“It’s Madness” Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich on LSE Piracy Report

We’re not sure how The London School Of Economics (LSE) could get something so basic so wrong as to suggest that because a some contemporary major label and heritage artists may be making more money from live shows (arena concert grosses) that somehow basic artists rights are not important for protection.

The New Music Express reports that Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich get’s it right in response the the LSE’s shortsighted misunderstanding about artists revenue streams.

“T-shirts and tickets are nothing to do with ‘copyright and creation’, which is the supposed subject of this document.

I hope the government sees how ridiculous this document seems to people who make records.

The authors are ‘pro piracy’ and they wish to influence the UK government’s upcoming review of digital copyright law.

It’s madness.”

Indeed.

It appears that the LSE report would be suggesting that artists never should have been paid royalties from the distribution of recorded music because there have always been other ways to make money from music.

If one were to truly let this logic sink in, it would appear that the LSE is making a general argument against all copyright because the distribution of copyrighted works is only a loss leader to live performances, synchronization fees or endorsement deals. This is of course absurd on every level.

This lopsided logic from LSE seems to favor illegally operating internet corporations distributing music without consent or licenses. We know that there is a lot of money being made in the illegal distribution of music online and the LSE’s report seems aligned with the economic interests of those who knowingly exploit artists for profit.

We expect better from such a respected institution then to ignore the economic interests by companies and corporations that are profiting illegally from advertising supported music piracy.

Perhaps it’s this report in DigiDay (parent company The Economist) that says it best.

Visit the top torrent search engines, and you’ll find ad calls from Yahoo, Google, Turn, Zedo, RocketFuel, AdRoll, CPX Interactive and others.

According to AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelley, it’s an easy problem to fix, but ad companies are attracted by the revenue torrent sites can generate for them. Kelley said his company refuses to serve ads to torrent sites and other sites facilitating the distribution of pirated content. It’s easy to do technically, he said, but others refuse to do it.

“We want everyone to technically stop their customers from advertising on these sites, but there’s a financial incentive to keep doing so,” he said. “Companies that aren’t taking a stand against this are making a lot of money.”

Thankfully Jonathan Taplin and the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab did some fantastic work earlier this year researching and studying how Ad Networks profit from piracy.

RELATED:

Over 50 Major Brands Supporting Music Piracy, It’s Big Business!

by Trichordist Editor

8 Reasons Why Pirating Hurts Everyone | ISPs Dot Org

Downloading the latest hit song can be as easy as pressing a button. With no investment necessary, any song or movie or even program can be found on person to person file sharing networks such as Limewire, Frostwire or BitTorrent. But is this downloading of free stuff really free? What does it cost us in the long run?

1. Copyrights – Historically, copyright laws have protected intellectual property, such as music. A copyright is a form of legal protection provided to the authors of original works of authorship, whether books, music, film or other creative works. Its aim is to allow authors, musicians, directors, etc., (and the companies that back them and distribute their work) to profit from their creativity and so encourage them and others to produce other works in future.

READ THE FULL POST HERE:
http://www.internetserviceproviders.org/blog/2011/8-reasons-why-pirating-hurts-everyone/

by Trichordist Editor

Why the LSE’s Piracy Arguments Just Don’t Hold Water | Music Industry Blog

It seems that there are always people who want to argue the sky is green and the grass is blue. Such seems to be the case with the London School Of Economics recent report on the impact of piracy on the creative industries.

The primary argument is that although recorded music sales are down (at least they got that much right) this is compensated for by live concerts and other revenues. As we point out here, over and over again these are all revenue streams that existed prior to the internet and therefore are an admission that the internet has failed to create a new middle class of professional musicians.

– Touring… existed BEFORE the internet
– Merchandise (T-Shirts)… existed BEFORE the internet
– Film/Sync Licensing… existed BEFORE the internet
– Sponsorships/Endorsements… existed BEFORE the internet

The Music Industry Blog makes quick work of debunking this dubious and logically flawed study.

The renowned LSE this week published a paper arguing against implementation of the UK’s Digital Economy Act and calling for policy makers to recognize that piracy is not hurting the music industry but is in fact helping parts of it grow. To these academic researchers the findings probably feel like some dazzling new insight but to anyone with more than a passing understanding of the music industry they are as if somebody just time travelled back to 1999. The piracy-helps-grow-the-pie / help-makes-the-sky-not-fall / actually-helps-the-industry arguments were common currency throughout most of the first decade of the digital music market.

