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David Bowie on Music, Copyrights, Distribution
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sun Jun 09, 2002 09:53 AM
from the spiders-from-mars dept.
from the spiders-from-mars dept.
EddydaSquige writes "In this New York Times article David Bowie talks about his new album, distribution deal with Sony, and how he's "fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing." Do you think the Bowie machine has the power to make the music industry see the light?"
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David Bowie on Music, Copyrights, Distribution
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He is pretty much spot on... (Score:4, Insightful)
It is about time the bigger well established artists started acting like this. They make far more money personing than via RIAA cds
Re:He is pretty much spot on... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, if you create something, you should own it.
However, that doesn't address the more interesting question: Why should owning something mean that nobody else can make a copy of it? After all, you still have it after it's been copied.
The answer, of course, is that copyright is intended to create an artificial scarcity of the work, inducing members of society to create more works via a convoluted economic process. The implementation of copyright is very complex, arbitrary and flawed, but unfortunately, nobody has come up with a better alternative.
So, copyright attempts to fill a worthwhile macroeconomic goal, but it's not a sufficient reason to cast the same moral indignation on those who violate copyright laws as if they had stolen your car. The idea is not to give every creator new inalienable rights, but rather to create an overall system where creators can generally make a living off of their works. Violating copyrights should be thought of as an infraction against the system as a whole more than as an infraction against the individual author.
Too many people forget people and corporations were granted artificial property rights over thoughts and ideas as a means to an end, not as an end in itself.
Not copyrights, contracts (Score:4, Insightful)
Try to find your local indie band at any national record chain, and chances are unless they're on MTV or Clear Channel, they'll not be found. This is because the national chains go through publishers or huge distributors, where only the top publishing houses can sell through.
You'd have to go to a local chain or a mom and pop store to find indie artists most of the time, or just to the artists themselves.
What we need is an overhaul of the music distribution chain. Sites like eMusic and MP3.com were set to do that until they were bought out by big publishers. They weren't bought out because they were failing, they were bought because they imposed a threat on the distribution network.
Hell, if you want to be rich, it's not making a religion, it's not winning the lottery, is threatening legally the bottom line of a multi-national conglomerate. Find a better, legal way to do what the publishers do, and they'll find a way to offer you money to go away.
Does he ? (Score:1)
No. But I believe he has the foresight which many among the musicians and the industry honchos doesnt have.
no NYT acct. (Score:2, Interesting)
Rock on david.
Bowie (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bowie - Hits and Misses (Score:5, Informative)
If you're curious, this was the deal with BowieBanc:
Ken Tepper, CEO of USABancShares.com, would go to some large organizations that were not connected to financial institutions. He would then pitch the idea of a "private label" bank where all of the money would actually be handled by vBank, the parent of USABancShares.com, but that the private label bank could issue credit cards, bank cards, checks, etc. with the name of the private label bank and all of the decorations. Other possible private label banks were YankeeBanc (new york yankees) and TrumpBanc (donald).
With BowieNet and the corporation Bowie owns, BowieBanc seemed like a good fit. His ISP clients, who were all huge fans, could easily open an online bank account, get a david bowie credit card (some of the designs were amazing), and a bunch of other perks.
The whole idea crashed down when USABancShares.com took on a host of bad loans (as banks often will do) and I believe they're still trying to track down the culprit. But the loans degraded their credit rating which is imperative for a bank to maintain.
It's a shame tho. We built the second online back with 5 ppl working 8 days straight (we slept in the bank). And the flash bank is still pretty neat all these years later.
For those without NYTimes accounts... (Score:4, Informative)
David Bowie, 21st-Century Entrepreneur
By JON PARELES
IN a Manhattan rehearsal studio, Gerry Leonard seemed to be noodling on his guitar as the rest of David Bowie's band waited. He played some sustained notes and a bit of minor-key arpeggio; he worked his effects pedals, adding echoes. A digital stutter entered the pattern, and suddenly the music gelled into "Sunday," the song that opens Mr. Bowie's new album, "Heathen," which will be released on Tuesday.
Chords from a phantom chorus wafted from a keyboard, and Mr. Bowie intoned: "It's the beginning of an end, and nothing has changed. Everything has changed."
