Stallman: Under copyright law, I could even copy them
A curious piece on The Guardian today, by Richard Stallman. He mourns the loss of HMV, on the basis that what’s replaced physical music sales is a “disaster for freedom”. However, the arguments he makes are curious.
Once I had bought the records, I was free to give or lend them to friends. Under copyright law, I could even copy them, to audio tapes in the old days, and give those to my friends. All this without the state’s knowing anything about it.
Now, he was certainly free to give or lend records to his friends, and also to copy records to tape and give those away. However, he wasn’t acting within the law. Today, in the UK, you’re still not acting within the law regarding format-shifting; and even if copyright laws change in 2013, to introduce a measure of fair-use (as is fairly likely), it will be for purely personal collections only. In other words, it will no longer be illegal in the UK to rip a CD to MP3s (just as the CD format is dying off, usefully), as long as you’re making the MP3s for you, and not spreading them around the web or emailing them to your friends.
For those who love both music and freedom, today’s form of internet sales is out of the question, which leaves ever fewer opportunities for us to buy music.
From the previous quoted paragraph, the ‘freedom’ Stallman appears to be encouraging heavily involves rights infringement—unauthorised copying of purchased content. Such copying’s still perfectly simple with digital files, but that doesn’t make it any better. And if Stallman’s concerned about “fewer opportunities for us to buy music”, I’m more worried about fewer musicians able to make music, because people are making use of their ‘freedom’ to rip said artists off, copying their music rather than buying it—whatever the format.
Richard Stallman is rapidly turning into a parody of himself. Laughable grasp of copyright laws aside, if you don’t like digital downloads, you can still buy CDs online. Surely this offers *more* freedom, as the stock range is wider? You’re no longer restricted by what the big music chains say you ought to be buying, which gives the little guy who was never going to be sold in HMV a chance? Stallman could come up with a whole new conspiracy theory on that one.
Presumably, Stallman is talking about US copyright law (where the courts have upheld fair use exceptions to the copyright law), even though his piece appeared on the Guardian. I agree that the end result is problematic, though.
However, I’m not quite following this point:
>From the previous quoted paragraph,
>the ‘freedom’ Stallman appears to be
>encouraging heavily involves rights
>infringement—unauthorised copying
>of purchased content. Such copying’s
>still perfectly simple with digital files,
>but that doesn’t make it any better.
Are you arguing that copying a record to an audio tape and giving it to a friend is bad, and *should* be illegal?
>And if Stallman’s concerned about
>“fewer opportunities for us to buy
>music”, I’m more worried about
>fewer musicians able to make
>music, because people are making
>use of their ‘freedom’ to rip said
>artists off, copying their music
>rather than buying it—whatever
>the format.
Is there any actual evidence this is happening?
This is obviously an incredibly complex topic, but I’m not sure the premise (that fewer musicians can make music if more people copy music) is actually valid. In fact, while the four major labels are shrinking, the music industry as a whole is growing rapidly (from 1999 to 2009, it went from $132 billion to $168 billion; source: International Federation of the Phonographic Industry).
Also, the number of albums being produced is exploding (2003: 38,000 new albums, 2010: 75,000 new albums; source: Nielson SoundScan). That suggests that more people can (and do) make music than ever before.
This is not to excuse piracy. Copyright violations are wrong (excepting the occasional instance of fair use). But I do think that it is not clear what their effect on musicians’ ability to make music actually is.
As an aside, I think people worry about the wrong thing if they worry about somebody giving MP3s to a friend. They should worry about YouTube instead. I know a bunch of kids who don’t own any music, don’t want to own any music, have no concept of why you’d want to own music, and simply listen to music on YouTube. That’s perfectly legal, but worse than people who copy music, because people who don’t want to own music to begin with can never be turned from pirates into paying customers.
(Wow, the formatting of that comment looked way better in the text field than in its published version 🙂
In context, he’s therefore opining in a British publication about the death of a British chain, primarily to British readers, and yet utterly ignoring British law.
Copying a record to an audio tape and giving it to a friend is illegal in the UK. Also, I’d argue that, yes, people shouldn’t really be dishing out copies of their music to all and sundry.
