Three Artists On Piracy: Sharing, Disruption And Turning Filesharers Into Your Street Team

from the stupid-filthy-helpful-pirates dept

There's a lot of discussion here at Techdirt about filesharing. Much of the discussion focuses on various legacy industries and their efforts to fight infringement, as well as their continued cultivation of artificial scarcity, which often sends potential customers towards unapproved sources. Various artists have also weighed in on the matter, offering their perspective as those most directly affected by filesharing. Some embrace it. Others view it as a threat to their chosen professions. No matter which side they take, it's largely viewed as inevitable or inescapable. But inevitable or not, the discussion continues.

In the interest of furthering the discussion, I'd like to draw your attention to three separate posts on the subject of filesharing, each one written by an artist with "skin in the game," as they say.

The first post is very timely, considering the recent rumor that Bruce Willis was taking Apple to court to secure his ability to pass his iTunes library on to his next-of-kin. Dessa, a rapper and member of the Doomtree Collective, draws a parallel between Monsanto and Apple and their sale of licenses rather than goods in order to better "secure" easily duplicated items and prevent sharing. Dessa also makes a further connection (filesharing to seed-sharing collectives), showing that these restrictive licenses fly in the face of normal human behavior.

Peddling a product that consumers can duplicate for free is a tricky business. With affordable consumer technology, you can now copy a song a hundred times, with no degradation in the sound quality—and most people seem to immediately recognize why that’s gonna make it harder to get paid for songs. But my first experiences with lossless, duplicable technology didn’t have anything to do with my career as a rapper. My first encounter wasn’t with a torrent site. Or a bootlegged disc. It was a tomato.

Seeds, quite obviously, are the mechanism of plant duplication. You drop a sunflower seed in wet dirt and, bang, you get a brand new one. Essentially, you just 'burned’ a sunflower. The seeds of this new plant can then be harvested and planted to create an infinite, almost lossless supply of flowers and seeds.

The connection continues. Monsanto sells licenses for the technology in the seed, not the seed itself, explicitly forbidding the resale or transfer of its seeds to unlicensed "users." iTunes does the same. Purchasers are forbidden from doing anything with their library other than what is explicitly allowed by the EULA. The right of first sale is stripped away because the purchasers have nothing to sell. They own nothing.

In addition, she points out that users agree to stipulations they'd never agree to with physical goods (as opposed to licenses), like being monitored (Apple says "technologies" will be used to verify compliance with the license terms; Monsanto's verification method is even more Big Brother-ish -- "aerial photography").

These rules and regulations can undermine our fundamental ideas of what it means to actually own something. In most of our purchasing lives, we pay for product and then we can do with it as we like... So If I’m only allowed to interact with my purchase in meticulously prescribed ways...it starts to feel less like mine. Like a pet I'm not allowed to touch or see.

Losslessly reproducible technologies are just complicated things to own... In many ways, the whole ownership model just seems poorly suited to duplicable technology... When we try to force new technology into the old model, our contracts end up sounding really, well, creepy. Instead of asking, Whose is this, who gets paid for it, and how much?, the conversation might be better reset by asking What is this, who made it, who uses it, and what’s fair?

The second post features the writing of recording artist and netlabel co-founder Bunny Intonamorous (presumably not his real name). His post goes long, spurred on by a statement made by a different set of artists, a pair that create likenesses of recording artists using the artists' own CDs.

Mirco Pagano and Moreno de Turco were quoted in the article as saying that "Piracy infects and destroys music, preventing artists to succeed and become idols as in the past."

My fury is two-fold: piracy of music prevents no-one from succeeding let alone infecting and destroying music, and also this (frankly outdated) notion that to be successful in music you have to be some kind of mega-stadium-level superstar money-machine.

There's a lot in Bunny's post (which runs a few thousand very entertaining and informative words) discussing what's wrong with these assumptions. While piracy has affected some artists ability to sell music, for the most part, that wasn't where they were making the most money anyway. Touring is where the money was and still is for many (though not all) artists. Piracy can't touch that.

The other positive aspect of piracy is that it has changed the music landscape from an industry that sold artists (and their art) to consumers, presenting the artists as "idols" and "icons," to something more democratic, more varied, and perhaps most importantly, more personal:

For better or worse (read: better) piracy is here and it's changed things. These days an artist has to have a presence over data-rich streaming sites such as soundcloud and bandcamp if they accurately want to gauge the size of their audience and tour efficiently enough to get money out of it and start building a reputation. And even then, it's risky, but it negates the main problems with piracy and money can, and will, still be made. I certainly wouldn't say that piracy is killing music. In fact, it's making a lot more music more widely available, which increases the amount of different breeding grounds there are, technically (though not necessarily) increasing the amount of interesting acts and artists out there.

In fact piracy of music software has broken down boundaries even further. Not only can people hear and experience a wider range of inspirational existing music, but now musical creation has become more widely available.

