ThosLives's Journal: On Media Copyrights (and other IP)

I just read this article and suddenly realized something. The RIAA is all concerned about "not getting compensated" due to media piracy. And artists are rightly concerned about not getting paid enough to be able to make music. I think, though, they are forgetting the basic Golden Rule of Capitalism.

Here's what I see: the RIAA and the "labels" are all upset because they are losing power. That means the people that run it are losing money (or, better stated, they aren't getting as much money as they want). They think that if music is pirated too much, then they won't be able to survive because nobody will pay for music. What they are forgetting is this:

If "nobody" pays for music, then people will stop making music. Before this happens, though, what will happen is that music producers (that is, the actual songwriters and performers) will have to charge more for their service of producing new stuff. The general public will never stop wanting new music, so there will always be a way for some musician to get people to pay for their work. There will be a supply-demand balance that happens.

Sure, things may look very different than they do now, or maybe they won't, but there will still be people able to get enough money to make a living writing and performing songs. Think about it this way - if there was no such thing as copyright, what would happen is that all the publishers would be hard pressed to stay in business (probably go extinct with the presence of the Internet). However, the artists would not go extinct, because people still want their goods. It would be like a comic strip that was in danger of having to go off-line because the author was running out of money. He has a big enough following that in 1 week of his fund raiser he got enough to stay solvent for three years. This wasn't so that people could see the old stuff Mr. Abrams wrote, but so that they would be able to see the stuff he'll write in the future. This is where the value of creative works comes in.

The publishers are somewhat successfully using the legal system to prolong their demise when market forces have destroyed the necessity for their chosen occupation. It's a shift, just like manufacturing is shifting, just like agriculture shifted, etc. etc.

The point is this: music will always exist, because people will always be willing to pay musicians (be it for concerts or just in the form of "I'm gonna give you money so I can hear the songs you'll be able to write in the future because you won't have to work 80 hours/week at Wal-Mart to get by". Publishers, however, don't need to exist any longer. This is why the RIAA is all up in arms. Notice that it's the Recording Industry that's up in arms, not the artists. I think the artists know that, at the very least, they'll be able to book enough gigs to make ~$50k per member per year, which is plenty on which to live.

My prediction is this: if market forces are allowed to prevail (i.e., no intervention through the artificial construct of legislation - including copyright law) the labels will belly-up for the most part, or more likely be relegated to server or CD publisher clearing houses. Archivers, if you will.

Instead of copyright, we should have something like "performance right" where you can freely distribute a recording of a performance as much as you want, but you have to pay the artist some licensing fee or whatever to perform the work. I would actually propose this as a better alternative to copyright, because copyright doesn't seem much to apply. As for copyright for things like literature, I think it should morph to something like "if you get paid for the distribution of this product, $X has to go back to the author". This would be the best solution to the issue I think, and I think it covers the intent and purpose of the original law. Actually, you could switch the performance arts to the same thing: if you charge money for the distribution of this, then $x goes back to the original author.

Granted, I'm biased, but this could even apply to software. It would let people know who the author is, and give people reason to only charge when necessary. Coupled with the "performance rights" I think this would be the best way to go. I'll have to do some more thinking about how "performance rights" might apply to software, since it doesn't really match that analogy.

Anyway, just like everything else, the people who are clamoring for "compensation" in the RIAA are just clamoring for protectionism. They are asking for someone to build them a wall so they don't have to change, and what will happen is they are just building themselves a mausoleum.

Let's think about IP reform, and present something that the politicians can buy. I'm not too concerned about the people in the distribution industry who aren't willing to change with the times, becuase people not willing to change should have to suffer the appropriate consequences for that decision.

Ah, I could prattle on for quite a while longer on this, but I think I'm going to work on writing some of it down in a more formal manner. I might even begin to try and put together some sort of movement. Scary.