Musicians' Manager Says SOPA & PIPA Are Not What Musicians Need

from the good-for-him dept

It's always nice to find musician managers who are willing to speak out when the record labels are pushing for bad laws. Ryan Chisholm, a manager at Bill Silva Entertainment, has penned a guest column for Billboard where he argues that SOPA and PIPA are not the way to help musicians:

The music industry already has a poor rapport with many consumers. SOPA/Protect IP only adds fuels the fire of those disgruntled (and web-savvy) listeners who are pissed off that we in the industry can't all get on the same page to agree on deal points to establish a consumer-friendly, legitimate marketplace that rewards creators, rightsholders and fans alike. Worse still, SOPA/Protect IP could make it harder for tomorrow's innovative services to be developed. Today, we are only beginning to realize the potential of sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, SoundCloud - along with numerous popular blogs and thousands of music sites - in driving discovery of and monetization around music. These platforms have become some of the greatest tools we in the business have ever had at our disposal. These sites provide fans the opportunity to participate more directly and meaningfully in the content provided by artists and rightwsholders. In their current form, SOPA/Protect IP give far too much leeway for legitimate expression to be silenced on the grounds of combating infringement. This affects far more than the entertainment industries.

Elsewhere he points out -- as we have -- that the best way to fight infringement is to offer better legitimate services, but SOPA and PIPA don't help in that endeavor at all. Those are definitely important points that many of us have been making for quite some time... but unfortunately, these points seem to be entirely excluded from the discussion over these bills.

Filed Under: manager, music, musicians, protect ip, ryan chisholm, sopa