No, The Public Standing Up For An Open Internet Is Not A Criminal Google Conspiracy

from the the-public-is-not-google dept

Over the past decade, we've talked about music industry lawyer Chris Castle and his bizarre interpretation of reality a few times. He insists that anyone supporting the legal sharing of content via Creative Commons is "self-serving shilling for the self-absorbed on the short con," which I'm sure must have sounded clever in his mind. A key target for Castle and his friends is that Google is the representation of all that is evil in the music industry. It's a convenient foil. Castle and his friends see Google lurking behind anything that's not like the old days, similar to the way that adults freaked out that pinball machines were destroying the minds of the youths in earlier generations.

Castle's latest claim, however, is positively crazy. Not only is he upset about the EU Parliament has agreed to reopen Article 13 of the EU Copyright Directive for discussion, he's decided that the only reason they did so must be due to a criminal conspiracy by Google, for which he is demanding an investigation.

... there have been incredible and probably illegal uses of the Internet to overwhelm elected officials with faux communications that reek of Google-style misinformation and central planning in the hive mind of the Googleplex.

We saw this again with the Article 13 vote in Europe last week with what clearly seems to be a Google-backed attack on the European Parliament for the purpose of policy intimidation. That’s right–an American-based multinational corporation is trying to intimidate the very same European government that is currently investigating them for anticompetitive behavior and is staring down a multi-billion dollar fine.

Vindictive much?

Apparently, the idea that the public might actually speak out when they realize that a terribly written proposal would lead to massive censorship of the internet is unfathomable to him.

And let's be clear here. This entire claim doesn't even pass the slightest laugh test. Google already complies with almost everything in Article 13. The whole point of Article 13 is to try to force nearly every site that hosts user content to install a ContendID like system. Google already has ContentID. Indeed, if anything, Article 13 would cement Google's dominant position by making it nearly impossible for newer, more innovative startups to enter the space without spending the tens of millions of dollars Google spent on ContentID.

The idea that Google would lead some "fake" public protest against Article 13 is ludicrous. But, this Google Derangement Syndrome seems impossible for those in the RIAA set to get rid of. I've mentioned before that just weeks after a massive public protest of SOPA stopped that bill from becoming law, I ended up at a dinner with an RIAA board member, who simply refused to believe that the public even cared one bit about SOPA/PIPA and insisted that the only reason the bill failed was because Google stepped up (in reality, Google was much slower than a ton of internet startups to recognize the threat of SOPA).

Indeed, this same derangement could be found in the tweets of former RIAA top exec Neil Turkewitz, who hilariously responded to the impact of widespread public protests by insisting that it was obviously not the will of the people stating:

Does anyone think the people have spoken? I doubt it. Democracy, freedom of expression & common sense were upended by allowing a Pirate & a fantastically large company w/ something to gain to define the terms of our freedom. A freedom w/o justice. An infant’s version of freedom.

Got that? Democracy, freedom of expression and common sense were upended... by people speaking out about the massive problems with Article 13. This is especially hilarious coming from Turkewitz, who worked for three decades on policy issues for the RIAA, at a time when the RIAA did so much of its policy awfulness by hiding it away from the public, in particular by sneaking awful ideas into secretly negotiated trade agreements, and then turning around and demanding that democratically elected legislatures write laws to match what he helped the RIAA sneak into those agreements. Or how about the will of "the people" when Turkewitz's RIAA colleague, just months before taking his job with the RIAA literally snuck four words overnight into a bill that would help the RIAA member labels take away rights from all of its artists. Was that "the will of the people"?

The recording industry spent decades actively subverting the will of the people at every turn. Even though the Constitutional mandate for copyright be that it promote the progress of science and learning by providing more material into the public domain, the RIAA spent decades -- usually in secret -- pushing and changing the law to turn it into a welfare system for record labels. For decades, "the public" wasn't even aware of what was happening, in part because copyright directly touched their lives so little.

That changed with the advent of the internet, and the fact that copyright and the internet don't work all that well together. Now, these changes that the RIAA used to push through in a smokey backroom is likely to impact the tools and services that billions of people use to communicate every day. And the consequences of those changes will have a huge impact on them. So no one should be surprised when the public speaks out about this. It's not a criminal conspiracy by Google. It's the public actually caring about what the internet looks like and whether or not they'll be allowed to speak without first getting permission and a license.