Mr. Bowie sang somberly about searching for signs of life, about fear and hope. At the end of the song, he shivered like someone coming out of a trance. "Ahhh," he said and grinned. "Good morning!" It was just after 11 a.m. and Mr. Bowie, 55, had already worked out at the gym and given an extended interview before starting the day's rehearsal for his summer tour.
Lean and affable, he was wearing a skintight gray T-shirt and stylishly understated gray pants. His gaze, with different-colored eyes because of a childhood accident that paralyzed his left pupil, has grown less disconcerting; he laughs easily. When asked what he considered the central point of his work, he said, "I write about misery" and chuckled.
Visions of cataclysm and professional aplomb: that's Mr. Bowie's life in his fourth decade as a rock star. One of rock's most astute conceptualists since the 1960's, he has toyed with the possibilities of his star persona, turned concerts into theater and fashion spectacles, and periodically recharged his songs with punk, electronics and dance rhythms. Now he has emerged as one of rock's smartest entrepreneurs.
"Heathen" is the first album from Mr. Bowie's own recording company, Iso, which has major-label distribution through Sony. In 1997, he sold $55 million of Bowie Bonds backed by his song royalties; the next year, he founded the technology company Ultrastar and his own Internet service provider-cum-fan club, Bowienet (davidbowie.com). In a nod to his art-school background, his bowieart.com sells promising students' work without the high commissions of terrestrial galleries.
His deal with Sony is a short-term one while he gets his label started and watches the Internet's effect on careers. "I don't even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don't think it's going to work by labels and by distribution systems in the same way," he said. "The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it's not going to happen. I'm fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing."
"Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity," he added. "So it's like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You'd better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that's really the only unique situation that's going to be left. It's terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn't matter if you think it's exciting or not; it's what's going to happen."
With his wife, Iman, he has a 22-month-old daughter, Alexandria, for whom he's keeping to a minimum his time away from home in Manhattan. When Mr. Bowie signed on as a headliner for Moby's Area:Two tour this summer, he made sure the schedule allowed him to return home between each of the six East Coast dates. He is also organizing, and performing at, Meltdown, a contemporary music, film and visual arts festival in London. (One songwriter he booked is Norman Carl Odam, known as the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, from whom he took Ziggy Stardust's last name in the 1970's; on "Heathen," he sings the Cowboy's "Gemini Spacecraft," about an astronaut obsessed with a girl he left behind.)
Mr. Bowie no longer expects to compete with performers in their 20's. "I'm well past the age where I'm acceptable," he said. "You get to a certain age and you are forbidden access. You're not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines, you're not going to get played on radio and you're not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth."
HIS fans among musicians, including Moby and Nine Inch Nails, have toured with Mr. Bowie, introducing him to a younger generation.
Back in 1990, Mr. Bowie tried to jettison his past. He billed an arena tour as the last time he would play his old hits. "I really did think I meant that," he said. "I got quite a way into the 90's before I started thinking, `Well, if you want an audience, David, you may want to consider putting some songs into your sets that they've actually heard.' Yes, I know, I went back on my word completely and absolutely."
He's now more comfortable riffling through his huge body of work. This week, the Museum of Television and Radio, in New York and Los Angeles, opened "Sound + Vision," a retrospective of Mr. Bowie on video that continues through Sept. 15. A restored version of "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars," the D. A. Pennebaker documentary of the 1972 tour that defined glam-rock, will be released on July 10.
"Heathen" was produced by Tony Visconti, who last collaborated with Mr. Bowie on his 1980 album, "Scary Monsters." He worked on most of Mr. Bowie's 1970's albums, including the celebrated Berlin trilogy of "Low," " `
On "Heathen," Mr. Bowie knowingly hints at his past. He echoes the song " `Heroes' " in "Slow Burn," which wonders, "Who are we in times such as these?" He revives analog keyboard sounds like that of the Stylophone, a miniature electric organ played with a stylus that was heard on "Space Oddity" in 1969 and reappears in the new "Slip Away." When Mr. Bowie starts his tour with a show for fan-club members at Roseland on Tuesday, he plans to play all 12 songs on "Heathen," followed by all of "Low." Hearing the music 25 years later "makes the hairs on my arm stand up," he said.
To make "Low," Mr. Bowie recalled: "I had brought the idea of having fundamentally an R & B rhythm section working against this new zeitgeist of electronic ambience that was happening in Germany. It was terribly exciting to know that one had stumbled across something which was truly innovative.
