This is what the owner had to say to someone who asked a similar question (from a comment on one of the recordings):
"It's very easy to answer your question: this beautiful music is not simply a commodity, to be hoarded. The copyright owners have a responsibility to the artists and their executors, and to their consumers, to make available what should be shared. It is quite simply wrong to maintain ownership of these recordings, and refuse to make them available. I would gladly pay money for CD re-releases of every album I have posted here: I have already paid large sums of money for these albums, and it grieves me that none of that money has found its way into the pockets of the recording artists or their executors, because I have bought their recordings in private sales. I do not post material that is commercially available, and I consider it morally reprehensible to do so. But equally I consider it morally reprehensible for copyright owners to do nothing to re-release important albums when it is in their power to do so. It is a simple and cost-effective process to release albums electronically, and make them available for legal download. If it is not done, they will be made available by people like me, who have no intrest in making money illegally. When master tapes are no longer available, and albums cannot be re-released, there is no reason why record companies should be concerned when people make rips of the original albums, because there is no loss of potential revenue involved. The idea that copyright law should be observed simply because it is the law, rather than because it protects peoples' interests, is not something that I am willing to countenance. Laws that exist without good moral reason do not possess the power of moral obligation. Laws are necessary to protect the interests of the commonwealth, and when they cease to have purpose, they cease to have moral power."
I bought that Tommy Peoples one on vinyl from Collett's over 20 years ago. The spark is there but begod it's a tough listen at times. He's appeared on some great albums with others but the only solo Tommy one I regularly listen to is The Quiet Glen. A fabulous album.
The download server for ceolalainn is incredibly slow - 109MB in about 50 minutes for the first item (a zip file)! With my broadband I would normally expect to download that in under 2 minutes.
I agree with Floss. And the question of what is morally acceptable/required/forbidden is a completely different question from the question of what is legally acceptable/required/ forbidden.
Why couldn't the copyright holders decide tomorrow to digitize the albums they own the rights to (just as the site owner has done) and sell them on i-Tunes for $9.99?
At the present rate it will take a century for record companies to sort out the internet, and by then people will be getting music some other way. If record companies can't or won't find a way to successfully market their product online, then they will lose profits. That's capitalism. In the meantime I have no problems with downloading out of print selections like these. I do my homework first, and to the best of my ability make sure they're out of print.
Unlike a corporate entity that was born before me and will exist long after my death, my time to sit and wait for a reprinting of great music is capped at about another 60 years. I'll pay for it, sure. But they won't sell it to me. On the other hand I can pay a used music seller a ridiculously inflated price for said music, and the artist won't be seeing a penny for that? The legally correct "pay for what you listen to" argument seems a little silly in that regard.
I'm offering to visit the owner of this site in jail! What a can of worms he/she has opened! And a delicious one at that. I must admit that I've dipped into it myself.
The two Mick Hanley albums and the Celtic Folkweave album, for example, should have been re-released years ago, along with most of the other titles on the site.
As an amateur artist/photographer myself I fully appreciate the need for copyright protection. However, I just can't understand why anyone would just leave these recordings lying in a drawer somewhere when the demand from fans/consumers is greater than it's ever been in the history of the music. If they don't want to release them, then give the master tapes to the artists or to a sympathetic record company.
Incredible to hear An Bothán A Bhaigh Fionnghuala sung like this on Celtic Folkweave, at about half the speed of the one on other (later?) recordings (or maybe they were just working up speed!).
the "moral or legal position" actually doesn't make the slightest bit of difference either. People photocopy books and other literature and they copy music, the issue is only going to get bigger with the availability of music on the net. The real question is how it is going to be dealt with. Copyright infringement in most countries, in my understanding, is a breach of civil law, not criminal. As such the remedy in a successful case is for damages. This seems to have been based, at least in the cases in the United States, on placing a monetary value on the number of downloads someone has made, the rationale being that that is the loss to the artist, or more particularly, the record label. If a recording is not available commercially, how is the "loss" quantified? Seems like a pretty good defence to me. Record labels can argue the toss until they go bankrupt, I guess.
Ok, if the site owner is morally comfortable why doesn't he find out from Seamus Begley, Kevin Burke, Matt Malloy, John Carty and Tommy Peoples are happy about their music being given away for free.
The only people who are stealing from these artists are the record companies who can't be bothered to make their recordings commercially available.
As for my understanding of copyright legislation, it is indeed very limited. Law was not my subject. Please feel free to enlighten me. My opinion on the morality of making commercially unavailable material accessible to all is not set in stone, and if there is anybody out there who is able to change it through the force of their argument, then I would welcome the opportunity to view their ideas.
I wasn't arguing the legal or moral issues. I was saying in my own sweet way that justifying your acquisition on the grounds that the thing is "out of print" is just incredibly lame.
If you're going to acquire it, you will. If that requires an adjustment of conscience, then adjust your conscience. "Out of print" is just you publicly adjusting your conscience. It's still someone else's property you're grabbing so whether it's in print or out is irrelevant. I suppose I could ask why you didn't buy it when it was in print. Like I said, I'm not moralising because I'm far from squeaky clean meself when it comes to borrowing peoples CDs and all. Would I acquire The Noah's Ark Trap (one of the best albums of all time in my view, and which I don't currently possess, alas) if it popped up on a download site or as a CD-R Bulmer release? You bet your arse I wouldn't.
No Michael. People's. People is the plural (unless I'm talking about the diverse peoples of the world, which I'm not), so the possessive has to be "people's." As for Tommy's surname, it's Peoples. So you'd write "borrowing Tommy Peoples' CDs."
Great to hear Taking Flight again after many years. I've got a copy on vinyl somewhere, but even if I could lay hands on it I've got nothing that will play it.
There's nothing wrong with writing "Peoples's" if that's how you say it. The rules about that aren't hard and fast. Personally, I think I'd say "Tommy Peoples' CD," so that's how I'd write it.
Actually, you needn't use the apostrophe at all when talking about Tommy Peoples CDs. You talk about Altan CDs and Bothy Band CDs without using the possessive. It would be absurd to ask "Could I borrow your Altan's CDs?"
Don't know about 'we', but you're talking about a completely different usage, using the name as an adjectival qualifier, and you reinforce it by the primary placement of 'your'. Could you borrow Altan CD? Try asking it that way in a record shop, you'll probably get charged double the price.
The issue has been for years now, that if something is on someone's computer somewhere in the world who is connected to the net, if they have music on there, currently released or not, then it is open to be picked up by pirate software and made available worldwide as 'grey copy', I think it is called. The way to deal with that, is to legalise and monitize the grey downloads, that way the artist can get paid for the download, even if the music is 'out of print'. 'out of print' as a term is really heading the way of the dinosaurs, with the internet.
Suppose an individual buys a Rembrandt painting and then chooses to stick it in his basement where no-one can view or appreciate it. Are the public now entitled to break into his house to take a peek?
Not moralising because, like others above, I gave up that right. But I do struggle with the logic.
People couldn't sell units of music without their presence 100 years ago. And just because music without presence became a commodity doesn't mean it always has to be so. it isn't a natural thing, it's an invented thing.
But then home taping killed music back in the 1980s so I really don't know what all the fuss is about.
Here are some scenarios:
1. I have an original vinyl copy of Taking Flight, I could borrow my mates turntable to digitize it on my rig or I could download the posted mp3, either way I end up with the same result but I use less electricity and time with the latter.
2. I can then sell my original copy on Ebay at 20 x its original cost, make a very tidy profit, all of which I trouser, none of which goes towards Bobby Casey's estate or the defunct company who probably paid Bobby less than the sum of my profit for the recording session (I don't know any details here).
"What if that individual opens the doors of his house to the public and people can come see the Rembrandt for free?"
There's a hotel in Ireland where people can wander in for free and admire a genuine Leonardo Da Vinci in a glass case (very well protected) next to the reception desk. I suspect that's a delicate hint of the prices they charge (starting at €100 pppn). But we did scrape together enough to have a coffee in the restaurant.
If you feel guilty about burning music for free, you could always paypal some money to the artist I suppose. Unless he's dead. In which case you could just send flowers.
Yea, and another funny thing about music is someone has the provide it. And with recorded music someone has to pay for it. Nowadays that is often the artist.
Then C.O., simply don't download many of these DEAD musicians represented by now defunct record labels. This is stuff that won't be available anytime soon -- if at all. You'll also notice Dragut has REMOVED download links for one set of records at least where a label has planned to reissue the old recording.
Surely even your conscience can live with that? Wouldn't want to be narrow minded ....
Mtodd, if you bothered to read the above posts you'd see my only problem is with the work of the LIVING musicians. You steal away if your conscience can take it.
If the recordings aren't generally available then the players may well not object. Though I know from personal experience it can take years for an artist to regain rights to a recording following a label going defunct.
a certain irony here is that some (lots) if these artists are playing music written by someone else who they are only going to pay artistic deference to (gulp I can't believe I said that)...making it a sort of counter-paradox to suggest it is wrong to partake of this delicious indulgence... strayaway child anyone...?
'Guilt shmilt. Thanks Dragut for making available all this great music that otherwise would not be available. Funny thing about music, it's made to be listened to. Pretty hard if some old bunch of codgers and penny pinchers want to hide it away, right?'
That's just about the most ridiculous thing I've read on this board today.
Let's get the facts straight for once and for all.
Dragut Reis (whose actual identity I know) runs a blogspot site which specialises in making freely available copies of out-of-print albums and some live recordings (though when one checks the details of these it becomes rapidly apparent that they've been filched from organisations such as RTÉ, the BBC and the British Library's Sound Archive).
Let's deal with the latter first. I very much doubt whether RTÉ would be happy to know that its recordings (of which it maintains copyright, not the musicians) are being made freely available without permission - and the same point would apply to Dragut Reis making the Denis Murphy 1995 CD available (which seems utterly cheeky - has he actually contacted RTÉ to find out whether it would be reissued?).
The BBC recordings of Richard O'Mealy were actually copyrighted by the Beeb in the late 1970s and have been cobbled together from the Seán Reid Society's site without either the BBC's or SRS's permission (and both would probably have been refused).