In more recent years though, following perpetual revenue decline and the growing plight of struggling ‘middle-class’ artists and songwriters, most neutral observers recognize that the piracy=prosperity argument just doesn’t hold water anymore.

Though of course that won’t stop the pro-piracy lobby fawning over this ‘research’ as more ‘evidence’ for their case.

PLEASE READ THE FULL POST AT THE MUSIC INDUSTRY BLOG HERE:
http://musicindustryblog.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/why-the-lses-piracy-arguments-just-dont-hold-water/

Additional Reading:

The 1 Percent: Income Inequality Has Never Been Worse Among Touring Musicians…

Note that in 1982 almost 40% of the revenue was divided between the “bottom” 95% of artists, while in 2003 they received only 15% of all revenue.

READ THE FULL STORY AT DIGITAL MUSIC NEWS:
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/20130704onepct

Related:

Why Telling Artists To Stop Selling Music & Just Make Money Through Live Shows Is Ridiculous

Give-it-all-awayGiving away all your music for free and trying to make your living via other revenue streams can be a valid approach. Except that I don’t know of any musicians actually doing that.

…

There are a lot of reasons it’s ridiculous for people in the tech world, in particular, to say that you should just give away all your music for free and make a living through live shows.

READ THE FULL STORY AT HYPEBOT:
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2013/08/why-telling-artists-to-stop-selling-music-just-make-money-through-live-shows-is-ridiculous.html

by Trichordist Editor

Intellectual property — Our forgotten constitutional right? | Fosters

This story originally ran on Constitution Day, but we just got hipped to it now. Worth the read.

Cyber-piracy increasingly costs the U.S. economy money that instead of creating and supporting jobs goes into the pockets of criminals. The government must act, and swiftly, by exercising its constitutional responsibility to ensure that this trend is reversed. This may require breaking some new ground and should be done only after careful, principled debate, with respect for liberty and adherence to our other, equally important, constitutional rights.

If the framers could understand this matter in the eighteenth century, we must believe the current Congress can grapple with it today. Previous efforts to update our intellectual property protection system were defeated in a flurry of misinformation. The proposed legislation may have been opaque and overly broad, but the concerns expressed by many conservatives and libertarians were overstated.

On this Constitution Day, let’s remember that even in the Founder’s concept of a limited federal government, it is the proper obligation of that government to secure the property of its citizens against lawlessness. Protecting intellectual property is a property rights issue. There is a difference between liberty and lawlessness: We should favor the former and oppose the latter. On Constitution Day we should think about the protection of intellectual property rights on the Internet as a logical, contemporary extension of the basic Constitutional rights of authors, scientists and inventors that our framers set forth so plainly two and a quarter centuries ago.

READ THE FULL STORY AT FOSTERS:
http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130919/GJOPINION_0102/130919239/-1/FOSOPINION

by Trichordist Editor

Copyright Erosion: How DMCA Misuse Became A Multimillion Dollar Shakedown

Essential Reading for All Musicians and Creators.

Music Technology Policy

I participated on a panel at the 2013 USC Institute on Entertainment Law and Business on October 5 in Los Angeles.  The topic was the erosion of copyright, not just through a lack of enforcement, but through permissive misinterpretation of the intentions of Congress.

My presentation was based on the briefing on brand sponsored piracy that I gave to the National Association of Attorneys General earlier this year (which you can see here).  A caveat–while I discuss only Google here, these problems are not limited to Google alone.  However, since Google is a monopolist in both search and online advertising, the difference between what Google does and others do while measurable is unlikely to be statistically significant.

The argument is that due to an extraordinarily distorted interpretation of the “safe harbors” created with the best of intentions by the Congress in 1998 (the so-called “DMCA notice and takedown”), the…

View original post 1,980 more words

by Trichordist Editor

The Misconceptions of Music Piracy | DeepWit Recordings

A fantastic and detailed exploration of the issues from the perspective of a Deep House, Independent, EDM Label.

The second biggest misconception I have run across about piracy is that it does not hurt sales.

