Tag Archives: Copyright

Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

Attention, Affluence, Dominance and The Artist Is Somewhere There In Between. BUT WHY.

It irks me when a person that you are having an email conversation with CC’s in other people who really don’t need to be CC’d. Instead of coming back to the person they are originally communicating with on the email they reply back and CC a few more extra people in. It is like they are broadcasting something to someone. Maybe they want to CC in a Manager to show how great they are and how terrible I am. Maybe they just want to make me look bad. I do it as well however when I do CC in an extra person I tell the person that I am responding to why I am CC in that extra person in. I also tell the person that I is CC’d in why they are included with a question that seeks their point of view.

Maybe we all just want some attention. It seems we are all fighting for attention these days.

Guess how many people know who Kim Dotcom is?

According to the MPAA and the RIAA, he is the greatest money launderer the world has ever seen. They convinced the police force to send their SWAT teams to break down his door and arrest him in the early hours. And the funny thing is that he is virtually unknown to ordinary people. Even his companies MegaUpload and Mega are not known brands to a large portion of people. So how can this great criminal mastermind remain undetected to most ordinary people. Hell, I was in Eastern Europe and all the people who I spoke to didn’t even know who Kim Dotcom was.

This goes to show how the entertainment industries like the MPAA and the RIAA have used affluence to hijack proper due process in the courts. And that affluence doesn’t stop there. It is used to hijack many debates especially when it comes to legislation around copyright. It is unfortunate that the music industry as a whole seems to be interested in protecting their business models, dominance and control.

The biggest issue today is attention.

The record labels still believe that their affluence and their publicity campaigns will get people’s attention. But that is old school thinking. Real attention grows over time.

And attention is just part of the equation.

How do we compensate the artist themselves or the songwriters that wrote the song once they have received our attention. The Copyrights of the artists are held by the labels. The labels purchase these copyrights for a value that is far less than what they are worth. And that is a big problem between artist and label. Because the record label is using the copyrights that they have amassed over 80 years of dominance as bargaining chips in licensing deals.

Spotify pays the labels a license so that Spotify can have their music on the service. In addition Spotify also pays the labels when songs are streamed. Plus Spotify pays any profits it makes to its part owners. In the case of the US market, Spotify is partly owned by the labels. And all of this was possible because the labels amassed an arsenal of songs from the artists they signed. Did the artists receive any compensation in these corporate deals?

The environment that musicians operate in is changing all the time, and with that comes a requirement to be flexible and forward-thinking in their approach. In addition the expectations of musical fans about how they access music and how they wish to be serviced has changed dramatically over the past fifteen years. And the ones that are investing in innovation are the technological companies. The Record Labels did nothing except litigate. The artists just waited to see what transpired instead of thinking and planning their own innovation.

If you want to grow and prosper as an artist you need to be thinking ahead all the time. Not only do you need to keep pace with your fans’ expectations, but you also need to position yourself to identify and make the most of the opportunities when they arise.

Focus on “WHY” you create music rather than simply focusing on ‘WHAT’ music you deliver. This is an important message. The why is the message that your fans would connect with and follow. It is your vision. Your belief.

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Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy

Who Made APRA/AMCOS Gods On Piracy?

What kind of world do we live in where a royalties collection agency that has a business model based on copyright thinks that it has a right to have a say about what kind of legislation should be written. Talk about business model protectionism. Talk about a conflict of interest.

APRA/AMCOS which is a royalties collection agency in Australia is asking the government for harsher and stricter laws for people who download music. And they asked sent emails out to artists that have songs registered with them asking us to make sure our voice is heard. Basically it was a call to arms to toe the same line as them. Well, I don’t want people who download music to be litigated. I don’t want the government to write laws to protect crap business models. Because the truth of the matter is this. The APRA/AMCOS business model is based on copyright.

Now with streaming winning on all fronts and the purchases of MP3’s and CD’s drying up, APRA/AMCOS is financially challenged. And they don’t know what to do. So they hijack the Copyright debate. Copyright was always about getting works into the public domain after a reasonable period of time. And organisations like APRA/AMCOS have twisted the debate to make it all about money.

If the music world embraced what Napster offered back in 1999 well, a different conversation would be happening right now. But they didn’t and music piracy just kept on growing.

But online music piracy is declining. The war is over. Streaming has won. Each year more and more people take up legal streaming services. The money pie to split up will only get bigger as the services get bigger. It’s simple economics. But the corporations of old don’t look towards the future. They look towards RIGHT NOW. How do they get paid right now?