Filed Under: article 13, chris castle, conspiracy, copyright, neil turkewitz, progress, public interest
Companies: google

Is Retweeting ISIS 'Material Support Of Terrorism'?

from the depends-on-your-point-of-view-apparently dept

Last week there was a bizarre and ill-informed post by music industry lawyer Chris Castle -- who has a weird infatuation with the idea that Google must be pure evil -- in which he tried to argue that because YouTube wasn't able to take down propaganda videos showing ISIS atrocities fast enough, that Google was providing "material support" for terrorism. As Castle notes:

Google's distribution of jihadi videos on Google’s monopoly video search platform certainly looks like material support of terrorists which is itself a violation of the federal law Google claims to hold so dear. (See 18 U.S. Code §2339A and §2339B aka the U.S. Patriot Act.)

Of course, there are all sorts of problems with the Patriot Act, including its definitions of "material support of terrorism," but to stretch the law to argue that providing an open platform and simply not removing videos fast enough (the videos in question all got removed pretty rapidly anyway, but not fast enough for Castle) is somehow "material support for terrorism" is flat out crazy. It stems from the same sort of confused logic that Castle has used in the past, arguing that Google and others must magically "just know" what is infringing and what is not -- suggesting a true lack of understanding about the scale of offerings like YouTube and the resources needed to sort through all the content.

We were inclined to simply dismiss Castle's nuttiness to the category of "WTF" where it belongs... until at a conference earlier this week, a DOJ official, John Carlin, who holds the role of assistant attorney general for national security, appeared to suggest that anyone helping ISIS's social media campaign could be guilty of "material support" for terrorism:

John Carlin, the assistant attorney general for national security, told a cybersecurity conference in Washington on Monday that officials could try to blunt ISIS’s violent PR operation by essentially trying propagandists as terrorists. He suggested the Justice Department could bring prosecutions under the law against providing material support to a terrorist organization. His remarks were believed to be the first time a U.S. official has ever said that people who assist ISIS with online media could face criminal prosecution.

Carlin was asked at the conference whether he would “consider criminal charges” against people who are “proliferating ISIS social media.”  

His answer: “Yes. You need to look at the particular facts and evidence.” But Carlin noted that the United States could use the material support law to prosecute “technical expertise” to a designated terrorist organization. And spreading the word for ISIS online could count as such expertise.

Carlin seems more focused on someone tweeting a link to ISIS propaganda or something along those lines, which would raise significant First Amendment issues, but his comment about "technical expertise" could certainly be turned around and put upon YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and other providers of social media tools. That would create a huge mess, and open a Pandora's box that would undermine one of the key premises of the internet that has made it so successful.

Is the DOJ really looking to undermine the entire internet, just because some terrorists have figured out that it's a good way to get out their message?

Meanwhile, if you want to see just how far this sort of ridiculous thinking takes you -- at the same time that people like Castle and Carlin are arguing about how YouTube may be supplying material support for terrorists, YouTube was deleting videos that were being used to document ISIS war crimes. YouTube has been rushing around trying to take down all kinds of ISIS and other terrorist content for a while now -- ever since then Senator Joe Lieberman demanded that YouTube block terrorist videos. And, the end result is that important channels that catalog and archive evidence and documentation of war crimes are being taken down. And, this is not the first time this sort of thing has happened.

When you start accusing these platforms of having some sort of liability (potentially criminal liability in the form of "materially supporting terrorists" for merely providing an open platform that anyone can use, you are more or less guaranteeing that important content, such as that which documents war crimes and atrocities gets banned as well. Is that really what Castle and Carlin are looking to do?

Filed Under: chris castle, doj, isis, john carlin, material support, patriot act, propaganda, social media, terrorism, war crimes, youtube
Companies: google, twitter, youtube

No, Saying Musicians Must 'Add Value' Does Not Mean Music Has No Value

from the fundamental-misunderstandings dept

Music lawyer Chris Castle has a talent for totally missing the point and then failing to make one of his own. In a recent blog post, he launches an attack on Michael Geist based on a completely incorrect interpretation of a statement he made to a parliamentary committee in 2010. Geist's position will be familiar to regular Techdirt readers:

The truth is that you can compete with free content if you provide value. One of the really exciting things about the Internet is that we’re seeing innovators coming up with all kinds of different ways where they can add value and entice the customer too.

