AUSTIN, March 13 — I'm not inclined to spend too much time on the panel discussion in which I participated. Let's just say IP attorney Chris Castle once again put together a stellar panel and I had another opportunity to promote the Copyright Alliance's efforts to demonstrate how copyright incentivizes creativity, jobs and growth. I did this not having a real sense of the audience. Half of the room raised their hands when Chris asked who was an artist, but one who didn't was a young man sitting in the front of the room wearing a T-shirt for all of us to see that said "Limewire," the P2P service that facilitates massive infringement of creative works. I didn't mind so much this non-artist thrusting his shirt in our faces, but I wondered at the mindset of somebody wearing that at a conference dedicated to performing artists, virtually all of whom have sold recorded music.

What I would like to briefly mention is the reception that I received following the panel. If I extrapolated the thoughts of the room based on Mr. Limewire, I would have felt it was not entirely a friendly space, and my experience speaking at this show last year taught me that there are more than a few in the music space who attend this show and have, unfortunately, transferred their frustration with aspects of the music industry's structure to copyright. Fortunately, most people have the logic not to make this leap.

At least they did in this room. I met artist after artist who was grateful for the work that we are doing in Washington to defend their rights. Many had good ideas on how we could keep up the fight. But mostly they were grateful, and surprised, because they had not heard of us and didn't realize they had this champion. Perhaps my most memorable encounter was on the trade show floor after my presentation. An individual recognized me who had been at the panel discussion and stopped to talk with me. This remarkable individual started a record label while an undergraduate, continued it while in law school, and now is running it full-time while also working as an IP attorney, going after infringers. We spent close to an hour brainstorming ways to reduce piracy, which he said is killing his small business. In fact, we talked so long that when I went to have lunch at my favorite Austin tex-mex restaurant, they were closed. No regrets, though, and those readers who know how much this native Arizonan craves authentic southwestern tex-mex cuisine will understand the sacrifice I willingly made.

I have learned much myself during my time here. As I told the audience, my passion for copyright came from personal experience in the written-word publishing industry, where things are very straightforward — there are writers and there are distributors, and deals are worked out based on which rights the writer will keep, which will be transferred to the publisher, and which will eventually revert. For the last decade or so I have been studying the music industry, and I am fortunate to have in the Copyright Alliance and on my board many seasoned veterans of the PROs, music publishers, labels, unions and artists' groups, but it still seems that every time I have a conversation with a musician I learn a little bit more. I love learning, so this is a lot of fun. 

This probably sounds a bit gushy for a policy blog. My apologies. But what I'm trying to convey, poorly I fear, is that it is refreshing to come to a place like SXSW and meet creative and entrepreneurial people whose lives are benefited by a strong copyright regime. Soon I'll be back in Washington, hearing the same twisted arguments that claim somehow that weakining copyright will benefit artists. I'm going to try as hard as I can to hold on to my memories of the discussions I've had here.

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 8:02 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under copyright opponents, creators. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.