David Bowie's Legacy On Copyright And The Future Of Music

from the exciting-times,-if-you're-looking-forward,-rather-than-back dept

Amid the steady stream of "hot takes" the past few weeks on the legacy of the late great David Bowie, The Washington Post's Robert Gebelhoff dug up some of the rock legend's contrarian views on copyright, if only to rebuke them thoroughly.

Gebelhoff's piece cited a 2002 interview Bowie gave to The New York Times in which he prophesied: "I'm fully confident that copyright...will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing…It's terribly exciting."

Exciting though it may have been, Bowie's prediction obviously has not come to pass, for which Gebelhoff says we should be thankful. In his piece, he notes that strong copyright laws "play an essential role in our creative economy – and have done so for centuries." He cites as evidence a recent Stanford University/NBER study on how differing laws in Italian city-states led to more operas being produced where copyright was protected.

Bowie has long been an innovator and music visionary, experimenting with early ways to use the Internet to "cybercast" concerts and connect with fans. But it's important that Bowie wasn't necessarily seeking the death of copyright (after all, he used it to make a living). Instead, he was paying heed to what digital media already had done to revolutionize copyright-centered industries.

What he got right was detecting traditional copyright industry's anxiety – the same anxiety that has led them to push successfully for copyright terms to be extended by nearly 580 percent over the last 200 years. Mickey Mouse famously has enjoyed several retroactive copyright term extensions since Walt Disney's death, though Walt has yet to take advantage of this added incentive.

So why would Bowie, whose fortune and fame owed so much to the music industry, be excited about the end of copyright? The answer is straightforward: as a working, successful musician and producer, he knew as well as anyone that unlimited copyright protection could hinder creation, as well as remunerate it. If you're a fan of Bowie's "Young Americans," you know that part of its power as a song derives directly from its unembarrassed quotation of the Beatles song "A Day in the Life."

While copyright didn't disappear in the decade since Bowie's interview, Bowie was in many ways right about the impending shakeup of the industry. More and more consumers, particularly millennials, are listening to their music on demand through a streaming subscription, rather than purchasing copies a la carte. Remix has become a central technique for new creativity. And heavy-handed copyright can get in its way. Look, for instance, at what future presidential candidate Kanye West did with Ray Charles' "I Got a Woman." Bowie's vision that "music itself is going to become like running water or electricity" turned out to be pretty accurate.

This trend has led to sharply declining revenues from physical sales (except for vinyl, which is doing fine, thanks to hipsters) and a steadily increasing share for streaming. Digital downloads are still popular and continue to represent a major revenue source for now. As physical formats have fallen out of favor, as Bowie perhaps foresaw, the industry experienced a period of sharp disruption.

The result has been not just depressed global revenues, but also a whole apparatus of production, distribution and retail falling away. As a 2015 study by Midia observed, the narrative of "music industry decline is a label phenomenon." Which echoes what Bowie saw coming in 2002: "I don't even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don't think it's going to work by labels and by distribution systems in the same way."

Of course, the role of our copyright system is not to protect established industries from disruption. Policymakers shouldn't protect the record store from Apple or the bookstore from Amazon. Our nation's founders gave Congress a mandate to use copyright to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." That is, to provide the carrot to spur artistic creation. If we take copyright "incentives" too far, they can undermine artistic freedom by imposing limits on other forms of creative expression and uses of tangible property.

Even the opera study Gebelhoff cites in his piece acknowledges this, as its authors write that "there is no clear evidence" that copyright extension beyond the author's life span creates meaningful incentives. In fact, they suggest it has little effect "beyond the first five years." In an article about the study, New York University law professor Christopher Jon Sprigman notes that: "[this] conclusion is particularly important because our contemporary debate is usually not whether to have copyright at all, but rather whether to extend already very long copyright terms."

Bowie was wrong that copyright would end, but he was right that copyright as we know it is under threat. Its foundation, built for an analog age, increasingly struggles to function in the digital one. And its market, warped by decades of heavy-handed government intervention and industry carve-outs, doesn't know how to operate freely anymore.

That's why substantial reforms will be inevitable. As Congress slowly moves in that direction, it should be mindful of this lesson: stronger copyright laws don't automatically incentivize more creative freedom. In fact, they often come at its expense.

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Filed Under: adapting, changes, copyright, david bowie, music


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  • identicon
    Pixelation, 5 Feb 2016 @ 9:54am

    Ahead of his time...

    Musically and in regards to Copyright. RIP Ziggy!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 5 Feb 2016 @ 9:56am

    Great

    Why do we worship these bastards? We cannot get anywhere in life because of all of the celebrity worship.