"At that time, I was vacillating badly between euphoria and incredible depression. Berlin was at that time not the most beautiful city of the world, and my mental condition certainly matched it. I was abusing myself so badly. My subtext to the whole thing is that I'm so desperately unhappy, but I've got to pull through because I can't keep living like this. There's actually a real optimism about the music. In its poignancy there is, shining through under there somewhere, the feeling that it will be all right."
Drug problems are long behind him, Mr. Bowie said. He now hesitates to take even an Advil because. "I have such an addictive personality," he said.
Making "Heathen," he and Mr. Visconti were leery of nostalgia. "One thing we haven't tried to be is cutting edge," Mr. Bowie said. "The other thing we've tried not to do is to delve too far into the past and rely on our known strengths, our known previous work. We do know, between us, how to landscape a song and give it a real place, an identity and a character. I guess that's the vestiges of the more theatrical things."
The album starts with "Sunday" and ends with its title song, both hushed and haunted by mortality. In "Heathen," Mr. Bowie sings, "Still on the skyline, sky made of glass/ Made for a real world, all things must pass." The album was written before Sept. 11, however, and the songs join a long line of Mr. Bowie's apocalyptic scenarios.
"I hope that a writer does have these antennae that pick up on low-level anxiety and all those Don DeLillo resonances within our culture," he said. "But I don't want to say that it was in any way trying to suggest that it was going to happen. It's not like it's something new to me. These are all personal crises, I'm sure, that I manifest in a song format and project into physical situations. You make little stories up about how you feel. It's as simple as that."
Between his own ruminations, he borrows "Gemini Spacecraft," the Pixies' "Cactus" and Neil Young's "I've Been Waiting for You"; in songs like "Afraid" and "I Would Be Your Slave," he sings about love, insecurity and transience.
"I tried to make a checklist of what exactly the album is about and abandonment was in there, isolation," he said. "And I thought, well, nothing's changed much. At 55, I don't really think it's going to change very much. As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I've got left?
"When it's taken that nakedly, these are my subjects. And it's like, well, how many times can you do this? And I tell myself, actually, over and over again. The problem would be if I was too self-confident and actually came up with resolutions for these questions. But I think they're such huge unanswerable questions that it's just me posing them, again and again."
Ironic (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't like the required registration BS either, but you know what I do about it? I haven't registered and therefore don't read the Times (or their advertisers)... voting with my eyeballs.
I would be wise if people stop doing stupid stuff like this. I would be interesting (in a bad way) to have the Time's come after
Random NYTimes registration generator (Score:4, Informative)
Bowie always had vision. (Score:5, Interesting)
I still think there's room for artists to sell music in a physical medium, with disks, nice cover art, books, perhaps a box set. I've downloaded just about everything by Tommy Guerrero but I'm collecting the CDs anyways... better sound quality, more permanent, nice cover art, and the pleasure of owning them and knowing I've contributed something to the artist. (TG does amazing grooving downtempo Cali-Latin style funky jazzy ambient blues, kinda like Booker T meets Tortoise with a bottle of wine on Carlos Santana's back porch.).
G
Oh, well, I can understand considering their sizes (Score:1)
Bowie and Don DeLillo (Score:3, Interesting)
Bowie Bonds (Score:5, Informative)
Money is the whole point, of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Point being, you can't apply this model to an artist that doesn't have that kind of track record. Try floating "Britney Bonds" or "'Nsync Notes" and see how far those fly. They won't, because they don't have any chance of producing the kind of steady cashflow that Bowie's sales produce over time.
Even looking at more relevant bands of this era (choose your own), they are ALL likely to fade within 10 years, and won't provide the sheer volume of Bowie's output. I happen to love the Pixies, but I have trouble thinking that anybody's chasing down "Bossanova" in their local Tower Records.
Neato model, points to Bowie's finance team for developing it, but applicable in a miniscule number of cases. If Bowie, in fact, owns his own IP, it might even be unique.
