Hi There,

I'm new around here, but have been thinking about the issues the Pirate Party represents for some time. I was wondering if the party had any policy or thoughts regarding alternate mechanisms for the reimbursement of artists, while still allowing the free transfer and sharing of culture?

It seems to me that the economic component of the piracy issue boils down to the absurdity of paying $30 (for an album say) for something that has a nil cost of distribution, yet people who make good things still need to be rewarded for it to cover the fixed costs of production.

I have had an attempt at gathering my own thoughts here:

http://issuu.com/jessematthews/docs/the_case_for_univseral_ownership_of_cultural_prope

and propose a law change which might fix all this. Skip ahead a few pages to the 'proposal' section if, as, I'm sure with such a learned audience as this you are familiar with the issues explored in the first section.

Comments and critiques enthusiastically received!

Cheers,


jesse

Hello jesse, welcome to PPNZ.

I think the proposal you suggest has actually already been tried. Sorry I forget the details, but I think essentially the outcome was that copyright holders repeatedly downloaded works they held copyright over in order to increase their share of the pie. To prevent this abuse, the cost of downloading would have to be higher than the income that copyright holders received from a download. If the cost of downloading is close to zero (ie just the cost of bandwidth), then the income that copyright holders could receive from downloading would have to be even closer to zero for the system to not be prone to abuse. This means such a system would be limited in how much it could pay to copyright holders, and, especially if the cost of bandwidth may continue to fall (which seems plausible), such a system may not be worthwhile. There are some attempts to do similar things with voluntary payments though, e.g., Flattr <flattr.com> and Airborne <airbornemusic.com>

Other related thoughts:

The idea of intellectual works as collective property (or public domain) is based on the false premise that intellectual works are morally property at all. An intellectual work is not a thing (or object), rather it is a form (or class). I own my CDs, and you own yours, as I own my chairs, and you own yours. The idea of property rights applying to forms (or classes) conflicts with the idea of property rights applying to things (or objects). Forms (or classes) have no real existence apart from the things (or objects) with which they are associated. If someone claims to own a form (or class), then, if they are claiming to own anything at all, they are claiming to own the things (or objects) associated with that form (or class). If someone claims to own a song, then they are claiming to own all the copies of that song, or they are not claiming to own anything, because the song does not exist apart from the copies of it.

Further, it is not true that artists must be paid for their work any more than that civil servants have a moral right to collect taxes. There is a difference between deserving something and having a right to take it. Certainly many civil servants do good work, and society is the better for it, however civil servants do not have a moral right to take money from people simply because they personally decided to do good work. Rather society democratically agrees to contribute money (tax) to provide an incentive for people to become civil servants and do good work. Likewise, artists do not have a moral right to take money from people simply because they personally decided to do good work. Rather copyright law can only be justified, like tax, as a democratically agreed means to provide an incentive for people to become artists and do good work.

Also, while the recording industry may be dying, that doesn't mean the entire music industry must die. The music industry is composed of two parts: the recording industry and artists. The recording industry has long served an important role in distributing music, but this middle-man role is no longer necessary, and because they're no longer doing anything necessary, we no longer need to pay them for it. Unfortunately, since the role the recording industry used to serve is no longer necessary, they are starting an aggressive war on two fronts. One is they are attempting to control the public with increasingly restrictive laws (e.g. controlling what people are allowed to do in their own homes), and the other is they are attempting to control artists with increasingly restrictive contracts (e.g. taking earnings from live performances). IMHO we need to free artists from the recording industry (e.g. by offering something similar to student loans to up-and-coming artists so they don't get locked into recording industry contracts) so we can leave the recording industry to die a due death without dragging artists down with them.

I'd also like to add that the VAST majority of musicians do not make much if anything from music. I vaguely recall some statistic posted that something like 98% of signed artists make less than minimum wage from their music and have a day job to make ends meet.

