DDJ>Intellectual Property: A Modest Proposal — Here is an interesting essay that proposes nationalizing the music industry. It seems like the only solution. Do it!
Being a good American, I always want to see market forces solve our problems, but in this case market forces are not working. Instead of making things better for us, they are making things worse.
As a result, I’m calling on our nation’s leaders to take a drastic step–nationalize the music industry. My proposal is simple, economical, workable, and benefits both listeners and musicians. Let me spell it out for you and I think you will join me in my wish to see this become reality.
Step 1 is for the government to set up a music archive. By law, all copyrighted music must be published to this archive. The Library of Congress is well suited to management of this task, and really, all they need is a giant server farm, a high-speed Internet connection, and a copy of MySQL.
related link:
record lables on the web
obscure discographies
Not one to compete — but I would say, why should I trust the government to control information over the private industry? The governement, while supposed to be the people, is not always that trustworthy… arguably, less so lately. We’re shifting our trust from one large organization to another — neither models seem appealing to me.
Public organzations can be just as trustworthy — more so, the problem seems to be a mix of government + corporations. Corporations lobby for government power, backing laws that create more corporation power, and so on, and so forth… why would that change by giving the government the full reigns?
You can argue Library of congress (who, if we remember ‘misplaced’ John F. Kennedy’s brain after autopsy), has been successful — but many government ran organizations cannot boast anywhere near such success… the divide between public and private schools comes to mind first.
The goal is personal responsibility and trust — I don’t find either options in this or the current model.
This is ridiculous. The market works fine. The issue is that an insufficient number of people object in a meaningful way to the results of the current music industry structure. While technology pundits spend all kinds of time on this issue, and I personally agree that the music industry establishment is ill-behaved, a sizable chunk of music consumers don’t give a flying fark.
I also find it a bit disturbing that so much trust would be placed in the government when, in fact, the federal government has been proactively protecting and implicitly encouraging the abuses of the existing music industry. Why would a nationalized system not be similarly vulnerable to abuse? The same people would ultimately still be in charge.
Oh joy, let’s give even more money to be controlled and mismanaged by the Federal government. It is already the case that any artists can post their music to a website for people to download. They can even enforce insane DRM requirements on that music. They issue this author has is that the starving artists sign a deal with a label that gives the label full distribution rights. Well, don’t do that if you want to get your music out.
The free market is working just fine. If you want a piece of music, buy it. If you don’t like the DRM tactics being used, don’t buy it and recommend others do not buy it. Encourage artists to post music on their own site and not sign away their distribution deals.
Those people that desire the music will pay for it. Those that do not are not required to pay for those that do.
The problem with the current music industry is that the artists record their albums, then get little or nothing financially for their work, except for increased attendance at their concerts (which is how most musicians make money).
I’d really like to see the Library of Congress or perhaps a non-profit organization take control of all music that is no longer in distribution. There are probably millions of titles that are still under copyright, that are not legally accessible to the public. I’d also like to see legislation that would allow these works to become public domain – perhaps introduce a 20 year copyright, with “use-it-or-lose-it” terms.
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/10/05/library_of_congress_.html
I think one of the very best things the government could do is bring down the copyright time-limits to their original levels: 14 years, renewable once.
These current laws are effectevly no limits, at all. The original idea of copyright was to balance rewarding of the author versus the general welfare of the public.
These days — no surprise! — it has totally swung away from the welfare of the general public.
>This is ridiculous. The market works fine.
As is often the case, what we mistakenly call a “free market” is actually a corporate welfare sytem. Current copyright laws were created to reward artists, but the system now protects the vested interests of large media companies.
So, Cameron, when you say the “market works fine,” it does in the sense that it continues to pour money into the pockets of people who have nothing to do with creating art.
Technology has changed to the point where we simply no longer need the middleman. And if we don’t need the middleman, is there some reason we sould create a corporate welfare system to enrich the middleman? I think not.
What I propose is an even more free market – more of a direct democracy than we have now.
>Not one to compete — but I would say, why should I trust the >government to control information over the private industry?
I don’t think it is critical that the government play a key role in this. However, it seems to be sort of a natural monopoly, in that it could be administered by a single party more effectively than by a competitive system of companies.
The distributions requirements are pretty simple. One thing that I think would be intriguing would be to find an effective way to do this via P2P, some sort of system like the CHORD networking system that Robert T. Morris developed at MIT (!) could easily do this. The only catch is figuring out how the peering arrangements pay the artists.
>The free market is working just fine. If you want a
>piece of music, buy it. If you don’t like the DRM tactics
>being used, don’t buy it and recommend others do not buy it.
You are describing how the free market operates today, and your description is perfectly accurate. However, and most important, this doesn’t mean it is working as well as it could. Why should we enact Federal Law to create today’s system when we could have a simpler law that works better, distributes the same products at lower cost, and benefits both producers and consumers?
Merely observing that free market principles are operating doesn’t mean that they are giving us the best system we could have. That is exactly my contention. The free market is supposed to the most effective way to deliver goods at the lowest possible cost, but I believe that in this case, this is not happening.
>These current laws are effectevly no limits, at all. The original
>idea of copyright was to balance rewarding of the author
>versus the general welfare of the public.
Yes, exactly!
What does any of that have to do with enriching Sony? The system is supposed to be enriching Bruce Springsteen!
Mark Nelson has some posted some of his comments at The Data Compression News Blog. You may want to take a look.
It’s all wrong.
1. The market IS working. That’s why iTunes is growing and popular music is popular.
2. It overruns supporting those I like, and boycotting those I don’t.
3. Don’t touch my pay check. No taxes!
4. CDs are DRM-free. iTunes isn’t the only store in town.
5. LOC and NASA has misfiled or lost stuff.
6. Profit motivates the involved to produce was people buy.