7 ms·

I can't think of any good reason why music should even be copyrightable.

by moetech 8y ago

lucasmullens 8y ago
So that musicians get fairly compensated when you use their song in a movie or ad?
- moetech 8y ago
  Should we really be incentivizing making music as a career? And besides, I don't think the bulk of music is being created by people being compensated for it.
  - Arainach 8y ago
    Yes, we should. If you want things done well, you want people to be able to make a living doing them. I'd love to see any sources on your claims regarding to music creation - certainly, a huge portion of quality artwork is the result of people being paid for it/creating with the expection that they'll be able to sell it. This has been true for centuries.
  - aqme28 8y ago
    > Should we really be incentivizing making music as a career? Sure, why not? > And besides, I don't think the bulk of music is being created by people being compensated for it. Most of the money goes to the few at the top, it's true. How does that change things?
    - moetech 8y ago
      >How does that change things? The point is that there won't be a shortage of new music even if everyone stops being paid to make music.
  - rectang 8y ago
    Somewhere out there, there exists an alternate universe where musicians ponder nonchalantly whether people should be compensated for software. "Can't they just sell software logo t-shirts?"
    - darpa_escapee 8y ago
      We're already there. People indiscriminately pirate software and games as much as they do music.
    - kgwxd 8y ago
      There's a ton of people giving away very useful software and all the files and tools to easily read and modify it. There's a handful of musicians giving away music too, but I don't know of many giving away the files and tools to read and modify it.
    - forapurpose 8y ago
      Music is art, to a significant extent. Rarely is software art.
      - hakfoo 8y ago
        But "art" isn't special. As much as people may speak of art reflecting its creator, once it gets into the outside world, it becomes an interaction with everyone it contacts. There are a million new perspectives formed, and plenty that could be done to extend the work. I could imagine taking software principles and applying them to art in many ways: * Bugfixes-- from simple grammar flaws, to finishing dangled story threads, why aren't we patching and re-releasing novels? * Technical improvements-- I could imagine, for example, a speaker manufacturer remixing songs so they sounded better on their hardware. * Customization -- if you've made an attractive image or song, and it hasn't been repurposed to sell Diet Pepsi, you haven't really arrived. The limit to these visions is that they run headlong both into the literal principles of copyright law, and the philosophy that art is somehow sacred as-is, rather than being a baseline for better and better things. Shorter copyrights and mandatory licensing can make it happen.
  - aikah 8y ago
    > Should we really be incentivizing making music as a career? Instrument practice, sound engineering are a crazy amount of work in order to get to a professional level. It's so bizarre to hear people say things like that, they have 0 consideration for the amount of effort put into the former, just because they can download 1 millions tracks on the internet in one click...
    - veridies 8y ago
      There are probably a hundred times more professional-level guitarists than professional guitarists. It’s a ton of work, but it’s a ton of work that a lot of people already put in just for fun. Professional production is very hard, but it’s also kind of a moving target. A lot of production is trying to hit trends set by other producers so that your music sounds professional itself. It’s largely competitive rather than artistically significant, and there’s some great production that doesn’t sound professional but still works.
    - moetech 8y ago
      My point is that that crazy amount of work is being wasted on a music career.
  - mrob 8y ago
    >Should we really be incentivizing making music as a career? Of course not. There is an enormous glut of cultural works, and people's quality of life would not be meaningfully harmed if all commercial production stopped. See: https://www.gwern.net/Culture-is-not-about-Esthetics https://www.gwern.net/Culture-is-not-about-Esthetics
- dgzl 8y ago
  I think he was asking from a more philosophical stance, rather than practical.
- CuriousSkeptic 8y ago
  Well that’s just the thing. “Fair” in this context is heavily biased by the how the world is currently organized. I’m pretty sure the notion would sound ridiculous in a world without copyright. Such a world would look very different from ours. But even if “fair compensation” was the goal. Why then not stipulate that in the law? Whay grant exclusive control of copying to anyone.
  - azernik 8y ago
    Because "fair compensation" is a reeeeally hard term to define legally, while giving someone a monopoly on a particular song and letting the market determine how to price that song's usage is a more workable mechanism.
    - thaumasiotes 8y ago
      This can't actually be the reason -- music in particular is subject to a variety of compulsory license schemes for which "fair compensation" is legally defined, and the copyright holder does not have the ability to prevent someone from covering / broadcasting / etc. their song.
    - CuriousSkeptic 8y ago
      But it’s really not. Workable that is. The exclusive control of copies throws a huuuge wrench in the machinery. Just in the copy providing department I still consistently run in to the situation where there is no legal means for me to enjoy certain albums, tv-series, movies, games or software. But that’s just the problem with the actually legal copies. I find it even more distressing that some of the best works I want to enjoy are illigal to begin with due to the authors infringig of the exclusive right of some longe abandoned work. And that’s just my experience. Considering the resources and suffering that goes into maintaining this state of affairs just boggles the mind.
      - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
        > But it’s really not. Workable that is. The exclusive control of copies throws a huuuge wrench in the machinery. Not really (at least, not in addressing lucasmullens' point). I'm making a movie or an ad. I think your song would be just perfect for it. You won't let me use it on terms that I consider reasonable. Well, there's more than one song that would be (approximately) perfect there. I'll see if their copyright holders are more reasonable. If you absolutely have to have Song X in your movie, then your point is correct. But I assert that, most of the time, that isn't the case. And behold, now there's a market.
- Bjartr 8y ago
