Getting Past The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Produce Content

from the simply-not-true dept

Glyn Moody points us to an excellent article at Eurozine, by Felix Stalder, about the myths of copyright today and how weaker copyright actually can increase cultural output. It starts out by showing that the standard claims behind copyright are simply not true. It’s based on an assumption, implicit (and sometimes explicit) in almost all pro-copyright arguments, that copyright is the sole source of income for content creators. But this is false.

This simple assumption, however, is incorrect. First, copyright as the basis of artists’ income is just one of many cultural economic models, namely that in which the “first copy” receives substantial investment that has then to be recouped (and more) through the sale of specific usage rights (licenses) to the users of further copies. This model is by no means applied across all domains of culture and, even where it is, it generates extremely unequal incomes. By and large, copyright-centered business models generate blockbuster economies, in which very few people earn very substantial incomes while the great majority of producers receive little to nothing for their work. Thus, the argument that copyright generated income works well only for a few, highly visible artists and their supporting industries.

This is a point we’ve discussed before, but which often gets ignored. When you look at the historical evidence of monopolies, you see the same thing. While it can create a few giant businesses, it actually harms the wider market, decreases competition, and cuts out any chance of a “middle class” in the market. It’s entirely “go big or go home.” Culturally, we may be losing out in such a market, because your choices become limited mainly to the major blockbuster artists. If you remove, or weaken, copyright laws, you open up the opportunity for many more artists to make a good living by employing other business models.

The article notes that, in fact, copyright “is simply not very relevant for many forms of cultural production.” And for many areas of content, weak copyright protection likely increases output, because it lowers the “cost” of the raw materials (other parts of culture). But, on top of that, weaker copyright opens up all sorts of new opportunities. The article discusses things like YouTube’s setup for monetizing videos, which simply creates tremendous new opportunities to make money where none would have been made before.

Given that most independent videos on YouTube would have received no revenue at all under the old copyright regime, the important thing to recognise is that it is possible to gain some revenue by providing free access to one’s material. A such, it represents a functioning, if limited, commercial opportunity enabled by a weak copyright environment.

It also discusses totally new opportunities, like Flattr (of which we are a happy user — which we’ll be discussing more about soon) and Kickstarter. Basically, into the void new and interesting business models emerge (as some of us at Techdirt have been predicting for over a decade). And the nice thing about those new business models is that they rely less on gatekeepers and more on people to support what they like, with more of the money going directly to the content creators. It may not create the same blockbusters (and even that I’m not sure I believe), but it creates a much wider spectrum of people who can make a good living. All in all, a great article.

Filed Under: copyright, creation, myth

Turntable.fm Showing How Sharing Music Is Communication

from the the-shared-experience-is-what-makes-culture dept

We’ve already talked about just how amazing Turntable.fm is for its users. The key point we made was how it totally makes music social in a way that’s incredibly powerful.

I noted how much it reminded me of when I was an actual DJ on the radio many years ago, where so much of the fun wasn’t just in playing music, but in hanging out with a bunch of friends and playing music together. Others are recognizing this as well. In one of the most splutteringly gushing reviews of the service, ever, Sam Grobart at the NY Times highlights this same key point by noting that sharing music is communication:

It doesn?t matter if you start a room with some nearby cubicle mates or with friends scattered across the globe: what you begin to realize ? almost instantly ? is that taking turns playing music with friends is a kind of communication. One song leads to another. Music, enjoyable in and of itself, becomes a sort of shorthand when played among people who have shared memories attached to it. Someone plays a song that was popular when you were college, then another friend plays another song from that same period and ? just like that ? you?ve traveled back in time. It?s like you?re all sharing in the same inside joke.

And this feeling is reflected not just in the choice of songs, but in the comments that friends post. Someone digs a lost hit out of the crates and the message board lights up with comments from friends (O.K., my friends) saying things like ?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!? and ?my head is exploding.?

Using Turntable can even help you make friends with people you only know in passing. If you?re D.J.-ing in a room with co-workers, you may never have realized that you and the guy across the floor both like Afropop. Now you have something new to talk about at the soda machine.

Later, he notes: “When your old college roommate surprises you with that Deee-Lite song the two of you used to rock out to, you know it?s more than just music: it?s a message.”