Just a regular album preview (Score:1)
CopyRight (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is that our current distribution model for intellectual property, especially music, does not work given the nominal distribution costs of internet-based music distribution. No digital form of distribution provides an equivalent level of moderation provided by the music industry, it is almost impossible to find the best quality content out of the giant databases like IUMA [iuma.com] or MP3.com [mp3.com]. We still need some way to sort the good stuff from the banal. It probably makes sense to use Gnutella to download pop music today, but from a long term perspective, we need to create an entirely new paradigm for music proliferation.
Bowies credibility (Score:1)
this is also the man who made his
own bank and electronic currency.
Did it work ?
Or maybe you didn't know he tried this stuff ?
Exactly my point
Copyright (Score:1, Funny)
It's all about the branding. Bowie gets it. (Score:5, Insightful)
I seriously doubt copyright will die (Score:4, Interesting)
What will have to change, however, is our perception of copyright. At this point, copyright is considered (however incorrectly) an inalienable right that often trumps even the first amendment. This situation is untenable. What I already see happening is the start of a movement to put the teeth back in the public side of the copyright bargain.
In the best case, I see copyright terms decreasing significantly and fair use rights being enforced by law. The first increases the incentive to produce by shortening the term of the artificial monopoly we the People grant to authors and artists.
The second means that the People's right to use works protected under copyright in any reasonable way they choose will be formally encoded, perhaps even to the point of outlawing fair use prevention technologies (what is usually called "copy protection") on works protected by copyright: this would restore the same balance that used to exist for patents before the DMCA.
I'll leave the worst case to others. =)
This is a myth... (Score:4, Insightful)
In a world without copyright, I still think that RMS and FSF would be happy.
Still, totally abolishing copyright is not a stated goal of the FSF. They just want more rights for the users of published software.
No (Score:4, Insightful)
Tell that to Bach, Shakespeare or any one else before probably 1900.
It may in a few instances encourage people to produce new works, but I bet in more cases it discourages people from using established works as the basis for new works. I bet it's a wash whether copyright helps or hinders in the grand picture.
All it really does is enable a few to get filthy rich while not helping the other 99.99% at all. Especially considering the few plagiarism cases that come to trial, where some rich artist (or corporation) is sued by some nobody for stealing his idea. The big guys can afford to steal and violate copyright because they have the lawyers to beat down the poor guys.
Re:No (Score:4, Interesting)
Great authors eat because they have to eat. With no income, they have no food.
Who said they would have no income? There are a variety of ways they could get income that may or may not be directly related to their writing.
Why is this ALWAYS an argument? What are these people supposed to do for a paycheck? Work at the Arco Station on the corner?
You're pretty unimaginative. First, they could actually have day jobs. Robert Burns was a farmer and excise collector. Who knows what Lewis Carroll's day job was? Second, they could use strategies like the street performer protocol or individual or corporate grants. Third, there are a variety of ways to turn intellectual works into "performances" which can be paid for: plays, interviews, signings, etc.
From one of your posts in another thread
Ok, tell you what. You go spend two years of full-time days (and nights and weekends) to write a novel and then give it all away. You have
absolutely no idea how much work is involved in writing or developing "cool stuff."
Actually, I did write a book and I did take about a year (not two) off of work for it (across several editions). If there was no copyright law I would have approached it very differently but I still would likely have done it. First, I would have seen it as a calling card, not something that would make me money directly. Second, I would have taken longer to do it, working on nights and weekends. Third, I would wait until the area of technology (it was a tech book) calmed down rather than expecting people to buy multiple editions as technology changed.
Overall, I would have radically changed my business model for the project. And in the end, that's my point. There is no one true business model for writing books or making widgets or anything else. The way the market works is to find ways to connect people who want something with those who can provide something. If a particular way of making that connection is blocked (copyright) then other ways will be found. That's why we had creativity before there was copyright and will have creativity after copyright disappears.
If there are authors who absolutely refuse to change their business model to adjust to changes in technology and society, then that is their problem, not society's. There will be other authors who will choose to adjust and they will thrive.
Not 10 years (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it'll have to get worse before it gets better in order for the public to start examining it. But I also think in about 20 years, we'll start to get a crop of legislators that are not quite so corporate. I think it's partly a demographic thing.
Of course, it will help if the average slashdot guy becomes a little more activist. Should you run for congress?
New York Times article (Score:1, Offtopic)
David Boies, you know, the famous lawyer who represented the government against Microsoft, and Al Gore versus Florida.
So when I read the blurb on slashdot, I figured that someone important had something logical.