The recordings taken from the British Library's Sound Archive (Bobby Casey and Brendan McGlinchey) have been posted by Dragut Reis on his site in direct contravention of the BL's terms of use policy.
Now lets look at those out-of-print LPs.
Firstly, and unequivocally, Dragut Reis has infringed the most basic tenet of copyright legislation by making freely available recordings to which he has no rights of ownership whatsoever.
Secondly, said legislation (whether it's within the EU, US, Japan or anywhere else) provides no moral 'escape clause'
which allows someone who feels that out-of-print albums should be made available, because label owners have been 'reprehensible', to second guess said label's intentions and make recordings of music (which they don't own) available on a free-for-all basis.
I wonder, thirdly, whether, Dragut Reis has actually approached any of the labels whose offerings he's made available for free. Can he be sure that Topic, for instance, doesn't have any plans regarding The Star of Munster Trio album? Does he know about the intentions of Compass Records (the owners of Mulligan and Green Linnet), CCÉ, Rounder or Shanachie? The answer, I suspect, is that he hasn't and is flying on a wing and a prayer.
Next, there's this - 'It is quite simply wrong to maintain ownership of these recordings, and refuse to make them available.' Why is it wrong? I'm not going to delve deeply into this very Kantian position, but, from a simple point of view, if I don't want to lend you my shovel then I won't.
Lastly, from the quote above, there's this - 'The copyright owners have a responsibility to the artists and their executors, and to their consumers, to make available what should be shared.'
Frankly, this takes the ultimate biscuit. The copyright owners have a duty to fulfil the rights of their contract with the musician(s). That's it and nothing else. A label such as Topic has no 'responsibility' beyond its contracts. Have you read any of those, Dragut Reis? I doubt it. Have you ever seen a publishing contract (in any format)? I doubt that too. A label's responsibility to its artists goes only as far as the clauses and conditions in the contract. There are usually no rights granted to executors unless a musician died within the time-frame of an existing contract. There are absolutely no rights granted to consumers within this framework.
On one level I do appreciate what Dragut Reis is doing, but he's chosen completely the wrong way to go about his task. It would have been far better to have contacted the labels concerned and enquired whether they would allow him to make their recordings freely available. On the other, however, I think it is truly reprehensible to sell off others assets at a nugatory value.
In conclusion, some time ago I discovered that Allen Freedman had actually made more recordings during his time in Donegal and Tyrone than were issued as the John Doherty 'Bundle and Go' album. That's an obviously logical surmisal, but I wasn't sure that they still existed. So I contacted Topic and discovered that there was a second album planned for release which featured four fiddlers - James Byrne, Simon Doherty, Con Cassidy and Danny O'Donnell - called 'Passing the Time'. However, said album was never released because Danny O'Donnell refused to sign the contract on the grounds that he didn't want to be heard unaccompanied (he'd done the same thing previously with 'The Brass Fiddle').
I've had a legitimate copy of this album for some years (supplied by Topic via the British Library) and even delivered a copy to James Byrne (who reckoned he'd been paid a tenner for his offerings), but there's absolutely no way that I'm going to make this freely available, wondrous recording that it is, on the basis of Danny's refusal to allow its original release. [Please don't ask me for a copy.]
I think we should abide by musicians' intentions and that's yet another thing Dragut Reis doesn't really understand.
"What about Kevin Burkes recording then that is only 5 years old?"
I myself am not aware of any breaks in the fabric of the time/space continuum...therefore it would be logical to assume the recording is indeed 5 years old. However if we have experienced any warp in the temporal fabric that has not been registered then the recording could be as old as the hills...depending on how you measure time...go beyond time to infinity I say...then it won't matter ...besides the Lords of Karma will settle all accounts in due course...royalties included...
So is posting this music then not "reasonable" and based on a reasonable doubt as to whether it will ever see the light of day, or has it been unreasonable to do so?
I can't help thinking that music without an audience to listen to it is a dead tradition.
mtodd, you've completely missed the point and, by highlighting the Ceol Álainn site here, probably initiated the procedure for getting it closed down. Mull on that, if you will.
Just a quick note off-topic. This thread is outstanding, not because it is devoid of some of the nastiness that erupts regularly on this site, but because, despite that, it has remained intelligent, nearly troll-free, and ultimately about the music. Interesting topic. I wish I knew more about copyright laws as they pertain to trad music. I mean, where rights are concerned, it's more about the recording than about a tune, which, for legal purposes, may as well have been written 400 years ago by a blade of grass, yes? I would have gone to law school if I could stomach being a lawyer.
A couple of folk have mentioned release by download. It's worth noting that the likes of itunes don't just take anything, and by that I don't mean that any of the recordings are not top quality, but if they don't think it will shift units they won't accept it. So that avenue may not always be available to the copyright holder.
I think the principle of putting these recordings up is good but the proper channel's should be used and where there are musicians involved that are still recording, then at the very least they should be asked for their blessing.
There really are two different arguments being made here. One is legalistic (the copyright law says ....). The other is normative (what is the greater good, regardless of the letter of the law - or, as Dickens wrote, the law is an ass. )
Since when do 'fabulously wealthy music corporations' put out Irish music? Most Irish music seems to be released by small outfits who are struggling to earn a buck, and doing much of what they do out of love of the tunes, just like the musicians!!!
Beat me to it 'ob ' I thought Floss made an extreamly good and to my view a telling point . Does the artist actually want this music to be out there .
I wonder if in the future Bob Dylan will feel the same about his new Christmas record
iTunes is a straight jacket, and artists need not consider it as the only means of ofering digital music to paying listeners. King Crimson, the Grateful Dead, Radiohead, a whole host of other groups outside the traditional folk genre have found way around this. And it is more economical than than burning and distributing compact discs with liner notes and artwork.
Gravelwalks
I think if an artist wants to promote his or her work/ album in that manner its up to them ,not a third party with out their agreement
Thats the point really .
All wildcat bloggers or torrent trackers aside, I was just pointing out that iTunes isn't the only way an artist can sell digital music. CO raised the point that iTunes may not take your average workaday trad music, perhaps in favor of more lucrative offerings. Good point that, if iTunes were the only place on the net to get digital music. They're fantastic and even make a good model in a lot of ways. But I'm afraid that its presence and position in the market could be detrimental to variety. Less competition isn't a good thing for consumers. More direct downloads from artist and label websites, for example, would be a welcome change. I already buy 90% of my hard copy music on the net, I would love to be able to cut out the shipping and handling costs.
That's true gravelwalks but it's still not simple on a small scale. There was a small company that started to do trad downloads a couple of years ago (tradtunes.com possibly, can't quite remember) but despite having the main trad names in Scotland they could not generate enough turnover to make it work. Download is not always easy for small record companies.
OK OK, everyone take it easy. The capitalist class is SO pleased to have so many defenders here, especially among the worker bees! Good on ye all! Well done!
...but seriously folks. Any company complaining about something they have out of print?
So go release it on iTunes then and quit yer bitching.
How hard is it to open a website and do e-commerce in this day and age? Any one of us with half a brain can do it. No damn excuses.
Now all you fine pub room lawyers can continue with your legal work. If you'll excuse me, my anti-authoritarianism is showing. Off to the powder room for me!
If some duffer can make this blog in his spare time, what excuse does ANY for profit company, regardless of size, have for NOT doing e-commerce with their catalog?
There isn't one. Some dude did it himself for no money.
SWFL, it's not that simple. As soon as something is on a commercial basis there are costs involved. http://www.tradtunes.com/ The homepage now says why the service had to cease.
Swfl
Plus you still don't answer the point about the permission of the Artist
If an artist wants to sell their music that way it's up to them not up to you.
I'm perfectly comfortable with the idea of copying recordings around. Who among us didn't do that as a kid, when we were getting into music? And yet we all likely poured a hefty chunk of our limited disposable income into LPs, tapes, and CDs... Hell, it was illegal copies of Altan, Chieftans, and Seamus Connolly that got me interested in playing Irish music to begin with!
Yes, copying and filesharing this stuff is probably illegal (though I'm skeptical that anyone will really press charges here--especially across international borders), and possibly immoral (depending on whether you feel providing something for free is worse than keeping it hidden from the world). But actual harm here is virtually impossible to assess. The people who download the most are the same people who buy the most, and the idea that every download is a lost sale is simply silly. (I didn't even know who Denis Doody, or Mick Hanly was before I downloaded their albums. Now I'd be happy to pay to hear either of them).
Copying and sharing is a reality. You can argue back and forth about whether it's a good or a bad thing, but while you do that, I've got a fiddle lesson to teach. I pointed my student at that Tommy Peoples recording, and told him to learn a tune from the source...
You make a very valid point, Georgi. I had never heard of Denis Doody, either, but I really like that collection of tunes.
I tend to buy recordings from artists at concerts. I like to put the money into their hands, and the music is better for me having an idea of what they look like when they play. I am most impressed by musicians that take it on the road, whether 'famous' or more obscure. They put up with the hassle and discomfort of travel so that I can hear them play or sing. Good deal!
The internet ihas changed the way we hear and acquire music. Everyone with a computer and a mic can record their own, for fun or profit. I can't help but think that that could be a good thing. Record companies have provided a service in the past, but their model is from the past.
Great discussion. This bit from the back of a trad CD wasn't written by a lawyer, but (or that's why) it makes good sense:
"Please support independent musicians by not copying this CD when purchase is an option."
This is a problem Thomas Kuhn would have loved, as we are in the midst of a textbook paradigm shift (even though he talked about the natural sciences, his ideas are applicable elsewhere). We have developed a certain construct or model of music based on ideas of ownership, property, the fact that you "own" the music you create and you sell it, and this weird relationship between musicians and record companies where musicians give up some of their ownership of their "product" in exchange for services the record company can provide, such as making recordings and distributing them. It's a very capitalistic paradigm, of producers and consumers and copyrights and all these kinds of constructs. A lot of people have a lot invested in this paradigm providing an effective model for making a career out of being a musician. It sort of worked pretty well up until now -- and I use all those qualifiers for the reasons Georgi stated so well above: that copies of CDs and tapes and records have been around for ages.
