As MTP readers will recall, Google is locked in the proverbial death struggle with the European Commission over antitrust complaints of Google’s anticompetitive behavior.  Those complaints resulted in an antitrust investigation going back several years.  For Google, winning that investigation would look like palming off as real change some ice in winter changes to their business practices as part of a bureaucratic charm offensive.  That charm offensive resulted in the embarrassing image of Eric “Uncle Sugar” Schmidt cozying up to his new BFF the Competition Commissioner of the European Commission, Joaquín Almunia.

Commissioner Almunia gave Google not one, not two, but an unprecedented three opportunities to negotiate a settlement on Google’s own terms–and Google is desperately trying for a fourth before Mr. Almunia’s term expires in October, and yes I do expect an October surprise from Mr. Almunia.  Every time Google got a chance to renegotiate rather than getting fined or…

In this interview with the BBC for the show “The Digital Revolution,” Andrew Keen describes how artists have been exploited by the tech and internet industries.

“What would I say to the people that are sitting in front of their computers–believing in revolution–I would tell them that they are subjects or victims of false consciousness, that they’re wrong— that they’re believing in something that doesn’t really exist–that they’re dupes–they’re exploited, particularly those that give away their labor for free so that young men in Silicone Valley can become infinitely rich.” – Andrew Keen

If you enjoyed this video, you may also like to read:
Loser Generated Content : From Participation to Exploitation by Mork Petersen

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[ THE 101 ] [NEW BOSS / OLD BOSS ] [ SPOTIFY ] [GROOVESHARK ] [ LARRY LESSIG ]
[ JOHN PERRY BARLOW ] [ HUMAN RIGHTS OF ARTISTS ] [

We completely agree with what Bono said in USA Today,

“…somebody should fight for fellow artists, because this is madness. Music has become tap water, a utility, where for me it’s a sacred thing, so I’m a little offended. The Internet has emasculated rather than liberated artists…”

We couldn’t agree more and we’ve been happy to see more artists speaking out publicly.

The situation is effecting artists at all levels like Aimee Mann, Neko Case, Talib Kweli, Ben Gibbard and Death Cab For Cutie, Jared Leto and 30 Seconds to Mars, Neil Young and Tom Waits to name just a few. These artists represent a wide spectrum of diversity and all are effected by the illegal exploitation of their work.

Let’s be clear about this. It’s about money. A lot of advertising money supporting the people ripping off artists to further their own…

Musicians have been getting the short end of the stick for a long time. There are no shortage of stories about the wrong doings of managers, booking agents, etc and of course record labels.

But today we find ourselves in a battle with an enemy few of us understand. If we were to believe the writings and ramblings of the tech blogosphere, than they would have us believe that our enemy is our fans. This is simply not true.

The enemy are the for profit businesses making money from our recordings and songwriting illegally. Let’s be clear about this, our battle is with businesses ripping us off by illegally exploiting our work for profit. This is not about our fans. It is about commercial companies in the businesses of profiting from our work, paying us nothing and then telling us to blame our fans. That is the ultimate in cowardice…

So record labels invest in the careers of artists about $4.5 Billion annually in A&R and Marketing. Meanwhile, there are 200,000 infringing sites exploiting artists work and paying them nothing that we can see from the looks of the Google transparency report.

To be precise at the time of the writing of this post there are 281,340 infringing sites on the report with the #1 offender having received over 7.5 Million DMCA takedown notices! Seriously, 7.5 Million… and Google can’t determine that this is a site “dedicated or primarily used for infringement.” Wow.

FIRST DISCLAIMER:

Now look, we don’t always like record labels, but when we do, it’s because they are actually paying artists and investing capital into developing careers (hello Trent Reznor returning to a major label). Ninety percent of new releases financed by labels don’t recoup or break even, but the bands still gain the marketing and PR…