To A Mother Concerned About File Sharing
Oops did I just share a file by posting this image? I think that the answer to that question may be as varied and complex as the answers that you will receive concerning your son’s attitude towards the sharing of music.
I’m sure at one point in time the IP(Intellectual Property)Police would have pounded on the door of my chalet ready to confiscate my quills for my illegal actions. Now I wonder who would have made the call to the man? Bach himself or a broker on behalf of Bach? To paraphrase the age old adage of brokers everywhere: “We must put a stop to this!” We?
Fast forward several hundreds years later and the argument is essentially the same. There are laws that were created with the intent of protecting the creators of music and other art forms. But who lobbied to get these laws on the books in the first place? Would I ever advise someone to willfully break the law? Absolutely not. Right now in my opinion we do have some very antiquated laws that seem to favor the “brokers” of music over the actual “creators” of music.
I believe that your concern as a mother is well founded in the sense that we should respect the law of the land. I think what is equally important is the right to take issue with those laws and to formulate some form of positive protest to bring about real change.
But the real bottom line is that in all honesty it all comes down to the money. I’ve often heard it articulated that if someone’s music is stolen that that is a dollar for dollar indication of a loss of income. We could go into the creative accouting sphere that is record royalty calculation but I’ll leave that to the experts.
What I would like to advance(pun intended)here is the notion of what constitutes a performance. When this institution that we know as recording began it was really a means to document a live performance. Just like piano rolls and sheet music before hand these were means of documenting and capturing the performance. I would argue that they are not the performance in and of themselves. At some point instead of supporting the notion of “I heard about this artist let’s go out and see him or her” the promotional tool turned into the performance. But I am excited to see that the notion of live music as the apex of a performer’s craft is returning.
We are at an impasse now. I’m sorry that I couldn’t give a cut and dry, right and wrong, black and white answer. I wish it was that simple. But what is very simple is this: When we ask ourselves what is ultimately best for music, we all can agree that the ability for the artist to support themselves and their families is paramount. Even thirty years ago it was unfathomable that an individual could have the power to broadcast to millions from their living room. This power should be harnassed for the greater good of all creators and not brokers of music. If we follow the money of the current business model that we are under now does it really support the greater good? Maybe somewhere in all of this lies the true answer.