Castle proceeds to tear Geist's statements apart based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of value:

We have heard this trope before. If only the artist provided something of value—besides the music. Because the music is of no value because it is "free"—that is, it has no value because it is widely stolen and has become devalued, so the artist now has to “add value” to the music.

If Castle has heard this before, then he should know that there is a bit more nuance to what free-culture proponents mean when we talk about adding value. Perhaps this is our fault for failing to handhold him through all the basic economic concepts that lead up to this position, and for using "added value" as a convenient shorthand for "additional scarce value". But really, if Castle wasn't so bent on condemning Geist, he could have figured it out for himself: nobody is saying music has no value. That would be a ludicrous claim: people love music, and it has exceptional value, but it is also non-scarce and non-rivalrous, meaning its price inevitably falls to zero. But smart artists can use music to build a brand, and an audience who will pay for other, scarce things—and that doesn't just mean t-shirts. It doesn't even have to mean something tangible and concrete: access, convenience and authenticity are all abstract scarcities that people value a great deal, and all can serve as excellent reasons to buy.

Castle also decries the fact that, supposedly, nobody cares about songwriters when discussing new models for artists. Of course, songwriters have an extremely valuable scarcity at their disposal: their ability to write new songs. That ability has plenty of value to musicians, producers and labels, which is why songwriters can pull impressive rates up-front. Why do they and their children deserve to receive ongoing payments for work that is 20, 50 or even 100 years old? Good songwriters are in high-demand, and they can parlay the success of their last song to get bigger, better commissions and charge higher rates. You don't see architects asking for royalties every time someone walks through the doors of a building they designed—they, like professionals in virtually every other field, know they have to keep working if they want to keep making money.

Next, Castle brings it all back to the supposed "tech oligarchy" and their "monstrous behavior," using some blatant weasel-wording and factual inaccuracies:

Make sure you add something of value, because the music and the songs are valueless, so why should Isohunt or Limewire or Megavideo pay the artist for them. All that subscription and advertising revenue that Megavideo and Google made off of piracy? That compensates these innovators for providing the promotional opportunity because obscurity is the artist’s biggest enemy, right?

Wrong.

No, not wrong. Is Castle really denying that obscurity is the first and most important hurdle for an artist to overcome? It wouldn't matter if people were buying CDs for $100 each—if they haven't heard of you, you aren't going to make any money. Of course, he also glosses over the fact that Megaupload did pay artists—the ones who embraced the service as a way to sell directly to their fans. Meanwhile, those who feared it handed a potential revenue stream to the pirates. Even more amusing is his lumping together of Megavideo and Google, as if they were essentially the same thing despite being so different that there's barely any comparison.

Castle's post is full of statements like "once again" and "we've heard this trope before." Maybe next time he hears it, he should actually make the effort to understand it, instead of wasting his time railing against ridiculous straw-men.

Filed Under: business models, chris castle, music, reasons to buy, rtb

Entertainment Industry Lawyer Predicts The Demise Of Free Culture

from the logical-inconsistencies dept

Music industry lawyer Chris Castle is at it again. You may recall him from his poorly thought out attack on evil free culture types that was easily debunked. Unfortunately, it looks like others are willing to let him spew nonsense. This time, it's Arts+Labs, yet another "anti-piracy" lobbying group that was formed last year. When it was formed, it was positioned as a more "reasonable" group, because rather than just being made up of entertainment industry reps, it also had a few "tech industry" folks -- though, those tech companies were ones looking to sell DRM or filtering technologies. So, as a supposedly more reasonable "balanced" approach, you would hope that perhaps Arts+Labs wouldn't publish a ridiculous rant from an entertainment industry lawyer, bashing all "free culturists" and predicting the imminent demise of free culture.

But, indeed, that appears to be what Castle is saying, predicting the demise of free culture based on some incredibly weak logic that doesn't pass the basic laugh test. I read the whole thing a few times and the logic was so twisted that I finally had to try to work backwards to figure out what he was claiming, and eventually realized that his position on copyright seems to coincide with Douglas Adam's old saying:

1) everything that's already in the world when you're born is just normal;

2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;

3) anything that gets invented after you're thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it's been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

So how does this apply to Castle's logic? Well, as far as I can tell, Castle's logical thought train runs as follows:

