To play devil's advocate, why should people continue to be compensated for work they did long ago? It's normal today, but it wasn't always that way, and it could be time to revisit that assumption. The amount and quality of works would change for sure, but there's nothing I know if that says there aren't other reasonable systems out there.
Especially in light of the fact that copyright is not fulfilling it's intended promise. Specifically that the government protects the work for a time, and in return the work goes into the public domain after a reasonable amount of time in order to enrich society as a whole.
What about things they did 6 months ago? The argument is whether music should be copyrightable at all, not whether 100-year copyright terms are reasonable.
Why indeed? We don't pay for food each time we reap the benefits of the nutrition it provided down the line. Weightlifters don't pay royalties to protein powder companies. It could be argued that artists could also be expected to not be paid beyond the initial creation of a work. It would be a very different world to be sure, but it's not a given that it would be a worse world.
No. There are two arguments. Whether music should be copyrightable at all is settled (though a fringe continues to argue it). That means that the second argument, whether 100-year copyright terms are reasonable, is in fact the main argument at this time.
> To play devil's advocate, why should people continue to be compensated for work they did long ago?
We often don't know which songs are worth millions and which are worth tens until years later.
If we believe that people who write songs should be compensated roughly proportionally to how valuable their songs are, it is hard to think of a way to actually do that which does not involve compensation long after the song is written.
Because "fair compensation" is a reeeeally hard term to define legally, while giving someone a monopoly on a particular song and letting the market determine how to price that song's usage is a more workable mechanism.
But it’s really not. Workable that is. The exclusive control of copies throws a huuuge wrench in the machinery.
Just in the copy providing department I still consistently run in to the situation where there is no legal means for me to enjoy certain albums, tv-series, movies, games or software.
But that’s just the problem with the actually legal copies. I find it even more distressing that some of the best works I want to enjoy are illigal to begin with due to the authors infringig of the exclusive right of some longe abandoned work.
And that’s just my experience. Considering the resources and suffering that goes into maintaining this state of affairs just boggles the mind.
> But it’s really not. Workable that is. The exclusive control of copies throws a huuuge wrench in the machinery.
Not really (at least, not in addressing lucasmullens' point). I'm making a movie or an ad. I think your song would be just perfect for it. You won't let me use it on terms that I consider reasonable. Well, there's more than one song that would be (approximately) perfect there. I'll see if their copyright holders are more reasonable.
If you absolutely have to have Song X in your movie, then your point is correct. But I assert that, most of the time, that isn't the case. And behold, now there's a market.
If I make an emulator. Perhaps it would be nice to provide a few classic games with upgraded graphics and audio. Even finding the rights holders could be a challenge.
Perhaps I found the new Star Wars movie crap, a few cuts and edits. And it’s much better. Only can only dream of getting the rights of releasing it.
Perhaps the mastering of a Metallica album was just bad. With a little skills applied to the problem and there you go, a much nicer edition of the album. Cant really add it to Spotify though.
This can't actually be the reason -- music in particular is subject to a variety of compulsory license schemes for which "fair compensation" is legally defined, and the copyright holder does not have the ability to prevent someone from covering / broadcasting / etc. their song.
Interestingly enough we have a great example of limited copyright protections for musicians in China that are still fabulously wealthy and successful. Their wealth is generated through performing/concerts, advertising, etc while their music is freely available for streaming/download.
Most of the value in the music industry has gone to Apple and Spotify shareholders the last 20 years, not labels. There is at least $100-$150 billion in cumulative shareholder value sitting there from just that. Spotify is worth more than all the major labels combined.
The iPod doesn't exist without the music from the artists. Apple didn't share their hardware profits with artists, and they're not sharing any follow on value from the iPhone either (which was entirely made possible by the iPod).
People hate labels, they mostly love Apple and Spotify, so they largely get a pass on this. The real money in the music industry during the iPod era, was in the hardware.
Should we really be incentivizing making music as a career? And besides, I don't think the bulk of music is being created by people being compensated for it.
Somewhere out there, there exists an alternate universe where musicians ponder nonchalantly whether people should be compensated for software. "Can't they just sell software logo t-shirts?"