Just as there are those whose musical stasis prompts them to ask questions about who the next "Dylan" or "Led Zeppelin" or "Beatles" will be, there are those who wonder how today's severely fractured market and wealth of distractions will ever produce another 25-million-album seller like Michael Jackson (or even $35K a year). Those that blame this lack of multimillionaire chart dominators solely on piracy, rather than on underlying cultural shifts, economic woes, a multitude of new distractions and other disruptions are merely settling for a convenient whipping boy, rather than actually working on fixing their problems.

And this is one of many reasons I really appreciate how piracy has changed the face of musical culture (along with the internet in general, of course): it has forced musicians to stop the whole rock 'n' roll, "untouchable", get-the-fuck-away-from-me attitude that beleaguered "legends" for some time, and encouraged artists to interact with their fans. This not only creates entirely new platforms for interaction other than just through audio, but has also de-fangs and de-mystifies these people, which then decreases the amount of "artist anxiety" someone faces when looking to create.

Yearning for idols and blaming piracy for today's "weak" music market is nothing more than rose-tinted nostalgia rewriting the history of the recording industry, turning it from an exploitative commercial venture into the deflowered victim of millions of basement dwellers. Those who rail against the "level playing field" are constantly working to conform this disruption to fit their favored narrative.

My biggest gripe with the whole "legends" argument, however, is that there needs to be some form of monopoly on 1) record sales, and 2) the public consciousness in terms of music. The second point, I fear, is the impulse of monoculture - that same impulse that abhorred subcultures in times past (which is slowly also being eroded, thankfully - be who you want! choose your friends! etc. - another wondrous example of what technology can bring you). Either way the suggestion is that, the way musical culture has been headed for the past few years is utterly wrong.

Granted, musical culture and money are in a strange state of flux at the moment, but the trends have been leaning towards a more aware, more (arguably) moral state of business: that you pay for what you enjoy so that these musicians - who generally tend to be very thankful - get if not all the cash you gave them, then at least a fairly sizeable chunk.

There's a thought: Support your favorite artists directly, rather than hoping a small portion of your $14.99 makes its way to them after passing through an entire office full of unrelated staff and a multi-level supply chain.

The final stop on this filesharing three-fer is over at Feral Intensity, home of self-published author Gayla Drummond. If you're not familiar with her, all you need to know is this: she is one of the few authors who came to the defense of LendInk during the Twitter-fed witch hunt.

Drummond begins her filesharing saga by describing herself as someone who originally felt piracy was "bad," but unlike others, she didn't just make the assumption and move on :

I researched to discover what the major reasons for piracy were, and came up with three: availability, DRM, and price.

Her reaction?

As a result, I distributed my work to as many sites as possible, made it DRM free where I was able to, and experimented with pricing to find what people were willing to pay for it. I stated more than once that I was totally okay with people loaning my ebooks to others (before lending systems on Amazon, etc), but did ask that they please not put my work on file sharing sites.

This is a refreshing change of pace from so many other stories that begin and end with "there's no excuse for piracy" and result in the ratcheting up of various piracy countermeasures until they reach the "draconian" level. However, the story continues:

Then someone did. Tria’s Tale ended up on one in January 2011.

My reaction was something along the lines of ‘Jeeze, the one thing I ask people not to do!’ and then it was ‘Oh, well’. Except when I checked the file sharing site, I discovered they required people to pay a membership fee in order to download anything. That got my back up; the site was making money from offering access to my, and others’, content. They weren’t selling the actual files themselves, just access to them. That was not okay with me. I sent a DMCA notice and within 72 hours, the site removed the link to Tria’s Tale.

So far, par for the course. Sharing is one thing, piracy is quite another, etc. DMCA served and content removed. Except... this isn't the end of Drummond's brush with piracy. First, she noticed this:

I can’t say whether it’s related or not, since I actually just realized it last night, but my sales doubled in 2011. That link was only up for 10 days at the most, but for all I know, it was related to the sales increase.

Anecdotal. Correlation and causation, etc. It would be easy to dismiss this as a coincidence, but rather than just wave it away, Drummond decided to pursue this angle. Discouraged by a lack of feedback and the grind of self-publishing and self-promotion, she decided to turn over her books to the dark side. Her thought process was basically: why kill myself handling all the promotional work when so many others are willing to do it for me?

When everything you’re doing isn’t producing the desired results, it’s time to try something different.

That is why I’ve become a ‘self-pirate’.

I want readers. Readers who will enjoy my work and let me know in some fashion. So when Ashen made his suggestion to me after the Lendink mess, I said YES.

While he was busy doing the heavy work of file prep and ‘seeding’ (the FSM bless him for putting up with my stupid questions and general cluelessness!), Google alerts notified me that The Contract Bride was mentioned on a certain forum. I always check out my Google alerts, and went for a look.

Lo and behold, file sharing links to it had been posted.

For just a second, I was all petulant about it: ‘That’s not one of the titles I picked out!’, but I got over that and ran with it because someone thought it good enough to recommend to others, AND THAT IS WHAT I WANT! Joined the forum to leave a comment with a link to a newly created page on my author site.

The next day, I had 3 new sales on Amazon and had received a donation from someone from that forum. That is the most action I’ve seen in a single day in regards to my ebooks since March, people.