Now we have all this new technology and the paradigm I described isn't working as well anymore. You can distribute a lot more free music a hell of a lot faster via the internet than you ever good copying cassett tapes. People keep coming up with software that tries to block this and other people write more software that gets around the blocking software. It's a never ending battle. Dragut's website is a great example of the model breaking down but it's so hazy -- out of print recordings, etc. that it is causing a huge long thread of controversy on this website. The record companies are hanging on by their fingernails since any eedjit with a computer and a mike can record an album and if they have a printer they can print album covers and make their own CD. The lines between producers and consumers have gotten blurrier as the consumer has acquired a hell of a lot more control.
Whether you like it or not, the old paradigm that has sort of worked, at least in our living memory, isn't working now. Whether you agree or disagree with Dragut's website, it is endemic of the problems faced by the music industry right now. Fighting it, whether it's by shutting websites like this one down or finding new and ingenius ways to encrypt albums or whatever, isn't the way forward. I think the industry needs to adopt a new model and slowly but surely, it probably will.
I don't know if there's a rule about citing Kuhn, sort of like Godwin's Law, but I'm going to leave that aside for the moment.
I want to address something that Floss the Tethers has brought up:
"I think we should abide by musicians' intentions and that's yet another thing Dragut Reis doesn't really understand."
I thought about trying to contact the musicians and ask them what they thought about it, but then I realized what a sticky position that would put them in. Mick Hanly, for example, doesn't own the copyright to these recordings as far as I know. What happens if he starts telling people "sure, go ahead and download them, I don't mind". Well, that in itself could be a violation of copyright law - especially if someone were to offer him money for the recordings. Sorry, a pay-pal account with his name on it next to the download button - same thing, to the law, I suppose.
I don't imagine that Kevin Burke will be dropping by either, to tell a bunch of trad music fanatics (who have just got through savaging Frankie Gavin for a business decision to use a band name) that they shouldn't download a set of tunes - tunes that they probably already own on records anyway. What has he got to gain by it? He might hate the idea of this recording being available - he seems to take a lot of pride in making excellent records, musically and sonically, and this is a one-off recording from a night at the Cobblestone. Good, nothing very different from other recordings, nothing special, nothing to warrant it being released.
Or, who knows, he might not mind at all - after all, people on this board likely have bought a lot of records that he's on, some of which he even got paid for. Most of the people reading thesession.org pay for tickets to hear him play when he comes to town, maybe he doesn't mind if people get a little extra something. You don't know, any more than I do. The only thing that we do know is that there's little incentive for him to speak up on the matter either way. Whatever he thinks about it, there's not a lot of upside in him saying anything about it on a website, "in front of god and everybody", as they say.
If either of the two decides to prove me wrong, I'd love to hear what they or any of the other artists represented here have to say about the matter, but unless and until they do, I think it's less than fair to speak in their names. Most of the arguments made here so far are quite worthy of consideration on their own merits.
Silver Spear is right. making a living out of selling units of music that don't require presence is an outmoded concept. It isn't even a concept that has much history. I love the way people like FlosstheTethers get so worked up about it.
and should all those people who play just like (or try to) other people pay money to the PRS or whoever everytime they execute a roll in say the style of Kevin Burke, one that they learned off Promenade, say, back in the 80s? Surely that's reproduction too?
10p for each triplet after the style of Tommy Peoples.
Aside from the cost of production I wonder if the value placed on a recording by consumers has gone down.
In the 1930s how long would it have taken to play through an average record collection - 2 hours ? 4 hours ? Every 78 available to buy would have been a special treat.
In the 1970s I and most people who records I borrowed (...) probably could play through their collection in a day or so (if they had wanted to).
Now, how long would it take to listen through just the archived Late Session programmes ?
Traditional music is being made available to listen to legally for free faster than one person could listen to it, probably even if you ignore repeats of tracks. And a lot of it is recorded live.
I often wonder if musicians get played well for live performances that are broadcast. Er, especially when listening to my recording of that Malloy/Carty/McGlynn broadcast taken off the radio...
It's a great thread all right. It's a wonderful compendium of excuses and justifications for obtaining something that exists only by dint of someone else's blood, sweat, tears and talent (and cash) for nothing. Garn, just nick it and live with it - after all, no-one's coming to get you for it, which kind of makes it OK, eh?
@ Steve: "It's a wonderful compendium of excuses and justifications for obtaining something that exists only by dint of someone else's blood, sweat, tears and talent (and cash) for nothing".
Doesn't that sound like everything? Not just a debate about some trad recordings.
to each according to their needs and from each according to their abilities .....
I wish I knew something about the history of copyright in the music industry, as it would be interesting to know how this "units of music" (thanks for the term, pavif!) as private property model developed. There would have been some sort of historical process behind it. Anyway, whether or not you agree with obtaining free music, the point is that the units of music as private property model isn't working. No matter which side of this debate you are on, you can surely see that. Screaming that stealing music is wrong won't help, since it is apparent from this thread alone that not everyone shares the exact same construct of a unit of music as private property. This has always been a somewhat tenuous classification, far more tenuous than say, the classification of a car as private property. I can't go into a Tesco and buy keys and a kit for hot wiring a car like I can buy some blank CDs. With the internet and the technology for making recordings available for free to a large number of users, these small cracks, which are hardly new, in how various people understand and apply constructs of music and property have become giant gaping canyons.
Sure, this website might be shut down, but others like it -- and not just for trad music -- will inevitably appear. And people will continue to burn CDs, use bit torrent type things, etc. etc. You can expend lots of energy putting out small fires, but the fires are endemic of the big, systematic problem and until you address that, you'll be perpetually fighting these wee fires.
The units - after Guttenberg - used to be sheet music (see Dennis Potter's Pennies From Heaven ... pun intended by Potter), which, in a temporal sense, is therefore more traditional than recordings.
Recordings were a pardigm shift. Now the process of their reconfiguration in the capitalist model is another. Like Silver Spear says, shout all you like, it's not going to stop. And it isn't really being driven by abberant subjects, miscreants and immoral n'er do wells.
Musicians need to find a new model. And anyway, it's not like the old one did many people so many favours is it?
I'll be sure and title my next post "A Burning Question"
Enjoying the discussion. BTW...just for the "record" ...I've bought my fair share. And the only ones I intend to [or indeed am interested in] download[ing] from this site are from artists who are long gone and where one can't possibly get their music any other *reasonable* way -- now or likely in the future.
I have tried to get permission from artists with regards to their music, as I've stated, but it's quite difficult, as many of them are dead.
Those who are alive are a bit rubbish at replying to emails.
Did anybody up on their high horses stop to consider whether the artists' wishes are consulted before their concerts etc. are posted on Youtube? Not one person has mentioned the most famous pirate site in the world, for some reason. The fact is, as many have noted, the internet has changed the way in which the world of media works irreversibly. I don't think I've done any harm by posting these wonderful recordings for people to hear, and contrary to certain self-righteous individuals' assumptions, I have contacted a number of record companies who are in ownership of copyright, and I am aware of those recordings which are intended for re-release and those that are not. It is possible to understand copyright law, and still disagree with it. I may not be a lawyer, but I'm not an idiot, and I'm certainly not a thief. I always buy CDs direct from the artists when I travel to their gigs, and I'll buy them a pint when they're out for a tune. I just don't buy into the outdated economic and legal shibboleths because I don't believe in them. Some record companies did a great job promoting traditional music, and did a great job for their recording artists. Some did well for themselves, and screwed their artists over, and continue to do so. The internet is now part of the capitalist marketplace, and if business doesn't adapt, it dies. That's what capitalism is all about kid.
The man in the street might well see the whole issue summed up as "You can't play with my toys ... they're mine!" The problem is that the issue is backed up by copyright law (unknown in the Baroque period), but copyright law - as with most other legislation - soon gets bedeviled by that other law: The Law of Unintended Consequences.
Thank God I was never a copyright lawyer.
It's great...here we are trying -- quite vainly -- to control what simply cannot be controlled....freedom of access, human nature, sharing and basic human curiosity ["hey, that's cool, never hear of that guy/woman...I'll have a listen"]
The fact is, control has been wrested from the controllers [by the web/digital technology] and has been place in the hands of the people.
And the people will rule. That's just common sense. But still we cling vainly to an outmoded and hopelessly inadequate system of reward and punishment.
"Screaming that stealing music is wrong won't help..."
Nobody's screaming. But if you get something for nothing without permission you are, er, stealing. That was a good one about I've bought my fair share anyway. So it's OK to steal a Rembrandt as long as I've already bought three Rembrandts... That's another good one that justifies it because you can buy blank CDs at Tesco. You can bet your life that, in the early 80s when only one factory was capable of producing CDs, had the record companies been able to predict that, less than 20 years down the line, any fool would be able to make a perfect copy of any CD at home for 10p, they'd have slapped the most titanic copy-protection possible on CDs from the outset. Not too many of us are squeaky clean but a lot of us draw our own lines in the sand. No-one's going to come and get us, that's the luxury of this discussion (how different the arguments would be if that wasn't the case!). Just do what you do do quietly and cut out the convoluted justifications!
It's not the same Steve, and the analogy doesn't hold any more water now than it did 30 posts ago. A painting is a concrete object, whereas copyright protects property in the abstract. Stealing a painting deprives its owner of his possession, whereas the copying of recorded material deprives nobody, unless it is depriving them of profit. In the case of music that will not produce profit for the copyright owners because they have either lost the master tapes or decided not to re-release for other reasons, it deprives them of nothing, other than the potential to make profit, and that is something of which they are already depriving themselves. These are not legalistic arguments, obviously, but they do have an obvious logic. It is necessary for busineses to adapt in order to make profit and survive. The internet is forcing them to adapt, or die, and if illicit recordings made available on the internet force music companies into the 21st century, and forcibly encourage them to release old recordings in legal formats, then that in itself will have made the whole exercise worthwhile.