Spotify says music piracy in Australia is on the way down. The corporations that have business models based on copyright say the opposite. What is known is that hard-core pirates will always remain. And that is nothing new. They have always remained. Even in the pre-Napster days people pirated.

Artists say that Spotify and Pandora don’t give them a fair share of money. Spotify says they do pay the rightsholders. In 99% of cases the rightsholders are the record labels and the publishing corporations. And it those entities that are not filtering the money back to the artists.

Seen any record label scream up and down that Spotify is not paying.

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Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

COPYRIGHT = Powerful Organisations Fighting Over Who Gets The Biggest Slice Of The Pie

The artists have the power. They are the ones that create the works, the songs. But it is the rights holders of the artist’s work (otherwise known as the Copyright Holders, aka, Record Labels) that are trying to organise deals with ISP’s, the Courts, technology start-ups, streaming services and the Government. They are the gatekeepers in the middle and they are more richer than they have ever been.

They are flush with cash. The internet was supposed to level the playing field against the major labels but it only made them stronger.

Why?

Because they are using their massive catalogs as leverage against streaming services and other technological start-ups. Much in the same they used their power against artists. And all of this because the artists sold away their power so that they could be given the chance to record and be a star. Like today, companies like Spotify are selling their shares to the record labels so that they could operate.

In Australia, the Attorney General’s Department is trying to make the ISP’s the RIAA Surveillance Force.

If anyone should be organising these deals it should be the ARTISTS/PERFORMERS with the USERS/CONSUMERS. No Corporations in the middle should be involved.

But that is not the case.

Because the Record Labels have benefited greatly from this Government created monopoly. Even in the U.S, the House of Representatives judiciary subcommittee will be meeting to discuss music licensing. The RIAA will be there, streaming services like Spotify and Pandora will be there and the music licensing groups will be there.

But why are they all there?

They are all there to ensure they get as large a slice as they can from the Copyright pie. Hell, YouTube is starting a streaming service and they are negotiating for lower rates than their competitors

Bad form.

As usual, missing in all of these Copyright discussions is the PUBLIC and the ARTISTS.

Copyright was created to promote progress in science and useful arts. It was never created to be a social welfare tool and it was definitely not created to enrich corporations and turn them into powerful monopolies.

Copyright laws need changing but that will never happen as the ones (RIAA, Record Labels) that control the money, will stand to lose a lot of it. That is why these corporations are NOT looking at ways to make Copyright better. They are just looking at ways to get the biggest slice of the current pie when it comes to Copyright.

Hey, pretty pretty
With the sweet sweet eyes
Order me up another slice of your pie
– “Slice Of Your Pie” – Motley Crue

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

What Do Artists Need? Stronger Copyright Laws or Better Business Models

I absolutely support that musicians should be paid for their work.

What I don’t get is how the record labels and misguided artists feel entitled to push for stronger copyright enforcement as a way to guarantee an income which is contrary to the foundations of what copyright was designed to do.

As we all know, Copyright laws have been hijacked by Corporations that at this point in time, copyright is contrary to freedom, and in particular freedom of speech, to a degree where it is illegal to sing “Happy Birthday” at a birthday party.

The “Happy Birthday” song goes all the way back to 1893 and right now it is “protected” by copyright until 2030 because someone decided to retroactively place it back under copyright. If that doesn’t tell everybody that something is very wrong with Copyright then I really don’t know what will.

Because people who really believe in stronger copyright laws believe that if those extra enforcement laws do not exist then musicians will cease to create. Those same people believe that if people are not paid upfront to write an album, then musicians will cease to create.

The maximalist viewpoint doesn’t seem to be supported.

Look at Sweden, the birth place of Spotify and The Pirate Bay. Guess what, the country has a thriving culture around music. Sweden to me is the scene to be at right now. Other policy changes by the Swedish Government around making medical care free has also contributed to this vibrant music scene. And all of this has been achieved with the threat of copyright infringement.

Remember all of the lies that have come out from the entertainment industries.

“Home taping killed music” was a good one. Guess that is why the music business and as a by-product the recording business grew exponentially once cassettes came into the market. I guess that is why no popular music has been made since cassettes came into the market.

The point is that copyright protectionism is purely about protecting old business models. Stronger Copyright has nothing to do about supporting thriving new industries. Stronger Copyright has nothing to do about finding new ways of doing things. The thing is the Copyright cartels have had a big win in successfully skewing the argument that file sharing is “theft”.

