Once upon a time, copyright law was created to allow individual creators to claim ownership of that which they had created, ostensibly to prevent others from making a buck off of the original artist's sweat equity without said original artist's permission. For most of those "struggling artists" of our romantic imagination, it was expensive and difficult to fight copyright violations, but the protection was afforded to them to do so, and the philosophy was quite similar to had_enough's insistence that artists should be able to be compensated for their work. Fair enough.

However, the RIAA is not an individual artist, nor does it actually function as an effective union of artists. Instead, it is an organization designed to ensure lots of other commercial interests get their cut. Many arguments can be made pro and con for how deserving those other interests are of the cut they receive, particularly in an era in which the cost of entry has been lowered to the extent that any artist can publish or distribute his/her own work. It is up to artists themselves to determine whether or not the value-add of those various interests is worth the cut that they take, and this is why musicians, for example, negotiate recording contracts.

Be that as it may, later changes to copyright law, particularly including the DMCA, have little if anything to do with artists. The DMCA is part and parcel of lobbying efforts toward a scenario of corporate personhood ardently sought by many corporate lobbying groups so that corporations can protect their profit streams. The only aspect of creativity protected by such later changes allows corporations to own the rights to IP or other creative work produced by individuals who work for said corporations. Essentially, it takes copyright OUT of the hands of individual creators and names instead the company as the owner.

The DMCA protects profits made by corporate interests that one could argue are parasitic interests rather than creative ones; they exist on the backs of the creators. The creators themselves were already protected by copyright laws designed to make it illegal for others to profit off of one's creative work without one's permission.

The DMCA is concerned with DISTRIBUTION, not creation, precisely because the parasitic interests related to creative work make their profit from distribution rather than creation. It is the DMCA that makes judgments like this one possible. It is not really concerned with the fact that artists could have made an additional .10 per sale; it is concerned with the fact that the packagers and distributors of CDs, a medium one could argue has the potential to become obsolete in the digital age, could have profited from a different distribution method than that which was chosen. Ergo, this woman was punished for making the files available for others to download who might have purchased $14.99 CDs otherwise.

All typical arguments about whether or not music should be free vs artists should make money from their work are practically irrelevant in this case. Original copyright law would have made the likely return on prosecuting such a case prohibitive because the defendant in question was neither making a profit from this redistribution nor representing someone else's creative work as her own.

Many musicians who are not at the top of the pop music machine prefer to distribute their music far and wide as they hope that it will garner a larger audience who might then pay to see them perform, buy their t-shirts and albums, and thus increase their livelihood. Many musicians who are at the top of the game tend to parrot the line of the distribution engine that takes care of the dirty work of distribution for them. Is one type of musician more right than another? If so, which one? This isn't about the artists. Instead, it is about those who package and distribute the works of those artists.

Evolve or die. Record labels aren't evolving, and I'm not sure they know how to. To some extent, their poor business practices (and I specifically mean the unfair contracts with the artists) have come back to haunt them.

To a different, and far larger, extent: the medium has changed.

Let me try this metaphor: music is like water. You can use it for free or via indirect payment in many, many places (drinking fountains = free, tap water = radio = indirect payments). And some companies sell the water. But really what they sell is the packaging. The LP. The CD. Once upon a time, the packaging was essential. It no longer is.

So to whom is the actual product valuable? The artist, who with the increase of recording technology and accompanying diminished cost, is increasingly able to finance their own artistic creations. This used to be the record labels job. No longer. What else did record labels do? Desktop design has made the packaging accessible. Distribution (i.e. record stores) has almost entirely disappeared and the internet has become the medium of distribution.

All that remains is promotion: getting your music heard and your face seen. There have been, and I'm sure still are, many independent publicists and radio promotors who could happily be hired by anyone for a fee (or percentage of the artists revenue, or whatever agreeement they wish to come to). For artists to whom live performance of music matters, this model can work just fine. In this sense, my recorded music is like a business card: it is a promotional tool to entice you to attend my performance. And if I periodically assemble, say ten, of my songs into a package, some, likely enough, of my fans will pay for said package - and pay me directly in person or via internet. Copywrite matters remarkably little since the purpose of the copywritten work is very much to encourage your support of my art in different ways.

All this is fine.

A challenge still exists for:

a) Artists who are strictly studio creations (which can be Brittany Spears or the Beatles post 1966.)

b) Artists who do not wish to devote their lives to contstant touring and/or who no longer are able to do so, but wish to provide for themselves or their families.

Copywright matters much more in those two circumstances. If record labels aren't to be these artists revenue streams, what can take their place.

While I generally deplore the use of music in adverstising, I do see that the revenue stream makes a difference to the copywrite holder. Only I don't see how more people possessing copies of the song, now to be associated with whomever the sponsor might be, hurts anyone.

Television and movie soundtracks provide another source. Perhaps the copywrite matters here. iTunes has certainly proven that people are willing to pay for digital downloads.

And this is where some new thinking about music and copywrite is needed, or perhaps new kinds of art. In the meantime, lawsuits are but odious fingers in the breaking (broken) damn.

I'm sure there are more answers too . .

AlterEthan

who used to work for an independent record label, and has written songs and worked as a performing musician