Branding, Culture, Politics, and Everything in Between

Spotted this at Digg. The New York Times just released another editorial piece defending the status quo, this time it’s about copyright. The Times has been vocal about how bad blog news sources are and I guess they feel threatened by them. My gut feeling is that this piece is a sort of tangent of that phenomenon, but I’m still surprised at how blatantly ignorant some of the arguments made in this piece were.

For example:

Were I tomorrow to write the great American novel (again?), 70 years after my death the rights to it, though taxed at inheritance, would be stripped from my children and grandchildren. To the claim that this provision strikes malefactors of great wealth, one might ask, first, where the heirs of Sylvia Plath berth their 200-foot yachts. And, second, why, when such a stiff penalty is not applied to the owners of Rockefeller Center or Wal-Mart, it is brought to bear against legions of harmless drudges who, other than a handful of literary plutocrats (manufacturers, really), are destined by the nature of things to be no more financially secure than a seal in the Central Park Zoo.

or:

“Freeing” a literary work into the public domain is less a public benefit than a transfer of wealth from the families of American writers to the executives and stockholders of various businesses who will continue to profit from, for example, “The Garden Party,” while the descendants of Katherine Mansfield will not.

I mean good God. If you want to use the copyright and real estate analogy ask yourself this: would it make any sense that if I were to build a house, I could thus prohibit you from building a similar house? Not on the same location, mind you, but a similar looking house? Copyright laws being as they are, that’s how it happens in the copyright world. Somebody at TechDirt did a pretty good rebuttal of this yesterday.

Copyright laws are way outdated now and it’s hurting artists more than it’s helping. When DJ Shadow has to go through a long and painful legal process to clear hundreds of samples that only around 10% would be recognizable anyway, you know something is wrong. I just can’t quite understand how somebody could argue that for example a producer sampling a long forgotten record somehow owes that original artist something. I mean if the original song is not selling anymore, shouldn’t the original artist be paying the producer something for “reviving” the old song, not the other way around? I’m pretty sure when producers sample old tunes both the new song AND the original get more airplay and sales. This happens all the time with hip hop producers and old soul, R ‘n’ B and funk song that they sample. As a funny side note, I’m pretty sure that a local black music station here in Finland called Groove FM actually goes out of its way to play the original songs when a new song becomes a hit. I guess it’s their way of paying tribute or just showing off their connoisseurism or something.

I’m pro relinquishing ALL copyright. This is not about being some sort of idealistic neo-hippie or anything, I just think it makes economical sense. People are afraid that if we don’t protect the copyright of for example songs, other bands might start recording them and playing them live. But you know what, so what? I’m fairly sure that people will reward the originators of said songs. In today’s connected society, copycats and frauds are exposed in a matter of minutes. If a band tries to steal another band’s song, mark my words, they will get caught. And bands playing other bands’ songs is just a great way to spread the message of those smaller bands. Imagine a big rock band playing a smaller indie band’s song live? Would there be a better way of spreading the smaller band’s art?

Chris Anderson wrote about this a while back, and it’s going to be the premise of his new book, due to be released in mid 2008.