Remember all of those commercials about stealing that seemed to appear on a legally purchased DVD. The irony. I purchase a DVD and then I get blasted with ads that links copyright infringement to theft. BUT, if file sharing was actually “stealing”, then file-sharers could no doubt be prosecuted under existing theft law.

But they don’t. Because file sharing is not theft of property. It is a violation of copyright. That’s an important difference.

Duplicating a pile of 1’s and 0’s does not deprive anybody of the original content. What all of this copying does is drive down the value of the product. What is the price of a song when the internet is littered with millions of copies of the same song and they are free.

That right there is a market with a customer base in the billions and it needed to be satisfied. And that is where YouTube, Spotify, Pandora and other streaming services come into play. They are there to monetize that market by competing with free through ad-supported business models. Hey, if it is good enough for the free to air TV networks, why can’t it be good enough for music networks.

But this “free market” has a big problem when it runs up against Government protected monopolies.

And the thing is, people do also pay for music. Many studies are actually showing that the biggest consumers of illegal media are also the biggest purchasers of legal media. Ultimately this seems to show that people are more than happy to pay for content they enjoy.

Metallica’s self-titled Black album is still moving on average 2000 units a week. And it is doing this even though millions of copies of the album are available to be downloaded for free. It is doing this even though it is available for streaming on Spotify and YouTube.

Volbeat has been selling records on a weekly basis in the U.S since 2011. They are doing these numbers even though their album/s are available to be downloaded on peer-to-peer networks. They are doing these numbers even though their albums are available for streaming.

Same deal with Five Finger Death Punch, Avenged Sevenfold and Skillet. Still selling, regardless of the state of piracy.

So what is it. Do artists need stronger copyright laws or better business models and terms that pay them a fair days pay for a fair days work?

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Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

Complicated Copyright and Why Do People Pay Good Money To Go To A Concert And Then Spend The Whole Time Filming It?

I do not understand why people go to a rock show or a metal show to film the whole damn thing on a smart phone. Seriously are they going to go back home and watch it over and over again afterwards? Of course not because it will sound like crap as smartphones are not designed to capture high volumes without distorting the sound.

Having been a high gig attendee my whole life, I have also been known recently to break out my iPhone and capture some footage or a few photos for posterity. However, I can honestly that 99% of the time I’ve never gone back and referred to my amateur filming or photography.

The reasons are simple, those captures can never accurately reflect the concert as I witnessed it.

So why did I do it? Why do other fans do it?

Is it for them to validate or prove to other people that they were there at the concert?

Like does anyone care these days. Everybody goes to concerts these days. Maybe once upon a time it was a big thing to go to a concert but these days it’s a nothing thing. Hell, I took my kids last year who were 8 and 7 to see, Kiss, Motley Crue and Bon Jovi. This year I took them to see Richie Sambora.

Do you think my father would have taken me to a rock concert at the age of 8? No chance.

Even if those people placed their concert video footage on YouTube, would anyone really care?

For example, Metallica is the biggest metal band in the planet right now. So they played “Frayed Ends Of Sanity” live for the first time and a fan of the band put it up on their YouTube account called MetallicaSoloFan and it has a whopping 2,473 views. Other accounts have the same song filmed from different viewpoints and again the view count is dismal.

Because no one cares that you went or for the crappy footage on display.

And what about the poor old fan that is standing behind a person filming the concert. As is the norm, in order to film a concert, you would need to hold up your device high above your head to capture the footage and in turn you are taking away from my viewing experience. Me and my boys copped that at the Richie Sambora gig.

However it is a product of the times. I get that.

In 2014, we don’t leave home without our Apple or Samsung devices. It is part of our make and build.

There are bands out there that would like this process of filming their show to be stopped.

The Eagles are one such band.

They want to stop people from filming their concerts by banning the use of the smart phone. Don Henley has hinted their tour of Australia could possibly be the band’s final tour and he wants fans to experience it with their eyes not their phones.

Of course we all know that Don Henley is very knowledgeable about artists copyrights and he is also opposed to fan filmed footage ending up on YouTube. For him it is all about CONTROL. He should be the one that CONTROLS how his music or the music that he is involved in is distributed.

So is videoing a concert with a phone a violation of an artist’s copyright. Don Henley says it is, however he also said that he doesn’t want the shows posted on YouTube because it spoils it for people who are going to come to a show in the future and that he doesn’t want to see Eagles content out there that sounds horrible.

However, live concert filming is done every day by multiple people at the same show. Some use it as a form of a diary record, to remember or relive that moment when their favourite song came on. Some do it to share the moment and their love for the artist. Some do it because they simple can. A smart phone or an iPad or Tablet, allows us the convenience to do so.

