Category Archives: Copyright

Copyright, Music, My Stories, Stupidity

Copyright Sweet Copyright

Don Henley wants to censor the internet in the name of Copyright.

Who knew that by writing a few songs which ended up being popular gave him (the creator) so much power to get legislation changed. As Peter Parker’s grandfather said, “with great power comes great responsibility”.

It feels like this whole industry of “intellectual property” is becoming more a police state than anything that’s meant to foster creativity.

And while Henley is testifying, there is one crucial segment which is not represented for these Copyright discussions.

From a U.S point of view, that is 229 million American adults who use the Internet to pay bills, to learn, to work, to socialize, to watch content they pay for and to create.

And the public is not part of the conversation and it’s the public who have their rights taken away to please the corporations who hold the rights to content.

These corporations, like the Majors (Sony, Universal And Warner) won a suit against telecommunications company Cox for $1 billion.

They convinced a judge and jury that the ISP is responsible for policing what its users do with their internet access.

If only we can hold the gun makers and knife makers accountable for what their users do with their devices.

Imagine that.

And instead of the labels doing something worthwhile to compete in a vast changing marketplace for the creators they claim to represent, they want the ISPs to play the Copyright Cop for them.

The majority of income the labels get, comes from streaming services and mp3 downloads. And none of these services were created by the labels.

But they still want stronger Copyright restrictions because apparently piracy still exists.

Come on. Really.

Warner Music was valued at $2 billion in 2004 and today its valued at $15 billion.

And 10% of the population will never pay for content. Michael Eisner from Disney said that once upon a time. So why bother with them.

How crazy will Copyright get?

A lot more crazier than right now because the public is never in the discussion.

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Copyright, Music, My Stories, Stupidity

Vinegar Syndrome

As a person who loves history and culture, it pains me to read articles like this of culture disappearing.

This is what happens when organisations lock up content and then don’t store it properly. Remember the warehouse fire in the U.S, which destroyed a lot of masters from the catalogue of movies and music that Universal held. And for some insane reason the back-ups to those masters were held in the same vault.

Madness.

And negligence.

All because the organisation failed to spend some of the billions they earn from these copyrights to properly store the masters in one location and their back-ups in a different location.

And in proper temperatures.

In the article, the tapes of the films are developing a “vinegar syndrome”, which happens because acetate films are stored in a warm, humid room.

It’s pretty obvious these organisations don’t know how to store cultural history. And they have no interest to preserve or to spend the money to digitize it. So why can’t they release the tapes to organisations like the Internet Archive or even the Public Domain to digitize the films for preservation.

Because they are scared that others will do something great and make money from content they produced once upon a time.

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Copyright, Music, My Stories, Stupidity

Copyright Sickness

I haven’t done a copyright post for a while, but I haven’t stopped reading on the subject. Because once you have been exposed to the laws of copyright and how those laws are meant to protect the creator but all they do is protect the organisation who holds the rights, well, I just can’t look away. Because the creator never had a proper seat on the negotiation table. In order to get a chance to make music, they had to give away their rights to their music for a long time.

First up is a little snippet on how much an organisation makes by holding on to copyrights. The organisation her is Sony.

For a three month period, Sony was paid just over $654 million for streaming. Now I don’t know about you, but that’s some serious money.

How much of it went to the artists, well that is a different story? And because Sony has a publishing arm, that division also received $375 million. This is $375 million which is meant to go to songwriters.

Again, how much of this makes its way to the songwriters, is unknown?

And I’m not sure if people are aware, but Copyright laws do have a termination clause, which allows an artist to reclaim their copyrights after 35 years have expired.

But the labels like Sony are not letting go easily. So these cases are in the courts, because the labels know that if they don’t have an extensive copyright collection of songs, they have no income. Because at this point in time artists who released big selling albums in 1985 can reclaim their rights to those albums.