The Greatful Dead figured this out years ago, well ahead of the curve, exactly what Silver Spear is saying. There's been a shift. The Dead were well ahead of it, but they made the plan clear.
They encouraged bootlegging and made their money on playing live and merchandise sales.
You seem to want to rewrite the law because you don't like what copyright owners do. The fact is that the copyright owners can do what they like, and if they want to cut their noses off to spite their own faces they have the absolute right to do just that. I hate what Mr Bulmer, for example, is doing (or not doing) with the masters of Nic Jones's albums, but they are his and I have no right to take the law into my own hands. If I grab a pristine vinyl copy of Noah's Ark Trap and make dozens of CD-Rs with it and spread 'em around, even if I give 'em away, I may not be depriving Bulmer of any profits now but I am compromising his ability to do so at a later date if he ever comes to his senses. He may have other sources of income that obviates any need for him to "adapt or die." The masters are his and it is 100% his decision as to whether he wishes to deprive himself of a profit or defer the day when he makes one. I can't tell you how much I detest what he's done but that just can't cloud the facts, and the most salient fact is that those masters are his. I don't like it one little bit but there it is. If I win the lottery I'll make him an offer he can't refuse and give the masters back to Nic Jones. As I say, we all find our own ways round all this, and no-one's coming to get us and I severely doubt that hellfire will be ours. Venial sins are still sins.
Steve (atheist actually)
"if you get something for nothing without permission you are, er, stealing"
Damn. Somebody should have told me that when I learned that tune last night from my friend Tina (without asking her permission) that I was stealing it from her.
Of course the comparison to Rembrandts is fundamentally flawed, because paintings are a commodity in limited supply. If I copy your CD, I haven't stolen it from you because you still have it. The only actual harm done is that somebody *theoretically* lost a sale (I say theoretically because much of the copying is done of things that people WOULDN'T have bought).
Steve Shaw said:
"You can bet your life that, in the early 80s when only one factory was capable of producing CDs, had the record companies been able to predict that, less than 20 years down the line, any fool would be able to make a perfect copy of any CD at home for 10p, they'd have slapped the most titanic copy-protection possible on CDs from the outset."
This would be a very safe bet.
This comment shows a distinct lack of understanding of the history of the music industry. The fact is, the music industry has been hollering that the sky was falling on music ever since the invention of the gramophone. They believed that cylinders, cassettes, VCRs and MP3s would all destroy the music business (in all cases, they were wildly wrong):
Copy protection doesn't, and never did, work. Time and time again, it only punished the people who bothered to actually buy the product (with security-destroying rootkits, requirements to buy special hardware, not being able to listen on the player of your choice, etc). The pirates not only broke the copy protection, but in doing so made a better product (eg: one you could listen to anywhere and that didn't damage your computer).
"You seem to want to rewrite the law because you don't like what copyright owners do. The fact is that the copyright owners can do what they like, and if they want to cut their noses off to spite their own faces they have the absolute right to do just that."
Perhaps he wants to rewrite the law because it's stupid, and it hurts humanity?
SWFL - it's true that the Grateful Dead did make a viable business allowing taping of their concerts, but keep in mind that they were, and still are, some of the most stringent enforcers around when it comes to the copyrights they choose to maintain. They chose to give away the right to make and distribute copies of their live shows, but at some of the same shows they would bust people for selling a T-shirt with one of their registered images (the skull and lightning bolt, for example, or the skull and roses - there was a list that the band released). Today, if you go to archive.org, you'll find that some of the band's most popular shows are not available there, because they're available for purchase as official live albums, such as the Dick's Picks series, and the band has asked that they not be distributed on-line - "asked" in the sense of "invoked their status as copyright holder". So there's not a lot of hope for an anti-copyright position in the Grateful Dead case.
But even if it were as simple as "the Grateful Dead gave away their music, and made money", the most important part of that sentence is the part where the band makes the decision. None of the artists on Dragut's site have publicly stated that they approve of this, so there's no indication that this is part of anyone's business model. The Grateful Dead case might be an argument to sway someone to the model you'd like them to follow, but it has no bearing on whether or not there's a violation of any moral or ethical principles involved in Dragut's site. Legal principles, obviously, are totally disregarded - I think it's safe to say that "out of print" does not indicate that copyright has been abandoned.
I shudder to think what would have become of western civilization if the ancient monks scribbling away in their monasteries had to adhere to today's copyright laws...
Bootlegging/copying might be against the law, but it's a fact of life, and I would contend that it often (eg: in cases like Ceol Alainn) does more good than actual harm.
The tune you learned from Tina was either in copyright or not. We are not talking about obtaining stuff by learning it. If that were stealing and humanity was simultaneously infinitely moral we'd all still be grunting at each other's naked hairy bodies in between helpings of mammoth sh*te stew. There is nothing illegal or immoral about learning any tune, but you are stepping over a line, ever so slightly, if that tune is Ashokan Farewell, for example, and you play it in the pub without asking first. De minimis non curat lex, though, eh, and we all do it. It's about as victimless as it can get. Stick that tune on your CD, though, and you're nicking unless you pay. There is a difference.
Copy protection? It's only illegal for CDs because the record industry didn't see the future. Suppose they had brought it in. Well, there would have been around 12-15 years' worth of the CD experience before anyone at home could have had any need to break the code, let alone make copies of anything on blank CDs, because they didn't have computers. We would have been in a whole different mindset and we wouldn't have needed clumsy and panic-stricken attempts to bring in the kind of copy-protection that damages computers or makes CDs unplayable on some kit..
Whether I understand the music industry or not is entirely beside the point. It's whether we can honestly confront the difference between right and not-quite-so-right. Just because someone else is being a bastard doesn't justify me becoming one as well, even if they're big bastards and I'm only a little one. That doesn't mean I might not choose to be one.
Dragut chose to share some wonderful music that he decided would benefit...and be for the greater benefit...of musicians at large. He could have just as easily chose NOT to share and and hoard it out of either fear of "legal issues" [good moral escape clause] or miserliness.
What a wonderful discussion. I'm surprised there's only been a single reference to the history and purpose of copyright law. Of course it changes over time (recently in favor of megacorps as they keep extending the horizon so Disney can keep making profits on Mickey Mouse) but the original purpose of copyright law is most definitely NOT to enable people to make money.
The reason for copyright is to increase the production of intellectual capital. The reasoning is that with some incentive to produce, more will be produced. So profit is a consequence of the law, not its raison d'etre. As long as the profit motive is pursued without regard to the purpose of providing incentive to create, the law is out of step with its reason for existence. When a law doesn't do what it's designed for anymore, a couple of things can happen. One is that those with a vested interest in the status quo use their political clout to keep making money at the expense of artistic creation. Another is that people defy the law until the whole thing comes to a head and the law gets changed. Both of these are happening here. Which will win? Don't touch that dial! (which for the younger readers is an archaic reference to a knob that used to control channel selection on televisions sets).
BTW, another problem with the law is that the creation is done by the artists, but most of the "incentive" provided by the law goes toward production and distribution. Now that production and distribution are virtually free, we need a model where artists are compensated for creation, but producers/distributors lose their stranglehold on the process.
<<<stepping back down to the floor, pointing at the soap-box beside me.... "Who's next?">>>
Brink
Wouldn't copyright also, directly or indirectly, or both, increase the perceived value [the intellectual captital] of a work as it were? thereby making it profitable to make and distribute it? ie, a money making venture.
I suppose one problem may be that in the new "free" universe that digital tech has created is we're trying [and confused about] what the term "value" now means? Value to whom? Well, it all depends...the greater good, or the good of only a few who think they can make money on something that time has forgot.
These records aren't creating value for the defunct record labels...but they still have great cultural value. And so....if something has that should it then not be distributed just because it's intellectual value can't be measured in business terms??
In other words, making the music freely available might not make some people money, but it might make nevertheless make many people very happy and the culture of irish music all the richer both in spirit and in depth of knowledge.
It sounds like you're taking my point precisely. The law exists to incent creative works for the greater good. The incentive comes in the form of compensation to the providers for a limited period of time.
If I recall from my one-year of law school, it came from the general need for usable maps. Society pays the creator of the map for a limited period of time in exchange for having a map that can be used in perpetuity. It was all very practical and civilized, but the doctrine has been extended to cover other areas of creativity, and the protection time-frames have become dramatically longer.
My argument isn't intended to infer that this behavior isn't against the law, with the risks and penalties that might entail. But I'm an American, and my entire country is based in large part on violating the laws of the British Empire. The Boston Tea Party was certainly illegal, but most Americans think the legal breach was justifiable.
If people can't make a living (or are out of pocket) doing creative things people may not do those creative things.
If a creative things brings in an income forever why not go sit on the beach rather than creating anything else.
Am I following this ? doesn't seem to difficult ?
And if people can rip stuff off for free why should they bother about "society" and "the greater good"
When is it OK to break a law that isn't keeping pace with the times?
a) Never
b) Whenever you feel like it
c) When you're willing to face fines, imprisonment, and the ire of society on the chance that you're not really a criminal, but in fact at the vanguard of social change?
"making the music freely available might not make some people money, but it might make nevertheless make many people very happy and the culture of irish music all the richer both in spirit and in depth of knowledge"
ha, ha, ha.
Why on earth do you think musicians should put the time in and pay for recording and pressing just for your hippie ideals?
What if a group of people decided that what you do for a living should be free 'for the greater good'? Would you continue doing it? People like you are the death of music not the life.
I think there is a lot of ontological confusion over what music *is* and what ownership of music means. And as brink said, the problem is exacerbated by ad hoc meaning given to the consequences of copyright law (profit) which ignores its original intent. Steve is saying that a tune like Ashokan Farewell (or whatever) has the same ontological status as a Rembrandt painting or a car, essentially a physical thing that someone can own. And if you take that physical thing without the owner's permission, that's stealing. Others here are saying it's a lot more complicated than that, that a song or tune is ambiguous; it's not a physical thing you can see, touch, and yes, own, but has a different ontological status. The music industry has adopted the former -- as I said earlier, it would be worthwhile knowing the history of the law and its development as it pertains to music -- but only tenuously. No one here would ever say that professional musicians should be denied a living, but they are challenging the model of music as property and saying it's something else, something that modern constructs of property and ownership don't describe very well, hence the legal conundrums surrounding the of sharing music. In spite of what modern intellectual law property law says about it, there is simply no consensus as to what ontological space music occupies.