To put into context about how messed up the current music copyright business is you need to get your head around the Copyright laws that have been written over the last sixty years.

At a high level, every live performance has a multiple set of rights that come into play.

(1) the copyright in the music, usually controlled by the publisher;
(2) the copyright in the lyrics, also usually controlled by the publisher;
(3) the copyright in the live performance, usually controlled by the label;
(4) the band’s right of publicity;
(5) trademarks owned by the band;
(6) contractual rights (potentially arising from signage posted by the band or the venue, the ticket stub or the terms and conditions of the website to which the footage is posted.
(7) the performance rights organisation like APRA or ASCAP, from which the venue needs to obtain a license.

Music was never meant to be this complicated but over the last sixty years it has come to be so.

And what about the rights of the fan who paid $600 for a front row ticket and another $100 plus at the merchandise store.

What about the rights of the fan, who had to drive 90 minutes to get to the venue and then pay another $30 in parking fees and then get charged $10 for a beer and $20 for a Hotdog and Chips.

There needs to be a sensible re-think but due to the money involved the copyright holders are not playing ball. They want stricter copyright laws, which is contrary to the public and culture in general.

ARTICLE

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A to Z of Making It, Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Copyright, Derivative Works, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

Bonfire – Fireworks

When I heard the “Fireworks” album from Bonfire I got the impression that they were superstars already. The album to me is a definitive piece of hard rock, melodic rock, heavy metal and euro metal all merged into one cohesive package.

I had a friend who had a friend who had a friend that made me a copy of the album on cassette. I had no idea who was in the band, who wrote the songs, who produced it and on what label it was on.

What I did know was the music. And the music was great. It brought Bonfire from the minors into the majors for me. And as much as the press labeled them overnight sensations, overnight sensations they were not.

Claus Lessman and Hans Ziller started to work together in a band called Cacumen in 1978. “Fireworks” came out in 1987. Yep, this overnight sensation was nine years in the making. And to top it off, “Fireworks” was Bonfire’s second album, and if you add the releases from Cacumen, this overnight sensation was a five album veteran.

And here is one for those copyright maximalist. In the late nineties, Lessman and Ziller had a six-year legal battle to get back the album copyrights of their pre-Bonfire band Cacumen. The court case finished up in 2004, with a win to them.

Yep, the companies that originally released the Cacumen albums ceased to exist. They did nothing with the music while they existed. However the people who still worked at those companies held the copyrights for those releases instead of the songwriters in the band. And when the band wanted them back, they fought tooth and nail to keep them.

I can hear people asking what is the sense for holding the copyright of albums and not releasing them?

The answer is plain and simple. GREED. The record label owners were waiting for someone to come and give them enormous loads of money for the Cacumen albums they still controlled. Thank god the courts saw in Bonfire’s favour.

The band for the release consisted of Claus Lessmann on vocals, Hans Ziller and Horst Maier-Thorn on guitar and Jörg Deisinger on bass.

Who you say?

That was exactly the same thing that I said when I found out the band member names.

“Ready 4 Reaction” and “Never Mind” are a great one/two punch to kick off the album. This is what the Eighties album delivered once upon a time. That knockout one/two punch. The great albums delivered even more knockout punches on subsequent tracks and to be honest Bonfire delivered a great album.

Both songs are composed by the band members and you get that Euro Metal Scorpions/MSG vibe immediately.

The lead break and the harmonies in “Ready 4 Reaction” provided an instant connection to me. How good is Hans Ziller. The Eighties was the era of the guitar hero. While other guitarists took the limelight and the instructional tape offers, Hans Ziller let the music do the talking.

Michael Wagener’s production is also crisp and clear.

If you are a fan of music that like genre’s “Ready 4 Reaction” well here is a new one for you, melodic speed metal.

Then the tempo goes into rock territory for “Never Mind” with the pinch harmonics riff that gives Zakk Wylde a challenge for who can do better pinch harmonics. And that lead break is another powerful piece of composition.

“Sleeping All Alone” and “Sweet Obsession” are both written by a songwriting committee like the current songs that make up the top 40 pop charts. Jack Ponti and Joe Lynn Turner this time are included as songwriters along with the four band members.

“Champion”

Some people hate him
but a winner never quits
when he’s rollin’ he’s a one man blitz – look out

Aint that the truth. Everyone hates a winner, thinking that it should have been them instead. People always think that they had the better song, the better look, the better story and so on. But the reason why people win, is that they never stop.