My mistake.
Adaptive (Score:3, Insightful)
special edition... (Score:3, Funny)
bowie's pretty much always ahead of trends (Score:5, Insightful)
What's done-for is scheduled viewing/listening (Score:3, Insightful)
Time shifting will give control of life-scheduling back to the public.
If the machines skip commercials, then broadcast entertainment may be doomed, unless something like the British television-licensing model comes into play. Cable rates would have to jump by a hundred dollars per month to keep the same revenues going into the system.
P2P won't make so great a dent as to obviate copyright. Mass-market bandwidth is too low, and it's too easy to recognize the traffic signature of illegal file traders. The Xerox machine didn't kill publishing, and Napster didn't kill the RIAA.
--Blair
David Bowie Is Cooler Than We Though! (Score:4, Insightful)
Now the question is, will the Slashdot community - a group always bitching about these issues - use its large, unified presence to mirror that good act? I was just discussing with my girlfriend that we ought to go out and purchase the CD as soon as it becomes available.
If there's a huge show of support for Bowie's move here, it will reflect that his ideals are good ones. Others will follow his lead (lots of other artists have - but after seeing his success). So go out and actually buy a disc with confidence that most of the money is going to the artist, instead of some rich old wind-bag's pocket.
Bowie, Weezer, Wolco, etc. (Score:2, Insightful)
Unfortunately the legality of the situation ... (Score:1, Interesting)
However, a more interesting question in my mind is how to regulate this. Quite frankly I don't think you can. I am fairly technically savvy, and I don't think that they will come up with a way to stop people from copying music, video, and writings.
Given that you can't regulate it, what does it matter if it's illegal?
I think that artists will just have to deal with the fact that they will be creating things which will not bring them income. Although all artists are not in this game for the income, it seems to me that all the one's that are complaining are the ones who only care about the cashola. Maybe a new breed of artists is how it will be in the future.
For the record, I pay for my DVD's (right now) and I pay for all of the CD's that I listen to. However, I have downloaded MP3's and I would honestly say that if the CD player in my car played MP3's, then I would be burning my own.
Regardless of the law, people are going to break it. Mostly when they really want the payoff, and there is little or no punishment. It's a gamble, just like speeding, but right now there are very few speed traps.
My 2 cents
(mp3s == crap) ? "Bowie 2002" : "Bowie 1999" (Score:2, Interesting)
Nevertheless, I've never seen any mp3s on his web-site [davidbowie.com].
Besides, with Bowie's Al-Gorish claims to geekdom in the past, and a webpage that insists I go get a new plugin... Hey, where's the non-flash version?
This sort of eyecandy whoredom that goes with most bands' web-sites is rather quite sickening. If you're in a band, what would your fans want?
I refuse to believe that if you're in a band, that your fans really want lots of eyecandy that's just that--eyecandy.
If you're an artist in the visual sense, then perhaps some eyecandy is to be expected. But in a band--no. And flash? Flash might do some okay things, but it's never used right....
Bowie has had some interesting quips in his day, but he seems altogether too self-absorbed. Okay, the music is okay, some of it. But his 15 minutes of fame are over.
real rock musicians... (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't doubt the power of David Bowie.... (Score:3, Funny)
Do not doubt the power of David Bowie's Area [areaology.com]
Only rebels left are old! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm serious: Take for example the only people you see speaking out in public against the idiotic "War on Terror"--they are old! Even academics who find it just as stupid as I do keep their mouths shut, even if they have tenure.
The same goes for this "Intellectual Property" debate. I would be shocked if there weren't many young artists who agree with every word that Bowie says about the subject. Still, they keep a low profile and don't rock the boat, because we live in a climate where that gets you severely punished. I wasn't there, but I suspect in the 60's and 70's people faced the same dilemmas, but they said "fuck it, I'll say what I think and see what happens." But then again, maybe the government and the corporations have us under a tighter clamp now than any other time in Western history since constitutions started being written.
Sure, we all have a right to free speech, but the system has made it so that speaking freely is severely against our interest. This means that even though we won't go to jail, we will get fired, spied upon, harassed, and vilified as friends of terrorists. (How long will it take before somebody argues that abolishing IP laws would be "caving in to terrorism"? Surely they will find some stupid, tenuous connection.)
