I’ve seen a fair amount of dismissal in the digital-utopian crowd of the nearly 12,000 individual artists and creators who signed our letter to President Obama and Vice President Biden asking that their rights over their works be respected online. If you’re acquiring or giving away someone else’s creativity and labor without their authorization or compensation, it’s easier to rationalize it if you feel you’re just sticking it to “The Man.”

So would you call independent musicians Borislav Mitic, Onofrio Falanga, Edward Box, George Bellas, Dushan Petrossi, Sebo Xotta, Emir Hot, and Simone Fiorletta “The Man”? These musicians have laid bare their souls on the Lion Music web site (an indie label) in a post called “The Murder of Music.”

You must read their stories. They love music and want to share their love with others. But while duplicating a recorded song online takes seconds, it takes much longer to master an instrument, develop composing skills, and record musical works at a high level of quality. As Mr. Petrossi puts it:

I will be straight and simple : If people just download or share the new Iron Mask album, which for information is by far our most expensive production, with a mix and master by Jens Bogren, there wont be another Iron mask album as the recording expense will not be recouped, so please beware and make the right choice before simply ‘clicking’.

In our society it is critical to point out false arguments — lies, whether intentional or self-deceptive — when we see them. It is false to defend illegal file-sharing by saying you’re doing it to promote a musician or composer, or because they’re getting screwed anyway and you’re only really hurting big evil corporations.

Lion Music is not big or evil. It exists to help talented musicians and composers reach an audience, with quality music prepared professionally. Yet Lion Music recently stated they could not sign any more artists to their label, and specifically cited illegal P2P as the reason, telling potential clients that “illegal file sharing on the net is killing independent music.”

I hear this routinely. Spend an hour at South by Southwest, a rockin’ good festival dominated by independent artists and labels, and the numbers will be spelled out plain and clear. I cited an independent musician, Juliette Tworsey of Firebug, in my testimony on piracy before the Federal Communications Commission.

Has music been murdered? No. Is the opportunity for independent musicians, composers and labels to actually sustain their creativity being significantly diluted by infringement? It is inarguable. Absolutely inarguable.

Share this:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 2:17 pm by Patrick Ross and is filed under FCC, blogging, copyright opponents, creators, p2p, piracy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.