Next year, Jon Bon Jovi can reclaim the rights back for “Slippery When Wet” and then he will own his biggest selling album, with all streaming monies to go back to his organisation. The year after, in 2022, Guns’N’Roses, Whitesnake and Def Leppard can reclaim back the rights to “Appetite For Destruction”, “self-titled 87 album” and “Hysteria”.

Do you reckon the labels will allow that to happen so easily?

They will either throw some extra millions at the artist or off to the courts.

And here is another one on payments to musicians.

PRS For Music is an organisation in the UK which collects copyright payments on behalf of songwriters, composers and publishers. For the 2019 year it collected a record £810m. The amount involves a few different segments, like public performance, streaming, radio, TV and international. With public performances being put on hold because of COVID-19, streaming subscriptions are becoming popular.

But the streaming money pie is not distributed evenly. What the labels get and what they pay back to the artists is based on contracts and what monies have been given to the artist vs what needs to be paid back. And if the artist owns their own rights, then they are in position to negotiate better especially if they have had some success in the past. Metallica and Motley Crue come to mind, as artists who own their own rights.

The thing that streaming companies do wrong is that they treat it as a pool of money and then they work out what ratio each artist is entitled to, based on the streams played on the artists songs divided by the total streams for the service.

So even though fans of Metallica, Tool, Def Leppard, Motley Crue, etc, listen to those artists, their subscription monies are also distributed to Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande and all of the rest of those high streamers.

I know as a consumer, I want my subscription fee to go to the artists I actually listen to and not to a central pot, where the money is divided on a percentage basis against every single artist on Spotify. But the system is as fair as it could be right now.

And here is what happens when an IT organisation creates a streaming service to allow music to the spread to the masses because in reality, the labels were negligent in their duty of care to the artists to do it much earlier on.

So for Spotify it’s court case after court case. Because people who contribute nothing to culture and made some serious money because they hold the rights to other artists songs, still want that money train to continue.

There is this dude from the U.S called Jake Noch who has an independent label called Sosa Entertainment and he has his own collecting society called PRO Music Rights.

So Spotify removed his labels recordings from the service because Noch was manipulating the streaming count of his labels music.

This scam is common, where the teams behind artists, create enough streaming accounts to just stream the music of the artist so they get a bigger piece of the pool of monies distributed to the rights holders. Noch didn’t like how Spotify pulled his labels music and he sued. He accused Spotify of “unfair and deceptive practices” and Spotify called him a “fraudster”. And via his collection society PRO Music Rights, he has accused every other streaming service of copyright infringement.

It shows the amount of manipulation involved here by a record label, who hired a bot farmer to set up millions of streaming accounts (all of them on the free ad-supported tier) who would then listen to the songs on the service. 99% of the revenue for Sosa Entertainment came from the free-ad supported tier.

Smells on Payola, it is Payola.

Finally, remember those MTV shows from the 80’s which actually had music videos and interviews. Well the Internet Archive uploaded heaps of em. It shows the early stages of MTV and the steps they took to become a cultural icon. All of the material is from a user’s own VHS tapes of MTV recordings.

But these have been taken down on copyright grounds. Basically an organisation which holds the rights to an artist has made a claim to censor a part of history. Or it could be the VJ themselves via an organisation. Whatever the reasons, history is being censored and locked up. Copyright was never intended to censor. From day one, back to the 1700’s it was to give a creator an incentive to create more works by giving them a monopoly to monetize their works for a certain period of time.

And it gets worse and will only get worse, because after the death of the creator an organisation holds on (in other words, locks up) the copyright for another 70 years after death and they are pushing for another 20 more to take it to 90 years.

P.S. Remember the British invasion in the 60’s and early 70s.

It happened because all of the blues and folk music created between the 1930 and 1940 had expired and become part of the public domain because they all had 28 year terms. Classical music was already in the public domain and a lot of jazz standards were as well.

And suddenly we had artists who pieced all of these styles together.

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Copyright, Influenced, Music, My Stories

Winds Of Change

A music festival in Moscow that features Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, Scorpions, Ozzy, Skid Row and few other acts.

Then came the Scorpions, “Wind Of Change” and its lyrics about being like brothers and following the Moskva River to Gorky Park.