1. Free culture is an economic fallacy, and is close to its demise.
2. Pop culture is important in winning over the "hearts and minds" of people who hate us
3. The only reason pop culture exists is because people earn money from it
4. Free culture fanatics don't get any of this and think that there's a battle going on between Silicon Valley (innovation) and Hollywood
5. These clueless free culture idiots are demanding government-mandated licenses and government-mandated prices
6. They claim this is needed because of market failure.
7. But there is no market if we don't respect "basic economic rights" (i.e., "copyright")
8. If we don't respect those "basic economic rights" then the internet gets polluted with junk
9. Then pop culture creators are lost forever, because they can't make money
10. So, the government must protect these "fundamental economic liberties" (i.e., "copyright"), but not do anything else, because then we might not win over the hearts and minds of our enemies.
11. Because of that, we're witnessing the end of people believing in this bogus idea of free culture.

You can read over the piece yourself, but I think I'm being quite fair to the reasoning. But, of course, this doesn't make any sense at all, unless you consider the Douglas Adams quote. Castle seems to think that "copyright" (a government-granted right) is somehow "natural" or a "basic economic right" or a "fundamental economic liberty." It's not and never has been. It's a government granted monopoly for the sole purpose of promoting the progress of the sciences and the useful arts. Thomas Jefferson's famous discussion of intellectual property "rights" makes it quite clear that there is nothing at all "natural" about copyright. But, since it's been around since he was born, to Castle, it's fundamental. And anything new is just downright evil.

And, of course, there are tons of other logical fallacies in this piece. Even if we grant that points 2 and 3 are true, he seems to be jumping back to that old lie that support of "free culture" means that artists don't earn money. It's a fallacy that runs throughout the piece, and of course is totally bogus. We've spent about a decade chronicling ways that content creators are embracing "free culture" and making more money because of that. It's getting ridiculous how many times it needs to be repeated but: giving away ONE THING for FREE, does NOT MEAN that you don't make money. Once you recognize that, Castle's entire argument falls apart (as does the entire reason that Arts+Labs exists... but that's another issue).

The other characterizations that Castle makes about "free culture" supporters are total strawmen. While there may have been some who set up a "battle" between Silicon Valley and Hollywood, I actually don't see that very much at all. I live in Silicon Valley and am pretty involved in talking about these issues with plenty of people, and it's rarely framed that way at all. Most folks are simply looking at ways to help enable the market to be more efficient, knowing that doing so benefits everyone. There's no "against" anyone -- other than those who want to somehow block this efficiency because they prefer to rest on their laurels and old gov't granted monopolies. The innovators in Silicon Valley aren't trying to stick it to Hollywood. They're trying to provide better tools to enable content creators of all kinds to create, share, promote, distribute and experience content.

Also, I'm curious which "free culture" academics "beat the drum for a government-mandated compulsory license and government-mandated pricing for all content." I've yet to see any. Yes, there are some who have suggested voluntary licensing, but I'm not aware of any who are pushing for government mandated pricing of all content. I, for one, am vehemently against such things.

Finally, after bashing these "free culturists" for not understanding "basic economics" and insisting that free culture has no economic basis, Castle flunks his economics final by stating: "Absent these rights there is no market, and therefore there can be no market failure." I may have to break out the red grading marker on this one to explain the F grade. Mr. Castle, I'm afraid you've incorrectly defined your market. It's a rookie mistake. "Free" doesn't mean there's no market. Down there in sunny Los Angeles, television has been quite a successful business... which gives its content away for free. And it works, because they put in place a business model that leverages the free content to make money. How hard is it for Castle to realize that there are other business models for the music industry as well? How many examples must we show before he realizes that free doesn't mean you don't get paid? And, finally, why is Arts+Labs allowing such ridiculously illogical thinking to appear on its website as commentary?

Filed Under: business models, chris castle, copyright, culture, music

Music Industry Lawyer Upset That Sites Are Able To Point Out The RIAA Took Down Content

from the a-look-inside... dept

Here's another quick little look into the way the minds of certain entertainment industry lawyers think, courtesy of Chris Castle, a music industry lawyer who we recently discussed concerning his views that only musicians can discuss music industry business models. Now he's got a post complaining about how internet sites respond to a takedown notice:

Note to self: Next time you do a content license for an online company, make sure that when the content owner terminates the deal the content can't be replaced with some inflammatory cutesey-ism. Down means down. Gone. Vanished. Not there. Not replaced with: "Hey idiot, the running dogs of the RIAA made us take down stuff because they wouldn't take our hillbilly deal."