The first question I have to ask people when they say this to me is, have you actually done a test to prove this hypotheses?

I have, and from what I have seen, from a small labels perspective is YES without a doubt it effects our sales. I can also say, being involved with a fairly recognizable Deep House producer, that when we take down illegal download sites for him, it can make all the difference between making it into the top 100 and not.

Maybe this does not hold true for all labels or artists, but I can certainly say for my label we have more lost revenue (my estimate would be about a third of what we could be making instead goes to piracy) then we get fans in return for this “free” promotion.

READ THE FULL POST AT DEEPWIT RECORDINGS:
http://deepwitrecordings.wordpress.com/tag/why-music-piracy-hurts-musicians/

by Trichordist Editor

Silk Road Arrest Shines Light on ‘Dark Web’ | ABC News

The wild west wasn’t wild forever, and neither will the internet be… Sooner or later the good guys will catch up to the bad guys and people will value law, over lawlessness. This bust proves that the issues musicians and creators face online is not so much about technology, but rather how that technology is used.

The FBI’s takedown of a billion-dollar black market website that allowed users to sell and purchase illegal items has shined a spotlight on the “dark Web,” which masks users’ online identities while providing a shield for everyone from hackers to journalists and the police.

Ross William Ulbricht, 29, was arrested Tuesday and charged with a battery of conspiracy crimes allegedly committed through his Silk Road website, which has been called the “Amazon of illegal drugs” or the “eBay of illicit substances.” It was described by the FBI as “the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet.”

READ THE FULL STORY HERE:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/silk-road-arrest-shines-light-dark-web/story?id=20460774

by trichordist

Copyright: The Inverted Human Pyramid | The Cynical Musican

You are no doubt aware of the hearings currently being undertaken by the US House of Representatives Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet – part of a major review of existing copyright law (and if not, I just told you). As can be expected in this enlightened (or, at least, interconnected) age – recordings are available on the web and I’ve been trying to catch up with the debate.

Whilst watching the hearing from two weeks ago (with representatives from the “rights holder side” present) I couldn’t help feeling that none of the witnesses was able to articulate just why copyright was so important to the nation as a whole – not just the small portion of it that actually owns marketable copyrights. Given that the House of Representatives represents all Americans, it would seem that such an explanation is deserved.

This got me thinking of how I would go about explaining it and I offer it for your reading pleasure.

READ THE FULL POST AT:
http://thecynicalmusician.com/2013/08/copyright-the-inverted-human-pyramid/

by Trichordist Editor

The End of Quiet Music | The New York Times

There’s a lot to take away from the recent opinion piece in the New York Times from Alina Simone about the new (but not better) realities for musicians and creators. Here are two paragraphs that have resonated with us, asking the important questions about where we are, and where we are going.

Instead of helping these musicians, we tell them they just have to adapt to the new realities of the music economy. And short of embedding MP3s in toilet paper, they have. Bands have demonstrated remarkable creativity in trying to monetize whatever they can to make up for the inability to, er, monetize their music itself. They will come over and play Xbox 360 with you or personally record your outgoing voice mail message.

We’ve placed the entire onus of changing-with-the-times on musicians, but why can’t the educational, cultural and governmental institutions that support the arts adapt as well, extending the same opportunities to those whose music provides the soundtrack to our lives? If they don’t, Darwinism will probably ensure that only the musical entrepreneurs survive. I can’t say if the world of music will be better or worse off if that happens, but it will certainly be a lot louder.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE AT THE NEW YORK TIMES:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/the-end-of-quiet-music/?_r=0

by Trichordist Editor

Meet the Free Market Royalty Act, an Elegant Solution to Some Complex Issues | Billboard

This guest post at Billboard is a great overview for understanding the “Free Market Royalty Act.”

Representative Mel Watt (D-NC-12) has introduced the Free Market Royalty Act (H.R. 3219), one of the most intriguing royalty proposals in years. The bill accomplishes two principal goals: Watt starts the process of getting the government out of the music business by eliminating the compulsory license for digital audio transmissions, and extends the sound recording public performance right to all audio performances.

Here’s why this is a productive solution to a knotty problem.

READ THE FULL POST AT BILLBOARD:
http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/legal-and-management/5740706/guest-post-meet-the-free-market-royalty-act-an

by trichordist