U2′s Bono is unlikely to be the most sympathetic spokesman for online music theft, because in our society it seems we have anointed ourselves with the right to determine the “appropriate” level of a creator’s compensation. Bono admits in USA Today that he is in fact not the right spokesman

“because people think people like me are overpaid and overnourished, and they’re not wrong,” the U2 singer says. “What they’re missing is, how does a songwriter get paid? There’s no space for a Cole Porter in the modern age.

“It’s not the place for rich rock stars to ask for more money, but somebody should fight for fellow artists, because this is madness. Music has become tap water, a utility, where for me it’s a sacred thing, so I’m a little offended.”

He should be offended. All creators should be. Anyone can download without authorization a song written and performed by Bono. Only Bono can write and perform that song exactly that way. He has a gift but he also has a skill that has come from decades of hard work (read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers to see how much repeated performing and composing as young musicians helped The Beatles reach the creative heights they did).

Would-be economist bloggers love to treat creative works as a utility, an odd argument. Yes, when digitized “Put Your Boots On” becomes a bunch of ones and zeroes, not unlike the pair of hydrogen atoms attached to single oxygen atoms running through plumbing pipes. But turn on the faucet and the molecules remain indistinguishable. Play the latest U2 track “Put Your Boots On” through your PC or iPod and it becomes something unique.*

It is the notion of treating a unique creative work as a utility that leads to the intellectually vacant argument that creative works should be priced at the marginal cost of distribution, i.e., near zero. See that balloon punctured in my Canard #5.

Bono’s instincts are dead-on here, but he reveals the fact that he has been spending more time trying to bring prosperity to the developing world (kudos to him, by the way) than tracking the state of infringement online today beyond his own industry:

The Internet has emasculated rather than liberated artists, he says, noting that the record industry has lost billions in value.

“From punk rock to hip-hop, from heavy metal to country, musicians walk along with a smile and jump like lemmings into the abyss,” he says. “The music business has been thrown to the dogs legislatively.”

That indifference will vanish once “file-sharing of TV shows and movies becomes as easy as songs,” Bono says. “Somebody is going to call the cops.”

I wish it were that simple. TV shows and movies have been as easy as songs to infringe for years, thanks to torrent services and fast broadband. And “the cops” can’t really solve this problem. Law enforcement is absolutely appropriate in enforcing IP laws (see Canard #9) but I’m enough of a realist to know that the answer to massive home infringement lies more with technological solutions paired with enticing legal alternatives and education.

Last year in Cannes I heard U2′s manager, Paul McGuinness, express himself passionately against copyright infringement. He made some excellent points, but his language was such that he made it easy for some to dismiss him:

For McGuinness, it’s clearly “hippies” in Silicon Valley, who love music but don’t understand it. “They have a disregard for the real value of music,” he says. They also, he feels erroneously, “don’t think of themselves as makers of burglary kits.”

All of those Silicon Valley geeks looking for the killer ap? “The real killer ap is our clients’ recorded music,” he told the audience of band managers, who burst into applause.

He also noted that online infringement is eroding the mechanical royalties of songwriters. Note Bono cited songwriters as well. They are the forgotten victims of infringement, the ones who can’t make money on touring or T-shirts. (See Canard #4 on the fallacy of earning income only on rivalrous goods and services.)

Bono and McGuinness know a wee bit more about the music industry and the compensation of musicians, songwriters and music publishers than does, say, a tech blogger who likes to harp on marginal cost. It is very helpful they are speaking out, but Bono is right, we need more voices.

* “Put Your Boots On” also isn’t U2′s best work, but that is of course a matter of opinion. I know “New Year’s Day,” “One,” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday” probably make most lists, and I appreciate all of those (especially the a capella version of “New Year’s Day”), but as an owner of all of U2′s albums I love “Bullet the Blue Sky,” the title track from The Unforgettable Fire, and the gospel version of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” I’d love to know your favorites, or ones where you think they fell short (many put “The Unforgettable Fire” in that category, I’d put just about anything from Zooropa.)

Share this:

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 10:20 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under blogging, copyright law, copyright opponents, creators, internet, p2p, piracy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.