It has been said that filesharers purchase more music, ebooks, etc. than non-filesharers. The argument goes back and forth on this, but one thing's for sure: pirates know how to get your work in front of thousands of people you'd never reach otherwise.

Don’t get me wrong, I by no means think doing this is going to catapult me into fame and fortune. But file sharing is widespread, and may possibly be the most effective, least time consuming method of getting my work in front of eyeballs.

It’s not any different than offering freebies through Amazon’s Select program or other sites when you decide to put your own work out there, and it’s certainly not going to have anymore negative of an effect than doing that. It’s a different platform with content hungry people.

It's not exactly advertising but it's certainly better than locking your creative efforts up behind DRM or endless legal threats. And if you feel piracy is unstoppable/inevitable (no matter which side you come down on "morally"), why not start seeding your own stuff? If you think you can't stop someone else from doing it, get a step ahead of them and become your own worst enemy/best friend. Let the system work for you.

Drummond's put her money where her mouth is:

Wanna pirate some of my ebooks? Go here.

As she points out, the Harry Potter books were being passed around on the internet long before official ebook versions were (finally) made available and yet, millions of copies were sold.

Filesharing will continue to be villainized by certain industries and members of various creative fields, many of whom would rather find someone to blame than actually deal with massive disruption. But to see only the negative is to miss out on a lot of the positive effects while also scapegoating potential fans.

Filed Under: artists, culture, piracy

Inexplicable: Jeff Price Pushed Out Of TuneCore, Despite Tremendous Success In Helping Artists

from the not-good-news-for-artists dept

We always talk about how various industries are changing such that gatekeepers are history and enablers are the future. One of the most impressive enablers around in the music industry has been TuneCore, a company built up over the last half-decade or so to provide artists with direct access to various digital distribution channels that were previously closed to them. TuneCore, co-founded and run by Jeff Price, had a singular vision of doing everything to make life better for musicians. They didn't take a cut of the royalties -- you just paid a flat-fee to use their service. They had very clear reporting and payments for artists -- basically the exact opposite of how major labels worked. Most recently, they set out to revolutionize the publishing business, and were well on their way towards that goal as well.

And, because of that, TuneCore, in many ways, surprised much of the industry while upending much of the industry. Many of the core functions that artists previously relied on labels for, TuneCore did better, in a more useful way, without asking the artists to hand over all their copyrights and 85% of their revenues. It became such a standard thing that almost every indie musician I spoke to used TuneCore, and many big-name musicians started moving in that direction as well.

The company was founded by Jeff Price, Peter Wells and Gary Burke a little over six years ago, and achieved some impressive things in that time. Jeff, as CEO, was pretty famous for his outspokenness -- and we've quoted him multiple times. He was certainly quick to point out all of the fallacies of the old RIAA way of doing business, which upset some of those legacy players, but it was clear from the beginning that what Jeff Price wanted most was to help artists. He, unlike so many, recognized the challenges and the opportunities musicians faced, and wanted to help get them past the challenges and reach the point of enjoying the opportunities.

I only met Jeff for the first time a few months ago, and saw him one more time after that, but he was one of those people that never seemed to stop focusing on a singular goal: making things better for artists, and helping them embrace what the internet enables. And from everything I've seen and heard, he was amazingly successful in doing so. Multiple artists I've talked to have spoken highly of TuneCore and what it enabled them to do. I didn't always agree with Jeff on everything (though I probably did more often than not), but even when we disagreed, it seemed to be over our interpretations of which way forward would actually be best for the artists themselves.

So I was surprised to find out that Jeff Price (and Peter Wells) have both been pushed out of TuneCore. I've spoken to a number of people associated with the company, and all of them are shocked and dismayed that Jeff and Peter are gone from the company. I've tried, multiple times, to get the main VC backing the company, Gill Cogan from Opus Capital, to comment on the situation, to no avail. But, many, many people stepped up to speak out strongly on Jeff's behalf. You can read Jeff's open letter linked above, in which he talks about all the company accomplished:

Under our tenure, TuneCore took significant market share away from the traditional major labels. As of July, 2012, TuneCore artists represent over 4% of all US gross digital music sales revenue and have sold over 610,000,000 units of music generating over $310,000,000 in gross music sales. More than four songs a second are sold on iTunes somewhere in the world by a TuneCore artist. Through the execution of the vision and the trust of the artist, TuneCore achieved about 40% of the market share of EMI and 25% of the market share of Universal in regards to digital music sales in the United States.

We were also able to attract artists across the spectrum: from emerging artists to the older legends and the new legends. Artists such as Drake, Soulja Boy, Sonic Youth, Nine Inch Nails, Zac Brown Band, Hoodie Allen, Civil Wars, Lecrea, Boyce Avenue, Kelly, Colt Ford, Ed Sheerhan, Alex Day, Aretha Franklin, Jay Z, Girl Talk, Blood On The Dancefloor, Jason Mraz, Nice Peter, Tiesto and hundreds of thousands more used TuneCore to place number one albums and songs on iTunes, Amazon and many other digital stores, breaking the control of the traditional industry while democratizing it.

