“You take someone else’s content for free. Deliver it. Don’t pay them anything. And build a $500 billion Silicon Valley company and be very, very, rich,” Weinstein said. “And then have cool slogans like ‘We just want to help the world.’ ” – Harvey Weinstein
READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE:
http://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2013/05/10/weinstein-slams-silicon-valley-on.html
We notice that Future of Music Coalition has submitted testimony to congress asking that they “represent” artists in the Copyright Reform process begun by Congress.
So since they’ve volunteered to represent us. We feel it only fair that they answer these two questions:
1. Who selects your advocacy positions?
AFM, AFTRA, NARAS, Nashville Songwriters Assn, and ASCAP all have democratically elected boards who set the organizations’ positions. Do you have members who vote for leadership? If not, who is making those decisions?
2. Who funds your organization?
Google is listed as your first sponsor of your primary event.
http://futureofmusic.org/events/future-music-summit-2012
How much money do you get from Google? Do you think you should be taking funding from a source many artists believe to be opposed to their interests?
Essential reading by Soren Mork Petersen, “Loser Generated Content: From Participation to Exploitation.”
In this article [1] some of the critical aspects of Web 2.0 are mapped in relation to labor and the production of user generated content. For many years the Internet was considered an apt technology for subversion of capitalism by the Italian post–Marxists.What we have witnessed, however, is that the Internet functions as a double–edged sword; the infrastructure does foster democracy, participation, joy, creativity and sometimes creates zones of piracy. But, at the same time, it has become evident how this same infrastructure also enables companies easily to piggyback on user generated content.
Different historical and contemporary examples are provided to map how the architecture of participation sometimes turns into an architecture of exploitation.
READ THE FULL PAPER HERE:
http://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2141/1948
Here we go again… We can go to Google and within minutes search for an artist of stature such as Lou Reed and quickly find unlicensed and infringing internet businesses exploiting his life’s work illegally while paying the him nothing, zero, zilch, nadda, zippo.
There are many disappointing things about all of this, but the first is that when doing a simple Google search for “Lou Reed Mp3″ the first five returns are for illegally operating and infringing sites.
This doesn’t count YouTube which may or may not be infringing, and may or may not actually be paying Lou from the advertising revenue (on this video, in the screen shots below for example). This is all the more troubling because we know that this can be easily filtered if there is the will to do so.
Perhaps most disappointing however is that major companies like American Express, AT&T Chevorlet, Chili’s, Lysol, Pottery Barn, Vons, Domino’s Pizza, Netflix and Galaxy Nexus are still supporting the this exploitation of artists with corporate advertising dollars. These companies not only supply the funding for these sites exploiting artists to exist, but perhaps even worse they add legitimacy to music piracy by lending their brand identity to it.
Clearly there is a lot of money being made in the distribution of music on the internet. Sadly not much of that money (or in this case NONE of it) is being distributed (or uhm, “shared”) with the artists themselves.
In any value chain where the artists work is being distributed and/or exploited for profit, the artist should be included in that value chain.
Not only do we see the major companies supporting these sites but there’s also the scam ads, rip offs and bogus services. And here’s where it gets even uglier…on sites like The Pirate Bay the work of Lou Reed is promoting adult (escort services?) and porn products like the one offered by Ron Jeremy below.
Let us not forget that the above examples represent a drop in the ocean of the over 200,000 infringing sites that Google alone is tracking.
See more Corporate Advertising Funded Exploitation of Artists:
Tom Waits * Neil Young * Aimee Mann * Neko Case * U2 * Ben Gibbard/Death Cab For Cutie * East Bay Ray / Dead Kennedy’s * Billy Corgan/Smashing Pumpkins
The numbers are simple and staggering. The internet has not empowered musicians, it has exploited them.
Of course there will always be people to nit pick the numbers, to argue and quibble about the Bureau Of Labor Statistics (BLS) methodology. It may be impossible to estimate the exact effect of unethical internet exploitation, but the trend is definite.
Those who debate the exact numbers are using that to delay action. Their job is similar to the commentators and ‘scientists’ funded by oil companies’ to deny global warming or say it needs “more study.”
The Bureau Of Labor Statistics is an agnostic government agency, not the RIAA.
It is also important to note that these cuts are made from the bottom up, not the top down. It is the struggling and middle class musician that gets hurt first. The difference between “making a living, making music” or not is represented in these numbers.
We should also like to point out that while musicians are making less money, those in Silicon Valley are making more money. Jaron Lanier says that “the internet destroyed the middle class” and we can see for ourselves that through the systematic process of removing the cost of labor from their offerings the elite few, are making more money, while everyone else is doing more of the work.