Anyway, this era makes me sick. You people suck. I might as well burn my books now to save you the trouble, because when these old-school rebels die, nobody will raise their voice in protest.
Re:Only rebels left are old! (Score:4, Interesting)
I blame the uber-PC view: "Be accepting of everyone and everything that is different." We have been trained not to care. No wonder everyone is so detached no one cares, everyone accepts. It's a mandate enforced and reinforced through 12--16 years of societal-normalization camp, err... I mean school... It's fallout from the 60's, and it doesn't taste as good 4 decades later.
Then there's all the messages being broadcast directly into our frontal lobes by large corporate sponsors. "Good consumer... good boy! sit, stay, be happy, buy stuff." Almost all of the urgent messages that bombard us are of no real importance. The real important stuff is mysteriously absent from the news... unless it somehow has to do with 9/11. You have to blow up a building or no one cares. What a sad world.
I wish I could make everyone read No Logo and Fast food nation. At least peruse Adbusters. *sigh*
I'm glad Slashdot exists.
He's half right. Copyright will change (Score:2, Insightful)
Not the mechanical act. That is now cost free and not sustainable as an economic base (Sorry xxAAs but you're gonna die. There's no reason for you to exist anymore. When I'm picking up the cost for storage on my own box and the cost of transmission to my own, the thing is MINE, not yours.)
Copyright is going to go, uh, right, back to the _person(s)_ who created the work.
Given the economies of scale (the internet makes China look like a local market,) and of distribution, (got a [hosted] server hooked up to a T3 switch? You're a media giant,) and the ability to charge for one-time or subscription access to a web page with content scaled for content (sampling, scaling,) combined with the IPv6 capability to identify exactly where a message or some content originated from, the artists are about to start raking in the money themselves.
I think that the packaged album is going to be a casualty if this shift though. If there's only ONE song you want to listen to, you shouldn't be stuck with the other ones that the company decided they wanted to use to fill out the rest of the CD.
The xxAAs are going to wither on the vine. I don't think that Hillary Rosen could hum anything I'd want to hear. Nor do I want to see Jack Valenti's holiday slides.
Vanilla Ice? (Score:2, Informative)
Bowie has always been a visionary... (Score:1)
I think that if things were to naturally evolve, he would be absolutely correct....
BUT...(unfortunately) we have Congress and the courts putting their noses into the water where they really shouldn't. What they're doing is akin to passing laws requiring all electronic equipment to have at least three vaccum tubes so the vacuum tube industry doesn't fall to obsolence...or to require at least one buggy whip on every horseless carriage.
What's really ironic is that the mantra that our leaders have had the past few years (and what they seem to go to over and over and over to justify all the deregulation they've done) is:
"Let the marketplace decide!". Why then do they seem to want to apply this selectively then?
I think the answer is: $$$$$$$$$. They want the flow to continue into their wallets and Swiss bank accounts.
50/50 (Score:2)
There is so much FUD and flaming about the future and viability of OpenSource and FairUse on the one hand and ClosedSource and IPR on the other these days that it is really difficult to make up one's mind as to what one supports.
As artists or a coders, a lot of us seem to have that idealistic streak in us that we like to share our creative efforts and quite a few of us enjoy being able to look at the sources of works without having to fear harrasment from some omnipotent Agency or company. On the other hand we need to eat and most of us wouldn't say no to high salary or royalty checks. The problem is that it seems that the big salary and royalty checks mostly go to those who control the big companies or organisations, not to small artists or codeslaves in their cubicles. I think that Bowie is right in that the situation will change, but not in the direction it will take.
It seems, gathering from the J Carroll-esque and MS funded FUD that the boys in Redmond are very, very frightened of the effect that OSS is having, even if they probably wouldn't really stand to lose much in real world terms because of their huge dominance on PC OS's. The same for the big Labels and Studios. They seem scared. I can't imagine that the amount of money that these companies and organisations are spending on their campaigns is negligable and they do stand a good chance of using their massive lobbying presence in the law and media to eventually sway a lot of things their way.