I spoke to Jeff to get a bit more background. While no one is willing to say why or how Jeff and Peter got pushed out, it seems pretty clear that this was not what Jeff wanted -- and not what many people involved with TuneCore wanted. Jeff highlighted how everything he's done has been about focusing on the artist, and you can tell that he's worried that the company may no longer be able to do so (though, of course, he doesn't say that directly):

We started the company with a mission and philosophy to make the world a better place for artists. I believe the success TuneCore has had under our guidance is based on never losing sight of that mission and philosophy. Stay true to the DNA of the company and no matter how the market changes you can adapt with a rock solid foundation. As the Founder and CEO I tried hard to instill my beliefs and passion into every aspect of the company, to never let the employees or board of directors forget the mission, the "why" of TuneCore's existence. My hope is the philosophies, vision and mission statement that have allowed the company to succeed are so entrenched that it continues on the path created for it. Serve the musician. Thats how you, the artist, the shareholders, the digital music stores and the consumers win.

The challange becomes when a company loses that vision. Neither Peter or I are even remotely in the league of Apple or Steve Jobs, but you look at what happened to Apple when John Sculley came in as CEO. He changed the Apple vision from making "insanely great easy to use products" to one of "making money at any expense". When Jobs came back and reinstituted his vision Apple soared again. Its the vision that drives the success and revenue, not the other way around. We did everything we could to instill the vision as deeply as we could. We just hope it sticks.

I reached out to Peter, as well, who seems equally baffled by the situation, noting that the company had been doing great, hitting all of its goals (and more):

Astonishing success under the original regime, really--that's been TuneCore these last few months. We fulfilled our promise to create a Publishing side, with a new office in Burbank, CA, and it represents another revolution for artists, the next step along the path we started along when the company launched. Back in New York, things have been fantastic, up to and including a launch of the new look of the TuneCore home page, which Gary, Jeff and I helped shape and which I think is superb. This real success makes me all the more puzzled at very recent developments

Peter noted that he was saddened about losing his own job, but that his reaction to Jeff being pushed out was on another level altogether:

"Stunned" doesn't begin to describe it. Okay, so the company asked me to leave--I can accept that, I'm a founder at heart, the company is no longer a startup, perhaps it's time to move on. But Jeff is the heart and soul of TuneCore, and frankly, its brains. No one knows this space like he does, especially when it comes to publishing. I said earlier that TuneCore was having astonishing success--it is, and that's due to a lot of hard work from a lot of brilliant people (whom Jeff found and convinced to come on board). It's also due to Jeff's vision and leadership. Why on earth would Jeff be asked to leave? Why now, in the face of so many successes, and on the cusp of doing for publishing what he'd already proven he could do for distribution? It makes no sense.

I reached out to some others who were intimately involved with TuneCore from the early days onwards, and they too are somewhat shocked at this turn of events. One of the original advisors to the company, George Howard, who is an executive VP at Wolfgang's Vault, told me that Jeff was astoundingly good at accomplishing what he set out to do with TuneCore:

Jeff is one of the few people who has genuinely moved the business forward. So many people talk about what the business could/should/might be, but Jeff actually had a vision and brought it to fruition with his founding and running of TuneCore. That's the key: bringing something to fruition. Jeff actually gets things done - implementing a vision via his role as CEO. In so doing, he, by creating a system that provided access to thousands and thousands of musicians who had - prior to Jeff's implementation of a vision - been denied access by industry gatekeepers, undeniably changed the music business for the better.

Similarly, Dick Huey, a long-time music business insider, who was an early advisor to TuneCore, seemed equally surprised at the removal of Jeff, and reiterated some of the things he'd been able to accomplish in spite of all the odds:

TuneCore was all Jeff. I remember the dinner where he first ran the idea past me, along with the old company name. I thought the idea sounded radical (it was), I thought there was a fair chance it wouldn't work (I was wrong), and I knew I wanted to be involved as an advisor (I am). Jeff didn't doubt the idea from the outset, and since we started talking about this, I'm not sure I've met a more tireless leader who is more singularly focused on executing on his vision. I feel pretty strongly that Jeff came onto this concept in a moment in time, just at the outset of artists starting to realize that digital distribution could be for everyone, not just signed artists. And he executed, and built what I consider to be a successful, remarkable, and growing business. I believe there are few individuals who could have delivered on this business idea the way Jeff has done for TuneCore.

Huey also went to great lengths to highlight the many, many things that Jeff accomplished with TuneCore that most others wouldn't have bothered with, or wouldn't have even thought to bother with. He detailed how he got Apple to allow TuneCore to be a key entry point to the iTunes store for unsigned (and signed) artists, taking control from the gatekeepers. He talked about establishing better standards for reporting and payment. He talked about all of the many artists that TuneCore helped to be able to make a living.