I think it’s more that people are less likely to make music regularly if they cannot survive by doing so. It becomes their hobby and not a career. Perhaps that doesn’t really matter in a world where there’s so much media, but I hate to think that all creative endeavours are rapidly heading towards hobbyist status. (And I’m not talking about people like myself here—I’m under precisely no illusions about how many albums I’m ever likely to sell—I’m talking about ‘proper’ musicians!) However, my larger point was Stallman’s insistence that he should be ‘free’ to go out and copy music and share that with whoever he wants, and screw the consequences. I’m certainly not remotely in favour of copyright crackdowns we’ve seen (such as suing little kids for using torrent apps), and I dearly hope British legislation will become less arcane this year, but there’s a balancing point between what the likes of the RIAA would prefer and where Stallman appears to live.
On YouTube, I wrote about that recently for .net. I was shocked at the percentages involved—something like a third of kids now only listen to music through YouTube. Given the appalling user experience, I find that astonishing. (As for it being ‘perfectly legal’, the listening bit is, but a ton of the ‘videos’ certainly aren’t—tons are bootlegs.)
Personally, I think this is perfectly normal and healthy human behavior. If you like something, you want to get others involved. With music, that used to mean giving mixtapes to friends. Later, it meant burning CDs for them. Today, it means dropboxing them a bunch of MP3s.
Where I live, this is legal, but even if it weren’t, I can’t see anything morally wrong with it. If anything, you’re way more likely to create new fans than prevent people from buying music.
In the last six months alone, I’ve bought at least a dozen albums based on songs friends sent to me, or “bootleg” YouTube links they emailed me. I don’t listen to radio, so I’d never have found out about acts like Of Monsters and Men or Agnes Obel otherwise. Before people started doing that, I hardly ever bought any music, simply because I didn’t find out about it.
I suspect that the main problem most acts have is obscurity, not piracy. I know there’s way more music out there that I would love, but I simply don’t find out about it.
But as far as I can tell, there’s no evidence that this is happening; either that people are less likely to make music, or that fewer musicians can survive making music. The opposite seems to be happening. More people are spending more money on more music than ever before, and more people are making more music than ever before.
The only ones who are suffering are the big labels, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. The majors are a middleman that became much too powerful, to the detriment of both consumers and producers.
I think it’s because one, there’s zero investment required. You don’t need to install anything or have any kind of account or a credit card or anything at all. Open any browser, take any smartphone, go to YouTube, enter the name of the song you want to hear, and there it is.
And two, YouTube has *everything*. This includes versions of songs that literally nobody else offers. The only place you *can* get them is on YouTube.
I once told a friend about Spotify, and her arguments against moving from YouTube to Spotify was:
– “They don’t have all the songs. I often listen to versions of songs from talent shows. An hour after the show is over, I can listen to that song on YouTube.”
– “I don’t want to install an app on every device I own.”
– “I don’t want to have an account, and enter my credit card.”
True, many were uploaded in violation of copyright, but Google recognizes those movies, and gives the copyright holders the option to take them down, or make ad money on these tracks.
The thing is, copying a digital file is NOT easy. Apple’s movie and TV stores still employ a DRM that has, to my knowledge not been cracked.
So I can’t play it on half my stuff. So I don’t buy it.
Whereas I’m not sure I even want to know how much I spend on music on iTunes but it’s a hell of a lot more than I ever did in the physical universe.
Ruthless profiteers will reap what they sow. They will have their precious commerce, by force, and their precious sheep at the expense of human culture and ethics (generally the cost will be “humanity”). Morality is almost gone completely….. Sharing has quite literally been legislated out of our societies. I personally need no more proof the devil runs this world. Call me crazy (that’s easy), but please prove me wrong (I wish you would!)
Our creation myth is wrong. Competition, suffering and death are not the means to progress, only the philosophy to divide us. Artists have never had an easy time making a living and, god knows, many that did in the past, did not deserve to. Preserving the monopoly of wealth and ownership that is (ex, RIAA, MPAA, DMCA) will only do more of what it has done in the past… make garbage. Look at popular movies! Listen to popular music! That is the fruit of your profit-based existence. Those are the “artists” you fund through defense of big business under the guise of concern for the economic feasability of ANYONE who isn’t you within a society. No one gives a shit. And ensuring the major industries make all the laws regarding private ownership is surely going to turn out great!!!! I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.