On the other hand there is absolutely no shortage of independent musicians, buskers, etc who are happy to create or perform music as a hobby and can even make some quite good change out of it. Dan Bull doesn't need the BPI ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gNZ79SF4M4

Why does the existing establishment have to be dismantled? If the recording industry is redundant and doesn't serve a roll then it will simply die a natural death as people move towards services offering music under licences that allow personal copying. Only it doesn't seem to be.
Like the South Park episode about Wall Mart ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_ ... _Way_Comes ), the monster can be destroyed by everyone simply turning their back to it.
"Randy then announces that the Wall-Mart's "heart" was their desires the whole time. Oblivious to the fact that the boys consider this obvious, Randy explains pedantically how the residents of South Park had allowed their consumerism to work against them and nearly destroy their cherished small-town charm. Realizing their mistake — albeit only on the surface — the townspeople loyally return to shopping at Jim's Drugs, which is shown to grow increasingly larger in a Wall-Mart wholesale fashion before being burned down itself. Watching it burn, the townspeople vow not to shop there again, and they immediately head to the local True Value."

The recording industry doesn't force people to sign on the dotted line. With the high level of accessibility that computers and the internet provide there are more options available for recording and distribution than ever before. Destroying the current system won't improve that level of accessibility as it doesn't impede it in the first place. Consumers aren't coerced into buying commercial music, especially when there is more option to obtain freely distributed music than ever before.
Destroying the recording industry because you don't like their business model removes that option for consumers who clearly like and support it with their fat-ass dirty dollar (a relevant reference to Hooker With A Penis by Tool). It doesn't increase the level of accessibility for self-recording and self-publishing, it only creates the potential to increase their listening base as you have given consumers no other choice.

@cybertao: The problem is that the recording industry isn't willing to die quietly, and are developing a new business model that involves getting armed police to raid people's homes.

That's because people are still consuming their products. The simple solution is to just not.

Regardless of your personal views towards ownership of, or non-existance of, intellectual property, they are pretty darn adamant about their views. And surprisingly (or not?), so are many of the people who pirate - they know someone claims ownership and even agreeably understand the concept of intellectual property. It isn't piracy when the other party wants you to download their creative output and give copies to your friends.
The social solution to the 'wall-mart' problem isn't for everyone to shoplift from wall-mart, or burning it to the ground.

@cybertao: It would be difficult to convince many people to work together in this way without an assurance that other people are going to do the same. This is why we have governments--so people can agree on ways of working together. If it is legitimate for the recording industry to advocate for law changes, then why is it not also legitimate for those who disagree with the recording industry to advocate for law changes?

There's nothing to stop you advocating law change. I fully support a review and overhaul of copyright legislation to enrich everyone's lives.
However, burning the wall-mart to the ground won't stop people from shopping at Jim's and doing it all over again. It won't make their lives any better. The problems created by the existence of copyright are more to do with attitude and social behaviour than acknowledging the concept of copyright. Remove copyright and you will still see assholes taking full advantage of the situation for their own financial gain. Perhaps even more so because artists and producers have less control over where and how their creations get utilised.

Sorry to fork the discussion, but could you elaborate on that statement? An example of people working together to build something is the linux kernel and various operating-systems built on open-source projects. Some of which take advantage and benefit from commercial input, and the commercial interests benefit from the community.
And of course, those projects are protected by copyright so everyone is expected to follow the licensing agreements they are are distributed under.

When I said 'many' I guess that should have been 'a significant proportion'. I guess you could say there are 'many' people contributing to open source projects, but this would still be a small proportion of the population (although that's enough). When it comes to economic power struggles though, a small proportion is not enough to make much difference. Yeah, there sure is commercial input and commercial benefit, but commercial doesn't necessarily require copyright. And yeah, copyleft is copyright, but only in the same sense that self-defence is the application of force against others. If there was no copyright law to restrict what people could do, then we wouldn't need copyleft to prevent the restriction of what people can do.