre-teen girls. I have no problem with corporations making profits, but their interests should not supersede those of the general public.
Copyright is important because it is meant to incentivise creativity, so that artists will be justly encouraged to create works that contribute to culture. Currently, it doesn’t do anything like that, and that’s a real shame. Artists should be rewarded for making musical works. People should be motivated to help get those works into the hands of as many people as they can. But that’s not what copyright, as it now stands, has very much to do with.
In fact, it locks down culture for as many years as it possibly can, prevents people from doing anything at all with it, and is only about maximising revenue rather than contributing to society and the intellectual and cultural life that music is supposed to enhance.
The word most often used in conjunction with copyright is ‘protection’. But copyright is not about ‘protection’. It’s about permission. Creative Commons licensing is a way to give certain types of permission and withhold others. It gets you out of the All Rights Reserved / No Rights Reserved dichotomy. I’m a bit of a fan, despite the common objection that it’s difficult to rescind permissions once given.
But to me, the real solution would be to throw out the existing copyright laws in their entirety, return to first principles and redraft them from scratch. What do we, as a society, want from our copyright laws? And what do the existing technologies enable that we could bring to bear on that?
Perhaps it’s not even about copying any more. Perhaps it’s about distribution now. But what we do know for sure is that the existing rules, designed and augmented to cater for the technologies and interests of the electric world, do not function well in the digital world.
Frightened into resistance
So these students, who are supposed to be frightened into compliance with a series of what can only be described as bad laws wielded with impunity, have instead been frightened into taking political action. The comparison made is what happened at universities during the Vietnam War, when students were frightened into action by the draft.
Think that’s an unfair comparison? Think how motivating the threat of up to $150,000 fine per downloaded song might be.
These are troubled times. The Iraq War, Afghanistan, global warming… But you want to inspire activism and get students to rally around a cause? Threaten them.
7 Comments. Write a comment or link to this post
netvalar
I was wondering how long it would take for enough people to stand up and say NO. This along with the class action suit filed in the States, and big artists leaving the major labels should be plenty big enough to give the music execs a wake up call. The future of music is with the technology not against it look at Magnatunes, Aimeestreet, and Sellaband. Not sure if any of these will last in the long term but def moving towards the future instead of beating the public into the past.
Oct 13th, 2007
warren love
I think that the argument that you can break a law because it is out of date strips away the last little bit of protection there is for the artist.
Student culture, in respect of music downloads, is selfish and their position one of convenience after the fact. It was there so I eat it mum logic and it would take a fair bit of convincing for me to accept that it is something else.
What ever pressures present technology places the individual under there is still the need for the consumer, in all respects and with many items, to exercise a degree of consideration. A student of mine who turned up with an external hard drive with 3000 songs on it admitted he hadn’t paid for any. This is getting something he has in fact ultimately little respect for.
A campign (if that’s what’s needed) should to be aimed in the first instance not at multi-nationals but at the consumer. The same thing is happening in design. Photographic artists are being stripped of their work by students for design projects. These same people can see the image. They recognise its quality but sense little of the struggle to get there.
I am for it being required that all ipods be copyright protected (i think you know what i mean)and we’ll see if the little buggers are so keen to take, and take for granted.
Oct 15th, 2007
Magnus
No, Warren, I have no idea what you mean about iPods needing to be copyright protected. Try to make one yourself and see what Apple’s lawyers do to you. But I guess you maybe think there should be a way to only make music that is paid for work on the iPod. Well, then noone would buy iPods.
Oct 15th, 2007
warren love
Exactly. Unless you have shares in apple mac i guess it shouldn’t really bother. If it was impossible to download files onto an ipod unless they had been paid for(and it can be done – we have the technology and could insist on it in every digital realm)then there would not have been this god awful mess in the first place. Who is responsible for that? Everyone in the industry is reeling from a change wrought by the tech companies. My question is why should they continue with impugnity to sell a technology the specific purpose of which is to rip off. This is not a luddite stance. It’s a simple question that can and should be asked. If, as it is suggested we strip back the laws of copyright and begin anew then the tech companies have to come to the party too to say what part they would play in sorting things out. Instead we must (as is the interesting stance of ‘New Music Strategies’) cope with the impossible. Music is free now. It’s anybodies and it doesn’t have to be paid for. Well we shouldn’t just sit back and accept that. Tech companies hide behind the fact that it isn’t them breaking the law. The end user does that. Yet we restrict the use of many things for many reasons. To suggest that students are championing the cause of music in this action seems a little odd to one whose generation really did champion it. We went out and bought. It was good to do so and many an obscure artist made a living thereby. Other income streams aside – its our music.
Oct 17th, 2007
netvalar
The music corps had the technology to limit P2P stealing and refused to license it so as to allow the P2P companies to work towards copyright protectioin. The major labels also had the means to work with the up and coming tech companies right from the get go back in 1998 They refused. Don’t get me wrong I would prefer copyrights protections and beliver that music should retain a value thus a charge to own a copy. However if the major labels had not tried to fight against new technologies and had worked with while pushing them forward we would have better protections now instead of the free for all. With that in mind the lawsuits would not have become needed. I therefore will stand behind the college students who are fighting against the generic all student are evil lawsuits being sent out to colleges.
The only P2P network company to have the license for the software developed by the major labels to thwart P2P stealing was one that the labels started back in the early 2000s or late 1990s which only lasted for a year 2 tops. And now to fight against the digital download companies the major labels are going to start their own. It too will probaly fail. Why do they want to try to reinvent something when they can merely use licensing procedures to work along side of.
Oct 24th, 2007
warren love
That’s interesting. I guess what you are saying is the majors will get control back through some form of industry agreement. However perhaps even that is too late as you seem to fear. There is some way to copy protect CDs isn’t there? This would give independent artist a means to control what goes down. The album is the base work which each artist would like i think to be able to determine how much of and what is of it is available for download. I think we have a great tendency to blame just web downloads. Nero is a major means by which many avoid paying? I hope I am not flogging a dead horse here – I am just interested for my own reasons. I give stuff away too. I need also to get on with it and increase overall web presence. Each approach would seem to me to have a part to play in the modern music environment.
Oct 27th, 2007
netvalar
Nero I would actually place in the same lines as cassettes used to be. Burning a song is similar to recording a song. One difference though is that burning a song the song has to be on your computer in digital format. As for using cassettes you just had to be able to hear it many people recorded songs from the radio at that time.
Artists and lables have given music away free for years the difference is who controls when the music is free. It is one thing to give music away for promotional reasons, it is another thing when people take the music for free without it being promotional.
The recent argument of music being like water doesn’t hold up for me either. Music can’t be treated as an utility.
Back to the college thing many of the lawsuits are being sent to the colleges with the assumption that students are downloading. No evidence used for these. Another example of the lawsuits going too far is the old lady who didn’t even own a computer let alone have internet access. And of course my favorite the disabled person who owned over 100 cds and because they were on his computer along with a P2P program was sued. Mind you these somgs were not in a shared file.
As for industry agreement no that won’t work now. Now it is a matter of playing catch up with the technology even thier once useful program to prevent P2P theft is outdated. Of course Limewire is attempting to force a patent licensing issue in court. If successful then Limewire can look at the code and possible upgrade it so that it can be put to use on P2P networks. Though I haven’t heard more on that for several months.
Oct 28th, 2007
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