When I asked Huey if he was comfortable with TuneCore without Jeff at the helm, he didn't hold back on his concerns:

I'm extremely concerned about the direction of the company without Jeff at the helm, as a shareholder in TuneCore, especially given the lack of information available about why he is no longer there. It should be clear from my responses to your questions that I consider Jeff Price to be the man who started or drove every major initiative at TuneCore of which I'm aware. I've heard no announcement of a new CEO, and I'm suspect that Jeff could even be properly replaced, given his unusual and unique combination of outspokenness, deep industry knowledge, wholehearted commitment to the company and to its staff. Jeff made you a believer, and even if you didn't believe, detractors largely respected his vision and commitment.

I've been interested in companies that help enable artists for a long time, and I've seen over and over again that these companies almost always succeed on the strength of their leadership -- a leadership that is committed to going to incredible (and seemingly impossible) lengths to actually help content creators, rather than feeding an old industry that looked to feed gatekeepers. I was surprised when I started to hear rumors of Jeff's ouster, and in talking to a bunch of folks, I've yet to find anyone who seems to think any of this makes sense.

I've spoken to some other people as well and may do some followup on this. In Jeff's open letter, he notes that he and Peter "look forward to continuing to change the industry on a global scale" and hints at something new coming soon. Peter, too, seemed eager to get started on something new, so I get the feeling this won't be the last we hear from the two of them, though I do wonder what will become of TuneCore without their leadership.

Filed Under: artists, distribution, jeff price, music, peter wells
Companies: tunecore

Artists Want The Ability To Buy Back Their Copyrights If Universal Is Allowed To Buy EMI

from the interesting-idea... dept

As Universal Music Group (UMG) continues dealing with antitrust questions as it tries to close its purchase of EMI, there's a lot of focus on "divestment," or which parts of the combined entity that would have to be sold off. There's even talk of having to sell off the famed Parlophone Records label (home of Coldplay and Radiohead). That would be a big deal, of course, but an even more interesting proposal has been brought up by the Featured Artists Coalition, a UK-based coalition of musicians, who are saying that if the company has to divest, why not let the artists themselves have the opportunity to buy back their copyrights at "fair market value."

Divestments in the wake of mergers should first offer copyrights, at market rates, to the artists who created them. To sell them to other corporations, whether large or small, is just a perpetuation of an old business model, which has seen the recorded music business halve in value over 10 years. During that time, the technological revolution has displaced the old music business players. We do not need to repeat the mistakes of the past.

It would be good to have music business people rather than financiers owning and running music companies again. It would be even better to have artists owning their work and entering into partner relationships with service-providing major and independent record companies with all the finance and expertise an artist needs to develop their own business.

That letter is signed by Ed O'Brien of Radiohead and Nick Mason of Pink Floyd. Of course, I imagine that the labels and the artists might disagree about what "market rates" are. Also, given how focused the labels are on fighting copyright termination in the US (allowing artists to take back their copyrights after 35 years), you have to imagine that they'd fight any such plan equally hard. It's no surprise why, though: if the artists who could afford to buy back their rights did so, that would take away many of the "big name" acts, which are pretty much the remaining money makers under the old system. There's no way the labels would agree to this, even if it certainly puts the artists' interests first. Yet another example of how labels' and artists' interests are not aligned at all.

Filed Under: artists, copyright, ed o'brien, merger, music, nick mason, ownership
Companies: emi, umg, universal music

Music Labels Have No Plans To Share Any Money They Get From The Pirate Bay With Artists

from the that's-not-how-labels-work dept

We see this every single time the music labels (usually RIAA or IFPI) "win" a big case against an alleged "pirate" site. They're awarded a bunch of money... and none of it goes to the artists. We've heard about it happening with Limewire and YouTube (though that was payoff to prevent a lawsuit, rather than the result of a lawsuit). And, once again, that appears to be happening with The Pirate Bay. TorrentFreak has the leaked document from the IFPI showing that it plans to reinvest whatever it gets... in the IFPI to continue its "anti-piracy efforts," such as going after other sites to get similar settlements for the same reason.

To be clear, the IFPI notes that it's unlikely to collect much, if any, of the money in this particular case, because (contrary to what it claimed all along), it certainly doesn't appear that TPB made very much money -- and the people sued "have no traceable assets." However, the ruling was clear that the money being awarded to the labels was "to compensate artists and rightsholders for the losses they suffered. But that's not how it would be used:

“There is an agreement that any recovered funds will be paid to IFPI Sweden and IFPI London for use in future anti-piracy activities,” IFPI writes.

TorrentFreak quotes Peter Sunde, one of the four who was convicted, noting that this is a case where money was directly promised to artists and not delivered. That seems a hell of a lot more like "theft" than anything that he did:

“They say that people who download give money to thieves – but if someone actually ends up paying (in this case: three individuals) then it’s been paid for. So who’s the thief when they don’t give the money to the artists?”

According to Sunde the news doesn’t come as a surprise.

“As far as I know, no money ever won in a lawsuit by IFPI or the RIAA has even gone to any actual artist,” Sunde says.

Indeed. I am unaware of any of the proceeds from any such lawsuits ever making it back to artists.

