I'm sure most people here will consider me crazy for saying this, but I really hope the music industry manages to make some inroads with these initiatives.
Here's my problem with the free culture / "information wants to be free" crowd -- when you decide you no longer place monetary value on intellectual property, you are merely impoverishing intellectuals and keeping those who run enterprises such as oil and mining companies in control of the world's wealth. Rather than making the world a better place by making intellectual property free, you're putting it into the hands of the very people many in this crowd hate.
I'm not saying that intellectual monopolies/oligarchies such as those seen in the 20th century are sensible; I'm merely saying that the free culture is, quite literally, economically retarded. Allowing creatives and intellectuals to pursue their art as a profession is one of the greatest accomplishments of modern society, I think; even better is the fact that you can pursue these things and make a significant amount of money which can be used to do lots of interesting things. We really need to figure out a way to preserve this -- the balance of power created by wealthy creatives pushing initiatives that run counter to the aims of wealthy industrialists is extremely important (Bono not withstanding, of course -- kidding).
Lessig, to whom I think you're referring with 'free culture', isn't really arguing for no IP. He is merely reminding everyone that copyright, patents, etc. are there for a reason and that reason is not like a property right (because ideas aren't like "stuff", economically, they are examples of non-rivalrous and non-excludable goods). The rights that a creator has are:
"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;" (U.S. Constitution Art. I, Sec. 8)
My understanding of the free culture movement is that this tradeoff of "limited times" has become, effectively, unlimited. Every time Micky is about to expire, congress re-extends his copyright for another twenty years or so. So then the problem is that we (meaning our culture), is getting the short end of the stick in this deal.
I basically agree that if there were no limited monopoly on ideas (like patents) then, for certain individuals, they just wouldn't be bothered to try and bring it to market; that's bad, I don't think anyone really wants that (even though they may think they want it). But the question is very much open as to what 'limited' means in this context.
You make the classic mistake of arguing against the record industry as a means for arguing against payment for intellectual property... While the record industry is involved in this, and they are the chief whiners, the overall situation is much greater. We have an entire generation of people around the world who see no point in paying for intellectual property.
This may actually be a situation in which society has made a decision to change its values, in which case the situation is irreversible, or will require a new generation before it can change. See: smoking, equal rights, etc.
Stuff changes. How long has copyright law been around? Are we supposed to believe that the entire human race was doing it wrong before us?
I'm not against copyright. I'm saying this is a shift of historical magnitude that no RIAA or MIAA or WTFIAA or for that matter anyone has the power to stop. Like anything, its effects will be both good and bad and depend on your point of view. For example, the record industry may consider it bad that they have less money for plates of cocaine in the boardrooms where they've swindled countless musicians out of their life's work. Personally I find that one rather pleasing.
Your implicit assertions about the proposals of the "free culture" crowd are false; your terminology raises unnecessary confusion; and your economic analysis is incoherent.
You're confused about what the "free culture" crowd advocates. Let's restrict this discussion just to copyright. Lessig does not advocate the abolition of copyright (and neither do I). He advocates reasonable limitations on its scope, and that copyright owners should consider when they do and do not permit others to use their works without payment, rather than always requiring payment.
There's very little that can be said coherently about "intellectual property" in general; trademarks, trade secret protection, and copyright, to name just a few, are very, very different. Maybe you can say this: "Intellectual property" laws turn the ideas and tools needed to carry out intellectual work into property, where they weren't before. They also turn some of the results of that intellectual work into property.
This is a good deal for investors in intellectual ventures; if their employees can't quit and start a competing company, the company can charge its customers a higher price, and the employees can't demand higher wages. If intellectual ventures need investors, maybe that's worth the cost.
But many creative people (God, I hate the word "creatives") and intellectuals have pursued their art as a profession in the absence of any "intellectual property", and often in the absence of investors. Lawyers, doctors, professors, judges, consultants, investment managers, schoolteachers, stage actors, many engineers, scientists, and symphony musicians all perform intellectual work as a profession without any "intellectual property". Even the majority of programmers write software for which copyright licenses are never sold --- either because it's only used inside of one company, or because it's free software. So your implicit assertion that eliminating intellectual property would leave "creatives" and intellectuals bereft of the ability to make a profession of their interests is false, and historically and economically illiterate. Your name-calling ("quite literally ... retarded") and explicit appeals to hatred ("you're putting it into the hands of the very people many in this crowd hate") do not rescue your point from being a falsehood, completely out of touch with reality.
If you farm apples, and apples have a monetary value, you can provide for yourself and family by farming apples.