The law itself is a cultural artifact with a history of uncertainty and contestation. It's not transhistorical and we should be wary of reifying it. It's worth looking at why the law is what it is, what historical processes lead to its current configuration. It is surely worth considering the possibility of better, more adaptive legal framework. If we legally and ontologically reclassify music, we can have jurisprudence which compensates artists for creation (as brink said) but releases the industry from the stranglehold of not only record companies, but also that of conceptual understandings of property and control which are no longer applicable (if they ever really were), and don't do much more than pitch various users of the music industry against each other.
Often in legal history, intellectual justifications are attached to laws and systems long after the initial reasons for creating them have become antiquated. The law themselves get reified, so even though outmoded, novel square problems are squished and jammed into the legal round holes. Laws generally only change under duress and usually peacemeal, so until a crisis (back to Kuhn) forces a major change in the law, it can very much be an awkward cobbled together jurisprudential mess.
It is quite clear that in the glorious traditional past when there were no CDs, no tapes, no gramophone records and best of all no sheet music, no one could make a living and there wasn't any music.
Or alternatively it was only once all this copying thing for a fee - started happening that anything became possible. After all if we can all copy freely it's obviously all over.
Thieves, bastards, hippies, just a few of the names thrown around at anyone who has had the temerity to question 'the law'. There isn't any 'law'. There are only laws.
My, this really is one of the best discussions we've had in a very long while here, but it's becoming increasingly hard to respond to the points made - simply because there are so many!
Let's be clear about a few things (and these aren't in any order of importance).
1) The Irish music industry, a mere droplet in an ocean of lachrymation, has never produced a band capable of exploiting its own product in a manner similar to The Grateful Dead. Indeed, there's only one band, Dervish, which has steadfastly managed to maintain control of its own recorded output.
Contrarily, the Irish music industry is replete with tales of foolishly signed contracts and rip-off deals (Planxty and The Bothy Band being the tip of the iceberg, though many others have suffered).
2) There has never been any great recording industry interest in Ireland. Polydor and Philips (which were both relative small fry in the grand scheme of things in the 1970s and 1980s) did have offices in Dublin, but the list of Irish musicians who've actually signed to major (in the sense of truly global) labels is ridiculously small. In traditional music terms that list boils down to two names: The Chieftains and Altan.
3) The majority of labels which have released traditional Irish music are relatively small enterprises. Even the big ones within that selective field are pretty tiny in comparison to, for example, the Universal Music Group.
Comments have been made here about the failure of said labels to make available their back catalogue, so let me provide a couple of clear examples which suggest that is an ill-founded viewpoint.
Firstly, the Topic label (some of whose recordings have been made available by Dragut Reis) has a truly estimable back catalogue, spanning more than fifty years of recordings. Yet, because interest in folk and traditional music is at best marginal, it has always struggled to stay above the breadline (and, indeed, has a very small staff and operates from premises which should have been upgraded a couple of decades ago).
The Irish element of Topic's back catalogue is relatively small, but that doesn't mean that the label has no interest in it. For instance, as part of its 70th anniversary celebrations, it reissued a remastered version of its McPeake Family recordings (the first time ever that the McPeakes had appeared on CD). The key word in that paragraph is 'remastered' since I know first-hand that the label's CEO is not interested in simply making available MP3 versions of the original vinyl recordings. He would want to do justice to the musicians and release recordings which did full justice to their playing or singing. The problem is that he simply does not have the resources to do so. Why don't you contact him directly, DR, and offer your services?
Secondly, let's take Mulligan as an example. Until recently the rights to the label were lost in some licensing quagmire. In 2008 Compass Records acquired the rights to the label, but whether said rights included the UK rest on a High Court case between the label and the nefarious Dave Bulmer's Celtic Music. As far as I'm aware the High Court has yet to announce its findings.
Dragut Reis has made available several Mulligan recordings to which he clearly has no rights of ownership, but, more importantly, nor does he have the right to second guess the label's intentions regarding albums released by musicians such as Bobby Casey or Mick Hanly.
4) The original Dragut Reis was, of course, a pirate. It's therefore a great pity that the one posting here hasn't checked some of the links available on his site. If he'd done so, he'd find other bloggers offering copies of commercially available CDs, such as John Doherty's 'The Floating Bow'. Any claims of 'innocence' should be rapidly replaced by 'It's a fair cop, gov'.
Finally, there's this:
'I'm making beautiful, unprofitable music available for people to hear. That doesn't make me a bastard.'
Yes, you are making the music available to anyone, but with a degree of self-righteousness, ill-founded assumptions and illegality that simply beggars belief.
A recording is a product, taking it is theft. To steal someones produce is nasty, not pointing out that it's wrong to do so. Just because someone elses product is easier to steal than yours does not make it right. Laws don't even have to come into that.
So, what’s a viable solution? Obviously, the current paradigm works about as well as alcohol (or pot) prohibition. What sort of system would work for all the stakeholders?
Just because one is attempting to reach a clear and honest view of how things are, without twisting, turning, contorting, justifying and excusing, it doesn't mean that one is supporting the law. At least not in the sense of defending it. And I for one am not upholding any moral good. I'm one of those small bastards, for sure. Those who know me may have kilometrage that varies.
Capitalism is founded upon taking people's products and giving them less than their worth in return. Is it therefore nasty? An argument supporting capitalism that declares it's basic tentets nasty seems likely to fail.
What should work well for musicians is making music. Not selling abstracted units. That worked for a very short time in the whole history of making music.
As pointed out above, Planxty and the Bothies didn't make anything out of their, let's call them albums ... but they didn't suddenly cease making music did they? All of those people carried on playing. Albums, though they didn't make them any money, helped them to do that. They became well-known on the backs of fabulous recordings, fantastic playing etc etc. Just because they didn't make any money out of the albums didn't mean their music suddenly ceased to exist. An album as some kind of precious commodity, an exhalted copy bearing a simplified notion of worth and ownership isn't the natural order of things - no more than anything else to do with products and exchange is, I'd add.
I'm sorry anyway, I'm probably too far to the left and thinking that society is constructed upon a pile of crap and lies is likely nothing to do with any of this.
As far as I remember, they didn't make much money from their sell-out gigs either. I think I recall Christy saying that in the first Planxty's farewell tour they scarcely broke even. So let's see. No money from albums and no money from gigs. Capitalism, anyone?
In the words of Dragut Reis (unless he ripped those of as well)
"It is quite possible that O'Mealy was duped, as he was reputedly reluctant to be recorded because people, he felt, would be less likely to come out to hear him perform if they had access to his music at home."
So are people now suggesting the opposite - "abstract units" that only benefit the musician by being a promotional tool ?
Haha, but that's it isn't it? That is capitalism. No one much likes your music, at least not as much as we've made them like david cassidy so tough luck.
There's one model that works really well - free to air television.
You don't pay for watching shows that someone else has made, which they want you to see anyway, because that is how they make their money. You don't pay either to watch the advertisements on your television screen in among the show that you're watching. The television station gets paid by the advertiser and the show maker gets paid by the television station. Enough of the viewing audience out there buys enough of the stuff being advertised to pay for it all. That's private sector funding.
The alternative I guess is to get all taxpayers to pay for it, by government-funded free to air television with no ads (they'll probably put ads in anyway, you know what the government can be like, and there's nothing you'll be able to do about it, but write blogs).
Same model will go for the music. The internet will change the way music is marketed and paid for; it won't stop people copying it though, it will make that even easier.
It's a little rich for you to be accusing me of self-righteousness Geoff. I bow to your encyclopaedic knowledge of the traditional Irish music recording industry, but your assumptions of moral guardianship are a little megolomaniac, to say the least. I'm not self-righteous, just indignant and opinionated. I would prefer it if Dave re-mastered the entire back catalogue of Irish material in the vaults, but that's not going to happen in the near future, perhaps never. In the meantime, I've made available a few home-rips of great albums for people to enjoy. Those who don't want to buy excellent quality re-mastered editions won't buy them anyway. Audiophiles like myself, and countless others, will always buy legitimate copies as soon as they are available. This really isn't as big a deal as you, and others, are making out. I'm not an ogre, I respect the wishes of those who don't want to be associated with my site. You can vouch for that personally, though I doubt that fits in to your (rather slef-righteous) agenda. Just stop worrying about it so much. The Irish music industry is it's own worst enemy, as you've already pointed out. People like me are only encouraging interest in old-style music. It will pay off in the future. Just not for me, because I'm not trying to rip anyone off. Fuc king hippie that I am.
Who would pay to go and listen to someone playing without ever having heard them, or without the recommendation of someone else who has?
And who hasn't gone to see someone playing, prefering instead to stay at home and listen to them on their CD/pirated mp3/flac ?
I'm not a driving force behind what's going on, but it is going on and I don't think it can be stopped. The real deep problem is one - i think - with the whole structure of a global capital economy. I think that this is reproduced in all kinds of ways and places, like here, where it might seem totally removed from larger issues.
I may of course also be wrong. I may be evil. Perhaps I am.
Floss, I do take your point about the links to sites with downloads of commercially-available material. Tell me which ones they are, and I'll remove them.
There is a lot of ethical valence in "how things are" and the status of a recording is more ambiguous than CO's characterization thereof. I'm not making any moral judgments -- I am saying that *is* how things are because there is a 100+ post thread about it on this site and in the meantime, thousands of people are copying music and thousands are being p*ssed off about it. So I reiterate there is no consensus; what there is are fundamental ontological problems with current conceptual frameworks of a tune or a recording.
