Placing Demands on Artists
Monday, November 9th, 2009 by Patrick Ross
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Do I have a right to obtain music by The Beatles in any format I want? That is the question that one needs to ask when deciding how to view the decision by the remaining Beatles and key rightsholders to rule out certain forms of digital distribution.
L. Gordon Crovitz has a nice overview of rights in the digital age in an opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal. (Note the WSJ, which puts much of their content behind a paywall — and more power to them — is making this piece available to non-subscribers as well.)
It’s no secret among the digirati that The Beatles haven’t made their music available for download through legal services such as iTunes. They have long embraced digital, however. Their entire archive was put onto CD decades ago; I can remember purchasing several of their albums in CD back in the mid-1980s. (The Sgt. Pepper cover art lost some of its impact in the smaller format, but the White Album translated visually just fine.) Most recently, they made waves with a dedicated “Rock Band” game.
But as Crovitz points out, they haven’t felt it appropriate to have MP3s of their work thrown in with so much other stuff at a price point some tech company sets arbitrarily. That is their choice.
A common riposte by those who believe that because something can be made available online, it must be made available online, is that The Beatles are leaving money on the table, because their tunes are easily found on infringing networks. For some, this becomes a pretzel-like rationalization for infringement.
Perhaps The Beatles feel that the folks who would download their tunes from a torrent service are not the folks most likely to actually spend money on their music; after all, there are plenty of ways to obtain their music legally and digitally.
The reason for Crovitz’s post is a stunt pulled recently by a company no one had ever heard of, that was selling Beatles downloads for 25 cents and streaming them. That anyone thought this might have been licensed is laughable. That they thought anyone would buy their “psycho-acoustic simulation” infringement defense was, well, psycho. But this outfit, which I won’t name, now has a law suit on its hands, but more publicity than it ever could have bought, including big play in the Journal.
It’s easy for us to see what the Internet is capable of, and feel everything we want should be available there, in a manner that works best for us, at a price point we think is appropriate. It’s easy to think that way, and it’s also a wee bit silly.
We have so much more available to us legally now than we did ten years ago, five years ago, one year ago. It will be stunning how much more we have available legally one year from now, five years from now, ten years from now.
But at the end of the day, rightsholders are in the best position to decide what they release, in what format, in what venue, and with what rights transferred. There are many “rights” that are worth championing, but the “right” to someone else’s creativity on your own terms is not a “right” at all.
(Additional note: I am proud that I resisted all temptation to incorporate Beatles’ song titles and lyrics in this article. But I could never reach the high-water mark in that approach achieved by the creators of The Powerpuff Girls. Their “Meet The Beat-Alls” episode pulled off an entire episode constructed of such lines. The writing is sublime, and the “Yoko Ono” character is to die for.)
November 12th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Firstly, I’d like to nitpick (sorry about that!): When you say the Beatles are available “digitally”, I understand you to say that you can purchase their physical product online (just like you can buy, say, a chair over the internet). Rights-holders: pushing technology to the max, blowing dust in Google’s face!
Legally, you’re correct. There’s no specific requirement for each and every rights-holder to make their works available in a certain fashion in order to achieve copyright protection (and such a requirement would be rather difficult to effectively enforce). However, I (and most of my friends) are far more likely to spend money on a rights-holder who is receptive to our preferred use of digital technology. If the Beatles are more interested in protecting values I don’t share (owning a physical copy of the CD, buying an album at a time) I’m not especially interested in owning their music.
As a business matter, I would expect their actions to naturally increase piracy, which it is their right to attempt to prosecute. Like leaving a sports car in a bad neighborhood, their (in my opinion dumb) actions do not absolve infringers of guilt. However, any attempt to use the resulting lack of sales to push for more laws treading on others’ rights (restrictions on technology, bad copyright laws, or other arbitrary harassment of non-infringers) should be rejected. Ditto for demanding TARP funds to keep their business alive if no-one buys their product
We must remember that eliminating piracy will not make purchasing the songs any easier and will only partially increase revenue(if any). Without the option of piracy, many users will simply spend their money on other things.
November 12th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Piracy accusations have been used out of context within the digital age just like anti-copyright accusations have been.
It is really about the “first edition” Internet generation’s habits and preferred methods of getting content. If the “house” had been set up properly to begin with, it would have had a strong foundation supporting existing infrastructure inclusive of copyright laws and all other laws of the land and we wouldn’t be experiencing this mass confusion and divisiveness.
From the beginning ISP’s should have been charging by consumption. That would have made it fairly simple to segregate copyrighted materials from fair use and other types of content. The fees could have easily been in line with what we are paying today for access. For example, you watch a movie online and you used up 100mb of your 7 gig allocation. You download some music and you use up 10mb of your allocation and so on. In the meantime, the ISP is depositing .01 per mb used into a collective consisting of rights holders. In turn the rights holders would democratically split up the pie.
Viola! Everybody’s happy and it is the fairest way for ALL concerned.
Fortunately, this is exactly how mobile networks are set up. So let’s get this done!
December 5th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Actually on December 7th the Beatles will release a limited edition Apple shaped USB Key with re-mastered audio for The Beatles’ 14 stereo titles, as well as all of the re-mastered CDs’ visual elements, including 13 mini-documentary films about the studio albums, replicated original UK album art, rare photos and expanded liner notes and the 16GB USB’s audio contents will be provided in FLAC 44.1 Khz 24 bit and MP3 320 Kbps formats
flac is an excellent format for music quality.
Will it be avaiable for download illegally ? of course
But they’ve put together a very compelling package and I’m really hopeful (being a large Beetles fan) that I’ll be able to get my hands on one.
I had read somewhere that the reason the Beatles do not have mp3s on line is that they had demanded that they be compensated by EMI for any songs that leaked to file sharing sites (for each download)
EMI of course would be too exposed for this to take place.
I’m sure they don’t have the same deal for the USB key so it does puzzle somewhat.