Indeed. After writing my original post on Turntable.fm and how it reminded me of hanging out and DJing with a group of others — people who I was close friends with at the time, but have mostly lost contact with — I reached out to many of my former co-DJs to talk about setting up a “reunion” via Turntable.fm. It’s hard to use Turntable.fm and not recognize that sharing music is a very legitimate form of communication.

In many ways, it’s a further manifestation of a point about culture that Julian Sanchez raised a couple years ago, about how culture is built off of shared cultural experiences. It’s the sharing part of culture that makes the culture valuable. If only you experience it, it just doesn’t have the same power. Turntable.fm’s key reason for being so addictive is that it’s one of the first operations, whether on purpose or not, that has effectively taken that key aspect of culture, and turned it into a service.

However, separate from just how Turntable.fm highlights this key point, I think it also helps explain why the legacy recording industry and many politicians have made so many wrong and counterproductive moves concerning dealing with music in the internet era. Rather than realizing that music is communication, they look at it solely as a unit of content. When you view music as a unit of content, even as the fans of music actually view it as a form of communication, you’re going to clash. That’s because many of the ways that people communicate via music break down the concept of music being a unit of content. And, in the end, that’s what a lot of the legal and policy battles have been about over the past couple decades. A very large group of people are communicating with music… and some big legacy players are simply not set up to even comprehend that, let alone cater to it.

Filed Under: communication, culture, music, shared experience, sharing
Companies: turntable.fm

After Watching This Video, Can Anyone Say That Remix Isn't An Act Of A Musician?

from the live-mashup dept

One thing we hear all the time from folks who dislike remixes or mashups aren’t “real” music is that a computer isn’t a real “instrument.” However, when I see and hear artists like Girl Talk, Kutiman and Pogo, I can’t see how anyone with any ounce of intellectual honesty can claim that these are not true musicians in every sense of the word. And yet, people still argue that they’re not, saying that sitting at a computer cutting up sounds isn’t the same thing as playing a real “instrument.” But… I point out that if someone is sitting at an electronic keyboard and pressing the keys, all they’re really doing is playing a sound created by someone else. Is that really all that different than mashing up sounds played by someone else? What if you take things a step further and program clips of other songs into a keyboard and have someone play it?

Step on up, Madeon. While it’s not a keyboard directly but (perhaps more impressively) a Novation Launchpad, this 17-year-old recently released this incredible video of him mashing up 39 of his favorite songs into one song… live. I defy anyone to claim that what he’s doing here is anything less than a musician playing a keyboard or guitar:

Just like a musician, he’s using an instrument and the sounds that it makes to create something new and wonderful.

Filed Under: culture, madeon, music, musicians, remix

Success! Sita Sings the Blues Once Again Viewable on German Youtube

from the better-than-lawyers dept

After one or two (or more?) years of being blocked on German Youtube, the full-length noncommercial Sita Sings the Blues movie is once again viewable in Deutschland:

I assume this is because last week I posted this video, complaining about why my 100% legal and painstakingly and expensively licensed movie was blocked in Germany:

Apparently many Germans are none too pleased with GEMA themselves, as indicated by interesting comments here. Some industry shills weighed in as well, but it looks like popular sentiment is against them. The story was shared widely, including in Der Spiegel and the New York Times online editions.

It’s not clear how an American YouTube user is supposed to contest takedowns in Germany. When I was in Berlin recently, it was suggested I find a German lawyer to take some sort of action. At the very least, I would need someone in Germany to contest the takedown on my behalf. I imagine that would have been a slow and possibly expensive process. Then I thought of making this video. Although it took some work (writing a statement — yes I know it’s an imperfect statement, I did the best I could with the knowledge I had — shooting the video, recording the audio via a separate mic, transferring files, editing, compressing, etc.), it was less work than managing an international legal process. And it got results fast! Better still, it contributed to ongoing debates about GEMA and Intellectual Pooperty in general.

My thanks to everyone who helped spread the word about this, and especially people in Germany who checked the Sita Sings the Blues URL and confirmed when the movie was blocked, and when it was unblocked.

