An interesting story over at Hypebot highlights how some "big name" musicians are threatening to "strike" and withhold new albums if they're not happy with how the sale of the label Parlophone goes down. As you may recall, with Universal Music getting approval to buy EMI, it has to sell off Parlophone, the iconic label that's home to a bunch of well known artists. And while Hypebot's title says that they're striking over the sale of EMI to UMG, that doesn't appear to be the case at all. The concern has to do solely with the sale of Parlophone:

Many of the label’s artists are unhappy being viewed merely as “assets” or “pawns” in a game that is set to be in the best interest for the powers that be. To protest this move, the rockers of Blur have joined forces with a number of Parlophone label-mates to collectively lobby potential bidders for the company and calling on them to place the interests of artists first, as reported by The Independent. If the musicians don’t find the new Parlophone owners to their liking, they could withhold all future releases and effectively go on "strike". 

"Artists are the only people currently being left out of the conversation, which is unfortunate,” said Blur drummer Dave Rowntree to The Independent. “If the staff at the label are unhappy with the new arrangements they are free to leave, but the artists are not."

I'm sympathetic to the artists here, because it almost certainly does suck for them... but I'm not quite sure what they're expecting here. For the labels, they are an asset and have always been just that. That's why they signed a contract in the first place. If they didn't like it, they shouldn't have signed a contract. Threatening to void the contract because they don't like some completely unrelated piece of business doesn't seem like a particularly reasonable response.

To be honest, it seems like in selling off Parlophone, the label might actually wind up somewhere more progressive and open to a future that embraces what technology allows, rather than holds it back. Perhaps the artists shouldn't make a big stink until they see what results. But, either way, if this was such a big concern, why didn't they write into their contracts that the deals were null & void should the label be sold?

While I have no doubt that the movie studios are being sleazy and underhanded in how it deals with both writers and actors concerning various contracts, it still seemed like both movie and TV writers were making a big mistake in demanding residuals for internet usage. All that does is make it more difficult to get that content online. And, of course, it meant that actors were going to fight for the same thing.

Now, just as the studios and actors had their negotiations breakdown, the Writers' Guild is claiming that producers are not living up to their end of the deal struck earlier this year. The writers claim that they're not getting the promised residuals, and the producers seem to be disputing which content is covered by the agreement. The writers say that all modern content from the past few decades is covered, while producers say the agreement only covers content made after February 13th of this year -- the date of the settlement.

To be honest, the whole dispute is rather silly. Any such system of royalties is going to break down. It may have worked in the past, but it's based on that same old concept of artificial scarcity that makes it more difficult to adapt to the modern economic reality of digital content. By insisting that the studios have to pay residuals on content reused on the internet (effectively getting writers and actors paid multiple times for the same work), it just solidifies the barriers for the folks who employ those writers and actors to adapt to the modern economic and technological reality. The writers and actors are just harming themselves by making it harder for studios to move into the internet era, adding tremendous additional costs beyond what was already paid for.

One of the causes of so many bad patents getting approved lately is screwed up incentives in the patent system. For a while, the US had a de facto system where agents were pushed to approve a patent when in doubt. That's because they were judged on how many patents they went through -- and if they rejected a patent, the applicant could complain and ask for a review -- meaning that the examiner would have to spend more time reviewing that same patent again, decreasing the number of patents they had gotten through, potentially harming their "stats." Thus, it's often easier to just "approve." And, of course, the Patent Office itself is usually fine with this, because that means more patent applications and more fees. The Patent Office has an inherent conflict of interest in that the more patent applications applied for, the more money it brings in. In the US, after this problem was brought to light, some changes were made to decrease the incentives to simply approve so many patents, though one could argue how effective it's been.

However, it looks like there are similar pressures in Europe, and Slashdot points out that a bunch of EU Patent Office staffers have gone on strike, complaining about the same thing: that there's pressure on them to simply approve as many patents as possible, in order to bring in more money for the patent office. The staffers are complaining that this is harming innovation. It's great to see workers in the patent office recognize how much harm approving bad patents can do to innovation -- and actually standing up and protesting the pressures to approve bad patents.

After the TV writers' strike from earlier this year, we noted that the final settlement actually was not in the best interest of the writers, even though they got much of what they wanted in demanding royalties from online usage of their content. The actors unions are now gearing up for that same battle, as well, as they, too, are demanding rights over online usage, including royalties and the right to demand permission before any of the works they appear in can be used online. It's difficult to feel sorry for Hollywood producers here -- as they very much brought this on themselves, convincing lots of people that they should get paid every single time any of their content was used. Thus, it's no surprise that the writers and the actors are now demanding the same rights.

However, just as it was wrong for the producers to be demanding a fee for every usage, so is it wrong for the writers and the actors to be demanding such a fee. All it will do is make it much more difficult, time consuming and expensive for any of that content to go online. And that will open up much wider opportunities for other content to go online instead, decreasing the overall value of the content made under these agreements. It's hard to fault the actors (like the writers) for looking out for their short-term interests and demanding the same sorts of things that the producers have demanded of everyone else -- but it's setting up a bad situation over the long-term, where the studios under these agreements won't be able to adapt to the changing media landscape.