Plus it’s the only song on the album written by Klaus Meine.

Where the Scorpions influenced or paid or instructed by the CIA to write this song?

Because we all know, the US and the USSR tried to outdo each other with their nuclear arsenal. When that failed, the US via the CIA tried to do what the USSR did in Eastern Europe.

Create dictatorship governments in Latin America loyal to the US. But that went all downhill as those Governments really liked to murder its own people.

But the biggest threat to the US was still USSR and Communism.

So they created a Congress For Cultural Freedom office, which was set up in 35 countries, including Eastern Bloc countries. The Office was run by the CIA and they used music as its centrepiece, to put on concerts and promote anti-communist behaviour via placing the records of banned artists secretly in the hands of citizens.

So I had a look at the “Crazy World” album from Scorpions and its lyrical references. There is no doubt that the more social conscience lyrics in “Winds Of Change” are a departure from their “rock you like a hurricane” and “rhythm of love” lyrics from their albums before. It’s not like the Scorpions didn’t write these kind of lyrics before. The Uli Jon Roth era had some songs that dealt with society and social issues.

Anyway I thought I would go through the “Crazy World” album lyrics.

So the album kicks off with “Tease Me, Please Me” and it’s about going around the world and loving lots of girls. Basically a song about groupies. “Don’t Believe Her” is about a woman who is a tease and who knows the game of breaking hearts.

“To Be With You In Heaven” is about a woman who will treat you like crap, but her loving is so good, that Klaus would walk through the darkest hell to be with her in heaven. “Restless Nights” talks about making love in Paris and London and rocking hard in Dallas and Rio. Basically the song is about touring and the “sexcess” that comes with it.

“Lust Or Love” is easily predictable based on the title. “Kicks After Six” is about a woman who works nine to five and is a slave to the suit and tie, seven days a week, but each night, this good girl gets her kicks after six and becomes a bad girl who wants it bad.

“Hit Between The Eyes” is a dumb song about feeling tension on the street, getting closer to some invisible heat and that if someone wants to cut you down to size, you can never argue with a 45. Maybe it was their attempt at a social issue around gun control, but then the chorus comes in and it makes no sense whatsoever. Like he is ready for the hit between the eyes, but he wants someone to get him out alive because he is too young to die.

“Money And Fame” is about a woman who just wants money and fame and how she is using Klaus as a stepping stone to something greater. “Send Me An Angel” is about a wise man who is giving advice and to be honest it’s pretty dumb lyrically.

So all the songs listed have lyrics which are pretty standard and about relationships.

Keith Olsen said when he was hired to produce the album, he found the lyrics really dumb and he asked for outside writers like Jim Vallance to come and work with them and tighten em up. But the overall message was still dumb.

And then you have “Winds Of Change”.

With music and lyrics written solely by Klaus Meine.

Songfacts and all of those other websites say that Klaus Meine was inspired by the band’s first visit to the USSR in 1989 for the Music Peace Festival.

Manager Doc McGhee said that Klaus was whistling the melody and he had the basis of the song written in Russia. But look at the lyrics.

Was Klaus capable of writing lyrics like these on his own or did someone else (a CIA ghost writer or speech writer) use Klaus’s melodies and write them for him?

Read this from Keith Olsen;

Interviewer:
You produced The Scorpions Crazy World album, tell us about the recording sessions for that album?

Olsen:
I really liked working with all of them as they were really cool people. Herman Rarebell [drummer] was the guy who spoke the best English, because he had lived in the UK for a while, so he was really good bilingual. So Klaus, Rudolf, Matthias and Francis had a very limited vocabulary in English. So they had a lot of the lyrics always had tease’, please’, me’ very simplified lyric which made us bring in some very good lyric writers to help write.
Keith Olsen in an interview at Ultimate Guitar

And when I look at the lyrics below, it sure feels like the words came from someone else.