Filed Under: artists, lawsuits, money
Companies: ifpi, the pirate bay

Why Do The People Who Always Ask Us To 'Respect' Artists Seem To Have So Little Respect For Artists?

from the just-wondering dept

Over the years, we've posted tons and tons of stories of content creators embracing the internet, exploring the new opportunities it creates and often profiting greatly from doing so. We regularly celebrate the great creativity from these artists, and cheer them on as they succeed and (sometimes) make lots of money. And yet... there is a certain contingency out there who keeps insisting that we "hate" artists, or alternatively, that we have no respect for artists. This is bizarre. I adore artists and creativity. Part of the reason we spend so much time here discussing new business models and opportunities is that we want more artists to succeed. I have trouble understanding why that's so bad. At best, it seems to be a case of shooting the messenger. In order to embrace these new models it helps to recognize that the old models just aren't that good anymore. And that gets some people upset. So they shake their fist at the sky... and blame us because we tell them that having an umbrella might be a good idea.

But one thing I find most troubling in all of this is that the very same people who constantly yell and scream about how we don't respect artists almost always make sure to mock and denigrate the quality of artists who do succeed these days. Take, for example, Jonathan Taplin, who (for reasons that escape me and many others) is the head of an "innovation lab" at USC, despite an apparent lack of understanding of the very basics of innovation. Instead, he pines for a historical fictional world that never existed. We wrote about some of his bizarre claims a few months ago. A few weeks ago, I was able to debate Jonathan at the Tech Policy Summit. Video of that should be going up soon, but it was more of the same. Taplin didn't have the facts on his side (he repeatedly made statements that were out-and-out false) and once he was called on it, he resorted to personal insults directed at me.

Taplin, in the past, has directly accused me of not respecting artists. But, then, we recently had a blog post about filmmaker Nina Paley and how she's dealing with the fact that copyright laws -- if obeyed -- would hold back her own creativity. And, rather than "respect" artists, or even engage in any form of serious debate, Taplin went on a Twitter rampage tossing insults at Nina and the quality of her work. First, he called her talentless:

Text: @techdirt. Only someone as talentless as Nina Paley would excuse theft. She can't even give her work away. Revenge of the nerds

Then he called her thoughts on the matter "half-witted":

Text: @ninapaley-This is truly sad and half-witted. radar.oreilly.com/2012/06/copyri ... via @radar

And finally, he made this confusing statement, which is similar to one he emailed me about how (in his head) my vision of the world is one in which we were all forced to watch videos of cats rather than Hollywood movies:

Text: If @ninapaley gets her way we will be forced to watch crap like Bob, The Angry Flower. The Revenge of the talentless Nerds

First of all, nearly everything he says is wrong. Nina Paley can and does give her work away. You can (and, if you haven't already, should) go watch her excellent movie, Sita Sings the Blues. And, contrary to what he'd have you believe (that no one could possibly make money giving away content for free), Nina does make money. Finally, I'm really at a loss as to how one would ever be "forced" to watch anything they didn't want to watch. In fact, these days, with such a massive explosion in choice, the idea that anyone would ever be a captive audience forced to watch something they didn't like just doesn't make any sense.

But the larger point is this unfortunate trend that we've seen, exemplified by Taplin's childish outburst here. The people who keep claiming that those of us seeking real solutions don't "respect" artists when we cheer and celebrate their successes and praise their artwork and creativity -- always seem to be the same people who mock and insult those very same artists' work for being successful. It's one thing to criticize their ideas. That's perfectly reasonable. But to take it a step further and insult their abilities as an artist is really quite shameful. And that's doubly true when you're talking about someone who is a public figure like Taplin, a representative for USC. Is this really the face that USC wants to show to the world as its "director" of an "innovation lab"? Someone who mocks an artist and attacks her talent?

Filed Under: artists, jonathan taplin, nina paley, sita sings the blues, tech policy summit

Dan Bull, Amanda Palmer & El-P: A Big Week For Artists' Voices On Techdirt

from the change-of-pace dept

Today, instead of the usual community favorites post, we wanted to take the opportunity to highlight our own top picks for the week. It was an easy choice, because we love it when artists and creators visit the site to speak about their experiences, and this week we were lucky enough to have guest posts from three different musicians. They all had a lot of great stuff to say, and here are a few highlights.

The first came about as a result of my post on rapper/producer El-P's friendly message to fans who downloaded the early leak of his album. El-P joined the comments, then followed up with a guest post discussing his approach to the music industry, and his thoughts on the popular debates about it:

So how do I feel? What's the right way? Fuck if I know. But I'll adapt and I'll do it with respect and class and not kicking and screaming. There's a hell of a lot I could say about both sides of this particular subject, but honestly does it matter? You all have formed your opinions on it already and in the end people like me are still out here trying to make a living no matter what those opinions are... right, wrong or in-between.

Unfortunately the comment thread on that post was hijacked by one particularly obnoxious AC, but amidst the noise there was also a strong response from some community members who were grateful to El-P for sharing his frank and thoughtful opinion, just as we were.