In the end, Bonfire was one of the thousands of bands that signed contracts stacked against them and of course they got ripped off. If you have read any interview with Hans Ziller and Clauss Lessman, they say the same. A small consolation is that Bonfire was not the only band who were ripped off. But it took its toll and Hans Ziller left the band in 1989.

And one more mention as it is not on an official Bonfire album.

Sword and Stone

It’s written by Desmond Child, Paul Stanley and Bruce Kulick. By the late eighties, Desmond Child was rock royalty. Riding high on the charts with hit songs from Bon Jovi, Aerosmith and Kiss.

“Sword and Stone” sounds like a lot of other songs that came before it and a lot of songs that came after sound like it, but, man, I tell ya, there is something about this song that just makes me play it on a regular basis.

You can hear the “Crazy Crazy Nights” and “Hot In The Shade” pop metal stylings in this song. It was originally a demo for the KISS album “Crazy Nights”. Paul Dean from Loverboy also used the song for his “Hardcore” album. But the Bonfire version is the one that I like.

It appeared on the “Shocker” soundtrack which to be honest is a pretty wicked soundtrack and having “Timeless Love” from Saraya coming after “Sword and Stone” it was another one/two punch.

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Copyright, Music, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

The Real Copyright Abusers Are The Major Record Labels

The major Record Labels own the majority of copyrights and don’t they love to overvalue their content. As soon as a product is seen making money or drawing an audience from music, the big copyright owners swoop in. And when they do swoop in a few things begin to happen;

The Product will get threatened. Think of Napster, Limewire, AudioGalaxy and MegaUpload. All gone. Pandora is constantly battling against rates of payments as they struggle to make a profit. Spotify, in order to trade in the U.S had to give the major labels a share of the company. It was either that or the labels would not license them. Google is always blamed for linking to pirated content.

The Product will get litigated into non-existenance. Mp3.com, hotfile, isohunt are three that come to mind.

The Product will move on to different areas of innovation.

The Product will get saturated with content from the copyright industries that a lot of the people who flocked to the product in the first place will just move on to another product.

Like MySpace.

MySpace was once a haven for finding out independent/underground music. The whole culture and market reach of MySpace was built around this premise. Of course MySpace got so popular that it was inevitable that the major legacy players would take notice. Eventually, MySpace was littered with content from the major players. Ads of major label artists popped up everywhere and all of the independent content that made MySpace popular got pushed further into the background, making it harder to find.

Eventually those people who made MySpace popular started to abandon the site in droves, moving onto other social media sites, like Facebook and YouTube.

Anyone heard this quote from Robert A. Heinlein.

“There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.”

Does it all sound eerily familiar? Does it sound like the attitude of the content industries for the last 40 years?

The MPAA and RIAA have never stopped lobbying the Government to pass laws that will protect their business models. Even Irving Azoff still blames technology for diminishing the music business profits instead of blaming the real devil, which is the GREED of the POWER PLAYERS. Someone like Azoff had a career on the backs of music that artists created.

The blame should be at the way the Record Labels/RIAA treated their artists and the fans of the artist.

The blame should be in the way the Labels creatively structured deals to ensure that most musicians never get paid a real dime.

Yes, back when the Record Labels controlled everything, artists are given advances, however the real term used should have been “loans on terrible repayment rates” in which the labels would add-on every expense that needs to be “paid back”.

Very few musicians ever “recouped” even after the labels made back many times what they actually gave the artists.

RATT sold 7.5 million albums in the U.S alone which meant total gross sales of $75 million. Even if the label gave them $1 million dollar advances for each album, that is $5 million the label would have spent on the band and in the process the Label made $70 million. I bet if the financials are made available, it would show Ratt as a band that still hasn’t recouped.

There is a post over at Techdirt that covers this in a bit more depth. The following comments are from Tim Quirk and how record label accounting relates to his band, Too Much Joy (TMJ):

A word here about that unrecouped balance, for those uninitiated in the complex mechanics of major label accounting. While our royalty statement shows Too Much Joy in the red with Warner Bros. (now by only $395,214.71 after that $62.47 digital windfall), this doesn’t mean Warner “lost” nearly $400,000 on the band. That’s how much they spent on us, and we don’t see any royalty checks until it’s paid back, but it doesn’t get paid back out of the full price of every album sold. It gets paid back out of the band’s share of every album sold, which is roughly 10% of the retail price. So, using round numbers to make the math as easy as possible to understand, let’s say Warner Bros. spent something like $450,000 total on TMJ. If Warner sold 15,000 copies of each of the three TMJ records they released at a wholesale price of $10 each, they would have earned back the $450,000. But if those records were retailing for $15, TMJ would have only paid back $67,500, and our statement would show an unrecouped balance of $382,500.

