Letters to the Editor
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Copywrongs...
What a terrible outcome. All we can hope is that this sort of thing gets so ridiculous that regular Americans start to reject the absurd and extreme copyright regime and realize the need for reasonable limits in these laws.
It's not "intellectual property."
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sorry folks, but it makes sense to me
tell you what. You write 24 original songs, and then see them stolen thousands of times, when you should have been paid for each time one was downloaded, and you tell me that verdict was wrong.
Artists have to be compensated somehow for their work. People simply should not be able to have music for free. Someone went to a lot of trouble to write, record, and distribute those songs. Why should ANYONE get them for free? Just cuz?
copyright is in tatters right now anyway. If artists aren't able to make a living making art, why should they bother? And, sure, they may make art anyway. But I can tell you, in history, there are plenty of examples of how once the money for something ran out, artists went on to something else.
We might have had a round dozen more major piano concertos from Mozart, for instance, if his audience had been willing to pay him for more. But, they weren't, so he didn't write any more.
This is not trivial. Artists must be paid. Downloading music without the expressed permission of the artist is wrong.
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They want war?
Two things should happen immediately, we should all download something, anything, today in protest. If you do not believe in that, then stop buying any music for a month.
The stranglehold that the music industry has put upon the evolution and advancement of artists and their music has been detrimental enough. Their 'arrangements' with propaganda institutions such as Clear Channel and the narrow scope of MTV, plus all the radio stations that are directly controlled by the music companies has been an unfair monopoly for too long. The time has come to take away their stick... no more poking out eyes!
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@had-enough: Reasonable copyright would not be a pirates heaven...
"You write 24 original songs, and then see them stolen thousands of times, "
Then why did you release it? If you don't want your song "stolen" why bother recording it at all?
I'm the son of a ASCAP registered songwriter who got some royalties from Acuff-Rose published songs she wrote. I'm not saying songwriters shouldn't get royalties.
For 20 years, no more. Stop this life-plus-70 year nonsense.
And they shouldn't be able to sell the copyrights. A copyright should be tied to the author forever; they can have ASCAP manage royalty collection.
Comments like the one you wrote usually come from people who dream of fast riches with a hit song, not journeymen writers who make a reasonable income from performance.
American law shouldn't be written to ensure a continual stream of income from one act of production. It's your job to figure out how to make money from your writing, if you do any.
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B.S.
While I agree that artists need to get paid no artist makes $9,250 per song from one person. Even if artists got $1 per song I don't think they proved that she uploaded those songs 9250 times each. That is just silly. I'm sure that they are going to appeal this.
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punishment does not fit the "crime"
If the defendant had gone into a record store and shoplifted 24 complete CDs, each with multiple songs, the crime would not have merited this penalty.
There is hope the judgment can be overturned based on this discrepancy.
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We almost didn't have copyright protection in this country
because of how ruthless book publishers in england were. Looks like we have this problem all over again.
Amazon's MP3 service should have come out 10 years ago. This woman is getting punished by laws that serve an industry that REQUIRES the government to protect it inability to compete in the market. Record companies deserve to fail as a business and then prosecuted for the invasion of people privacy (Rootkits, etc.).
I wish ordinary citizens could have such power.
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You think this is wrong? Put your money (and your music) where your mouth is
Boycott RIAA-connected recordings (there are plenty of independent artists around). Send the poor woman a donation to help her pay that ridiculous penalty. Organize a fund to pay any such penalty, and get people to take a pledge to not buy a RIAA-connected CD in addition to making donations. (CDBaby is a good place to find independent artists' recordings...)
If you are an artist, release some of your recordings for free, and make it very clear that filesharing those particular files is OK. Consider a Creative Commons license for your work.
If the RIAA sees that their action has aroused public anger - not just grumbling in annoyance, but real and honest anger - they'll back off. Let's get angry. That's the only way that we can keep copyright law from getting even more out of hand than it already is. But we have to do something - not just grumble in annoyance and shrug disgustedly.
Note that according to copyright law as it is today, the mere fact of opening a music file on your computer can get you that penalty - the file gets copied to RAM when it gets opened, and that is considered "copying" for purposes of copyright law. I forget what court decision it was that came to this brilliant conclusion.
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It's a corrupt industry
I get a check every once in a great while for a song I wrote fifteen years ago. My bona fides.
The music industry is really, really corrupt. Most of the profits are separated from the writers and performers long before anyone in the public has a chance to download a song.
In a way, the industry's desire to push the concept of digital music over analog, when they moved from LPs to CDs, is what brought them to this problem. Once the average joe could copy zeroes and ones the industry had lost.
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@gruber: it's more complicated than that...
gruber wrote:
Comments like the one you wrote usually come from people who dream of fast riches with a hit song, not journeymen writers who make a reasonable income from performance.
********
actually, I don't write music, but I'm in a niche music business, and I have some knowledge of history.
Artists who don't get paid for their work, are quickly out of business, or worse.
I think a life-copyright is about right. Why not? The artist should benefit from their work for the rest of their life. The plus-70 is for heirs or copyright holders..that is less easy to justify, although if heirs profit, that seems right to me too.
As for not selling copyright, that's just silly. Consider Brahms. He sold all copyrights to his main publisher. Why? Because he didn't want to be bothered. He wanted to write, and perform, and enjoy life. His publisher managed his money. Not always well, but well enough that Brahms was essentially independent before he was 40..
I imagine variations of this happen a lot, even to this day. Copyright is an asset like any other, and should be fungible. And so it is.
My point was simply that artists should be paid. We have copyright law to enable this. Sure, it's abused. What law isn't? But it's better than nothing at all.
I have done some arranging in my time, and I'll tell you right now, it's hard enough work that I would NEVER give it away, except in very special circumstances.
If people download music illegally, and they know it's illegal, they deserve what they get.