From Lembit’s Daily Sport column:
PIRATES could soon be in power in the UK! But they’re not the swashbuckling Johnny Depp-type –– or even our uzi-wielding chums from the Somali coast. I’m talking about the Pirate Party –– the Swedish outfit who campaign for free file-sharing online. They’re fed up of big fees being charged for music downloads, copyright being slapped on YouTube videos and internet usage being tracked. They won a couple of seats in Brussels and are now planning on standing in the UK general election next year. These buccaneers shouldn’t be underestimated. They’ve got a big supporter base of mostly young people. I can see problems with making everything free as composers and writers would lose out. But the pirates have a point. Until we take a more reasonable approach to tracking internet usage and copyright questions there may well be a case to say: “Yo-ho, me hearties!”
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5 Comments
I know that Lembit is writing in a style that would be attractive to Daily Sport readers. So it is hard to know from reading the article whether he has seriously looked into this.
The question I would like to know the answer to is how are people in the music trade going to make any money? Of course until recently we have had to pay a lot of money for records and cds, probably too much, but isn’t the danger now we go to the opposite extreme?
I think most musicians actually make money from playing live. Not the stadium-rock, album-plugging, special-effects tours of really big (and financially bombproof) acts, but the mostly small-scale night-after-night efforts familiar (but not exclusively) to most folk acts, for example. This seems fine to me. Most people have to keep turning up for work day after day rather than continuing to be paid for ever for what they did last year or ten years ago; and for the moment at least, CDs are still sold in vast quantities anyway (though who buys them, apart from little old lo-tech me, is a bit of a mystery).
Malcolm, I run gigs at the “toilet circuit” end of the market and can assure you that bands are not getting rich from it and neither am I. The only money left in music is from airplay (ie radio) and stadium rock tours.
I didn’t say anyone was getting rich from it. I’m not getting rich from working either, but I make a living. That’s enough, ain’t it?
There is so much discussion on the internet about these issues on which the Pirate Party is now campaigning that it can seem almost arrogant to presume one can add anything further to the debate! But as LDV is a friendly port-of-call for those well-read about liberalism, I have a query…
The debate often seems to be portrayed on the one hand as a free-spirited rebellion by bright, young, open, tech-savvy freedom-fighters against rich, dumb, greedy corporate types living in the past who just “don’t get it”. And on the other hand as a fight-back by hard working writers, composers, directors and other artists against the cavalier theft of their livelihood.
Ultimately, though, doesn’t it all come down to a classic old-fashioned liberal Mexican stand-off between the rights of two groups? The consumers want the right to share stuff; the professional creatives want the right to charge for their work.