A lotta chatter about this in recent days. I always enjoy a good “fuck the government” rant, but the we shouldn’t lose sight of the basic argument, as it pertains to be business that has fed and clothed me and my fellow musical travellers for decades: musicians need to get paid. Peri-fucking-od.
In an article in the Guardian, Helienne Lindvall writes:
It’s a basic economic fact that you can’t make a living doing stuff for “free”. There will be no progress once you start starvin’, Marvin. People who side with computer geeks in saying that everyfink should be free often say that people will continue to make music, no matter what. True, but there is only so much amateur hour a guy can take. I wonder whose music you will miss more, the stuff from that band down the road who pesters you to like/vote their latest masterpiece or the stuff released by record labels.
Don’t be glib. Think it through.
Great music doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the cumulative result of a series of processes that start at home and at school when you first pick up an instrument and someone teaches you to play it. At some point it moves on to the local pub, your laptop studio or the local demo studio. Then to other stages and bigger laptops in better studios. Perhaps more in depth studies on the theory and construction of music. It can also be done in backstages of bars and clubs. Then more and more people get involved, each with their own particular skills to help make music that moves the spirit. Whoever pays for it needs to make their money back. Whoever works in it needs to make a living. This business of music has come up with all my favourite records. And all of yours, too.
There is no such thing as a free market. It’s all a complicated set of rules, laws and regulations that protect people, their dosh, ideas and all the rest of it. We need a set of (probably very) complicated rules to make sure that people who make music and invest in the process get paid. Work towards it, my friends. Don’t be bullied by the geek brigade into thinking that you should let them make all the money while you get zilch.
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I think what got lost in the whole SOPA/PIPA debate was how the two sides were not at all complete opposites. Everyone that opposed SOPA was not completely against the idea of some kind of law to stop piracy, the real problem was that SOPA and PIPA were so horribly written and so generally vague that it basically allowed the government and copyright holders to take down entire websites such as Youtube if they so wished.
I heard that under SOPA, Justin Bieber could have been taken to court when he first started off, simply for doing a cover of somebody without permission and putting it on Youtube.
What got lost in the whole argument was that the main thing that the people that were against SOPA actually just wanted a better worded, more clear and precise version of SOPA that couldn’t destroy freedom online.