> That is not correct. My current role is a technical one, not a legal one.
Well then I apologize for my presumption.
> Besides studio time, connections to expert studio musicians, producers, engineers, advances and royalties?
The first four of these have nothing to do with IP schemes and are widely available to those of us who grind not only our music but our social connections. I publish all of my music as CC0 or CC-BY-SA (and of course all DRM-free, as is nearly all bluegrass now), and I think my studio records and collaborations show quite clearly that I have not suffered from lack of access to top talent. If anything, the notoriety of my IP activism and development of p2p tools seems to have made me _more_ interesting to most of my favorite bluegrassers; I'm not sure I'd have been able to make either of my studio records without the good will that has come from this.
Royalties are obviously a complex topic with a strange history, but I see no reason to lose confidence that we can engineer a system by which funds flow form fans to musicians in a way that is at least as just (and is more direct) than royalties.
Advances are obviously an issue, I grant that. And it's not just the check getting cut, but the negotiating power from the label side to do the tour launch, get on the studio and mastering calendars, push to playlisters and radio stations, etc. - a lot of these activities are (in my opinion, cringely) crosswired with the systems of contracts and advances.
I have almost no familiarity with the motion picture industry, and only a passing connection to soundtrack musicians.
But I have repeatedly been shocked to find that even when one of my friends writes a big hit, they receive what seems to be a joke in terms of financial compensation.
Yes, of course Metallica made that fuss. But they didn't outwardly say, "we want our fans arrested" - they dressed up their complaint as a qualm toward an industry too tolerant to the presence of p2p file sharing (what today we might even call freedom of general purpose computing).
In other words, they kept the quiet part quiet. And in any case, if that's the closest thing we can picture to a band wanting to call the cops on their fans, I feel reasonably secure in my assessment.
Much of your comment seems designed to question why I want to take money out of the pockets of these entire neighborhoods of salt-of-the-earth folks. I don't. My contention - the obvious observation I believe - is that the framework of casting their work as intellectual property has impoverished rather than enriching them, and that a better way is coming.
If you stand on the east bank of the Cumberland and look west, I hope you notice that nearly all of the glitzy logos atop the high-rises are financial firms - Third Fifth, Wells Fargo - I can't immediately remember the rest. Obviously the batman building notwithstanding. :-)
The intensity of financial firms in and around downtown Nashville is a testament to how many billions have been diverted from their fan-=>artist path and have instead made their way into the pockets not only of studio execs, but their underwriters and insurers.
Since the internet seems wont to route around IP laws anyway, I feel strongly that we live at a moment of opportunity to right this wrong.
> the framework of casting their work as intellectual property has impoverished rather than enriching them
Some hit artists might disagree with you.
Besides, the ones who flopped don’t owe the rightsholders money from their own pockets. It’s not a “heads I win, tails you lose” situation for the artists. In some ways an advance is a better deal than a typical business loan. In fact, a business loan is a pretty good approximation of a typical early record deal. The challenge is that it’s often difficult to get artists to understand that.
> The intensity of financial firms in and around downtown Nashville is a testament to how many billions have been diverted from their fan-=>artist path and have instead made their way into the pockets not only of studio execs, but their underwriters and insurers.
Well, yeah. For every hit artist there are thousands of flops. Someone has to bear the risk of developing the artists, building repertoires, fronting the money to make first records, and marketing. It’s an axiom of capitalism that the party that takes the biggest financial risk gets the biggest share of the rewards.
I think what you’re really saying is that you think artists deserve a bigger share of the profits. That’s a fair position to hold, but it’s a rather differ one from the statements I was previously responding to.
Well then I apologize for my presumption.
> Besides studio time, connections to expert studio musicians, producers, engineers, advances and royalties?
The first four of these have nothing to do with IP schemes and are widely available to those of us who grind not only our music but our social connections. I publish all of my music as CC0 or CC-BY-SA (and of course all DRM-free, as is nearly all bluegrass now), and I think my studio records and collaborations show quite clearly that I have not suffered from lack of access to top talent. If anything, the notoriety of my IP activism and development of p2p tools seems to have made me _more_ interesting to most of my favorite bluegrassers; I'm not sure I'd have been able to make either of my studio records without the good will that has come from this.
Royalties are obviously a complex topic with a strange history, but I see no reason to lose confidence that we can engineer a system by which funds flow form fans to musicians in a way that is at least as just (and is more direct) than royalties.
Advances are obviously an issue, I grant that. And it's not just the check getting cut, but the negotiating power from the label side to do the tour launch, get on the studio and mastering calendars, push to playlisters and radio stations, etc. - a lot of these activities are (in my opinion, cringely) crosswired with the systems of contracts and advances.
I have almost no familiarity with the motion picture industry, and only a passing connection to soundtrack musicians.
But I have repeatedly been shocked to find that even when one of my friends writes a big hit, they receive what seems to be a joke in terms of financial compensation.
Yes, of course Metallica made that fuss. But they didn't outwardly say, "we want our fans arrested" - they dressed up their complaint as a qualm toward an industry too tolerant to the presence of p2p file sharing (what today we might even call freedom of general purpose computing).
In other words, they kept the quiet part quiet. And in any case, if that's the closest thing we can picture to a band wanting to call the cops on their fans, I feel reasonably secure in my assessment.
Much of your comment seems designed to question why I want to take money out of the pockets of these entire neighborhoods of salt-of-the-earth folks. I don't. My contention - the obvious observation I believe - is that the framework of casting their work as intellectual property has impoverished rather than enriching them, and that a better way is coming.
If you stand on the east bank of the Cumberland and look west, I hope you notice that nearly all of the glitzy logos atop the high-rises are financial firms - Third Fifth, Wells Fargo - I can't immediately remember the rest. Obviously the batman building notwithstanding. :-)
The intensity of financial firms in and around downtown Nashville is a testament to how many billions have been diverted from their fan-=>artist path and have instead made their way into the pockets not only of studio execs, but their underwriters and insurers.
Since the internet seems wont to route around IP laws anyway, I feel strongly that we live at a moment of opportunity to right this wrong.