I follow the Moskva down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change
An August summer night, soldiers passing by
Listening to the wind of change

The world is closing in
Did you ever think that we could be so close, like brothers
The futures in the air
I can feel it everywhere, blowing with the wind of change

Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night where the children of tomorrow dream away
In the wind of change

The wind of change blows straight into the face of time
Like a storm wind that will ring the freedom bell
For peace of mind let your balalaika sing
What my guitar wants to say

Everyone went to a dictionary to see what a balalaika is.

Regardless if conspiracy or truth, or if they became celebrity James Bond’s, rockers and rock music, changed the world.

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Copyright, movies, Music, My Stories

Bands

Bands, the way we have known them will be no more.

It will be the era of the songwriter. It might look like a band on the outside but really it will be the main person or two and the supporting musicians. Sort of like how it was in the 50s and 60s up to a certain point. Until The Beatles changed everything.

For example, like James Hetfield and The Metallica Band or like Jon Bon Jovi and The BJ Band or like David Lee Roth and The Van Halen Band or Rob Halford and The Judas Priest Band.

Maybe they will just use their name like Bryan Adams, Keith Urban, Don Henley, Neil Young or Ozzy Osbourne.

Even Alice Cooper started off as a band and morphed into a solo artist with musicians supporting the artist.

Maybe a return to the Crosby, Stills and Nash kind of names.

These are just examples of using artists that I know. The new artist could use just their name or their name with a backing band or a group name but the reality will be that the group is really just the artist with other musicians supporting the artist.

If you look at bands right now and in the past, most of their songs are written by one main member. Sometimes two or three members, especially when bands had artists who paid their dues and had experiences before joining.

Ignore pop songs for the moment who seem to have 10 writers to start with, and if the songs are a hit, there is a writ and more songwriters are added to the list.

Yeah I know what your saying, U2, Def Leppard, Black Sabbath and Van Halen just to name a few, have albums saying that the songs are written by all the members.

But the truth is, what is in print for us to see on the lyric sheet or album, is not always the truth. Songs are complicated beasts when it comes to a band setting. It didn’t used to be that way but it is that way now. Especially when there is money involved.

For example ASCAP is a music publisher in the US, had total revenues of $1.226 billion dollars in 2018. They paid $1.109 million in royalties back to artists. And they kept $117 million in administration costs. Basically money for nothing and the chicks for free to the publishing company.

That’s just one of many in the US. Then there is BMI who had total revenues of $1.283 billion and paid out $1.196 billion to artists by 30 June 2019. And they kept $87 million for administration costs.

And each country has multiple publishing companies. And each country has record labels. And everyone is making multi millions from music for nothing.

The actual copyright registration and the splits associated with the song plus the band agreement which also has percentage splits determine who is entitled to what. Van Halen even took Michael Anthony off the songwriting credits when they renegotiated a multi million dollar publishing deal in the early 2000’s.

COVID-19 has changed the game.

A normal band makes their money on the road.

Some bands might have streams in the billions and own their own copyrights, but if they are that level, they will have a team of people in their organization like managers, legal, accountants and other employees who do fan club and website.

Right now, no one can tour and they don’t know when they can start touring again because having so many people in a room, theatre, arena or stadium is a problem when it comes to social distancing. And even if concerts are allowed, will people just go back to life as normal or be cautious. Maybe concerts will resume with a cap of 500 people max.

And no one gets into bands or starts writing songs to get paid. They do it because they love it and there is a need within them to create. But with any artist that starts to become popular, money is a byproduct of creating something which resonates.

And then it becomes about the revenue streams and how is the artist going to make money.

Streams will pay and the artist will get more if they own their rights. And the person who wrote the song will get two bites of that revenue. One from the streaming service to the Copyright owners account and another from the Rights Organization which administers their catalogue. This always causes resentment between members because one person has more than others.

Especially when the band agreement in place favors one over the other. And the other member feels like their songs should be considered but they are not up to standard.

Remember when Kirk Hammet told everyone he lost his phone with riffs and that’s why he had no song writing contributions on the “Hardwired” album but James set the record straight when he said that Kirk’s riffs just weren’t there, meaning they weren’t good enough to James and Lars to consider.

