
With change at the top of Copyright Office, a battle brews over free content - walterbell
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-copyright-office-20161109-story.html
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theandrewbailey
> "You don't make any money from recording music anymore," he said.

Historically, musicians got paid for making music, not for selling it. For
thousands of years, musicians never got paid for recorded music, yet they
survived. The real money maker is, and has always been, live performances and
concerts. The multi-millionaire double platinum musician is a 20th century
aberration.

Ever read "The Problem with Music"? [http://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-
with-music](http://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music)

~~~
finnh
I'm not sure I get this argument. Of course artists would rather be paid for
product than time, and of course they want the aberration to continue.

The world of tech would be pretty different if the "aberration" of stock
options were eliminated, and everyone was paid only by the hour.

But it goes further than ISOs to actual product revenues - I would be pretty
sad (and much less well off) if I could only charge by the hour for writing
software vs collecting revenues for software I already wrote.

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shakna
> "The librarian wants free content, and the copyright office is there to
> protect creators of content. They are diametrically opposed ideologies"

Well, that's an insane viewpoint.

Creative Commons and free culture licenses exist to maintain both!

> "You don't make any money from recording music anymore," he said. "The
> streaming services have wiped out that revenue stream."

Ah. So your company has failed to keep pace with what your audience wants, and
so is falling apart. Your answer is to use copyright like a sledgehammer,
rather than trying to understand the current market.

~~~
rayiner
> Creative Commons and free culture licenses exist to maintain both!

 _If_ a content creator has licensed her content under a free culture license,
the job of the copyright office is to help her enforce that.

> So your company has failed to keep pace with what your audience wants, and
> so is falling apart. Your answer is to use copyright like a sledgehammer,
> rather than trying to understand the current market.

That would be a reasonable argument if the market set the price for streaming
services. But to a significant extent it does not. For example, Pandora-style
streaming is subject to mandatory licensing at prices set by the
government.[1]

Imagine that the government sets the price for wheat (as it has several times
in our history). If the government sets the price of wheat too low, due to
pressure by say cereal manufacturers who use wheat as an input to their
profit-making activities, should we condemn the farmer for complaining about
it?

[1] [http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-
jay...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-jay-z-
pandora-songwriters-compensation-copyright-justice-
perspec-0402-20150403-story.html)

~~~
ethbro
_> That would be a reasonable argument if the market set the price for
streaming services. But to a significant extent it does not._

It's been a minute, but didn't CDs and records usually get sold at the same
price point?

Also, the article you linked is about songwriters, not performers (and happens
to be co-written by one of its case studies for "I got paid far less than I
think I should have" afaict).

I was under the impression that Spotify allocated revenue according to total
listens on individual tracks, which seems fair enough.

~~~
rayiner
Spotify, because it lets you choose your song, is not eligible for compulsory
licensing. But the compulsory license still anchors the market price. Content
owners can't charge the "real" market rate for songs because streaming
services and downloading services are to an extent fungible with each other.

~~~
ethbro
How would one determine the real market rate for a song in the first place? In
an ephemeral streaming context, a market seems like it would be nigh
impossible to implement. "I bid $.02 for an hour of streaming music, only play
me songs that are under that"?

~~~
rayiner
The same way they do now when there is no compulsory license: the publisher
negotiates the value of songs with the streaming service up front.

~~~
ethbro
That doesn't sound particularly free. That sounds like monopolies dealing with
each other.

~~~
rayiner
There are dozens of publishers and dozens of streaming services.

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iraphael
For an interesting understanding of the state of copyright today, I recommend
reading Free Culture, by Lawrence Lessig.

I bought the kindle version but it's also available online at
[http://www.free-culture.cc/freeculture.pdf](http://www.free-
culture.cc/freeculture.pdf)

------
mljoe
I think an understanding of the positives and negatives of copyright is
important. Copyright is an important economic motivator and the basis for the
creative industry's ability to generate revenue, but taken to extremes it
stifles technological innovation and can lead to outright censorship.

Until very recently, only the positives were represented in government policy.
It was as if it was impossible for too much copyright or too strict copyright
enforcement to even exist.

What we are seeing is a rebalancing of the narrative, one that includes the
opinions of more then just the entertainment industry. That's all.