  To play devil's advocate, why should people continue to be compensated for work they did long ago? It's normal today, but it wasn't always that way, and it could be time to revisit that assumption. The amount and quality of works would change for sure, but there's nothing I know if that says there aren't other reasonable systems out there. Especially in light of the fact that copyright is not fulfilling it's intended promise. Specifically that the government protects the work for a time, and in return the work goes into the public domain after a reasonable amount of time in order to enrich society as a whole.
  - azernik 8y ago
    What about things they did 6 months ago? The argument is whether music should be copyrightable at all, not whether 100-year copyright terms are reasonable.
    - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
      No. There are two arguments. Whether music should be copyrightable at all is settled (though a fringe continues to argue it). That means that the second argument, whether 100-year copyright terms are reasonable, is in fact the main argument at this time.
      - azernik 8y ago
        Top of this thread: "I can't think of any good reason why music should even be copyrightable." This particular argument is about whether music should be copyrightable.
    - Bjartr 8y ago
      Yes, good question. Why indeed? We don't pay for food each time we reap the benefits of the nutrition it provided down the line. Weightlifters don't pay royalties to protein powder companies. It could be argued that artists could also be expected to not be paid beyond the initial creation of a work. It would be a very different world to be sure, but it's not a given that it would be a worse world.
  - 8y ago
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Ignoring that most goes to the label, and the artists get a ridiculously small share of the pie?
  - adventured 8y ago
    It's not just the labels. Most of the value in the music industry has gone to Apple and Spotify shareholders the last 20 years, not labels. There is at least $100-$150 billion in cumulative shareholder value sitting there from just that. Spotify is worth more than all the major labels combined. The iPod doesn't exist without the music from the artists. Apple didn't share their hardware profits with artists, and they're not sharing any follow on value from the iPhone either (which was entirely made possible by the iPod). People hate labels, they mostly love Apple and Spotify, so they largely get a pass on this. The real money in the music industry during the iPod era, was in the hardware.
- Salgat 8y ago
  Interestingly enough we have a great example of limited copyright protections for musicians in China that are still fabulously wealthy and successful. Their wealth is generated through performing/concerts, advertising, etc while their music is freely available for streaming/download.
tunesmith 8y ago
Music gets suckier if there's less incentive to work at it.
rayiner 8y ago
I can't think of any reason why music copyright should ever expire. Music is (1) purely the product of creation (i.e. you're not just taking ownership of something like land that's naturally occurring); and (2) completely non-rival (there are an infinite number of original songs for people to create). I don't see why rights in something like that shouldn't be perpetual. Why should anyone else ever acquire rights to something that's purely the product of your mind?
- pishpash 8y ago
  There are certainly not an infinite number of original songs. There have already been lawsuits where songs that might have legitimately been independent creations were litigated for being too similar.
- cocacola1 8y ago
  If that were the case, every note of every instrument would already be under copyright.
- hakfoo 8y ago
  The problem is that music has no inherent scarcity or exclusivity. Because there's no natural limit to the supply of copies, the marginal cost goes to zero. To create a viable market, the entire rest of the country/world has to agree to inconvenience itself, simulating a scarcity by saying 'you're the only one who can legally make copies.' So it's more a matter of hassling everyone else for the benefit of a relatively small group of creators. This is something that can be seen as a value-maximization problem. How much extra music do we, as a society, get to enjoy by adding another N years to copyright? And what does that cost us in enforcement, licensing, and reduced ability to respin old work?
- bo1024 8y ago
  That's an interesting perspective, maybe this response will help. It's tempting to think of copyright in terms of ownership. I wrote the song, so I own it, and anyone else who uses it is violating my ownership in some way. But that's incorrect. Copyright is about control. The holder of copyright is granted a certain amount of legal control over everyone else's actions. I can prevent Jack from selling a copy of my song. I can prevent Jill from performing my song live. They no longer have rights they used to have. Of course there is no "natural" basis for this concept, unlike ownership of physical goods. It was invented merely as an economic tool to incentivize production. Legally, it's purely a fiction of government. If Jill moved to another country and performed my song, I might have no way to stop her. I'd probably never even find out. So how could I have some fundamental right to stop her from singing what she wants to sing? Ethically, I would turn your question around: Why do I get to control other people's actions that don't affect me? Why should I be able to sell that control or hand it down to my heirs? It's not clear what that argument could be.
tomp 8y ago
I do support some form of copyright - e.g. if you earn money based on my work, you should compensate me accordingly - but not for private, non-commercial use.
forapurpose 8y ago
There's an overlooked assumption, that art should be a commercial product sold in the marketplace. Maybe some things shouldn't or don't need to be sold in the marketplace. Maybe art should be more like free software (or just be free - let's not parochially limit ourselves to software analogies). Certainly for 'purposes' or aspects of art - as enlightenment, enrichment, the pinnacle of culture and civilization - free distribution would be better, spreading its benefits more widely. Also, like free-as-in-speech software (sorry), each work of art is part of the creative process for the next one; it can be reused, modified, extracted, etc, so free art would be much better in that respect too. I understand that artists want to eat and have roofs over their heads. I want a pony. Seriously, perhaps there are other ways to accomplish that. UBI?
- mmt 8y ago
  > Seriously, perhaps there are other ways to accomplish that. Yet another hidden assumption right there: that art must (or should) come from full-time professional artists (as opposed to hobbyists and/or part-timers).