It seems as if various people on this thread are arguing what philosopher types call the "liberal theory" of power," which essentially asks, "which acts ought to be permitted and which acts ought to be prohibited." I'm saying that it's more complicated, that we ought to take a more Foucauldian approach (oh yes, we've gone from Kuhn to Foucault) and look at the historicity of power relations in the context of music industry. Law is an interface -- one of them -- for the exercise of power. So if you really want to dig underneath the surface and come to an understanding of why things are the way they are now and why it's such a huge problem, you'd want to analyze the power relationships between musicians, consumers, record companies, and other users of the industry. Power, however, is not only preventative; it is also creative and productive; it not only subjects one to forms of control, but also constructs him. I bring up some of Foucault's ideas on power because that is precisely what is at stake here -- how power is constructed, who has it, what does it ontologically mean? Money? Intellectual control? Right now we are seeing power in the music industry changing faster than the juridical apparatus and indeed even social can respond to it and as a result both do so clumsily. Who has power, who should have power, and how that can or even if it should be regulated are all highly contested right now given how much technology has altered older power structures and posed a challenge to the social and legal structures supporting them.
Emily Are you sure you are studying the right subject ?
I know there is no shortage of dead mad scottish people to look at but you seem to have a good grasp of this subject .
I wonder if this file sharing biz will bankrupt record companies so we will end up with artists making and selling their product themselves at gigs and on line .
The end of woolworths in the UK has hastened this future.
My cousin does gigs all round the UK hardly ever gets paid but sells 15 to twenty CDs a night at £14 a time .
He is not full time yet but is building a following,
I think thats the way to go for those who want to be a full time artists.
Very interesting discussion. A random thought that popped into my head while reading was this: the sixties was probably the heyday for record sales (I can't be arsed to research this). There was no other way to have the music in your house on tap apart from buying the record. That's why every beatle-maniac had all their singles etc.
It sometimes feels that the recording industry / copyright laws regarding music are still wondering how to get back to that golden monopoly of media.
Ok, so not much of a thought really. Carry on, all.
Actually, just a wee summary too:
It's certainly illegal. It's moral in the wider sense of feeding a living culture, and the sharing of the marvellous exemplars of that culture to those who inhabit that culture. It's very grey water when we wonder what the individual artists' opinions are without knowing them.
p.s. Emily, I appreciated your Foucault angle. Thanks.
p.p.s. Mr Pirate, I'm thoroughly enjoying listening to what I've downloaded. I had quite a bit on worn-out tapes that had passed their day (yes, copied from LPs shock horror - in defense, there was sod all available for sale in Devon at the beginning of the 90s. Luckily my dad and stepdad both had good record collections).
If anyone is interested in the history of copyrights in American and British law, I now have an excellent (PDF) book on hand by an American law professor which gives an excellent overview. If anyone is interested, drop me a line and I can email it.
I will also add that it's not just hippies, pirates, liberals, whatever you want to call them, who recognize the positive benefits to society of allowing some amount of free access to cultural artifacts, such as music and films; it is also the United States Congress and the United States Supreme Court. When the Motion Picture Association of America sued Sony for creating technology which made it easy for people to record TV shows and movies, the VCR with the record button, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Sony. They actually argued that it wasn't their job to police these things but rather it was Congress' job to pass legislation which balanced competing interests. Justice Stevens, writing for the majority opinion argued,
"The protection given to copyrights is wholly statutory, and, in a case like this, in which Congress has not plainly marked the course to be followed by the judiciary, this Court must be circumspect in construing the scope of rights created by a statute that never contemplated such a calculus of interests. Any individual may reproduce a copyrighted work for a "fair use"; the copyright owner does not possess the exclusive right to such a use." (Sony Corp. v Universal Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984))
In this case and others like it (and there have been many), where the holders of a copyright demanded Congress or the courts enact legislation to regulate or enjoin some sort of new technology which fundamentally alters the relationship between copyright producers and consumers, Congress and the Courts have consistently refused to grant copyright holders absolute and exclusive rights to the value of their copyright. The courts and Congress acknowledge that while making sure authors and musicians get the fruit of their intellectual labours, there are also societal benefits in the free flow of information, ideas. In the Sony Corp case, Stevens said,
"it is Congress that has been assigned the task of defining the scope of the limited monopoly that should be granted to authors or to inventors in order to give the public appropriate access to their work product. Because this task involves a difficult balance between the interests of authors and inventors in the control and exploitation of their writings and discoveries on the one hand, and society's competing interest in the free flow of ideas, information, and commerce on the other hand, our patent and copyright statutes have been amended repeatedly." (464 US 417)
I think this case serves as a concrete example of my previous points -- that it is important, necessary even, to take into account social and historical processes and from this constitute an awareness of how our current framework of copyright and ownership of music has been constructed.
When you watch a TV show or movie on TV you have paid for it, either through advertising putting prices up or via a licence fee. It might not feel as though you've paid for it, but you have. So taping it to watch another time is fair use. If you buy a CD and make a copy of it for your car that is also fair use. If you obtain an album without permission and without paying for it that is not fair use. If you buy a download from someone who has not obtained permission to distribute it that is not fair use either. All this fine talk about societal benefits and cultural rights and free flow of information is still just a pile of excuses for ignoring the law. Bad laws can have unintended consequences it's true, but so can advocating the sidestepping of those laws. I'm desperate to get a (legal) copy of that Nic Jones album but I won't die if I don't get hold of it. And let's not forget that we exist in this little bubble of Irish music which is a tiny minority interest. 99% of the cultural "treasure" that would be slopping around under a more liberal regime would be pop songs.
I believe that if you read carefully the copyright notifications on movies and tv shows you will see that you are not permitted to make copies of them, whether they appear on free to air or pay television. The view seems clearly to be that even though there are ads in among the movie or show, that does not entitle you to the right to copy that show or movie, whether you deem that you have paid for the right to do so or not, simply because you claim payment for the right through watching an ad, or indeed having paid your monthly pay tv premium.
You sound like you're trying to justify your taping of movies, ss.
Steve, last time I checked what the BBC were saying about recording programs the impression I got was that it was OK to hold a recording to listen to it at a later time( I think they call it 'time shifting' ) but not to hold it indefintely. It may be something to do with the royalty they pay - I guess they don't have a licence to broadcast stuff and let people keep copies for ever.
If you read what I said I think you'll find that time-shifting is precisely what I was referring to. I do not try to justify anything I do which may be illegal. I'm not aware that making recordings from the telly of anything just so that I can watch it at a more convenient time (then delete it) is illegal. I have kept copies of all the Naked Guns, Airplane! and Blazing Saddles because as I said I'm one of those little bastards. I'm living with it.
Time-shifting is legal in the UK. I've just checked. The law applies to radio and TV broadcasts. It is not legal to hold on indefinitely to the recordings or spread 'em around. I don't know whether anyone has ever defined "indefinitely." I'm not expecting Frank Drebin to come knocking on my door any minute.
Sorry Steve. You adding the "then delete it" makes it clearer. At the risk of another misunderstanding - I may be out of date but I think the copying for the car (and copying to ipod etc) is technically illegal in the UK, rather than fair use. Although I recall being told by someone who seemed sure of the facts that vinyl to CD for personal use was OK because one had bought a licence to listen to the music; but that may have been a U.S.A. usage.
You're allowed to make a copy of a CD for your private use but you're not allowed to convert it to a different format, for your mp3 player for example. Wacky. I think this is currently being addressed.
I've copied everything. My whole life is a copy, the words I speak, the customs I reproduce, the music I play, triplets, rolls, slides, crans, variations, even the tunes I've made up. All of it. I've copied films, tv programmes, music, cds, flac files, mp3s, wavs, accs, m4as, apes, wvs, oggs, books, articles, clothing, mannerisms, hairstyles, shoes, shops, pubs, destinations, . The whole lot. And all of it, all of these things are material goods produced by someone else & reproduced by me.
The worst of it is that some people also copy from me.
I only ever read Foucault's 'History of Sexuality, Volume 1', which is probably not appropriate to this discussion.
However, I would like to correct one detail in DR's last post above. Copyright Law regarding recordings is still 50 years. The 95 years quoted is an EU proposal which has yet to be enacted.
My point with the Supreme Court case I cited above was that even the courts and Congress have acknowledged there is ambiguity in terms of what you should and should not be able to do with music (or films). My point was that the MPAA, after that case, asked Congress to pass legislation requiring VCR manufacturers to either get rid of the "record" function or limit its use, and Congress didn't do a thing.
Foucault would suggest that this is a historical moment where power could have been shifted in a substantial way through juridical means, but it didn't happen. I think that tells us something.
At the end of the day, the kind of ownership models constructed by intellectual property laws are completely untenable outside of an authoritarian system of enforcement. All I'm arguing is that we shouldn't just accept the modern model as "the way things are" and reify it, but we should carefully examine its history and its theoretical underpinnings. We should ask if it is really the most efficacious way to be sure musicians get compensated for their creative contributions while sustaining a culture of openness and creative and intellectual freedom.
“At the end of the day, the kind of ownership models constructed by intellectual property laws are completely untenable outside of an authoritarian system of enforcement.”
…and largely untenable even within an authoritarian system of enforcement.
A treasure trove of music
A treasure trove of music
Wonderful albums by wonderful musicians...enjoy:
http://ceolalainn.blogspot.com/
# Posted on November 9th 2009 by mtodd
Re: A treasure trove of music
Ooooh, thanks!
# Posted on November 9th 2009 by Pontus Adefjord
Re: A treasure trove of music
That will keep me busy for at least a year...
# Posted on November 9th 2009 by kennedy
Re: A treasure trove of music
...just listening to it all, that is. Never mind trying to incorporate it into my playing. That will take many years.
# Posted on November 9th 2009 by kennedy
Re: A treasure trove of music
Of course, the site's owner has cleared copyright with all the labels, hasn't he?
