[advocacy] Re: Personal Music License

[Daniel James]

> I think I agree with your idea, but would you please not use the
> word "piracy"?  That word says that unauthorized copying is the
> moral equivalent of attacking a ship.

I agree - I was using a recording industry term there! I meant 
'disassociate free music sharing from unauthorised commercial 
duplication'. Traveling outside the UK (eg in the Mediterranean 
countries) I've seen that this kind of music distribution is the 
norm, and doubt very much that the artist gets any compensation for 
it. Most of the duplicators can't even be bothered to get the artists 
name right on the cassette spine, and these tapes are sold in legit 
shops. 

> Your claim seems to be that you can't expect the CDs to be released
> this way, or that it will be difficult. 

If I release a CD of my own music, I will release it under this 
licence - but I am not contractually obliged to anyone. The problem 
is that for free formats such as Ogg Vorbis to succeed over 
proprietary formats, it has to be supported by well-known artists 
such as Courtney Love, for example. These artists don't have control 
over their own work, and are not in a position to dictate licensing 
for their CD's - sad but true. The opportunity exists for downloaded 
music because it's currently in a grey area.

> I got the feeling that your goal includes giving people the right
> to share music privately, even if they get it from CDs.  But if the
> CDs are not released under this license, then this license won't
> achieve that goal.

It's a good point, although it can be used both by free artists (for 
all music they create) and 'slave' artists for downloaded music, if 
they can get the agreement of their overseer. We both know that it 
doesn't matter (digitally speaking) if you make an .ogg file from a 
CD you bought or download it - it's the same file. The content 
industry is still trying to stuff the cat back into the bag that was 
opened when CD's were introduced. Do I have a record cutter? No. Do I 
have a CD burner?

Let's assume that an artist - let's call him Eric Clapton - doesn't 
want to have 'his' music shared (ignoring the fact that he was happy 
to 'share' the work of uncountable musicians down the centuries who 
will never get a penny from his CD sales). Let's respect his wishes 
and not rip his CD's to our hard disks, share them with friends etc.

On the other hand let's imagine that there's an artist called David 
Bowie, who understands how the internet works. He's savvy enough 
about the content industry to have set up his own publishing company, 
so he owns the rights to his own songs. He lets us download his work 
and share it freely with his blessing, because he knows that if we 
like it we will do that anyway. His CD sales go up because more 
people have heard his music, and this means he can pay the bills. All 
the kids think he's quite cool, for an old bloke.

Who gets what they want in this scenario? Eric has declining sales, 
and gets increasingly frustrated because no-one think he's cool. 
David is on the cover of the magazines again, and this satisfies his 
monstrous ego. 

He still has one foot in the content industry, but he's ready for the 
time when CD's are made obsolete by ubiquitous broadband networks and 
cheap, reliable storage. Paid downloads will become viable then, but 
the payment will effectively be a voluntary donation to the artist, 
since there's no middleman and we can copy the file for free if we 
really want to. 

The people who are really stuffed are the record companies - assuming 
they rely on Eric and his way of doing things. They need annually 
growing profits to satisfy their shareholders, and Eric can't deliver 
that. 
 
In history lessons we learn that whole industries can die, if they 
don't make what people want. So we have to make the case that people 
shouldn't support the content industry and its plans for digital 
domination unless they want to be spoon-fed their culture - and pay 
for the privilege.   

Daniel

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