Arrington On Copyright: Wrong

http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2008/05/arrington-on-copyright-wrong.html

by markbao • 18 years ago

17 27 18 years ago

No more $100000000 movies is a small price to pay for no more copyright. I could happily live the rest of my life without another professionally made book, program, or song. In fact I would be ecstatic.

greendestiny• 18 years ago

You might, but seemingly you'd be in the vast minority. There is currently any number of bands and film producers making stuff available for free legally. But even with the threat of prosecution, and the hatred for copyright, these bands can barely make an impression.

sanswork8• 18 years ago

There are quite a few huge bands these days who owe all their success to the internet and more specifically Myspace. The Artic Monkeys are the first that come to mind, but I know there are a few others I could list if I thought about it.

"Third, if the recorded music industry goes down, concert sales will not grow – they will shrink"

Also wrong and with no reasons why he believes this. The record industry and the concert promotion industry are separate yet complementary industries. The loss of the record industry will almost certainly have no huge effect on the concert industry.

I'll be honest I stopped reading at the end of that paragraph.

ardit33• 18 years ago

Yep. Yelle, in france too, started with myspace. http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q4FamibkUH4

hank7779• 18 years ago

I am the article author. Actually, the arctic monkeys do not give away their music free on their website or on myspace. Second, the group is successful because along with making great music, they have a great, very hard working 15 year old label called Domino, who also have for example, Franz Ferdinand. So Arctic monkeys is not internet based despite what you may think, has a real record label that puts money and marketing efforts behind them, and doesn't give their music away free. I am not saying that artists that have websites or myspace pages cant succeed obviously. Almost all artists have myspace pages so that would be silly. I am saying you cant just put your stuff up on the net, do nothing else, and expect to make a living -- particularly if you are giving away your music which is where Arrington thinks everything should go.

sanswork8• 18 years ago

The Arctic Monkeys have a label because of Myspace, they signed to Domino after achieving success not before it. Myspace was their main source of promotion in making them famous and well known not Domino. I also didn't say they gave their music away free, I said they were a band that got popular from the internet only.

hank7779• 18 years ago

One other thing...

"The loss of the record industry will almost certainly have no huge effect on the concert industry."

Name a successful touring artist that has not had a successful, label based, recording career.

sanswork8• 18 years ago

Correlation does not imply causation.

You're looking at it the wrong way, in the current world popular bands get signed to labels so pretty much all major touring bands will be signed to a major label. It doesn't however mean that an absence on labels will kill touring since the labels for the most part aren't into touring. It's another set of companies that handle that.

enra3• 18 years ago

You're basically saying that "it hasn't worked before, it won't work in the future". This actually reminds me of startups.

1) What other options you had in the past sharing and selling your music than joining a record company?

2) If you're successful artist, why wouldn't you have a label? Labels would pay millions upfront and help you with everything. It's easy money, like an exit, even it hurts you in the long run. Probably most artists are not interested in building a business.

We usually forget that artists actually get their fame without labels, but labels are pretty good and quick luring these potential artists in. Who knows what would happen if so many artists didn't take their exists.

I would say that many DJ:s are quite successful and touring artists, even they don't usually have labels behind them. Ofc they are not mainstream. You really cannot be the next Rolling Stones, since internet and other options has been around just for few years. You have to remember that copyrights and labels history is aswell relatively short.

In Finland, Poets of the Fall are still independent, and got their fame over internet and/from there playing a title song in Max Payne. I think Jonathan Coulton has build his music over internet and got featured in Portal.

ideas101• 18 years ago

Time has arrived where original content creator/artist (musician, writer etc.) has to decide how they want to publish their content and make money. Self-publishing is gaining momentum in the book arena, the same can happen in music, movie and tv - the only thing is someone has to make self-publishing and internet distribution eco-system simple and affordable (wow! here is the business idea).

The other platform that can be explored is creative commons. Licensing under creative commons and sharing content freely with the support of some kind of revenue generation is one of the best option (i think).

noonespecial• 18 years ago

Our visual entertainment would be confined to things like Star Wars Kid.

He forgot "Ow, My Balls", I think.

Seriously though, I think live music and recorded albums are actually disconnected and septate products. What will happen is that there will be no more soccer moms going to $100 million dollar REO Speedwagon reunion tours and instead there will be a resurgence in small venue, local music scenes."Pop" music as we know it today, when it becomes a free commodity, will be seen by most people as a product for children.

This can be good because although there will be no more "Madonnas", hundreds of smaller acts will take her place and offer much more variety. I can't wait.

enra3• 18 years ago

Williams On Copyright: Wrong

First, what is with the "music goes down"-statement. Arrington just said that "a new era of free recorded music and paid live performances is a very good thing". Lots of things are free and still up and running (eg. this site, tv, radio..).

"Second, there is no evidence at all that free music on the Internet is an effective". Ok, but there is. Next.

"Third, if the recorded music industry goes down, concert sales will not grow – they will shrink." There is no evidence that it would happen like this. First, marketing efforts results are usually hard to measure. Second, cleary marketing isn't the only thing, or even the most important thing on creating demand. It's the music.

If we get back to the original Youtube-Viacom case, what's the harm if you watch some clips of the Office from Youtube? It isn't like you were going to buy the dvdbox, just for watching it at work while sipping your coffee, but you might buy it afterwards, because it got your attention again.

Ok, I understand that Viacom has the copyrights, and Youtube is making money of them. This dispute, as many others, isn't about ethics, morale, downgrading our culture, terrorism or ripping of the artists. It's just about money. You can even watch South Park for free on their own site

dmm• 18 years ago

There was art before copyright and there will be art after it as well.

The rights afforded artists under copyright laws are not natural rights, but were created for the specific purpose. If that purpose is no longer served by these laws then they should be eliminated.

It is a federal crime now to take a camera into a movie theater. You can receive jail time for this. When will the insanity stop?

hank7779• 18 years ago

"The rights afforded artists under copyright laws are not natural rights"

There are no such thing as "natural rights" - only rights that we as society agree are beneficial. IP rights are no different than the rights for you to own your shoes or your house. They are just social contracts.

Arrington On Copyright: Wrong

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