Repudiate Copyright Monopoly

From a slashdot article titled DRM Free Music is Everywhere, I posted this reply, titled DRM hurts, copyright hurts - recording = marketing
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As a very very small music producer (basically, I give bands money to record or tour, and I hope to recoup some of that investment in the future), I work very hard to get the bands I finance to repudiate not just DRM but copyright in general. Small bands have no real reason for either — recording music is just a marketing process to try to get people to come to your shows. Sure, without copyright, some big producer might steal your lyrics and music and have the newest pop boy band re-record it, but this too would just be a great marketing tactic — the Internet would jump all over it.

Small bands need to give their recorded music away freely online in order to get more people to come to their shows. My brother’s band Maps & Atlases just went on a 7 day tour to the East Coast and ended up in a tiny university town called East Stroudsburg, PA. Instead of showing up to no crowd, the venue was packed — a rarity for the town and venue. Why did this happen? Maps & Atlases released their EP for free online. They sold out of their first EP (2000 copies) during their 2006 tour, and they’re coming up fast on selling out their second pressing, even though the music is easily downloaded online. Why do fans pay for albums? They get face time with the band, they get autographs, and they know that buying the merch direct will keep the band writing and touring.

DRM is terrible for any band but the absolute largest, and even for them it is bad because the new fan base wants to have nothing to do with it. I look at it this way: DRM for the adult contemporary crowd just makes life harder for them, DRM for the teen crowd is easily bypassed. But it isn’t just DRM that makes things difficult, it is also the fact that copyright really throws fan distribution a curve — even the fans who openly distribute the music know it is “piracy” but they feel they’re helping the band.

I look at the Internet as one big radio station waiting to be harnessed by smaller musicians all over the world. Write music with one purpose: to attract fans to your live shows where you can make your income by continuing to work, rather than hoping to write one hit once and earn royalties for the rest of your life. Who here works a regular job and wishes that they could work a few months in exchange for years of income? Life doesn’t work that way — unless you work with the distribution cartels that are quickly watching their futures slip through their fingers. If you’re in a band, tell your fans to copy your music for their friends in hopes that those friends will become the new fans. Viral marketing is key to making a solid income in live music.

Sidenote: If you’re in a band and you disagree with me on making a living, it is because you’re trying to keep a “steady job” while also trying to tour. You can’t do both. My brother’s bandmates all quit their jobs (some of them have master’s degrees!) to handle a tour schedule that includes typically 20 shows a month. Stop whining and dig in.

Discuss this article at the repudiate copyright forum.

Slashdot today has an article titled U.S. Copyright Lobby Out of Touch with the following editorial:

“The BBC is featuring a story on how the U.S. copyright lobby is increasingly out of touch with the rest of the world. The article focuses on a recent report designed to highlight the inadequacies of IP protection around the world by arguing for a global expansion of the DMCA and elimination of copyright exceptions. Michael Geist penned the article, which specifically calls out the United States for expecting the world at large to adopt its non-standard standards for copyright law.”

The editorial links to this BBC article.

My comment is as follows:

The U.S. copyright lobby exists for one purpose: to give distributors sole custody of intellectual property “rights.” In the past, pre-copyright, there was no intellectual property — there was only marketing material that provided an artist or creator access to the market so they could sell their true product: live productions of that marketing material. Shakespeare wrote for acclaim, but it was his live performances that produced his income. He was also paid by wealthy patrons of the arts who wanted to see more from him. For centuries, this is why art was created. Those who didn’t want acclaim but still wanted to produce art would do what we all do for incomes — they got jobs in creating something for someone else.

For 200 years, copyright was considered the only way to protect your creations, but what came out of copyright is the worst-case scenario for amateur artists: instead of copyright protecting your creations, it only protected the monopoly networks of distribution, what I would call distribution cartels.

Now, 200 years later, we have a majority of opinion that believes that people wouldn’t create if their intellectual property wasn’t protected. But this isn’t true. I created the Global Unanimocracy Network”> of blogs and forums in order to prove that you could generate an income for your talents without the need for copyright. All my writings are now public domain — I freely encourage others to copy my writings and posts and repost them under their own name, on their own sites, for their own income. Why? Because it generates interest in the niche topics I cover, and eventually people find their way to my site. I make a decent income through advertising and individual support for my future writings. People pay me so that I will write more in the future. Even better, my network of blogs has also gotten me writing gigs for other sites that pay me to write content for them in a “ghost writing” type of deal.

If you are a musician, you have two options: record a record and use it as marketing to get people to your shows (as my brother’s band Maps & Atlases has done), or go and get a job as a studio musician creating music for commercial ventures (movies, TV shows, muzak, etc). The idea that you can spend 2 weeks or 2 years creating one record and then reap 70 years of income is ridiculous. Does a plumber go to school for 2 years to learn how to fix toilets only to get paid for 70 years whenever you flush that toilet? No, they continue to work. Does an architect spend 2 years designing plans only to get paid forever by those who live or use the building that came forth from the plans? No, they keep designing. Artists are no different — they should continue their labors in order to continue to reap incomes.

Right now, copyright has placed in the hands of powerful mercantilists the monopoly of distribution. The FCC decides who can transmit over public airwaves, and this blocks amateurs from the airwaves. Yet those days are coming to an end as the airwaves are growing less important as the Internet is available in more and more places (for example, I have a consistent WiFi connection to the net in my car at about 200kbps via T-Mobile’s EDGE network). As the Internet finds its way to more parts of the country and the world, the public airwaves will be less utilized and way less efficient. The copyright lobby knows this, and they’re trying hard to restrict future growth in “piracy” and non-licensed distributors. Yet for amateur artists, the non-licensed distributors are the best way to get the word out about their real product: continued labor to make new and unique art.

A friend’s band, 38 Acres, now tells their audience and online visitors to freely copy their albums for friends. They make a decent income selling unique performances, and they also make an income selling their T-shirts and hats and posters. People who “pirated” their album generally buy their album when they meet the band — the band autographs it, and the casual fans know the money is going to record the next album, which will also be freely copyable. The copyright cartel HATES this type of marketing, because it goes around their monopoly of distribution.

The lobby isn’t out of touch, it is out of time, and it knows this. Using force to keep their monopoly is no longer valid, as there are too many people with the ability to get what they want without the previous distribution media. The more that the cartel tries to control the average consumer, the more they will become unreliable, inefficient and invalid in terms of how the consumer connects with the producer of various media products.

Discuss this article at the repudiate copyright forum.