April 25, 2013
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Musician, Understanding Copyright Law tagged Copyright, Independent, Indie, piracy April 15, 2013 It was towards the end of a long, cold, 2 month tour around Europe promoting my new album, just about to head to Portugal to finish off and enjoy a bit of sun. I got an email from a fan in Switzerland saying something like “Hey, check out this video, it’s pretty cool but the best part is the music ;-)”
I clicked the link and it lead me to a video on Eurosport/Yahoo Europe. The video was by Red Bull and was of a guy called Daniel Bodin doing an amazing 220ft jump on a snowmobile, from an Olympic ski ramp. The music behind it was my song “What Am I?” from my second album “The Rooftop Recordings.”
Understanding Copyright Law tagged Copyright, Independent, Indie November 20, 2012 The US Supreme Court is hearing an appeal that could change your ownership rights to music.
If you purchase music as physical media or license-free downloads, you are protected by the so-called First Sale Doctrine of the US Copyright Act, which gives people the right to lend, resell, or give away the works that they’ve bought, even if those works contain copyrighted elements.
But the case of Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, currently being heard by the US Supreme Court, could undermine First Sale Doctrine, making ownership feel more like licensing. How could you be affected?
August 29, 2012 If you are like me, you probably despise the fact that there is an endless stream of companies that are willing to place ads (through Google) on sites that rip off artists.
Now you can do something about it.
Understanding Copyright Law tagged Copyright July 24, 2012 Copyright is dying – that is obvious to everyone. What isn’t obvious to everyone, especially in the music industry, is what a glorious and just outcome this is.
International copyright only came into being in 1891 – very recent considering the long history of music and the arts. And it was publishers – not artists – who convinced governments to foist the system on us. Prior to that, during monarchical times “copyright” was permission granted to writers by the king to print what was politically correct. It was government that introduced the entire concept of “idea ownership” – the basis of copyrights and patents – precisely so it could crush the ideas it didn’t like. Copyright has rotten origins.
April 11, 2012 I recently started a discussion on TED.com discussing Rob Reid’s presentation, The$8 billion iPod, and a response that was posted by Ken Sanney. While my original intent was discuss the simplification of complex issues, people began some passionate arguments about piracy and copyrights. You can read the whole thing (with comments) here from TED’s conversation page.
I started getting frustrated because the majority of the people posting were not involved in the music industry nor did they have any knowledge of copyright law. If there’s one thing that I can’t stand, it’s simply the regurgitation of rhetoric, especially when there’s no basis in logic and not supported by evidence.
Here’s my personal take on the issue. If you’d like to see my responses to all of the traditional arguments in favor of unauthorized piracy and the debate whether copyright protection should exist at all, please check out the TED debate linked above.
Understanding Copyright Law tagged Copyright, Law March 13, 2012 The problem with the “fuck copyrights, you can make money from live performances” argument is that this thinking limits an artist’s ability to scale to: his or her capacity to perform (live) on a consistent basis. If music (for example) is consistently stolen borrowed or free, where does the capacity to scale through minimal additional investment come from? T-shirts?
One might argue that if you reach the top tier of the profession that the capacity to generate easy, incremental income scales far beyond the income generated via performances. However nobody wants to invest in a business or an industry where the only way to obtain a financial exit is to hit a home run. There are far too many investment alternatives where you can pile up rewards by hitting singles and doubles…while preserving the opportunity to hit a home run also.
Understanding Copyright Law tagged Copyright February 21, 2012 1. Introduction.
Any artist hoping to break through in the digital age has a fundamental decision to make; embrace wholeheartedly a DIY pathos and work ethic, or throw in the towel now and reconcile oneself to hating on those whose perceived ease of success masks tireless work, focused dedication, and strategic planning—don’t think Skrillex deserves his meteoric success? Let’s see you make a commitment to your fans to try and play 322 shows next year! (www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/industry/record-labels/skrillex-on-how-he-got-5-grammy-noms-we-1005601152.story.)
Understanding Copyright Law tagged Copyright, DIY, music lawyer January 25, 2012 The Music Industry has been struggling to battle the revolution of Digital Piracy for years, with countless musician’s speaking out against it. This struggle has gone as far as the creation of a few ill-advised bills being proposed by Congress, known as SOPA and PIPA, to protect Hollywood’s movie and music industries from dropping drastic levels of revenue. However, these laws were far from desirable, and the Music Industry still faces a challenge in battling piracy, despite the activists against it!
October 12, 2011 I used to be a music lawyer and I was a bit of an authority (for a while) on sampling and sample clearance in the early ‘90’s. Then I ran a bunch of dance labels and worked with a lot of electronic artists. I have cleared a lot of samples but I have released way more records with samples in them that we didn’t bother to clear. Why? Because we thought that no-one would notice that we’d used their music - these were generally small specialist underground records - and that if they did, we would be able to agree something after the event, if the need ever arose. The reality is that it was too much bother and too expensive to try and clear a sample of an obscure and hard to find piece of music or of a snippet of a big successful tune when you knew that your record was going to sell just a few thousand copies - i.e. we felt at the time that the risk was well worth it. And hundreds of thousands of records have been released with uncleared samples in them.
Understanding Copyright Law tagged Copyright, Law, music lawyer June 29, 2011 Music licensing is the licensed use of copyrighted music. It also ensures that the creators of musical works get paid for their work. In layman’s terms it can be viewed as leasing your property out to someone for a fee, based on how and where they intend to use it, and for how long.
June 13, 2010 This is a repost of something I published earlier today on my personal blog. Normally, I don’t like to repost stuff - but it kind of occurred to me that this is probably where I should have blogged it in the first place… :)
Performance Rights Organisations pay composers when their work is broadcast or otherwise performed in public. And rightly so. But making sure that everyone gets paid fairly is difficult to ensure - particularly when you consider how much data you’d need to track in order to be entirely accurate.
I think there’s another way.
November 5, 2009 When I had live video shot in the past, we hung large, dated signs up that clearly declared our ownership of the video. The signs also strongly suggested that anyone that did not want to be included in the video should please leave. We also had our camera crew shoot the signs right into the footage as ‘evidence’ if needed.
Here’s a video and photo release (below) you can use when you believe it really matters. Get an attorney to check this for you. Always try to get verified (check an ID) addresses and phone numbers on these releases.
October 14, 2009 Q: What happens when you put a lawyer, an economist, a business executive, a government bureaucrat and an artist into a locked room? A: The business executive assaults the economists, the lawyer sues the executive, the bureaucrat falls asleep, and the artist writes a song about it. This is the copyright debate.
Over the last couple of years, and as a background task, I have tried to make sense of the copyright / copy restriction debate. Is more or less copy restriction better or worse for rightsholders?