(Update: It appears that some time between me opening Castle's post in a tab and writing and posting the story, Castle took down the post. I guess he's trying to demonstrate what he means by "Down means down. Gone. Vanished. Not there.") Now, I'm sure that this is Castle just venting after yet another bad move by one of his clients has backfired into a public relations nightmare (something like this perhaps?). If he actually thinks that simply pulling content down with no explanation whatsoever will make users happier then he's completely lost -- and I don't think he is.

But the key is that this does give yet another glimpse into the mindset of the typical legal professionals at work on some of these issues. It's not about openness, it's about secrecy ("Down means down. Gone. Vanished. Not there.") It's not about working out a reasonable deal that benefits everyone, it's about trashing the service provider for offering a "hillbilly deal." And, of course, it's never about the user at all. Who cares if they're wondering what happened to their content? The user doesn't matter at all.

And that is why the entertainment industry is in trouble.

Filed Under: chris castle, takedowns

Dispensing With Some Myths About The Poor Poor Songwriters Decimated By Piracy

from the cry-me-a-river-of-song... dept

Entertainment industry lawyer (and big time copyright supporter) Ben Sheffner has a blog post pointing us to a rather amusing "interview" between two other copyright maximalists: Chris Castle, another music industry lawyer, and Rick Carnes, the head of the Songwriters Guild of America. Sheffner, amusingly, absolutely loves to nitpick any news article or blog post from those who believe that copyright law is too strict -- ridiculing minor misstatements or weaving in questionable legal theories to mock those who question the abuse of copyright. Yet, in writing about this interview between two people who share his worldview, apparently all skepticism or critical thinking goes right out the window. So, I guess we'll have to do it for him.

Now, I almost hesitated, because Castle has this friendly and inviting header to his blog:

Copyright 2006-2008, Christian L. Castle. All rights reserved. NOT subject to Creative Commons deed, license, or whatever it's called this week by the self-serving shilling for the self-absorbed on the short con.

Yes, you see that anyone who recognizes how to benefit from the sharing and promotion of content is apparently a "self-serving shill for the self-absorbed" as opposed to someone with some basic knowledge about the economics of information and how to craft successful business models around it. Clearly, Mr. Castle would prefer that no one ever bother to help promote his blog, and I'm tempted to oblige and ignore him -- but there are some important points in his post that need to be discussed. And, despite his slightly threatening header, I'm going to bet that fair use covers the following clips for the purpose of commentary. If he disagrees, we can discuss it and, who knows, maybe this post will disappear (save it now!). Oh, and by the way, Mr. Castle, it's 2009 now. You might want to update the date on your notice (which, as a lawyer, I'm sure you know -- you don't actually need to retain your copyright).

So, off we go. He starts off ever so nicely, tearing down all "Internet analysts, self-appointed futurists as well as self-annointed consumer advocates," claiming they all "misunderstand the role of songwriters and the negative effects that rampant piracy has had on them." Way to totally demonize and pigeonhole anyone who speaks up with alternative business models. But clearly, Castle (and Carnes later) are not interested in alternative business models. They really, really like the way the world used to be, and they're going to keep on wishing that it could go back to that. Then there's this:

People who just write songs don't sell t-shirts, don't play shows, don't have all the other income streams available to them that the EFFluviati point to as subsititute revenues for the cruel theft of labor value by companies like Kazaa, Morpheus, Limewire and the Pirate Bay.

I like the "EFFluviati" coinage. So eloquent. But, of course, he uses it to brush off what he hasn't bothered to understand (amusingly, right after insisting that it was everyone else who doesn't understand). This is, unfortunately, all too common among some (though, I would say definitely not all) of the copyright system defenders. Rather than understanding the basic economic principles at play, and using those to understand how to craft new business models, they simply look at one or two business models being used by some (t-shirts! concerts!) and insist that's really all there is. It amuses me that folks who apparently claim to represent the "creative" industries are so uncreative themselves. It also amuses me that they insist that no one outside of the music industry can comment on music business models, but they have no problem commenting on economics without any experience in that subject.

If they bothered to take the time to actually understand the economics at play, they would recognize that there are always scarcities to be leveraged, and business models can be crafted around those scarcities. With song writers, of course, there's the scarcity of their time and their skill -- all of which can be monetized with smart business models. It's not that difficult to figure out how this works, if you look at a few other industries that employ "writers" and realize that songwriting can be compensated in much the same way.

