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.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: adapting, changes, copyright, david bowie, music
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Ahead of his time...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Great
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 thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
It's pretty sad to see the jackals picking at the corpse before it's even cold.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Or do you think of those with that idea with the same disdain because emotions are weakness?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
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 thread ]
Oh Techdirt, your douchey clueless-ness never pauses, does it?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Great
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 thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Great
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
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 thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_city-states:
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 thread ]
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 thread ]