Filed Under: disputes, germany, nina paley, performance rights, sita sings the blues
Companies: gema, google, youtube

The Confusing Case Of Lovecraft's Copyrights

from the ph'nglui-mglw'nafh-Cthulhu-R'lyeh-wgah'nagl-fhtagn dept

It was Joseph Kranak who first told me of the thing. I didn’t comprehend it then—the forbidden aeons, the timeless machinations that grind man’s very essence to dust. At first his story seemed fine but mundane: an expedition to collect the famed texts of H. P. Lovecraft, which were rumoured to be in America. But it soon became so hideous I almost thought him a madman:

To start off, any book published prior to 1923 is in the public domain. Some of Lovecraft’s early works fall in this time period. But all of his most famous works, including “Call of Cthulhu,” “Dreams in the Witch House,” “At the Mountains of Madness” and so on were written after 1923. Before 1976, all works had to be registered with the copyright office to avoid falling into the public domain, and many of Lovecraft’s works (the ones published in amateur presses) were almost certainly never registered. Additionally, any work published between the years 1923-1963, not only had to have been originally registered, but had to have that copyright renewed sometime between 1950 and 1992 to avoid avoid falling into the public domain. If it was renewed, then it is copyrighted until 95 years after publication. Unfortunately, there’s no official database that explicitly lists which works published before 1963 had their copyright renewed. The Copyright Office has an online database of works renewed after 1977, but if the work was renewed from 1950-1977, that requires searching through the copyright office’s database of physical paper records.

With assistance from fellow scholars, he pursued this eldritch knowledge with urgency, for it had sunk its barbed talons into his mind and awoken a fevered interest. Things only grew more perilous as he discovered that there are lurking creatures and ancient dynasties who claim domain over the Lovecraft texts. They carry decrepit tablets pocked with the inscrutable runes of arcane tongues:

It is generally believed that Lovecraft retained all rights to his works published from 1926 forward (though we don’t have documentation to confirm this). In the period 1923-25, he published a few works in amateur presses like The Tryout that didn’t register their copyrights, and six works in Weird Tales, which did register its copyrights. Weird Tales did transfer whatever rights it held to [August] Derleth and [Donald] Wandrei and Arkham House in 1947 … Of the rights to the remaining 21 works published from 1926-37, that Lovecraft retained rights to, his rights were transferred, upon his death in 1937, to his only heir, his aunt, Annie Gamwell. Gamwell transferred the royalties in her will to Derleth and Wandrei, but the copyrights she held and these were transferred to her heirs, Edna Lewis and Ethel Morrish. Lewis and Morrish subsequently transferred at least some of their rights to Arkham House in an agreement. The problem is that the language of the agreement in which Morrish and Lewis ostensibly gave rights to Derleth and Wandrei is not clear about what rights are being transferred.

As he spoke, I felt my thoughts go dark and cold, as though falling into the void that I now knew had always seethed beneath the fickle and fissiparous veil we call reality. All mankind’s simple joys—the stories we share with our friends, the songs we sing at our gatherings—were in fact but facets of this thing, this malevolent will at work in dark recesses of the cosmic wasteland. It operates outside time, outside reason—an omnipotent urge that demands nothing but control and the mindless submission of its unwilling subjects. Somehow in that moment I heard its foul name, a maddening proto-sound that my fancy assigned to a single cryptic glyph: ©

When many minds would flee to frenzied madness or purge themselves and lay fallow in ignorance, Kranak ventured onwards in pursuit of the essential truth and nature of ©. But his journey ended in an absence of endings, for what he uncovered then was a torturous paradox—an utter lack of resolvable truth that implicitly creates its own truth, a void that fills itself. He learned that the insidious beast of © can assail common sense by growing more dangerous as it dies, and is sometimes at its strongest when it does not exist at all:

For my money, I’d say all of Lovecraft’s are probably in the public domain ? but there really is no answer to the question of their copyright status. Were the rights properly renewed? Were they transferred to Arkham House? Copyright law has been stretched so far into the past that lost documentation, orphaned works and uncertainties about ownership become more and more problematic. All we can say is that if someone were to challenge copyright ownership, a court would be able to come to a decision, but the decision could go either way. It’s doubtful it’ll be worth anyone’s time and money to try and resolve this in court, and this makes the situation de facto as if the copyrights still hold, since no one wants to risk getting sued (though the copyright holders haven’t, at least so far been zealous in pursuing their lawsuits). So, long as no one challenges their claim, the persons claiming to own the rights, own them by default. And the issue won’t really be resolved until 2032 when the last of Lovecraft’s works published in his lifetime will enter the public domain (and I’m excluding the few posthumous publications, which appeared as late as 1944), unless there’s another copyright extension, which would just push all of this mess forward.