Carnes and Castle jointly bemoan the fact that there are fewer professional songwriters these days, and it's just not like the old days anymore. They also take time to trash "amateur" songwriters as being not worth a dime. It's as if someone let Andrew Keen into the conversation. Carnes and Castle conveniently ignore that more music than ever before is being made today -- and, yes, a large percentage of that music is terrible, but there's a ton of excellent music mixed in. The real trick is just getting better filters. But, of course, rather than do that, Castle puts up this bogus experiment:

Lock yourself in a room for an hour with a continuous playback loop of "Chocolate Rain". Then try it with Gershwin, Cole Porter, Lennon-McCartney, Diane Warren, Carol King. See which you like better.

Right, pick a dreadful amateur song, and then pick wonderful (but all very old) professional musicians. Of course, Castle doesn't bother to note the obvious. I could pick some current indie songwriters, and suggest you spend an hour listening to... say... Corey Smith or Jonathan Coulton or occasional Techdirt author Blaise Alleyne or Techdirt reader and free culture success story Adam Singer or (my personal favorite) Vic Ruggiero (start with this song) or some other top indie songwriters... and then try it with NSync or New Kids On The Block or any other teenie bopper sensation from the past twenty years -- all using "professional" songwriters -- and see which you like better. See? The "point" is no point at all.

Then Carnes jumps in to blame all the troubles of songwriters on their unwillingness to recognize the way technology had changed the market, ignoring all sorts of new opportunities to make money... oh wait, no. He blames everything on those darn pirates, and the fact that things just "aren't the way they used to be." Yeah, and we all used to walk uphill both ways 10 miles there and back to school in the snow:

There are multiple causes for this situation but most of the damage was wrought by two specific problems. The first being that the internet has turned into a Cyber-Somalia.

Professional songwriters used to live on advances from their music publisher. These advances were to be recouped from record sales only ("mechanicals" is the industry term for these revenues). Music piracy killed record sales so that made it impossible for music publishers to recoup the advances they paid songwriters so they stopped signing writers and let go of the ones they had when their contracts ran out.

In other words, the market changed, and Carnes is screaming about how the world needs to stop and go back to the way it was. I guess Carnes wishes that we went back to an age when you picked up the telephone and had to speak to an operator. Eventually, phone technology reached a point where we could all make those connections ourselves, putting lots of phone operators out of work -- thanks to those darn "calling pirates" (but also enabling a communications and technology revolution). Oh wait, what am I talking about... the phone put all those old telegraph operators out of work, so it was probably evil too.

By the way, if you want a shorthand way to know of any business or industry that's in serious trouble, it's when you ask them what their main purpose or mission is, and they talk about "protecting" anything, rather than adding value and expanding the market. So, Carnes, what's your number one job at SGA?

The mission statement of the SGA is two words "Protect Songwriters". That lack of specificity has forced me to show up in all kinds of places I never thought I would be! I was the lead witness in the latest Copyright Rate Board hearing. I have testified on behalf of songwriters in both the Senate and the House of Representatives on many issues concerning song writers rights, and I have spent the last ten years flying all over the country talking to people about the harm that is being done to American music by the widespread theft of songs on the internet by a mob of anonymous looters.

Maybe, rather than than focusing on "protecting" them, you might want to look at enabling them to adapt and capture some of the massive new opportunities out there.

Then there's this rather interesting interpretation of the Constitutional clause that resulted in copyright (you know, the one that's "to promote the progress"). According to Carnes, it's not about promoting the progress, but about raising the standard of living of songwriters:

"At least the [Congressional] Members I have talked to understand that the Constitution includes provisions for royalties for creators because without them the quality of life suffers."

Interesting. Makes you wonder why Congress didn't mandate full protection for telegraph and phone operators when technologies changed how those professions worked as well. After all, I'm sure -- temporarily -- those workers saw their quality of life decline. But, of course, we all know that eventually, their quality of life improved greatly, thanks to all of the wonderful things enabled by those new technologies.

Then Carnes goes on to rip on basically everyone else for causing problems for songwriters -- never once recognizing that maybe the problem is that the rest of the world has moved on, while he and his group haven't even tried. He blames the record labels (well, we agree on that one), every internet service out there (not kidding: "I am not a fan of any particular online company since I have had to spend the last three years of my life fighting them...."), and, of course, Google: "I am not a fan of Google because I believe their search algorithm reduces all art to the lowest common denominator. That's a real culture-killer if I ever saw one."

