Robert's Sysadmin Blog

You wouldn't feel the same way if someone was using something you created without asking permission. Remember, every time a song was played on the radio, a fee was paid to the copyrighted owner of that music. Over the web should be no different. Even when you hear music at a sporting event, a small fee was charged to have the right to broadcast the songs. The artist makes a living off their work. Now, an artist can decide that someone can use their work, without having to pay a royality, but, that is the artist's decision.

I am not saying that the artist shouldn't be compensated for their work. If course they should be be.

But the model that the record industry has been using is no longer valid now, and their continuing attempts to hold on to that model is stifling the kinds of creativity that actually -encourage- the purchase of music.

All that back-catalog that Adam plays in his show; I think it became quite clear that it was actually -driving- sales. Now how much of an influence podcasts and mashups can actually be there is disputable, but I will tell you one thing: I dont believe for a second that they -detract- from sales, yet the record industry, RIAA, etc. claim they do, and are in that vein, threatening Adam, and by extention the podcasting community with it.

And as for payment of the artists? You think the majority of that 80 bucks we have to pay here in the netherlands for a CD actually goes to the artist?

Have you ever read how hard it is to actually legally attain the rights to do something creative with a tune? You should read Larry Lessig's blog.

They make it systematicly hard to do anything else but purchase the song withing a completetly restrictive DRM cylinder, and they dont even bother to investigate how other forms of capitalisation of the music could possibly compensate for the fact that the music itself, the MP3, is being ripped and shared over p2p. And there ARE way to capitalise on music and artist besides the music itself, and THAT is what I believe is what they should be focussing on now.

If music CAN be aquired illegally via the Internet, people -will- do it, and considdering the cultural and entertainment value of the music, people will do it en-masse.

But to get back to the original point; what triggered my post was the -behavior- of these people toward -anything- that threatens their dead model. They are going after, what I and many others, considder completely harmless, and in fact, exitingly new expressions of creativity.

If you can imagine why I think they are waisting their time going after MP3-copying people (which is most of us), imagine how I feel about them going after podcasters and mashup-makers and players. These are bullying tactics, no more, no less, and while i believe they will lose in the end, they are upsetting a lot of people needlesely in the process.