As I contemplated this wicked entanglement, this inescapable pall clutching the fruits of human sentience, this tenacious threat keeping eager hearts at bay, I was reminded of words once written by Lovecraft himself?words I had read in a forbidden tome but never truly apprehended until then: that is not dead which can eternal lie.

Filed Under: copyright, hp lovecraft, public domain

Why Sita Sings The Blues Is Perfectly Legal In Germany, But You Still Can't Watch It On YouTube

from the hello,-gema dept

Nina Paley, who regularly writes for Techdirt (as well as plenty of other publications) passed along this video she put up about how her movie, Sita Sings the Blues is blocked by YouTube in Germany, thanks to GEMA, the music collection society in Germany.

Since I know a little bit about the ongoing fight between GEMA and YouTube in Germany, I asked Nina if it was okay to do a post, discussing some of the details. We’ve written about GEMA a few times before, and last year, I went to Berlin and interviewed YouTube’s Patrick Walker on stage at PopKomm/All2gethernow, specifically discussing YouTube’s ongoing fight with GEMA. The details are a little different than what Nina suggests in the video, though she’s absolutely correct that this is very much GEMA’s fault. Even though Nina has a paid-in-full license with the various music companies that say displaying/performing her movie for free in Germany is entirely legal, GEMA has taken a ridiculous hardline stance with regards to YouTube. It believes that YouTube needs to pay it ridiculous sums of money for every video on the site that includes any GEMA-licensed music.

Other collection societies around the world have made agreements with YouTube, and worked out reasonable royalty rates for performances. Except GEMA. If I remember correctly, GEMA may be the only major remaining collection society which has not worked out a royalty rate with YouTube, and instead has been fighting a battle in German courts against YouTube. Because of that, and because of some clearly ridiculous court rulings, which suggest that YouTube (rather than its users) are liable for any infringement on the site, YouTube is blocking all videos that it comes across that include GEMA music.

Thus, I believe that the reason Sita Sings the Blues has been taken down is not, as Nina suggests, because of a direct takedown notice by GEMA (though, that’s possible), but more likely because of YouTube needing to avoid liability from crazy German court rulings and GEMA’s overinflated belief in what a “reasonable” royalty rate would be. Now, notice the key part here: the artist in this case wants the video to be online. Nina is pissed off that it’s offline. She’s paid quite a bit of money to the various music publishing entities to have the rights to show the movie worldwide, and the one blocking that is GEMA.

This is not an uncommon occurrence in Germany, unfortunately. Because of the way the laws work in Germany, those who have deals with GEMA effectively give up all of their own rights on such things. When I was in Germany, I spoke with multiple artists who were freaking out because they couldn’t give away their own music, because GEMA didn’t allow it. Aritst would show me their official webpage, without free music, and then their “secret, unofficial” web page with the music they wanted people to download. GEMA, which seems to be run by people entirely out of touch with how music works today, simply insists that no one can give away music for free… because then GEMA doesn’t get to collect money. Furthermore, for those who try to get around GEMA and used alternative licenses, GEMA has been known to ignore such licenses, and insist that people still need to abide by GEMA’s rules.

This is not a healthy situation. You basically have an out of touch bureaucracy that thinks it gets to set all the rules, even if they don’t match the reality in the marketplace. Because of that, artists are suffering. And the fact that YouTube is blocking Sita…, despite it being fully licensed and perfectly legal in Germany, should really wake some people up to the fact that GEMA is not helping artists at all. It’s stifling them massively.

Filed Under: disputes, germany, nina paley, performance rights, sita sings the blues
Companies: gema, google, youtube

Culture is Anti-Rivalrous

from the it-increases-in-value-the-more-it's-used dept

Economists talk about rivalrous and non-rivalrous goods, but Culture is neither rivalrous, nor non-rivalrous; it is anti-rivalrous.

I. Rivalrous

Rivalrous goods diminish in value the more they are used. For example, a bicycle: if I use it, it gets me from here to there; if you use it, it gets me nowhere. If I acquire your bicycle, you don’t have it any more. Only one of us can have the bicycle at one time. We can share it to a limited extent, but the more it’s used the less it’s worth; it gets dinged up and wears out. The more people use the bicycle, the less utility it has.

If I steal your bicycle, you have to take the bus

All material things – things made of atoms – are rivalrous, because an object cannot be in two places at the same time. Everything in the physical world is rivalrous, even if it’s abundant.