Yup, hand this man one of the greatest tools for promoting, discovering and distributing new music for songwriters, and he hates it. It's a "culture-killer." Actually, what he really means is that it's a killer of legacy structures, and apparently he'd rather not recognize what it enables, but will complain about what it's taken away.

Carnes goes on to complain (again) about certain business models that don't work for songwriters (concerts, t-shirts), again apparently not creative enough to recognize the scarcities offered by songwriters, and then comes my favorite part:

The most infuriating thing about being lectured to by anti-copyright groups about how songwriters need to get a new 'business plan' is who gave them the right to tell us how to make a living? Who are they to say we shouldn't fight to defend our rights? In truth, I find their suggestions are unbelievably arrogant and self-serving.

This is a common complaint that we hear, and I'd like to address it head on, because it's 100% strawman, and it needs to be debunked and discarded. No one is telling them they "need" to get a new business plan. All we're doing is (a) explaining the changes in the economic and technological landscape and (b) explaining how that opens up new possibilities and (c) noting that if they choose (and it's their choice) not to adjust, they're going to be in trouble. The problem is that part (c) is happening, and rather than recognizing part (a) and (b) they're lashing out at those of us who tried to show them that there is a better way. If it's self-serving to show songwriters and musicians better ways to make a living and warning them that fundamental changes in the marketplace mean the old way can't survive, then so be it. But it's not, as Carnes and others (including Sheffner) seem to believe, an attempt to harm musicians. Songwriters don't need to change at all, but then they'll go out of business. The problem is that Carnes wants to blame everyone else -- including those who tried to suggest a better way. No good deed goes unpunished, of course.

I'm sure buggy whip makers were upset, as well, when people suggested they needed a new business model, but how many of us are really that upset about the diminished buggy whip industry these days?

Both Castle and Carnes take separate turns to suggest that anyone who's never put out a song shouldn't be allowed to comment on the matter at all -- which I'd argue could (again) easily be flipped around. Those who have never bothered to understand basic economics shouldn't be allowed to comment on business models either. Musicians are free to talk about music -- and I'd never try talking about what makes a great song, since that's not my area of expertise -- but it's somewhat ridiculous to claim that only musicians understand the economics that impact music creation. Besides -- as we've seen from our own Blaise Alleyne and Adam Singer -- there are plenty of real musicians who do, in fact, recognize the power of these issues.

And, finally, Carnes' big finale is quoting a totally unnamed "real economist" who claimed that "nothing competes with free." I could come up with a pretty long list of of examples showing musicians and songwriters who have, in point of fact, successfully competed with free and earned millions doing so. But, why let reality seep into a discussion when some unnamed "real economist" says it's impossible. But, if Carnes and Castle apparently only take lessons from real economists, rather than reality (which, of course, goes against what they said earlier in their discussion), I'd be more than willing to point them to various real economists who have shown how to compete with free -- including our most recent Nobel Prize winner.

So, of course, now that we have both real world examples and "real economists" showing how it works, I'm sure Carnes and Castle will admit that perhaps they were a little closed-minded? Or... maybe not. Cognitive dissonance will probably seep in and we'll hear about how economists don't know anything, but only real songwriters can comment on it. Well, okay, let's go back and look at the songwriters who, rather than whining and complaining about times gone by, actually bothered to understand basic economics and do something about it. How about Corey Smith, who not only figured out how to "compete with free" but figured out how to use free to make $4.2 million last year.

And then there's Trent Reznor. He figured out how to make $1.6 million in a single week for music he gave away under that "self-serving shilling for the self-absorbed on the short con" of a Creative Commons license. And, you know what? It didn't even involve t-shirts or concerts. But, you know, according to Carnes, Castle and Sheffner, that's impossible. And, we're all thieves or something. Now, Reznor and Smith are both performers as well as songwriters, but both employ a number of folks to help them do what they do (managers, tech guys, other musicians, etc.). If you're bringing in that much money "competing with free" I'd imagine spending some of it on songwriting help (for those who need it, of course) isn't that big a stretch, is it? Reality's a bitch, sometimes, ain't it?

Filed Under: ben sheffner, business models, chris castle, copyright, rick carnes, songwriters