    His politics on fascism alone makes him a fucking turd disconnected with reality. Sure he blamed this on the drugs... that's right cannot forget these all are drug addled idiots we like to worship.

    From hollywood to the nfl we worship people that do nothing but produce art.

    People say we could end hunger on the amount of money we spend on war. How much more could be done with the money and worship spent on entertainment? O shit, I just trampled a LOT Of RELIGIONS right there...

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 5 Feb 2016 @ 1:00pm

      Re: Great

      You don't have to worship someone to enjoy what they do. And you're right, entertainment is not a necessity. However, why would we do away with all entertainment? What do you do to entertain yourself? Whatever it is, I suggest you stop it immediately and give whatever money you spend on your hobby to the poor.

      Yeah, there are some 'worshipers' who absolutely follow whatever does. And yeah, there are some people who actually listen to whatever dumb ass things celebrities say about politics. Why anyone would listen to a famous person just because they're famous is way beyond me, but I doubt many people are actually taking the dumb shit most celebrities say as seriously as you seem to.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      jupiterkansas (profile), 5 Feb 2016 @ 6:39pm

      Re: Great

      It's not about worshiping Bowie. It's about listening to someone who's very successful in their business talk about their business. If he were discussing something unrelated you might have a point.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 5 Feb 2016 @ 10:23am

    If Intellectual Property is to be truly treated as property, then there should be a property tax on continuing to hold the rights to it. And should you fail to pay the property tax on your IP, then we do what can happen with physical property and the government repossesses it and it then enters the public domain.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Whatever (profile), 5 Feb 2016 @ 10:28am

    David Bowie's legacy so far appears to be (a) a whole lot of posting trying to re-interpret the things he said and did to meet up to people's agendas, and (b) semi-talented musicians trying to suck up by producing various tribute albums and using his music to promote their own brands.

    It's pretty sad to see the jackals picking at the corpse before it's even cold.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 5 Feb 2016 @ 10:46am

      Re:

      I'm sorry that you have become so jaded that you so easily discount the idea that he had a lot of fans, many of them musicians themselves, and that they might want to do something to celebrate him or have their appreciation for him rekindled by his death.

      Or do you think of those with that idea with the same disdain because emotions are weakness?

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      jupiterkansas (profile), 5 Feb 2016 @ 6:40pm

      Re:

      Hmm... and I thought his legacy was a ton of great music.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    mattshow (profile), 5 Feb 2016 @ 11:17am

    Peripherally related, but mostly just an excuse for me to complain:

    It appears that the Life Aquatic Studio Sessions, a collection of David Bowie covers by a Brazillian musician, is no longer available on Google's music streaming service, at least not in Canada. This is almost certainly a licensing issue. It has been available previously - I'm not sure when it was removed (ie. whether it was removed recently to capitalize on renewed interest due to his death).

    So THAT'S a kick in the junk.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 5 Feb 2016 @ 12:11pm

    "except for vinyl, which is doing fine, thanks to hipsters"

    Oh Techdirt, your douchey clueless-ness never pauses, does it?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    tqk (profile), 6 Feb 2016 @ 4:16am

    ... future presidential candidate Kanye West ...

    You have got to be kidding me.

    On the other hand, "Under Pressure ..." Yes, copyright sure should feel under pressure. It's perverted its usefulness. When enough people learn of what's being done with it, it'll go away.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 8 Feb 2016 @ 1:35am

    [...]how differing laws in Italian city-states led to more operas being produced where copyright was protected.


    From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_city-states:
    The Italian city-states were a political phenomenon of small independent states mostly in the central and northern Italian peninsula between the 9th and 15th centuries.


    I mean studies of general trends are fine and all but you think they could have gone to a study of media & copyright analyzing more recent times to try and prove their point?

    Oh wait! Most recent studies show that very long copyright doesn't really benefit anyone but a few very large corporations... Hmmm... I wonder.

    I'm sure Disney is VERY grateful David Bowie was wrong...

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    JBDragon, 8 Feb 2016 @ 12:21pm

    I don't have a problem with Copyright. Just with the extreams it's taken!!!! No copyright should last longer then 20 years. 10 years should be more like it. That's more then long enough to make money off of whatever new thing YOU did!!!

    This lasting 50-100+ years, basically forever at this point is just crazy Does anything ever go into the Public Domain anymore??? Long after the person that created it died, wife gone, hell even the kids are gone, now it's the grand kids living off of it or some mega corporation. This is the problem and it needs to end. Nothing should be longer then 20 years. Some things even less, 15, 10, or 5 years. That's it!!! Create something you. If you're dead, then it doesn't effect you any more.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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