A commons is a rivalrous good. Hence the "tragedy of the commons": the more people use a square of land, the less valuable it is to each of them. The grass gets eaten too fast to grow back, the soil can’t handle the incoming rate of sheep shit, and degradation ensues.

Fig. 1: a lovely day for grazing on the commons

Fig 2: Tragedy strikes

Rivalrous and non-rivalrous are often confused with scarce and abundant, but they’re not the same thing. Air is abundant, but it is still rivalrous – some "users" could make it toxic for the rest of us, because air is not infinite. Land and water are so abundant in North America that Native Americans couldn’t imagine owning or depleting them, and look what happened. We treat the oceans as infinite, but they are not; human pollution and exploitation is killing ocean life. We also pollute the vast ocean of air – hence acid rain. Air and oceans are commons.

Commons are commonly-held rivalrous goods. Because they are rivalrous, some uses (or over-use) can poison them or otherwise diminish their value. For that reason, Commons(es) actually merit rules and regulations.

But Culture is not a commons, because Culture is not rivalrous and can’t be owned.

II. Non-Rivalrous

Non-rivalrous goods, as their name implies, don’t diminish in value the more they are used. A favorite example of a non-rivalrous good is the light from a lighthouse. It shines for everyone. No matter how much you look at it, I can see it too.

Everyone can see the light from the lighthouse…

This is a pretty good example, but it’s not quite right. Theoretically, if enough tall boats are in the harbor, they actually can crowd out your lighthouse light.

…except when they can’t. Once again, too many sheep ruin everything.

Consider sunlight in Manhattan; yes, the sun shines for everyone, but if they build a high-rise next to your apartment you won’t see it any more. There’s only so much sunlight that hits a certain area, and that light is rivalrous. You can always move, of course – except land, while abundant, is definitely rivalrous and not infinite, so you’ll have to engage in some rivalry to do so.

The light metaphor has another problem: is light a particle, or a wave? If it’s a particle, then light is rivalrous. If it’s a wave, then it’s not.

Thomas Jefferson used the example of candle fire, writing "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." Of course candles burn out but it’s not the light that’s diminished, it’s the candle. That’s a great metaphor for attention, which is scarce: once our attention is used up, the light goes out.
But Culture is not non-rivalrous either.

III. Anti-Rivalrous

Anti-rivalrous goods increase in value the more they are used. For example: language. A language isn’t much use to me if I can’t speak it with someone else. You need at least two people to communicate with language. The more people who use the language, the more value it has.

Which language do you think more people would pay to learn?

• English
• Esperanto
• Latvian

More people spend money and time learning English, simply because so many people already speak English.

Social networking platforms increase in value when more people use them. I use Facebook not because I love Facebook (I certainly don’t), but because everyone else uses Facebook. I just joined Google+, and will use that instead of Facebook if enough other people use it. If enough people flock to yet another platform, I’ll use that instead. Meanwhile I love Diaspora in principle (I was an early Kickstarter backer, before they surpassed their initial $ goal), but I don’t use it, because not enough other people do. When it comes to social networks, I am a sheep.

A classic "Nina’s Adventures" comic, which I only realized was anti-rivalrous a few years ago. ♡ Copying is an act of love. Please copy and share. Culture is anti-rivalrous. The more people know and sing a song, the more cultural value it has. The more people watch my film Sita Sings the Blues, or read my comic strip Mimi & Eunice, the happier I’ll be, so please go do that now and then come back and read the rest of this paragraph. The more people know a movie or TV show, the more cultural value it has. Monty Python references attest to the cultural value of Monty Python – we even use the word "spam" because of it. Shakespeare‘s works are culturally valuable, and phrases from them live on in the language even apart from the plays ("I think she doth protest to much," etc.). The more people refer to Monty Python and Shakespeare, the more you just gotta see em, amiright? Or not, it doesn’t matter whether you see them, you’re already speaking them. That all culture is a kind of language, I’ll leave for another discussion.

Cultural works increase in value the more people use them. That’s not rivalrous, or non-rivalrous; that’s anti-rivalrous.

IV. Some Exceptions That Prove The rule

I know what you’re gonna say now: "what about my credit card number? That doesn’t increase in value if it’s shared!!" That’s right, Einstein, because your credit card number is not culture. Here are two things that aren’t made of atoms and are nonetheless rivalrous:

1. Identity
2. Secrets

Identity is some mysterious mindfuck that my very smart friend Joe Futrelle says no one has satisfactorily defined yet. But whatever identity is, it’s rivalrous. If more people were named Nina Paley and had my home address and social security number, I’d be screwed. But that should highlight that my name, home address, and social security number aren’t culture. They may be information, but they’re not culture. They don’t increase in value the more they are used.