I can't think of any good reason why music should even be copyrightable.

lucasmullens 8y ago

So that musicians get fairly compensated when you use their song in a movie or ad?

moetech 8y ago
Should we really be incentivizing making music as a career? And besides, I don't think the bulk of music is being created by people being compensated for it.
- Arainach 8y ago
  Yes, we should. If you want things done well, you want people to be able to make a living doing them. I'd love to see any sources on your claims regarding to music creation - certainly, a huge portion of quality artwork is the result of people being paid for it/creating with the expection that they'll be able to sell it. This has been true for centuries.
- aqme28 8y ago
  > Should we really be incentivizing making music as a career? Sure, why not? > And besides, I don't think the bulk of music is being created by people being compensated for it. Most of the money goes to the few at the top, it's true. How does that change things?
  - moetech 8y ago
    >How does that change things? The point is that there won't be a shortage of new music even if everyone stops being paid to make music.
- rectang 8y ago
  Somewhere out there, there exists an alternate universe where musicians ponder nonchalantly whether people should be compensated for software. "Can't they just sell software logo t-shirts?"
  - darpa_escapee 8y ago
    We're already there. People indiscriminately pirate software and games as much as they do music.
  - kgwxd 8y ago
    There's a ton of people giving away very useful software and all the files and tools to easily read and modify it. There's a handful of musicians giving away music too, but I don't know of many giving away the files and tools to read and modify it.
  - forapurpose 8y ago
    Music is art, to a significant extent. Rarely is software art.
    - hakfoo 8y ago
      But "art" isn't special. As much as people may speak of art reflecting its creator, once it gets into the outside world, it becomes an interaction with everyone it contacts. There are a million new perspectives formed, and plenty that could be done to extend the work. I could imagine taking software principles and applying them to art in many ways: * Bugfixes-- from simple grammar flaws, to finishing dangled story threads, why aren't we patching and re-releasing novels? * Technical improvements-- I could imagine, for example, a speaker manufacturer remixing songs so they sounded better on their hardware. * Customization -- if you've made an attractive image or song, and it hasn't been repurposed to sell Diet Pepsi, you haven't really arrived. The limit to these visions is that they run headlong both into the literal principles of copyright law, and the philosophy that art is somehow sacred as-is, rather than being a baseline for better and better things. Shorter copyrights and mandatory licensing can make it happen.
- aikah 8y ago
  > Should we really be incentivizing making music as a career? Instrument practice, sound engineering are a crazy amount of work in order to get to a professional level. It's so bizarre to hear people say things like that, they have 0 consideration for the amount of effort put into the former, just because they can download 1 millions tracks on the internet in one click...
  - veridies 8y ago
    There are probably a hundred times more professional-level guitarists than professional guitarists. It’s a ton of work, but it’s a ton of work that a lot of people already put in just for fun. Professional production is very hard, but it’s also kind of a moving target. A lot of production is trying to hit trends set by other producers so that your music sounds professional itself. It’s largely competitive rather than artistically significant, and there’s some great production that doesn’t sound professional but still works.
  - moetech 8y ago
    My point is that that crazy amount of work is being wasted on a music career.
- mrob 8y ago
  >Should we really be incentivizing making music as a career? Of course not. There is an enormous glut of cultural works, and people's quality of life would not be meaningfully harmed if all commercial production stopped. See: https://www.gwern.net/Culture-is-not-about-Esthetics https://www.gwern.net/Culture-is-not-about-Esthetics
dgzl 8y ago
I think he was asking from a more philosophical stance, rather than practical.
CuriousSkeptic 8y ago
Well that’s just the thing. “Fair” in this context is heavily biased by the how the world is currently organized. I’m pretty sure the notion would sound ridiculous in a world without copyright. Such a world would look very different from ours. But even if “fair compensation” was the goal. Why then not stipulate that in the law? Whay grant exclusive control of copying to anyone.
- azernik 8y ago