On the other side the sheer inescapability of the fact that the GPL keeping code alive in spite of attempts to kill the projects and the true benefits of many people doing small tasks on a large project and peer review and feedback means that OSS is steadily gaining ground. There is no way that Linux/Moz or OpenOffice are going to go away. And the non ownership means that people who are scared of being blackmailed by corporations can use it without fear and this fact seems to be a major factor in the industry. With musicians starting to realise that they stand to gain much more in terms of "street credibility" by releasing their works over the net, and having very little to lose in any case, the big labels are getting caught in a bind. Do they try to fight these musicians whom they don't usually treat with much respect in any case, and risk boycott actions snowballing against them (where is Metallica today?) or do they go with the flow.
I think that companies like Apple with it's open core OS, Darwin and closed UI, and SuSE's UnitedLinux and RedHat moving to models that comply with the GPL but no longer do everything for you for free (compile it yourself) are starting to address some of the shortcomings of the everything for free as in beer model. Likewise I think that the music industry, in the end will probably go for a compromise where lower quality recordings are available for download and if you want something better you pay.
There is a lot to be said for compromise.
Concert are the future (Score:1)
Anyway, most artists make a great deal of their income at concerts. Record companies don't tap in as much, the tickets are 60 dollars, instead of 1x.99 for the CD at the store.
Another thing that will happen is the dissapearance of 'one hit wonders'. They will go the way of the typewriter, because people will only download their stuff, not go to their concerts, etc..
I mean don't most of you buy the CD anyway if you REALLY like it? I have many CD's that I bought that I have downloaded the whole thing, just as a 'thanks' to the artist. But do you really buy someone that only has one good song? Or go and sit through a three hour concert with only liking that one?
This whole thing will really change the industry even more than most people realize currently
Bowie had first video on CD-ROM (Score:1)
He's always been noted as progressive and in-touch with technology. A real good guy from the
no, but... (Score:2)
Ground Control to RIAA (Score:2, Funny)
And there's nothing you can do
(cheesey, yes, but somebody had to do it
Here in Russia, copyright enforcement is difficult (Score:2, Insightful)
The light? (Score:3, Insightful)
The music industry has seen the light with great clarity for quite a while. That's why we got the DMCA and why we're getting the too-long-to-pronounce law. Don't phrase this as a matter of clueless old farts who should "see the light" and join the internet age. It's a matter of an entrenched, wealthy, intelligent elite which will fight to the death to preserve and enhance its privileges and income.
The implication of this "see the light" comment is that the music industry should adapt to changing conditions. But an excellent quote which I can't find right now says, in effect: "Individual organisms do not adapt to changing conditions - the species adapts via the death of ill-adapted organisms".
Hey, David Bowie... (Score:1)
Bowie is right on target (Score:1)
Bowie on audio formats ... (Score:2)
Bowie laughs, says, "Because they're crazy. I don't care about any format; I download it from the Internet."
Re:See the light, sure (Score:2, Interesting)
If I believed that everything was milk and honey, and that people would be kind to each other, I wouldn't be opposed to the copyright system because I would think that people wouldn't abuse it as they do now.
These days, people (like the record industry and the software publishing industry) exploit the public by abusing copyright.
These people put their long tentacles of control on everything they publish. You buy that record? Well, sonny, you better not copy it or you're gonna pay!
Your sweetheart asks for a copy? Are you going to be loyal to her/him or to the copyright owner?
Sharing copies with other people shouldn't be a crime, it's a nice thing to do.
These days, everythings not "milk and honey", because the laws are set up to reward miserliness and punish friendliness.
Re:Right. (Score:1)
Re:End of intellectual property, as sad day indeed (Score:2, Insightful)
If I produce software, music, or writings, these are the results of my work and efforts, and nobody is entitled to steal them!
But CDs aren't the results of your work. The music, or words, are. If I, as an artist, burn a CD of my music, and give it to someone, I have lost nothing other than the 50 cents for the media. The music in my head has not gone away.
Intellectual property is no less than private property.
Yes, intellectual property is arguably property, but the mistake is in treating it exactly like physical property.
The problem is not in the idea of "intellectual property" (referencing the originator of a work, acknowledging the creativity that went into it), but in the mistake of using the word property which has connotations that don't directly apply to the very different ideas of a physical thing (a piece of land, a car, a radio), and an idea.
How would you feel if someone stole your computer because presumably they have a better use for it?
If someone stole my computer, I would no longer have the use of my computer. But if I write a song and someone tapes me singing it, what have I lost?