Next, we got a visit from the one and only Amanda Fucking Palmer! Amidst all the excitement surrounding her Kickstarter project, Amanda deftly employed an allegory about bamboo to describe the campaign's massive success, and the many years of work that made it possible:

There's a great story about how bamboo grows. A farmer plants a bamboo shoot underground, and waters and tends it for about three years. Nothing grows that's visible, but the farmer trots out there, tending to this invisible thing with a certain amount of faith that things are going to work out. When the bamboo finally appears above ground, it can shoot up to thirty feet in a month. This is like my kickstarter campaign. The numbers aren't shocking to me, not at all. I set the goal for the kickstarter at $100,000 hoping we'd make it quickly, and hoping we'd surpass it by a long-shot.

Incidentally, as I pointed out on Twitter, Amanda Palmer is an anagram for A Mr. Panda Meal. Coincidence?

Last but not least, Dan Bull took a break from writing epic raps to write an epic post. After Dan successfully used the Pirate Bay and its Promo Bay program to get his new single on the charts, we wondered what he must think about his country's decision to censor the site. Now we have our answer: he thinks it was pretty damn ridiculous.

Now, thanks to the High Court ruling, no aspiring musician will be able to use The Promo Bay to gain exposure in the UK. Once again, the British Phonographic Industry is throttling any channel of distribution which doesn't allow them the cut to which they believe they are entitled. I'd like to see what the BPI's head, Geoff Taylor, has to say to George Barnett, the unsigned British songwriter whose fanbase skyrocketed after being featured on The Promo Bay. The only thing that the BPI has done for George is to entirely prohibit his primary means of exposure.

Of course, those aren't the only choice words Dan has for the BPI.

Big thanks to El-P, Amanda Palmer and Dan Bull for stopping by and sharing their thoughts! For some other creators featured on Techdirt this week (just not in person), check out game developer Stardock's Jon Shafer on building a loyal fan base, producer Swizz Beatz on embracing technology, My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields on a dispute with Sony, and author Paulo Coelho's stats on his $0.99 ebook sale.

Filed Under: amanda palmer, artists, bpi, dan bull, el-p, music industry, musicians, promo bay
Companies: kickstarter, the pirate bay

We Don't Want Everything For Free. We Just Want Everything

from the kids-today dept

Recently, I gave a Sita Sings the Blues talk to a roomful of 15-to-17-year-olds. Near the end I explained Free Culture and my stance against copyright, which led to some interesting discussion. Turns out most of them are manga fans, and familiar with publishers’ complaints about scanned and translated manga shared freely online. They all read them anyway (except one, who prefers to read entire manga in the bookstore). I asked them how they would choose to support artists they liked (once they had some disposable income) and they said:

1. Donate buttons – with the qualification that they want to know as much as possible about where the donation is going. They said honesty and transparency are important.
2. Kickstarter – They all knew about it (which was notable because none of them had heard of Flattr) and valued pitch videos that explained how the money would be used.
3. Custom drawings
4. Merch
5. Physical copies
6. Live Shared Experiences, including ballet, museum exhibits, and concerts. The event aspect was important; they wanted to be able to say, “Remember that one time when that awesome show was here…” They agreed seeing things in person is a more powerful experience than seeing things online, and worth spending more on. One said she would buy CD at a live show because “it reminds you of the show.”
7. One said he would support artists by promoting their work to his friends.

Semi-related, I took an informal poll of how many would prefer to read a book on paper vs. an e-reader. The vast majority said paper, but what they really seemed to want was dual formats: paper copies to read comfortably and collect, and digital copies to search and reference. Makes sense to me. Only two of them had iPads, and none used them for “enhanced eBooks.”

My favorite quote of the afternoon, from a 15-year-old girl:

“We don’t want everything for free. We just want everything.

crossposted from ninapaley.com

 

Filed Under: artists, copyright, culture, free, honest, support, teens, transparency

EMI Sneakily Trying To Pretend Many Of Its Artists Can't Reclaim Their Copyrights

from the but-of-course dept

We've talked plenty about the coming legal battles over "termination rights" in various works. If you're not familiar with it, under the 1976 Copyright Act, content creators have a guaranteed right to terminate any copyright assignments after 35 years. That is, if a musician assigned the copyright to a label, as is standard, they can take that copyright back after 35 years. This is not a right that an artist can give up. Even if they sign a contract saying they give up their termination rights, it doesn't matter. Those rights cannot be taken away from the artist under the law. The exception to termination rights, however, is if a work is classified as a "work made for hire." However, the definition of what qualifies as a work made for hire is very, very narrow:

A “work made for hire” is--

(1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or

(2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire. For the purpose of the foregoing sentence, a “supplementary work” is a work prepared for publication as a secondary adjunct to a work by another author for the purpose of introducing, concluding, illustrating, explaining, revising, commenting upon, or assisting in the use of the other work, such as forewords, afterwords, pictorial illustrations, maps, charts, tables, editorial notes, musical arrangements, answer material for tests, bibliographies, appendixes, and indexes, and an “instructional text” is a literary, pictorial, or graphic work prepared for publication and with the purpose of use in systematic instructional activities.