So going back to my Ratt example, it is a well-known fact that artist in the Eighties signed contracts that gave them a 5% cut of the album sold. Do the math? I am pretty sure it will come out that Ratt didn’t recoup.

As the Techdirt post pointed out;

“In other words, musicians don’t get paid anything in most cases, while the labels can earn a tidy profit for years and years, still insisting the band hasn’t recouped. It’s why a band can sell a million albums and still owe $500,000.”

The whole doctrine of “getting the government and the courts to guarantee profits in the future” is the reason why copyright trolls like Rightscorp have come into existence. It has also given rise to law enforcement working for the content industries as a pseudo “Copyright Police”, which in reality was always a civil matter, never a criminal matter.

In the end, the real copyright infringers and abusers are the actual Record Labels.

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Copyright, Derivative Works, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit, Unsung Heroes

RANT ALERT: Copyright, Rock N Roll Hall Of Fame and The Walking Dead

BUSINESS MODEL PROTECTIONISM

It’s pretty pathetic how the entertainment industries need to get governments to pass laws and update laws every time there is a shift in technology. Remember, back in the Eighties, when the boss of the MPAA Jack Valenti proclaimed at a Senate Congressional Hearing that the VCR’s are to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone. Yep, that is right, the head of the MPAA said that in 1982.

Fast forward a decade later and VHS sales of movies proved to be a very very large income source for the movie industry. So if the MPAA had their way, this technological innovation would have been killed at the beginning. Sort of like how the music industry reacted when Napster exploded. And due to that poor reaction, they allowed piracy to grow and due to their unwillingness to license Spotify, they allowed YouTube to become the unofficial streaming king.

All of this innovation happened because of copyright infringement. If all of the innovators followed the law or asked permission from the Record Labels to go ahead, well, no innovation would have been possible, because hey, any innovation in the entertainment industry that is not controlled by the gatekeepers is like the Boston Strangler to their business profits.

Let’s get one thing straight. Copyrights have been infringed forever by consumers of music and it still hasn’t killed off the music business. The difference now is that the main holders of Copyright are large corporations called Record Labels, who have the cash to go all nuclear with lawyers on people that violate that copyright.

So when it comes to negotiating new laws for copyright, it is these large and cashed up business entities that are lobbying politicians.

So what we have is a disconnect. The copyright industries want the tech industries to introduce measures to reduce piracy. The copyright industries want ISP’s to introduce measures to reduce piracy. The copyright industries want Governments to introduce measures to reduce piracy. The copyright industries want Judges to introduce measures to reduce piracy. Basically, the copyright industries want everyone else to help them, however they choose to do nothing themselves in terms of innovation.

Call it the last screams of the ENTITLEMENT EXECUTIVES.

That is why take down requests from copyright holders are going through the stratosphere. The Entertainment Industries are abusing a law by trying to catch a site that is NON-COMPLIANT. If the site that is hammered with the robotic takedowns doesn’t comply then they could be held liable.

This is not what copyright is designed to do.

Copyright was always designed so that the creator of a piece of work is granted a certain monopoly on their works and by that grant they can then sell their right to copy their work to another entity in exchange for a fee. A quick search of Google for the definition of Copyright states that it is “the exclusive and assignable legal right, given to the originator for a fixed number of years, to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material.”

So now add “The Record Label” to the definition. The definition would read something like this;

“The exclusive and assignable legal right granted to the originator who then sells that right to a corporation for a fixed number of years (in some cases, for their whole life plus 70 years) so that the corporation can print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material.”

Burton C Bell from Fear Factory didn’t know how much his songs were worth when he signed his first contract with Roadrunner Records.

Imagine a young up and coming sports star who is signed to an NBA club for peanuts and then after a season or two, shows that they are really a star athlete. Two things would happen to that sports star. The NBA club that they are with will either up their contract to match their new-found stardom or a new NBA club will swoop in and make them an offer they cannot refuse.

Fear Factory showed Roadrunner that they are a star athlete. Instead of getting a better royalty deal they got the same rubbish for 20 years plus. Instead of being allowed to negotiate with other labels and getting a transfer to test their net worth, they got locked into a restrictive contract with terrible payment rates.

Copyright is too distorted and removed from what it was intended to do. It needs a rethink and a massive re-write. The kids of today, the ones that pirate, will one day step up into government and then, change will happen.