Secrets have power as long as they’re secrets. They lose their power when they are shared. When I become conscious of some secret that’s weighing on me, I share it with at least one other person (even if they are a confidante also sworn to secrecy): I can feel the secret’s power diffused just by the act of sharing. Notice I use "power" here instead of "value." Secrets may be of little or no cultural value – most people don’t really care who that guy slept with 6 years ago – but they can certainly have power, especially when used for blackmail. Which is why it’s important they remain secrets, so they’re not used for blackmail, or harassment, or any reason at all. Privacy is important. Because secrets aren’t culture. Culture is public. Secrets are, well, secret. Until they’re public, whereupon we get scandalous stories that are culture – humans love to gossip – but aren’t secrets any more. The story might gain value, but the secret loses it.

Money vs. Currency
And how about money? Money is scarce, right? It has to be, or it doesn’t work (thanks Wall Street & Federal Reserve for screwing that up). But currency has more value the more it is used! Would you rather have your scarce 100 Euros in Euros, or in giant immoveable donut-like stones on a remote island?

A large rai stone in the village of Gachpar

I remember when the US dollar was a valuable currency; markets all over the world wanted dollars, because they were so widely used and exchangeable. So you want your money to be scarce, but you want your currency as widely used as possible.

V. Conclusion

It’s important to treat scarce goods as scarce, abundant goods as abundant, rivalrous goods as rivalrous, and so on. Wall Street treated money, a scarce and rivalrous good, as though it were infinite/non-rivalrous, and look what happened.  Power companies, and the politicians they own, treat the environment, which is a rivalrous commons, as though it were non-rivalrous, and we have dying oceans and mass extinctions and other events you don’t want to think about so much that you’ll just get mad at me if I point them out here so I’ll stop. The RIAA and MPAA, and the politicians they own, treat Culture, which is anti-rivalrous, as though it’s rivalrous. They are doing for Culture what Wall Street did for the economy. If you want to help make this better, treat Culture like what it is: an anti-rivalrous good that increases in value the more it is used.

 

Addendum: Why do I say Culture is not a Commons?

Filed Under: abundance, culture, economics, non-rivalrous, rivalrous, scarcity

It's The Experience That Makes Music Valuable; Not The Legal Rights

from the proving-the-point dept

Ethan Kaplan strikes again. The always-thoughtful (and thought-provoking) former recording industry tech exec has put up a blog post that not only explains why Turntable.fm is so popular, but also reframes why the record labels have failed to embrace almost every cool new internet service. You should read the whole thing, but the short version is that users care about the experience, the big labels care about the legal rights. And it’s really the experience that makes things valuable. But, if you (like the labels) have bet on the licenses, rather than the experience, then any time someone else makes the experience more valuable, all it does is highlight just how little value there really is in the licenses.

Value in the music business though is an odd thing: the more value added to the music by the fan directly, the less influence the rights holders have over it, and the more influence the creators of representational systems (i.e., turntable.fm) and rights creators have (i.e., artists going directly on turntable.fm with stuff that their labels don?t own). And rights holders do not like being taken out of the value equation.

Call it Kaplan?s Law: the more value a non-music company adds to the fan/artist relationship, the bigger the threat to those who?s business depends on being between the two.

To some extent, this is a (better) rephrasing of a point I tried to make a few years ago, that those who focus on “copyright” as the key to success in any industry are using copyright as a crutch. Rather than building real value and business models that users want, they’re using this crutch which provides a simple business model. It makes them lazy, uncreative, uninterested in real user value — and violently against any sort of innovation that increases value while diminishing the importance of that crutch.

The really interesting points are when you remove that crutch and realize that for a business model to work, it has to provide real value that willingly brings users in. Until the music industry figures this out, they’re going to continue to miss the boat on important innovation on both the product side and the business model side.

But artists don’t have to miss that boat. As Kaplan suggests, now is the time to focus on the “experience rights,” not the “legal rights”:

To artists: own your experiential rights. Participate in technology and hold your representatives (lawyers, labels and management companies) to the standards you want your content held to once you lose control of it.

Filed Under: copyright, culture, experience, licenses, rights
Companies: turntable.fm