  Because "fair compensation" is a reeeeally hard term to define legally, while giving someone a monopoly on a particular song and letting the market determine how to price that song's usage is a more workable mechanism.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    This can't actually be the reason -- music in particular is subject to a variety of compulsory license schemes for which "fair compensation" is legally defined, and the copyright holder does not have the ability to prevent someone from covering / broadcasting / etc. their song.
  - CuriousSkeptic 8y ago
    But it’s really not. Workable that is. The exclusive control of copies throws a huuuge wrench in the machinery. Just in the copy providing department I still consistently run in to the situation where there is no legal means for me to enjoy certain albums, tv-series, movies, games or software. But that’s just the problem with the actually legal copies. I find it even more distressing that some of the best works I want to enjoy are illigal to begin with due to the authors infringig of the exclusive right of some longe abandoned work. And that’s just my experience. Considering the resources and suffering that goes into maintaining this state of affairs just boggles the mind.
    - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
      > But it’s really not. Workable that is. The exclusive control of copies throws a huuuge wrench in the machinery. Not really (at least, not in addressing lucasmullens' point). I'm making a movie or an ad. I think your song would be just perfect for it. You won't let me use it on terms that I consider reasonable. Well, there's more than one song that would be (approximately) perfect there. I'll see if their copyright holders are more reasonable. If you absolutely have to have Song X in your movie, then your point is correct. But I assert that, most of the time, that isn't the case. And behold, now there's a market.
Bjartr 8y ago
To play devil's advocate, why should people continue to be compensated for work they did long ago? It's normal today, but it wasn't always that way, and it could be time to revisit that assumption. The amount and quality of works would change for sure, but there's nothing I know if that says there aren't other reasonable systems out there. Especially in light of the fact that copyright is not fulfilling it's intended promise. Specifically that the government protects the work for a time, and in return the work goes into the public domain after a reasonable amount of time in order to enrich society as a whole.
- azernik 8y ago
  What about things they did 6 months ago? The argument is whether music should be copyrightable at all, not whether 100-year copyright terms are reasonable.
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    No. There are two arguments. Whether music should be copyrightable at all is settled (though a fringe continues to argue it). That means that the second argument, whether 100-year copyright terms are reasonable, is in fact the main argument at this time.
    - azernik 8y ago
      Top of this thread: "I can't think of any good reason why music should even be copyrightable." This particular argument is about whether music should be copyrightable.
  - Bjartr 8y ago
    Yes, good question. Why indeed? We don't pay for food each time we reap the benefits of the nutrition it provided down the line. Weightlifters don't pay royalties to protein powder companies. It could be argued that artists could also be expected to not be paid beyond the initial creation of a work. It would be a very different world to be sure, but it's not a given that it would be a worse world.
- 8y ago
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Ignoring that most goes to the label, and the artists get a ridiculously small share of the pie?
- adventured 8y ago
  It's not just the labels. Most of the value in the music industry has gone to Apple and Spotify shareholders the last 20 years, not labels. There is at least $100-$150 billion in cumulative shareholder value sitting there from just that. Spotify is worth more than all the major labels combined. The iPod doesn't exist without the music from the artists. Apple didn't share their hardware profits with artists, and they're not sharing any follow on value from the iPhone either (which was entirely made possible by the iPod). People hate labels, they mostly love Apple and Spotify, so they largely get a pass on this. The real money in the music industry during the iPod era, was in the hardware.
Salgat 8y ago
Interestingly enough we have a great example of limited copyright protections for musicians in China that are still fabulously wealthy and successful. Their wealth is generated through performing/concerts, advertising, etc while their music is freely available for streaming/download.