THE WALKING DEAD

It’s passed its prime.

The last half of Season 4 was by far the worst. It is a yawn fest of massive proportions. The only two episodes worth talking about so far is the Rick Grimes House episode. The house when the group that Daryl is with right now decided to crash it.

And the other one was the Carol episode with the two little sisters. However I still have issues with that episode, as I saw it just an episode put there to shock, instead of progressing the story line.

AMC is down two big shows in “Breaking Bad” and “Mad Men”, so they are pumping all of their resources into milking TWD.

Seriously spin offs. It only dilutes the main brand. Think of “Law And Order” or “CSI”. They had so many spin offs it got to a point of silliness.

The main show runners in Frank Darabont and Glen Mazzara got booted for various reasons, with TWD comic creator Robert Kirkman being behind the Mazzara booting. One thing I can say is that comic book writers should stick to comic books. They are not TV show runners.

Frank Darabont got the TV show up and running. It is the house that Darabont built in it’s tone, settings and style. Not Robert Kirkman.

Prior to the show exploding, The Walking Dead comics had a cult niche following. Now it has a popular culture following. And that is because of the TV show. Not because of the comics. The comics provided the story, however how original is the story when the whole Zombie genre is copyright free.

I actually went and purchased the comics recently for my Christmas Present. And that is because of the show.

ROCK’N’ROLL HALL OF FAME

They call themselves “leaders in the music industry” that joined together to establish the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation.

Joe Elliott from Def Leppard called it as it is. Elliot called them a “board room of faceless tuxedo-wearing morons” who decide such things based on their own determination of what’s cool. And with that, a final lyrical quote from the great James Hetfield

“Who made you God to say”

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Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

Copyright Innovation V7.0 – More Legal Crap and No Innovation

You know Copyright is all wrong, when you have a composer of several Motown hits combines copyright law with divorce law. Seriously, how much more distorted can copyright get.

Smokey Robinson is seeking a declatory judgement against his ex-wife. You see, Robinson is reclaiming the rights to his pre-1978 songs from Jobete Music Co. Robinson’s main problem is that his ex-wife (since 1985) believes she should be entitled to 50% of whatever income these songs generate and she has filed suit to ensure that happens.

It looks like to me that everyone tries to twist copyright law to suit themselves. It’s that whole ENTITLEMENT argument.

The labels claim that all pre-1978 songs are “works of hire”.

Smokey Robinson claims that his ex-wife isn’t entitled to his profits but his heirs are.

A judge ordered YouTube to take down a movie based on a copyright claim of the actor.

Rightscorp (a copyright troll) is ordering ISP’s to pass on fines to it’s customers like the “Thought Police” from 1984.

Or maybe your a Dutch collection society who just won a court decision to have a “pirate tax” on every storage device, because, hey, every storage device, smartphone, tablet and PC MUST be used to store media files. Talk about entitlement. And they had to balls to say that it is all in the name of “protecting artists.”

Like the three strikes policy that the lobby groups keep pushing. All in the name of “protecting artists”. Did you know that in Ireland, it has been in place for 4 years with one ISP and no pirates have been disconnected. In New Zealand the ISP’s are still arguing with the Entertainment industries over who should foot the bill. Since the Entertainment industry doesn’t want to foot the bill, nothing much is really happening.

It’s pretty obvious that these legislated policies do not work however they still come up in the public conversation. Australia is another country talking about a three strikes scheme.

And all of them are to “protect the artist”. However the artist doesn’t see an increase in their bank balance.

So there you have it, another solid week of copyright innovation from the entertainment industries.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140308/08430726495/smokey-robinson-sues-ex-wife-to-prevent-her-claiming-50-his-recaptured-motown-hits.shtml

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140307/07424226477/dutch-supreme-court-agrees-to-let-rights-group-collect-back-you-must-be-pirate-taxes-mp3-players-hard-drives.shtml#comments

http://torrentfreak.com/three-strikes-isp-no-pirates-disconnected-in-four-years-140313/

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Copyright, Music, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

Copyright In The Modern Day. It’s Not About Driving Innovation Anymore.

It’s all about stopping copyright infringement. It’s all about shaking down internet users. It’s all about a ridiculous and “out of touch with reality” penalty system. For example, if a user downloads one song, the RIAA have argued that the copyright holders are out of pocket between $20 to $10,000. It’s a huge mark-up from its iTunes price of $1US.

When discussions are had on Copyright, it’s all about the enforcement. It’s all about creating a monopoly. The ones that sit on the innovation fence are shouted down to from the ones that control/hold the Copyrights.