If you create ideas/code/art/music, and IP has a monetary value, you can also provide for yourself and family by creating those things.
If "information wants to be free", then I have to farm apples all day, and only create IP (if I'm so motivated) for free, after dinner and before bed.
I'm all for sharing ideas/IP if you want to, but I totally support people's right to sell or keep ideas/IP if they choose to.
Do I think the RIAA/MPAA are generally immoral parasites? Yes. The solution isn't downloading songs and movies from RIAA/MPAA labels and trying to pretend you're doing something other than sneaking in the backdoor of a concert or movie theatre.
The concept of not having intellectual property doesn't mean that you can't still sell your ideas, it just means that you can't control what someone else does with them. You can keep your idea to yourself or trusted individuals, but there is no reason to expect a monopoly on an idea.
Far fewer people could make a living producing and selling IP (music, movies, books, code, etc...) if the first person they sold it to was free to either give it away or sell it for 50% of what they'd paid for it.
Allowing creatives and intellectuals to pursue their art as a profession is one of the greatest accomplishments of modern society... ...We really need to figure out a way to preserve this...
It's possible to agree with this sentiment while still believing that the music industry, as currently incarnated, is not the best vehicle to accomplish this goal.
The current shift we're seeing does seem to limit the instances of extreme success for individual creatives. This might not be a bad thing, if it provides a venue for more individuals to succeed, if at a smaller level. I think this is happening as the record companies slowly get moved out of the loop, but it's still early days and the new models for success are most certainly not yet fully fleshed out.
I'll be intrigued (in the academic sense) to see what they come up with.
The GPL couldn't be fought (I consider the fight basically over after the last court ruling) because it gives rights where most software licenses remove them. In a way it is on firmer legal footing than conventional licenses, because it is much more clearly a contract; the law grants you these rights, but if you do X and Y, you get Z from me in return. It's hard to imagine how to eliminate the GPL without also eliminating software licenses.
Similarly for the creative commons; how can you block open culture which gives people rights they wouldn't have without losing the same legal structures you use to remove rights? Removing rights exercises those legal mechanisms far harder than a standard contract, just like with the GPL vs. standard EULAs.
I suppose they could try a pure social approach but I submit that they've already lost that fight. Trying to advertise that people shouldn't use the free thing is going to be one of the fuddy-duddiest things an industry has done in a long time, and calling further attention to free culture is unlikely to do them any favors.
They haven't lost the social fight; it hasn't even started. The average person has yet to even think to question bog-standard intellectual property practices; that Overton window has a long ways to move yet.
I'm not hopeful. Lessig, for one, is so bad at speaking to the uninitiated about these issues that he lost a debate with Stephen Colbert, who was trying to _make fun_ of the opposing position.
They've lost the leading edge already... and how do they propose to roll even that back? "No, that free stuff which you can freely examine and come to your own conclusions about sucks because we say so, come spend $20 on thirty minutes of generic music again?" They've lost because there's just no way to dress this up in a way that can get past the cynical 21st century consumer.
> The average person has yet to even think to question bog-standard intellectual property practices
I'm not sure that's true. Many of my friends aren't computer geeks or copyfighters, but most of them share music and movies and use P2P applications. For many people the concept of recorded music as something you buy just doesn't exist.
The idea behind copyleft boils down to "I'll share with you if you share with me". And Creative Commons boils down to "I've got some copyrighted work; I choose to share it under certain contitions".
If ASCAP want to argue against these ideas, they've chosen a hard task for themselves. Probably all they will achieve is reinforcing the music industry's image of being out-of-touch dinosaurs living in the previous century.
Here's my problem with the free culture / "information wants to be free" crowd -- when you decide you no longer place monetary value on intellectual property, you are merely impoverishing intellectuals and keeping those who run enterprises such as oil and mining companies in control of the world's wealth. Rather than making the world a better place by making intellectual property free, you're putting it into the hands of the very people many in this crowd hate.
I'm not saying that intellectual monopolies/oligarchies such as those seen in the 20th century are sensible; I'm merely saying that the free culture is, quite literally, economically retarded. Allowing creatives and intellectuals to pursue their art as a profession is one of the greatest accomplishments of modern society, I think; even better is the fact that you can pursue these things and make a significant amount of money which can be used to do lots of interesting things. We really need to figure out a way to preserve this -- the balance of power created by wealthy creatives pushing initiatives that run counter to the aims of wealthy industrialists is extremely important (Bono not withstanding, of course -- kidding).