We wait to see what live music will look like post COVID-19.

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Treating Fans Like Shit

How Much Should Streaming Services Pay?

A lot of people hate Corey Taylor, but I’m not one of em. I enjoy the music he creates, more with Stone Sour than Slipknot and he has a point of view, a stance, which he shares with the world.

In an interview with the Irish Times which Blabbermouth grabbed and ran with a few months ago, Taylor was asked if SLIPKNOT could live just on royalties from listens.

He said, no they couldn’t survive at the current rates but if the streaming services paid the same publishing rate as radio stations than they could.

In Australia that equates to about $6 per song (for the main cities), as regional cities have a lower fee and then there are separate fees paid for when the song is played, like prime time hours or graveyard hours. In some cases the artists pay to get themselves played and they don’t even know it as it’s charged back to them by the label via miscellaneous expenses.

Also the $6 fee is paid just to the songwriters not the recording act. Since Taylor writes his own songs, he is okay in that department as he would get the payment.

But streaming services charge us $9.99 per month to access a catalogue of music. The math doesn’t work and suddenly piracy looks more appealing of that fee goes up.

Taylor doesn’t have a problem with streaming services for what they are trying to do, but he has a problem with them, when they spend millions of dollars on buildings and then more millions on decking out those buildings for offices and then more millions on flying private and more millions on wages while the artists who bring people to their service are not experiencing the same share of those millions.

But hang on a second, the label he’s signed deals with also spend millions of dollars meant for the artists on the same thing.

Steve Miller said something similar about the recording industry and the RNR Hall Of Fame people at his RNR HoF induction, how they take so much money from the artists and they don’t compensate the artist fairly.

The problem that I have as a fan of music is this;

Artists on a label sell their masters to the record labels for a fee. They are compensated at that point in time. Some for a lot more if they are successful and others for peanuts because they didn’t know any better.

The labels are aware of this power they have and since they are offering the cash, they want a return on investment. So the label benefits in this streaming era because they hold the masters.

Get your masters back like Motley and Metallica and suddenly you will benefit as well.

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Copyright, Music, My Stories

Money

It’s all about money, money and money.

I’ve never used Trivago to book any hotel. I normally re-book at the hotels I like and have stayed before and I do it direct with the hotel. Like my music, I’m a pretty loyal to things I like.

But a lot of people do use Trivago and recently a court case brought against Trivago by the ACCC in Australia found that Trivago, didn’t actually promote the cheapest rates to its users. What it actually did promote was the hotels that paid Trivago the most commission as the cheapest.

And speaking of sleazy tactics, how much more bullshit is the recording industry going to spread over free ad-supported music being a negative in the industry.

Isn’t $3 billion enough?

I guess not.

And on the topic of YouTube, it’s 15 years old this year. It all started in February, 2005. Eight years later, it was getting 1bn users a month. Another seven years after that it reached the 2bn users a month stat.

Are there lessons there for aspiring musicians or for musicians who want to make it?

Of course there are.

Stop thinking about the traditional label album deal and start embracing what the world has to offer. The Guardian article interviews five people who have used it to great success from the early days. And of course there are millions of others who have used YouTube, without any success at this point in time. Like the recording business.

How many artists get signed and end up unsuccessful in commercial terms versus the artists who get signed and end up successful in commercial terms?

Because it’s all about money. Everyone wants to be paid and in music, too many people make money from music, who shouldn’t, like the label CEO and workers who fly private, because it’s these people who keep money away from artists who are on the road in shitty buses and vans.

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Music, My Stories

Sheet Music

Its February 1997, and the November 1996 issue of Guitar hits the newsstands in Australia. We were always 3 months behind.

On the cover is Rush  with the headline, “Returns To Rock With Their Heaviest and Best Album in 15 Years”. And that album is “Test For Echo”, a headline I totally agreed with.