tunesmith 8y ago

Music gets suckier if there's less incentive to work at it.

rayiner 8y ago

I can't think of any reason why music copyright should ever expire. Music is (1) purely the product of creation (i.e. you're not just taking ownership of something like land that's naturally occurring); and (2) completely non-rival (there are an infinite number of original songs for people to create). I don't see why rights in something like that shouldn't be perpetual. Why should anyone else ever acquire rights to something that's purely the product of your mind?

pishpash 8y ago
There are certainly not an infinite number of original songs. There have already been lawsuits where songs that might have legitimately been independent creations were litigated for being too similar.
cocacola1 8y ago
If that were the case, every note of every instrument would already be under copyright.
hakfoo 8y ago
The problem is that music has no inherent scarcity or exclusivity. Because there's no natural limit to the supply of copies, the marginal cost goes to zero. To create a viable market, the entire rest of the country/world has to agree to inconvenience itself, simulating a scarcity by saying 'you're the only one who can legally make copies.' So it's more a matter of hassling everyone else for the benefit of a relatively small group of creators. This is something that can be seen as a value-maximization problem. How much extra music do we, as a society, get to enjoy by adding another N years to copyright? And what does that cost us in enforcement, licensing, and reduced ability to respin old work?
bo1024 8y ago
That's an interesting perspective, maybe this response will help. It's tempting to think of copyright in terms of ownership. I wrote the song, so I own it, and anyone else who uses it is violating my ownership in some way. But that's incorrect. Copyright is about control. The holder of copyright is granted a certain amount of legal control over everyone else's actions. I can prevent Jack from selling a copy of my song. I can prevent Jill from performing my song live. They no longer have rights they used to have. Of course there is no "natural" basis for this concept, unlike ownership of physical goods. It was invented merely as an economic tool to incentivize production. Legally, it's purely a fiction of government. If Jill moved to another country and performed my song, I might have no way to stop her. I'd probably never even find out. So how could I have some fundamental right to stop her from singing what she wants to sing? Ethically, I would turn your question around: Why do I get to control other people's actions that don't affect me? Why should I be able to sell that control or hand it down to my heirs? It's not clear what that argument could be.

tomp 8y ago

I do support some form of copyright - e.g. if you earn money based on my work, you should compensate me accordingly - but not for private, non-commercial use.

forapurpose 8y ago

There's an overlooked assumption, that art should be a commercial product sold in the marketplace. Maybe some things shouldn't or don't need to be sold in the marketplace. Maybe art should be more like free software (or just be free - let's not parochially limit ourselves to software analogies). Certainly for 'purposes' or aspects of art - as enlightenment, enrichment, the pinnacle of culture and civilization - free distribution would be better, spreading its benefits more widely. Also, like free-as-in-speech software (sorry), each work of art is part of the creative process for the next one; it can be reused, modified, extracted, etc, so free art would be much better in that respect too. I understand that artists want to eat and have roofs over their heads. I want a pony. Seriously, perhaps there are other ways to accomplish that. UBI?

mmt 8y ago
> Seriously, perhaps there are other ways to accomplish that. Yet another hidden assumption right there: that art must (or should) come from full-time professional artists (as opposed to hobbyists and/or part-timers).