# Posted on November 9th 2009 by Floss the Tethers
Re: A treasure trove of music
This is what the owner had to say to someone who asked a similar question (from a comment on one of the recordings):
"It's very easy to answer your question: this beautiful music is not simply a commodity, to be hoarded. The copyright owners have a responsibility to the artists and their executors, and to their consumers, to make available what should be shared. It is quite simply wrong to maintain ownership of these recordings, and refuse to make them available. I would gladly pay money for CD re-releases of every album I have posted here: I have already paid large sums of money for these albums, and it grieves me that none of that money has found its way into the pockets of the recording artists or their executors, because I have bought their recordings in private sales. I do not post material that is commercially available, and I consider it morally reprehensible to do so. But equally I consider it morally reprehensible for copyright owners to do nothing to re-release important albums when it is in their power to do so. It is a simple and cost-effective process to release albums electronically, and make them available for legal download. If it is not done, they will be made available by people like me, who have no intrest in making money illegally. When master tapes are no longer available, and albums cannot be re-released, there is no reason why record companies should be concerned when people make rips of the original albums, because there is no loss of potential revenue involved. The idea that copyright law should be observed simply because it is the law, rather than because it protects peoples' interests, is not something that I am willing to countenance. Laws that exist without good moral reason do not possess the power of moral obligation. Laws are necessary to protect the interests of the commonwealth, and when they cease to have purpose, they cease to have moral power."
# Posted on November 9th 2009 by kennedy
Re: A treasure trove of music
My own thoughts Floss. I would hate to steal from these great players. If it really is all above board though then thanks very much indeed mtodd.
# Posted on November 9th 2009 by bogman
Re: A treasure trove of music
So, the answer's no then.
# Posted on November 9th 2009 by Floss the Tethers
Re: A treasure trove of music
I should also add that whoever wrote the piece Kennedy quoted really does have no understanding of copyright legislation.
# Posted on November 9th 2009 by Floss the Tethers
Re: A treasure trove of music
I bought that Tommy Peoples one on vinyl from Collett's over 20 years ago. The spark is there but begod it's a tough listen at times. He's appeared on some great albums with others but the only solo Tommy one I regularly listen to is The Quiet Glen. A fabulous album.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
The download server for ceolalainn is incredibly slow - 109MB in about 50 minutes for the first item (a zip file)! With my broadband I would normally expect to download that in under 2 minutes.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by lazyhound
Re: A treasure trove of music
I agree with Floss. And the question of what is morally acceptable/required/forbidden is a completely different question from the question of what is legally acceptable/required/ forbidden.
Why couldn't the copyright holders decide tomorrow to digitize the albums they own the rights to (just as the site owner has done) and sell them on i-Tunes for $9.99?
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by crickett
Re: A treasure trove of music
At the present rate it will take a century for record companies to sort out the internet, and by then people will be getting music some other way. If record companies can't or won't find a way to successfully market their product online, then they will lose profits. That's capitalism. In the meantime I have no problems with downloading out of print selections like these. I do my homework first, and to the best of my ability make sure they're out of print.
Unlike a corporate entity that was born before me and will exist long after my death, my time to sit and wait for a reprinting of great music is capped at about another 60 years. I'll pay for it, sure. But they won't sell it to me. On the other hand I can pay a used music seller a ridiculously inflated price for said music, and the artist won't be seeing a penny for that? The legally correct "pay for what you listen to" argument seems a little silly in that regard.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by gravelwalks
Re: A treasure trove of music
this is how the music industry will deal with the internet:
www.qtrax.com
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Duijera Dubh
Re: A treasure trove of music
www.qtrax.com
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Duijera Dubh
Re: A treasure trove of music
sorry, couldn't get the link to activate.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Duijera Dubh
Re: A treasure trove of music
http://www.qtrax.com - I think you need the http://
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Pontus Adefjord
Re: A treasure trove of music
exactly right gravelwalks!
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by leoj
Re: A treasure trove of music
I'm offering to visit the owner of this site in jail! What a can of worms he/she has opened! And a delicious one at that. I must admit that I've dipped into it myself.
The two Mick Hanley albums and the Celtic Folkweave album, for example, should have been re-released years ago, along with most of the other titles on the site.
As an amateur artist/photographer myself I fully appreciate the need for copyright protection. However, I just can't understand why anyone would just leave these recordings lying in a drawer somewhere when the demand from fans/consumers is greater than it's ever been in the history of the music. If they don't want to release them, then give the master tapes to the artists or to a sympathetic record company.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by amhrán
Re: A treasure trove of music
Tell that to a certain Mr Bulmer.
I don't see that "out of print" makes the slightest difference to the moral or legal position. If it ain't yours to have it ain't yours to have.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
Incredible to hear An Bothán A Bhaigh Fionnghuala sung like this on Celtic Folkweave, at about half the speed of the one on other (later?) recordings (or maybe they were just working up speed!).
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by suesinger
Re: A treasure trove of music
the "moral or legal position" actually doesn't make the slightest bit of difference either. People photocopy books and other literature and they copy music, the issue is only going to get bigger with the availability of music on the net. The real question is how it is going to be dealt with. Copyright infringement in most countries, in my understanding, is a breach of civil law, not criminal. As such the remedy in a successful case is for damages. This seems to have been based, at least in the cases in the United States, on placing a monetary value on the number of downloads someone has made, the rationale being that that is the loss to the artist, or more particularly, the record label. If a recording is not available commercially, how is the "loss" quantified? Seems like a pretty good defence to me. Record labels can argue the toss until they go bankrupt, I guess.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Duijera Dubh
Re: A treasure trove of music
Ok, if the site owner is morally comfortable why doesn't he find out from Seamus Begley, Kevin Burke, Matt Malloy, John Carty and Tommy Peoples are happy about their music being given away for free.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by bogman
Re: A treasure trove of music
The only people who are stealing from these artists are the record companies who can't be bothered to make their recordings commercially available.
As for my understanding of copyright legislation, it is indeed very limited. Law was not my subject. Please feel free to enlighten me. My opinion on the morality of making commercially unavailable material accessible to all is not set in stone, and if there is anybody out there who is able to change it through the force of their argument, then I would welcome the opportunity to view their ideas.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Dragut Reis
Re: A treasure trove of music
Have you asked permission from the artists?
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by bogman
Re: A treasure trove of music
I've got permission from some, not all, but I'm working on it.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Dragut Reis
Re: A treasure trove of music
Well if it's not otherwise available and these guys ok their recordings being freely available then hats of to you.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by bogman
Re: A treasure trove of music
I wasn't arguing the legal or moral issues. I was saying in my own sweet way that justifying your acquisition on the grounds that the thing is "out of print" is just incredibly lame.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
Why is it lame?
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Dragut Reis
Re: A treasure trove of music
If you're going to acquire it, you will. If that requires an adjustment of conscience, then adjust your conscience. "Out of print" is just you publicly adjusting your conscience. It's still someone else's property you're grabbing so whether it's in print or out is irrelevant. I suppose I could ask why you didn't buy it when it was in print. Like I said, I'm not moralising because I'm far from squeaky clean meself when it comes to borrowing peoples CDs and all. Would I acquire The Noah's Ark Trap (one of the best albums of all time in my view, and which I don't currently possess, alas) if it popped up on a download site or as a CD-R Bulmer release? You bet your arse I wouldn't.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
people's. God, I hate myself for leaving that out.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
peoples' (possesive plural - unless you were talking about borrowing Tommy People's CDs)
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by llig leahcim
Re: A treasure trove of music
No Michael. People's. People is the plural (unless I'm talking about the diverse peoples of the world, which I'm not), so the possessive has to be "people's." As for Tommy's surname, it's Peoples. So you'd write "borrowing Tommy Peoples' CDs."
At least you didn't write "CD's."
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
I've just discovered that if you type "people" enough times it starts to look bloody peculiar.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
Great to hear Taking Flight again after many years. I've got a copy on vinyl somewhere, but even if I could lay hands on it I've got nothing that will play it.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by johndsamuels
Re: A treasure trove of music
Yes, llig, you ignoramus!
Anyway what's wrong with writing Tommy Peoples's CD?
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Duijera Dubh
Re: A treasure trove of music
There's nothing wrong with writing "Peoples's" if that's how you say it. The rules about that aren't hard and fast. Personally, I think I'd say "Tommy Peoples' CD," so that's how I'd write it.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
Yeah, but it ain't right English, are it.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Duijera Dubh
Re: A treasure trove of music
I stand corrected
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by llig leahcim
Re: A treasure trove of music
Actually, you needn't use the apostrophe at all when talking about Tommy Peoples CDs. You talk about Altan CDs and Bothy Band CDs without using the possessive. It would be absurd to ask "Could I borrow your Altan's CDs?"
Now - what we we talking about...?
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
Don't know about 'we', but you're talking about a completely different usage, using the name as an adjectival qualifier, and you reinforce it by the primary placement of 'your'. Could you borrow Altan CD? Try asking it that way in a record shop, you'll probably get charged double the price.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Duijera Dubh
Re: A treasure trove of music
If you can buy the musician's music, then great.
If you can't? It should never be heard again, because of some corporation's profits...that they won't make, because they're not releasing it for sale?
That's hilarious and pathetic at the same time, at best, much like most of modern corporate governance. [gets off soapbox]
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: A treasure trove of music
The issue has been for years now, that if something is on someone's computer somewhere in the world who is connected to the net, if they have music on there, currently released or not, then it is open to be picked up by pirate software and made available worldwide as 'grey copy', I think it is called. The way to deal with that, is to legalise and monitize the grey downloads, that way the artist can get paid for the download, even if the music is 'out of print'. 'out of print' as a term is really heading the way of the dinosaurs, with the internet.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Duijera Dubh
Re: A treasure trove of music
Thanks for your contributions, Dragut.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Kevin Rietmann
Re: A treasure trove of music
You're welcome.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Dragut Reis
Re: A treasure trove of music
Suppose an individual buys a Rembrandt painting and then chooses to stick it in his basement where no-one can view or appreciate it. Are the public now entitled to break into his house to take a peek?
Not moralising because, like others above, I gave up that right. But I do struggle with the logic.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by grego
Re: A treasure trove of music
How about the logic dealing with the differences between a one of a kind painting and an audio recording?
Just pulling yer leg a bit there, grego, all in good fun.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: A treasure trove of music
What if that individual opens the doors of his house to the public and people can come see the Rembrandt for free?