And how things change from the previous decade. Back in 1986, guitar heroes like Malmsteen, Van Halen, Schenker took up the first few pages of ads. In 1996, it was the dudes from Bush advertising “Ernie Ball” strings and Kim Thayil from Soundgarden advertising Guild guitars.

Each issue of the magazine has a section at the beginning by the Editor In Chief. It’s written like how we would write a blog post today. On this occasion, the headline was “The Song Never Remains The Same”. The Editor In Chief HP Newquist wrote about “how songs get published in the magazine”, because the main reason why I and many others purchased the magazine was for the song transcriptions.

There are publishing companies that OWN the print rights to music. The publishing companies usually pay the artist a large upfront fee to license the songs for printing, which will cover a three to 5 year term (or longer in some cases) or they will pay a royalty (that lovely word) whenever the song is published.

To get a song transcribed for a magazine like Guitar, the magazine needs to first get the approval of the publisher.

Then the magazine will send the music to a transcriber.

When the song appears in the magazine, the magazine pays the publisher who in turn pays the artist and the transcriber is paid as well for their work. The magazine also pays to use the song in each of the countries the magazine is distributed, which means getting the rights from several international publishers for each song.

And all of this for a one time only use, hence the reason why the magazine at that point in time didn’t put any transcriptions up on their website, because that allowed unlimited use.

Sounds like a pretty simple business arrangement when everything is controlled by the labels and the publishers.

But there are also artists who are not interested in having their music appear in magazines and artists who want to give their final approval of the transcription as being true and correct. In this instance, the magazine sends off the transcribed work to the artist who goes over it to make sure the transcription represents what the artist played.

So the post goes on to say that when they feature an artist and don’t run a transcribed song, it is because the magazine doesn’t have permission to print a song from that artist or another magazine has first rights to songs from that artist or permission has been given to multiple magazines, who print the song all at the same time (which has happened as I was a Guitar World buyer and a Guitar buyer). In this magazine they had Rush on the cover and “Test For Echo” was also printed. So in typical fashion, Rush are the good guys once again.

Even after the magazine has secured the rights to print a transcribed song, it can be denied a reprint because a new songbook is coming out and the publishers don’t want to cannibalise the sales of that songbook.

And the web back in 1996, had a lot of text notepad transcriptions put up from users who either transcribed the song themselves or had access to a transcription and copied it to a text document and distributed. I found a lot of songs that way.

So of course the print publishers came out with lawyers and started to crack down on user posted online transcriptions, claiming that it infringers on their copyright and takes away from an artist’s royalties, which is the same spiel used for bootlegs. EMI had a very public battle with OLGA (On Line Guitar Archive) because it had user uploaded transcriptions which infringed on their rights and took money away from the artists. You know the usual PR spiel.

Suddenly the business relationship is a bit more complicated, because the publishers didn’t know how to operate in the world wide web.

These days, it is different and communities like Ultimate Guitar do have user uploaded transcriptions.

And the reason why the Editor In Chief felt the need to explain all of this, is because by 1996, the magazine was getting a lot of angry feedback for re-publishing songs they had already published. A problem that the internet had created for them.

And the big problem the internet created for the magazine was the user uploaded transcriptions to songs. Why buy a magazine to learn how to play a song when a 15 year old kid has learnt it and shared it with the world.

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Stupidity

Progress Is Derivative – What The!! – It’s Not Okay To Show Your Influences

Led Zeppelin became the biggest rock act in the world. They wrote songs based on their influences and some songs even sounded like the songs they were influenced by. From traveling the world, they were also exposed to exotic sounds and as technology got better, to new sounds.

Suddenly, thousands of wannabe guitarists and singers and drummers and bass players started to copy the licks and melodies and beats of the mighty Zep, forming an influential bond with the music, much in the same way, the members of Zep allowed other artists and songs to influence their music and melodies.

And Zeppelin wasn’t just an act with a geographical location. Their music was everywhere and there was no way that any teenager in the 70’s could escape the sounds of the Zep. Fast forward into the mid 80’s and suddenly a lot of bands on record deals had a lot of musical passages in their songs which paid homage to Zeppelin and in some cases too much homage. But Zeppelin never sued. These derivative versions of songs based on Zep cuts actually increased the value of the Zep cuts.

