Stealing the words right out of your mouth..., Robert Tucker
Sunday, 24th February, 2008
Copyright infringement is probably one of the most heated debates in the music community today if it hasn't always been. Countless articles and blogs, films and books have been spun out of the debates. Should it be? I would rather think not.
There are some finer points of law in arguing who may be the creative author of a piece, but as to the rights of the artist to the ownership of the work they create, I think it is an inalienable right and just that.
Copyright laws seem impotent to ward off the many sharks trying to gnaw their piece of the artist's profit or the feeding frenzy of out and out pirates. Indeed, there seems to be a cultural shift that has no moral sense of property. Is it the product of a series of consumer oriented generations? Has corporate marketing fed this sense of entitlement, a drive to want and to have without restraint?
There is a tempest of new thinking and methodology coming into place because of the internet. Artists are quickly finding that these unfriendly seas also offer new tools for them to take the control and copying of their work out of the hands of others. More artists at all levels are taking management of their careers, distribution and marketing to the DIY opportunities of the internet.
This doesn't end the controversy though. In the light of broadband and bit torrents there is no rest. Like many other times throughout history we are in the throes of change. Is this an onslaught to be demonized, gates to be barred and ramparts armed? or is it a transition in technology that heralds a renaissance of thought, discovery and a boom to culture and society?
Change is never easy. It stretches, pulls and twists till what will break breaks. This may be a new chance to rewrite the rules. Maybe artists have a new freedom available if they can shed the reliance on the old and ineffectual systems.
The film below, Steal This Film II, raises some thought provoking viewpoints and observations. It is well worth the watch.
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