There is a great article over at The Conversation website. Go read it. Journalist David Glance has a lot of viewpoints that I agree with.

The thing is, people have been “copyright infringers” since day dot. Anyone that remembers cassette tapes, will tell you how they used to copy songs from recordings onto a cassette tape. James Hetfield used to copy Lars Ulrich’s record collection onto cassettes.

We used to copy songs from the radio onto cassettes. We used to copy movies from TV onto VHS cassettes. Then we got even more creative and hooked up two videos at once to make copies of the latest releases. With the advent of the CD and blank discs, we started making mixed CD’s. When Napster exploded, people flocked to it.

Richie Sambora was a guest host on “The Panel”, a TV Current Affairs/News show on Channel Ten in Australia. This happened last week. There was a segment on Spotify and how streaming has led a slump in music sales. One of the members of the panel asked Richie Sambora, how many records has he sold. Richie replied back with “about 130 to 140 million records”. Richie then further stated that piracy was big even in the days before the internet, as pirated Bon Jovi LPs, cassettes and CD’s sold like hotcakes in Asian, African and Eastern European countries.

So I did some research on this and I came across the Moscow Peace Festival. The Moscow Peace Festival took place in 1989. Hard Rock and Heavy Metal music was hard to get “legally” in Russia, however it didn’t stop over 100,000 people from attending the show to watch Skid Row, Ozzy Osbourne, Scorpions, Motley Crue and Bon Jovi perform.

All of those fans of music must have gotten their music from somewhere. Actually musical sales in the USSR at that point in time didn’t even exist. Hell, it wasn’t until 2010 that the National Federation of Phonograph Producers (NFPF) was established in Russia. And they don’t even have a website. All of this shows how serious the legal music business is treated in Russia.

All of this supports the argument that we are all copyright infringers. Governments need to look at how people adopt these laws and change them to suit. Instead the Governments look at who puts money in their pocket and add more bad laws to existing bad laws.

Australian Attorney-General George Brandis has got no idea what is happening in the real world or how the internet works. His comments show that he is just a puppet for the Movie Industry Lobby Machine. Check out some of his comments;

To pirate a video or a song without paying the fee for it through iTunes, and so on, is an act of theft, it’s pure and simple.

Um, no. To infringe on a copyright is not an act of theft, as the mp3 is still with iTunes. No one has stolen it. What has happened is that multiple copies of that mp3 are in circulation right now. People pirated Adele’s 21 album, however all of that piracy didn’t stop it from moving over 10 million units in the US because no one stole anything. They infringed on an artist’s copyright. Something that fans of music have been doing since day dot.

When people, pirate “Game Of Thrones”, they don’t steal the original master copy from HBO. What they do is download a copy that someone made from the actual legal broadcast.

The ISPs, in my view, do need to take some responsibility for this because they provide the facility which enables this to happen.

Um. No. ISP’s don’t need to take responsibility for bad business sense and business models designed on controlling distribution. To provide a few different analogies, should the gun manufacturers take responsibility for their guns killing people. Should car manufacturers be responsible when their cars kill other people due to high speeds. Should the knife manufacturers be responsible when knives are used for violence. Should gas bottle manufacturers be held responsible for when their gas bottles are used in drug laboratories. Should alcohol brewing companies be held responsible for all the alcohol fuelled violence.

It is easy to lay the blame on others. However it is the record labels that need to take responsibility. They still don’t get it. People want FREE music. Spotify provides a service that is free, however it is still seen as restrictive and people still go to other torrent sites to download content. And then the recording industry claims that these sites make so much money from running ads on their site. If that is the case, then why isn’t the recording industry offering the same service and make that same money.

They don’t want to, because that would mean that their margins will shrink a little bit more and that is all they think about. The NOW. What is the plan for the future? A small return today, could lead to a greater return in 5 year’s time.

The fact is that people don’t have a right to download pirate copies of songs or movies or television programs because the people who make those programs or other items have a right of property in them. The way artists earn their living is through royalties and that’s the way they are remunerated for what they do.

Um no, artists have never made a living from royalties. The record labels have. Artists previously made a living from touring, licensing, merchandise and large advance payments. In today’s world, the main revenue streams are disrupted, however other revenue streams have opened up.

http://theconversation.com/copyright-reform-will-drive-innovation-not-trying-to-stop-the-internet-pirates-23286

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140225/12341626346/australian-copyright-reform-goes-into-reverse-fair-use-out-three-strikes.shtml

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