I’ve been listening to some songs recently, and the resemblance to other songs is a beautiful thing to hear. I know that these kinds of similarities are bringing forth a lot of court cases in pop music where a jury is asked to decide what is plagiarism and what isn’t.

In the Cult’s song “Peace Dog”, the middle part section has a similarity which comes from the “Stairway to Heaven” section before the solo section kicks in.

And on the topic of Led Zep, no one can forget Kingdom Come. “Get It On” basically lifted the whole “Kashmir” chord progression, and “What Love Can Be” is similar to “Since I’ve Been Loving You” and “The Rain Song”. Regardless, Kingdom Come made me want to listen to Led Zeppelin.

Whitesnake broke through in the 80’s on the backs of MTV and a sound that rivalled the Sunset Strip, but when they started off on the blues rock journey, David Coverdale was channelling Led Zeppelin in “Trouble”. Coverdale even looked like Plant and sounded a lot like him on this cut and along with Sykes they brought the Led Zep sound, filling the void for a lot of fans of that music.

And this was okay, to show your influences and pay homage to styles.

But Copyright kept changing and evolving, because the corporations kept pushing for perpetual laws, as they knew that if they lost the copyrights to valuable recordings and songs, they would be losing money.

And by pushing for laws that lasted 70 years after the death of the creator, it also meant that the heirs of the creator would also benefit as a by-product. And the heirs are now taking from the hand that gave them the right, because if copyright terms stayed the same (28 year term (14 years with the option to renew for another 14) or if the artist died before the 28 years, on death), the majority of these court cases would not even exist, because the songs would be in the public domain.

But it was still okay to show your influences and pay homage, because the record labels and publishers still paid the heirs and the artists for their rights, as the labels made 300% more profit due to CD sales. But when the record labels stopped paying, as mp3 ripping and then digital downloads and then streaming took over, suddenly, there was a problem for the artists or the heirs/organisations who owned the copyrights. The payments ceased or became dramatically less.

So with a combination of Copyright law changes and a change to the distribution model, a new situation was created with lawsuit after lawsuit, because every artist or heirs of the artist feels that their work is so original and free from influence, that they must be compensated.

And suddenly it wasn’t okay to show your influences or pay homage. But all progress made in music was to build on what came before.

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Music, My Stories, Stupidity

Copyright Just Keeps On Giving

Copyright is the gift that just keeps on giving.

Remember how copyright is meant to protect the creator so they have a monopoly on their work, with the aim to be paid if the work is popular. A lot of artists create works which are not popular and as such, their monopoly on their copyrights have no value.

However, in this case, the creator gets a stroke and other people allegedly forge the creators signature to transfer the rights to corporations who seem to benefit.

The Seinfield creators couldn’t even come up with this kind of a story. You can add elder abuse to the list for Copyright court cases.

The other big one is Ed Sheeren and his song, “Thinking Out Loud”. You see even if Sheeren did copy a Marvin Gaye song, the song should have been in the public domain anyway because both Gaye and his co-writer are dead. Then again the labels wanted these kind of perpetual laws many years ago and now they are getting bitten in the ass.

And companies like Structured Asset Sales, founded by an investment banker called David Pullman exist by purchasing a lot of copyrights from the children of these creators many years ago and now we have this stupidity of suing people.

And as usual, Copyright is already benefiting the corporations who create nothing and now it is benefiting the heirs of artists who create nothing, to sue the creators who create something.

But if you really want to know how the recording industry via the RIAA caused this mess, then read this article over at Techdirt.

Nothing is original especially in music which has mass appeal. No artist writes music without being exposed to music. Everyone is working from the same instruments and the same chords.

And the courts now cannot make a distinction between influence and theft. It’s set the precedent that all influence is theft. And the labels went with that for decades only to be sued over the last 10 years from heirs of dead artists.

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