Life in the Slow Lane
Aug 12
While I was walking home tonight, I passed by a museum and something in the window caught my attention. It was a display of a small antique pipe organ from the late 1700’s– it looked like a very early attempt to create a miniature Wurlitzer that could be played at home. A rather odd, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” type of contraption, it reminded me of the homemade time travel machine rigged up by Doc Brown in “Back to the Future”. In its day, it probably looked as cool as the iPad. Now, it’s not something that anyone uses to get the job done.
The sight of this awkward, ungainly invention brought me back to an analogy made by one of my colleagues earlier in the day, as we discussed the current challenges of copyright licensing. “I feel like we’re trying to drive some old unrestored 1950’s clunker” he said, “the kind that only the old guy that owns it can actually drive, because you have to know just how to wiggle the gear shift and how many times to pump the brakes to make it all work”. I heard almost the same sentiment at a lunch with one of the industry’s most respected copyright lawyers. Everyone in the music business knows it’s true, though few will say it publicly, since it directly undermines our demands to get paid for what we own. But the old copyright system just ain’t working anymore. The truth is:
The process of licensing copyrights has to change drastically and fundamentally, if the whole concept of copyright is going to survive at all.
Right now, we’re driving down the Information Superhighway in that old 1950’s jalopy– we’ve got it floored and we’re doing about 35 miles an hour. Copyright holders are not only being run over, we’re also being passed by, as young entrepreneurs from the Google, YouTube, Spotify generation create global empires built on providing immediate, free access to entertainment and information. Meanwhile, the copyright community is still back somewhere on the side of the road, trying to figure out who owns the rights in which territory and for how long, and who has the right to issue the license, and how many licenses will be necessary, and what should the license cost. At best, we’re an impediment. At worst, we’re irrelevant.
Consider:
At a family wedding, the bride and groom do a crazy dance to a medley of big pop hits– it’s all relatively harmless (at least from a copyright standpoint) and clearly covered by the principle of “fair use”. After all, this is kind of what music was made for. But not too surprisingly, the dance is captured on videotape by the people filming the wedding. It’s then posted on YouTube, probably as a simple, cheap way of sharing the moment with family and friends. Again, it’s all still covered by fair use, since it’s largely a private activity and there’s no attempt to sell anything.
But suddenly, the family wedding video becomes a viral phenomenon, and millions of viewers go to YouTube to watch the silly dance, generating plenty of tangible economic benefit to YouTube in the process. At this point, clearly the copyrighted material contained in the video (that is the medley of recorded music to which the dance is performed) should be licensed, and the labels, artists, publishers and songwriters should be compensated. But how? Just a guesstimate would indicate that there could be 15 different artists, all of the major labels (some of which might no longer own the master recordings in question), probably at least fifty songwriters, and twenty different music publishers, each of whom would have to grant permission, and then play a role in determining the appropriate sync fee for each song. It would take months for a two minute home video, and probably cost in the six figure range. Ridiculous.
Here’s another:
A video collector owns outright some archival footage of a big star performing on a TV variety show from years ago, which a new mobile entertainment provider now wants to license and sell as a download to mobile phones in Asia. But within this short segment, the big star performs a song, which would have been licensed under a sync agreement that covered only that particular performance, in that territory, during a specific window of time. In order to use the footage in a different medium, territory and era, a new sync license will need to be negotiated with all of the publishers (many of whom have sold their catalogs or allowed the copyrights to revert to the songwriters). And then there’s the matter of union fees. Several of the performers on the show may have been members of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), Screen Actors Guild (SAG) or the American Federation of Musicians (AF of M), which means there might be residual payments due for any reuse of the show. Good luck figuring that one out.
A last example:
A music fan in Japan wants to purchase the new CD by an American act signed to Columbia/Sony Records in the US. The CD has never been released by Sony in Japan. The fan logs on to Amazon, locates the CD, and purchases it. But Amazon can’t fulfill the transaction, due to a copyright infringement lawsuit initiated by Sony Japan. As the local distributor of Sony product in that territory, Sony Japan owns the rights to sell that product in their region. By allowing the consumer to purchase directly from Sony in the US, Amazon is infringing on the copyright. And it’s true, even though Sony Japan has no intention of making the record available in Asia. As the copyright holder, the local company has the right to distribute the product or not, at their discretion.
In part, this explains why a consumer in the US who wants an album by a French artist released only in France can’t simply go on iTunes and purchase it. He or she can go to iTunes France and see the album or hear samples of the music. Certainly, the consumer can steal the record on any number of illegal sites. But purchase it? Nah. That would be copyright infringement. Go figure.
Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I’m a staunch defender of copyright. I’m not a believer that information wants to be free. I am however realistic enough to know that information wants at least to be available, at some generally reasonable price. Right now, our copyright laws are a hodgepodge of political compromises and outdated principles, all changing from country to country. In a global world, they are structured territory by territory. In a society based on instant access and immediate gratification, they are restrictive and reliant on step by step negotiations with half a dozen different parties for a single use. They can’t survive like this.
Unfortunately, there are no attractive solutions. Clearly, any reform needs to be done on a global level. The web is worldwide after all. That should be easy. We can take it up right after we solve the problem of world hunger and get everyone to agree on global warming.
Even worse, the only viable answer to the internet-related problems seems to lie in some kind of system of blanket licensing, similar to that used by the performing rights organizations to collect on music being used in public venues. In some form or another, a tax or surcharge would need to be assessed on electronic equipment or computer technology, or directly on internet service providers, mobile phone networks and other “distributors”. The money collected would then be shared among the entire creative community, from publishers and labels to artists, writers and union members.
If that seems like a simple and clean resolution, it’s not. The problem is that all of the money would go into a fund, and then be distributed to the copyright holders without any clear way of attributing it to a specific use. Worse, the ability of each individual copyright holder to negotiate fees on his or her own behalf and to collect them would be lost– thus eliminating two of the major functions of a music publisher in one fell swoop. In essence, such a move would make much of the music publishing role obsolete. If only for reasons of self-interest, it’s not a proposal I relish.
The only thing worse is the alternative, which is what’s happening now. We are already becoming obsolete, simply because people are ignoring us. Sure, we can still make things grind to a halt with a major lawsuit here or there, or exact our revenge with a jumbo copyright-infringement settlement–after about ten years in court, fighting appeal after appeal. But the judges are getting less sympathetic, the law is seeming less and less just to society at large, and the internet generation is moving ahead without us. Most importantly, we’re leaving stacks of money on the table every day, by not being able to take advantage of licensing opportunities for our music. There’s no value in owning copyrights if no one has the time, patience or money to license them. Already, more and more creators are simply making new product which they own in its entirety, and licensing it directly to individual services.
There was an article in the New York Times today, about an inmate who after having been wrongfully imprisoned on death row for twenty years had just been set free. His one request to a benefactor had been a Walkman, only to be informed that no one used them any more, and handed an iPod. As the surprised ex-con acknowledged, it’s painful sometimes, but things change. You have to move on.
Otherwise, you’re an artifact in a museum window.
http://ericbeall.berkleemusicblogs.com/2010/08/12/life-in-the-slow-lane/