There are a lot of specific conditions there. If you're wondering how such an odd list was put together, some have suggested it was basically just who was in the room. Somewhat surprisingly, one of the main parties who apparently wasn't in the room were the major record labels. Notice that sound recordings aren't there, and you'd have to stretch the definition mightily to cover sound recordings. Of course, the labels have been freaking out about this for decades. Famously, back in 1999, Mitch Glazier, a Congressional staffer, snuck some language into a totally unrelated law about satellites to make sound recordings count as work for hire too. He allegedly did this in the middle of the night such that no one -- even the "authors" of the bill -- knew it was there until after the bill passed. This one time, the outcry (especially from musicians) was so loud, that Congress had to go back and repeal that section. Of course, by then, Glazier had jumped ship to a job at the RIAA making about half a million dollars. He's still at the RIAA where he's now the second in command. Remember that the next time anyone pretends the RIAA is about helping artists. Their number two guy tried to screw artists out of their copyrights.

Of course, that hasn't stopped the efforts by the record labels to still pretend that the copyrights they hold are "works made for hire." They've been testing out a few legal theories, none of which seem very strong, but many of which will soon be tested in court. Why now? While there have been a few lawsuits over this (especially in the comic book space), the key aspect of termination rights came into effect in 1978, with that 35 year window. 35 years after 1978 is... 2013. So, a battle is shaping up.

Michael Robertson, who has been involved in a long term legal fight with EMI, is calling attention to the fact that EMI seems to be trying to just declare that music made by bands signed to its labels are works made for hire. How are they doing this? Well, just by declaring that the songs are "made for hire" on the copyright registration. You can see one example of that on a Billy Idol copyright registration embedded below. But, simply declaring it as a work made for hire on the copyright registration is totally meaningless. It doesn't mean the work hits any of the qualifications under the law.

The RIAA has been trying to claim that any albums are really a "compilation" so they qualify as a "collective work" under the law, which does create a work-for-hire situation. But there are other conditions that need to be met, and it's unclear if those have been. Plus, the claim that an album is a "collective work" is a pretty weak one all around.

Either way, many artists probably don't even recognize that their works have been designated this way (or even what it means), so Robertson has been putting together a big list, and seeking artists on that list to proactively challenge the claims, rather than waiting until the 35-year window hits. There are some pretty big names on the list he's dug up already -- including the Beatles, the Beastie Boys, the Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, Billy Idol, Coldplay, David Bowie, Duran Duran, Frank Sinatra, Iggy Pop, Janet Jackson, John Lennon, Katy Perry, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins and many, many more. Robertson is hoping at least someone on the list will go legal and claim their own works:

What I'm looking for is an artist who has the courage to stand up on this issue and claim their works, laying the groundwork for them and ALL artists who share their plight to take ownership in the near future and escape this slavery. (Rather like Curt Flood did battling to get free agency for baseball players: See The Curious Case of Curt Flood which should have been called the Courage Case of Curt Flood.)

Of course, some of this may get sorted out by the long list of coming lawsuits for those artists who have actually begun the process of trying to terminate the copyright assignment, starting with The Village People (though that's a weaker case, since the band itself was put together by the label). Either way, it's pretty ridiculous to see how far the labels are going to try to deny artists the ability to take back their copyrights, despite the law being pretty clear that they have that right.

Filed Under: artists, copyright, michael robertson, music, sound recordings, termination, termination rights
Companies: emi

Protecting The Artists? Disney's Marvel Uses Copyright To Crush Already Broke Ghost Rider Creator

from the how-nice dept

Five years ago, we wrote about Gary Friedrich, the creator of the comic book character Ghost Rider, and how he was suing tons of companies, claiming that the copyrights associated with Ghost Rider had reverted back to him in 2001. As we noted at the time, there were some questionable things about his lawsuit -- including the fact that he waited years until after a movie and video game had been created and released before suddenly going legal about it. However, apparently Marvel (owned by Disney), in its ultimate vindictiveness, turned around and countersued Friedrich and won, leading to a ridiculous situation: Friedrich, who is broke, is now supposed to pay Marvel $17,000 for Ghost Rider merchandise he had sold in the past. He also isn't supposed to say that he's the co-creator of Ghost Rider any more if saying so involves him getting any kind of commercial advantage.

The full ruling in the case makes it clear that Friedrich's copyright claims were suspect in the first place, as it appears he clearly handed over the copyrights on the character to Marvel. The legal stipulation covers the specific terms, including the $17k payment, and the injunction against using the words "Ghost Rider" in connection with the sale of any goods, merchandise or services (i.e., "pay to get the signature of the creator of Ghost Rider!").

While Friedrich appears to have clearly overreached in his initial claim, the vindictiveness of Marvel/Disney is pretty ridiculous here. There's simply no reason for the company to demand $17k from a broke Friedrich, and (on top of that) make it that much harder for him to actually earn the money to pay them. As some are pointing out, you should remember this story the next time big companies claim they want to strengthen copyright law to "protect the content creators."

Filed Under: artists, comics, copyright, gary friedrich, ghost rider
Companies: disney, marvel