I write music, and I make no money off of it, because I like the idea of people listening to my music. Artists will produce music [scenespot.org] even if they can't eat off money made from selling CDs. "Artists" who are paid to manufacture generic music for mass-sale will probably go away, but that won't stop real music from happening. It will just stop non-musicians who have a career in music.
Now it may be that in the future, society will agree as a whole that using someone else's intellectual property (singing someone else's song, manufacturing drugs using someone else's formula) will be considered a form of stealing, but it is a mistake to consider it the same form of stealing as taking another person's computer, or stealing their car. That is what exists now, it's too rooted in laws of physical appropriation for it to apply to reality, and that is where these arguments start. When people discuss "stealing" IP they're really talking about two different things.
Re:End of intellectual property, as sad day indeed (Score:2)
Particularly with regards to this: If I produce software, music, or writings, these are the results of my work and efforts, and nobody is entitled to steal them! Intellectual property is no less than private property.
That's not how it works. We have copyright laws in order to benefit the public. If this happens to satisfy artists, that's great, but not necessary. Benefits to artists are merely a 'carrot' used to extract useful works out of them. They didn't earn it merely by virtue of the act of creation. Were this so, the lack of copyright anywhere in the world prior to roughly 300 years ago would be entirely inexplicable.
The public benefit comes first and foremost. Anything else is merely happy chance.
You can't own words, daddy-o. (Score:1)
Re:Why NYTimes requires registration [OT] (Score:1)
Re:You know something? (Score:1)
Unless, of course, they use the INTERNET. (Score:2)
The Internet is the way that music is going to be distributed in the future. The record companies are welcome to come along, but they aren't needed anymore. Which makes your argument even more ironic.
Re:End of intellectual property, as sad day indeed (Score:1)
Would I be upset if somebody stole my computer? Yes. But would I be upset if somebody copied my computer? I don't think so.
Actually this is probably a troll, since this argument about IP is so easily made to look ridiculous.
Re:You know something? (Score:1)
That was before the invention of this little thing called the *internet*. It lets anyone distribute content for a fraction of what the cost would have been ten years ago.
This is exactly what the media giants want us to think. They have created a mystique about the amount of money and power it takes to make you successful, when the reality is you make them successful. They have exploited the relationship between artist and art lover to the point that artists feel they have no alternative to get their art to the art lover and still earn a living.
Re:You know something? (Score:4, Insightful)
Starving artists!!! (Score:1, Insightful)
I know plenty of great recording artists who actually lose money on their work. They do it for the love of the work, not to make money.
Sure you'll be able to download free music from the net, maybe enough songs to fill a whole cdrom
You have no idea what you are talking about. Napster contained many many hours of songs that were never sold to begin with.
Re:You know something? (Score:2)
Huh, I wasn't under the impression that all the good electronica was produced by Sony.
Well, I'm thumbing through my collection, and other than a couple of virgin releases, I don't see much by major name labels.
I could live without those two CDs
>The costs involved in producing and massively distributing an album are so high that no startup band could ever hope to afford them.
Yes, I mean it costs me $20 a month for a usenet account, and it costs about $100 a month for a business-level high speed internet connection, so at $120 a month to post your CD to usenet and have everyone in the world have it, I'd say the distribution costs are massively high.
As far as producing goes, I again suppose that if your entire band can't afford the couple of thousand renting a studio for a couple of nights costs, perhaps you're broke and need to MMF?
>they have precisely a snowball's chance in Hell of distributing nationwide.
When did Usenet go offline? I seem to have missed this...
I did notice in another post you complain about pots making downloading slow.
Well, you can download overnight one high-quality album over most POTS lines (I know because I've done that before I got high-speed, and I connected at 21.6k).
One album a night is more than most people can afford with the current $20 an album system.
I also noticed you mentioned that standalone MP3 players are expensive. I suggest you look more closely. It cost me $75 for my last portable MP3 player. If that's expensive, I'd like to buy my chocolate bars for $0.25 each again!
And yes, this MP3 player has a simple headphone out jack. I had to buy a "special" cable from my mini-mart to convert from a headphone jack to RCA jacks. Cost me $3...
(sorry if this double posts... slashdot crapped out last time)
Re:You know something? (Score:2)
Major labels are nothing more than a scheme to spoonfeed pablum to people who are too lazy to actually have any taste.