There's a ton of people giving away very useful software and all the files and tools to easily read and modify it. There's a handful of musicians giving away music too, but I don't know of many giving away the files and tools to read and modify it.
As much as people may speak of art reflecting its creator, once it gets into the outside world, it becomes an interaction with everyone it contacts. There are a million new perspectives formed, and plenty that could be done to extend the work.
I could imagine taking software principles and applying them to art in many ways:
* Bugfixes-- from simple grammar flaws, to finishing dangled story threads, why aren't we patching and re-releasing novels?
* Technical improvements-- I could imagine, for example, a speaker manufacturer remixing songs so they sounded better on their hardware.
* Customization -- if you've made an attractive image or song, and it hasn't been repurposed to sell Diet Pepsi, you haven't really arrived.
The limit to these visions is that they run headlong both into the literal principles of copyright law, and the philosophy that art is somehow sacred as-is, rather than being a baseline for better and better things. Shorter copyrights and mandatory licensing can make it happen.
> Bugfixes-- from simple grammar flaws, to finishing dangled story threads, why aren't we patching and re-releasing novels?
This is pretty similar to what’s happened with Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo. He’s repeatedly reworked it, tweaking the production and verses and in one case adding a whole new song.
> Customization -- if you've made an attractive image or song, and it hasn't been repurposed to sell Diet Pepsi, you haven't really arrived.
https://youtu.be/zxyTk3ligAc – a band playing a very close copy of their hit song Winchester Cathedral as a coke ad.
"He" being the operative word. Third parties aren't doing their own custom distributions. This becomes a big deal if you can't convince the original creator that something needs fixed.
If you've got a big enough vision that you lock horns with Linus Torvalds on the Linux kernel, you fork it and release anyway. If you have a different vision than Kanye West for the album, good luck getting your version through the courts.
The importance of music and the importance of software is worlds apart. Not to mention there's enough music already made to cover everyone's need. Software is nowhere near that.
Most of today's software is a rehash of crap we already had. It's just the dumb clients render HTML instead of cursor positions and ansi colors now. And the smart clients are smaller.
That is a frightening thing to read. Just because you don't appreciate music doesn't mean you can dismiss out of hand its cultural value. I would rather live in a world without software and computers than one without music, not even close
Are you saying software is unimportant or music is unimportant?
A choice between the two, like choosing to be blind or deaf, I'd choose music, I'd choose blindness.
Music is much more fundamental to the human condition than, <laugh out loud>... software <more laughing>
Gather round the keyboard family, let's code together, you do the functions, I'll write main!
(This is intentionally harshly written, in response to the obvious hyperbole of this "Not to mention there's enough music already made to cover everyone's need" - whatever that is).
I'm aware it's all subjective, but I'll still write this:
Music is life, Software is lifestyle.
moetech, find some music that elicits a response from
a part of your lizard brain you didn't know existed, that makes you cry with connection. That's just the beginning of the journey.
>Should we really be incentivizing making music as a career?
Of course not. There is an enormous glut of cultural works, and people's quality of life would not be meaningfully harmed if all commercial production stopped. See:
> Should we really be incentivizing making music as a career?
Instrument practice, sound engineering are a crazy amount of work in order to get to a professional level. It's so bizarre to hear people say things like that, they have 0 consideration for the amount of effort put into the former, just because they can download 1 millions tracks on the internet in one click...
There are probably a hundred times more professional-level guitarists than professional guitarists. It’s a ton of work, but it’s a ton of work that a lot of people already put in just for fun.
Professional production is very hard, but it’s also kind of a moving target. A lot of production is trying to hit trends set by other producers so that your music sounds professional itself. It’s largely competitive rather than artistically significant, and there’s some great production that doesn’t sound professional but still works.
Yes, we should. If you want things done well, you want people to be able to make a living doing them. I'd love to see any sources on your claims regarding to music creation - certainly, a huge portion of quality artwork is the result of people being paid for it/creating with the expection that they'll be able to sell it. This has been true for centuries.