I don't think that's a good analogy.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by TheSilverSpear
Re: A treasure trove of music
I was going to post an exactly similar message, grego. That's my feeling as well.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
People couldn't sell units of music without their presence 100 years ago. And just because music without presence became a commodity doesn't mean it always has to be so. it isn't a natural thing, it's an invented thing.
But then home taping killed music back in the 1980s so I really don't know what all the fuss is about.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by pavlf
Re: A treasure trove of music
Here are some scenarios:
1. I have an original vinyl copy of Taking Flight, I could borrow my mates turntable to digitize it on my rig or I could download the posted mp3, either way I end up with the same result but I use less electricity and time with the latter.
2. I can then sell my original copy on Ebay at 20 x its original cost, make a very tidy profit, all of which I trouser, none of which goes towards Bobby Casey's estate or the defunct company who probably paid Bobby less than the sum of my profit for the recording session (I don't know any details here).
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Patkiwi
Re: A treasure trove of music
Aaaargh: mate's
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Patkiwi
Re: A treasure trove of music
You could just as easily do nothing. What difference? Casey and Co still get f all.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by pavlf
Re: A treasure trove of music
"What if that individual opens the doors of his house to the public and people can come see the Rembrandt for free?"
There's a hotel in Ireland where people can wander in for free and admire a genuine Leonardo Da Vinci in a glass case (very well protected) next to the reception desk. I suspect that's a delicate hint of the prices they charge (starting at €100 pppn). But we did scrape together enough to have a coffee in the restaurant.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by lazyhound
Re: A treasure trove of music
If you feel guilty about burning music for free, you could always paypal some money to the artist I suppose. Unless he's dead. In which case you could just send flowers.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Strummer007
Re: A treasure trove of music
Guilt shmilt. Thanks Dragut for making available all this great music that otherwise would not be available.
Funny thing about music, it's made to be listened to. Pretty hard if some old bunch of codgers and penny pinchers want to hide it away, right?
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by mtodd
Re: A treasure trove of music
Yea, and another funny thing about music is someone has the provide it. And with recorded music someone has to pay for it. Nowadays that is often the artist.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by bogman
Re: A treasure trove of music
Then C.O., simply don't download many of these DEAD musicians represented by now defunct record labels. This is stuff that won't be available anytime soon -- if at all. You'll also notice Dragut has REMOVED download links for one set of records at least where a label has planned to reissue the old recording.
Surely even your conscience can live with that? Wouldn't want to be narrow minded ....
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by mtodd
Re: A treasure trove of music
Mtodd, if you bothered to read the above posts you'd see my only problem is with the work of the LIVING musicians. You steal away if your conscience can take it.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by bogman
Re: A treasure trove of music
C.O. ah, ok. Fair enough then. I agree, one would not want to take from those living their means of making a living --for obvious reasons.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by mtodd
Re: A treasure trove of music
If the recordings aren't generally available then the players may well not object. Though I know from personal experience it can take years for an artist to regain rights to a recording following a label going defunct.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by bogman
Re: A treasure trove of music
Bottom line is Tommy Peoples will make no money from this old recording whether you download it or not because it's not for sale.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Strummer007
Re: A treasure trove of music
What about Kevin Burkes recording then that is only 5 years old?
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by bogman
Re: A treasure trove of music
a certain irony here is that some (lots) if these artists are playing music written by someone else who they are only going to pay artistic deference to (gulp I can't believe I said that)...making it a sort of counter-paradox to suggest it is wrong to partake of this delicious indulgence... strayaway child anyone...?
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by mickyfong
Re: A treasure trove of music
'Guilt shmilt. Thanks Dragut for making available all this great music that otherwise would not be available. Funny thing about music, it's made to be listened to. Pretty hard if some old bunch of codgers and penny pinchers want to hide it away, right?'
That's just about the most ridiculous thing I've read on this board today.
Let's get the facts straight for once and for all.
Dragut Reis (whose actual identity I know) runs a blogspot site which specialises in making freely available copies of out-of-print albums and some live recordings (though when one checks the details of these it becomes rapidly apparent that they've been filched from organisations such as RTÉ, the BBC and the British Library's Sound Archive).
Let's deal with the latter first. I very much doubt whether RTÉ would be happy to know that its recordings (of which it maintains copyright, not the musicians) are being made freely available without permission - and the same point would apply to Dragut Reis making the Denis Murphy 1995 CD available (which seems utterly cheeky - has he actually contacted RTÉ to find out whether it would be reissued?).
The BBC recordings of Richard O'Mealy were actually copyrighted by the Beeb in the late 1970s and have been cobbled together from the Seán Reid Society's site without either the BBC's or SRS's permission (and both would probably have been refused).
The recordings taken from the British Library's Sound Archive (Bobby Casey and Brendan McGlinchey) have been posted by Dragut Reis on his site in direct contravention of the BL's terms of use policy.
Now lets look at those out-of-print LPs.
Firstly, and unequivocally, Dragut Reis has infringed the most basic tenet of copyright legislation by making freely available recordings to which he has no rights of ownership whatsoever.
Secondly, said legislation (whether it's within the EU, US, Japan or anywhere else) provides no moral 'escape clause'
which allows someone who feels that out-of-print albums should be made available, because label owners have been 'reprehensible', to second guess said label's intentions and make recordings of music (which they don't own) available on a free-for-all basis.
I wonder, thirdly, whether, Dragut Reis has actually approached any of the labels whose offerings he's made available for free. Can he be sure that Topic, for instance, doesn't have any plans regarding The Star of Munster Trio album? Does he know about the intentions of Compass Records (the owners of Mulligan and Green Linnet), CCÉ, Rounder or Shanachie? The answer, I suspect, is that he hasn't and is flying on a wing and a prayer.
Next, there's this - 'It is quite simply wrong to maintain ownership of these recordings, and refuse to make them available.' Why is it wrong? I'm not going to delve deeply into this very Kantian position, but, from a simple point of view, if I don't want to lend you my shovel then I won't.
Lastly, from the quote above, there's this - 'The copyright owners have a responsibility to the artists and their executors, and to their consumers, to make available what should be shared.'
Frankly, this takes the ultimate biscuit. The copyright owners have a duty to fulfil the rights of their contract with the musician(s). That's it and nothing else. A label such as Topic has no 'responsibility' beyond its contracts. Have you read any of those, Dragut Reis? I doubt it. Have you ever seen a publishing contract (in any format)? I doubt that too. A label's responsibility to its artists goes only as far as the clauses and conditions in the contract. There are usually no rights granted to executors unless a musician died within the time-frame of an existing contract. There are absolutely no rights granted to consumers within this framework.
On one level I do appreciate what Dragut Reis is doing, but he's chosen completely the wrong way to go about his task. It would have been far better to have contacted the labels concerned and enquired whether they would allow him to make their recordings freely available. On the other, however, I think it is truly reprehensible to sell off others assets at a nugatory value.
In conclusion, some time ago I discovered that Allen Freedman had actually made more recordings during his time in Donegal and Tyrone than were issued as the John Doherty 'Bundle and Go' album. That's an obviously logical surmisal, but I wasn't sure that they still existed. So I contacted Topic and discovered that there was a second album planned for release which featured four fiddlers - James Byrne, Simon Doherty, Con Cassidy and Danny O'Donnell - called 'Passing the Time'. However, said album was never released because Danny O'Donnell refused to sign the contract on the grounds that he didn't want to be heard unaccompanied (he'd done the same thing previously with 'The Brass Fiddle').
I've had a legitimate copy of this album for some years (supplied by Topic via the British Library) and even delivered a copy to James Byrne (who reckoned he'd been paid a tenner for his offerings), but there's absolutely no way that I'm going to make this freely available, wondrous recording that it is, on the basis of Danny's refusal to allow its original release. [Please don't ask me for a copy.]
I think we should abide by musicians' intentions and that's yet another thing Dragut Reis doesn't really understand.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Floss the Tethers
Re: A treasure trove of music
wow a technical knockout I believe Floss
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by bazouki dave
Re: A treasure trove of music
"What about Kevin Burkes recording then that is only 5 years old?"
I myself am not aware of any breaks in the fabric of the time/space continuum...therefore it would be logical to assume the recording is indeed 5 years old. However if we have experienced any warp in the temporal fabric that has not been registered then the recording could be as old as the hills...depending on how you measure time...go beyond time to infinity I say...then it won't matter ...besides the Lords of Karma will settle all accounts in due course...royalties included...
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by mickyfong
Re: A treasure trove of music
So is posting this music then not "reasonable" and based on a reasonable doubt as to whether it will ever see the light of day, or has it been unreasonable to do so?
I can't help thinking that music without an audience to listen to it is a dead tradition.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by mtodd
Re: A treasure trove of music
mtodd, you've completely missed the point and, by highlighting the Ceol Álainn site here, probably initiated the procedure for getting it closed down. Mull on that, if you will.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Floss the Tethers
Re: A treasure trove of music
Killjoy! Get him!
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by gravelwalks
Re: A treasure trove of music
Fabulously wealthy music corporation crying? Oh boo hoo? Go release it for download and sale then.
Don't want to?
Then shut up.
Good morning, good afternoon…
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: A treasure trove of music
good man swfl.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by mtodd
Re: A treasure trove of music
'Fabulously wealthy music corporation crying? Oh boo hoo? Go release it for download and sale then.'
That's bilge and you know it. If you've something relevant to say about breaking copyright laws, then let's hear it. Otherwise 'then shut up'!
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Floss the Tethers
Re: A treasure trove of music
Just a quick note off-topic. This thread is outstanding, not because it is devoid of some of the nastiness that erupts regularly on this site, but because, despite that, it has remained intelligent, nearly troll-free, and ultimately about the music. Interesting topic. I wish I knew more about copyright laws as they pertain to trad music. I mean, where rights are concerned, it's more about the recording than about a tune, which, for legal purposes, may as well have been written 400 years ago by a blade of grass, yes? I would have gone to law school if I could stomach being a lawyer.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Jimmy B
Re: A treasure trove of music
A couple of folk have mentioned release by download. It's worth noting that the likes of itunes don't just take anything, and by that I don't mean that any of the recordings are not top quality, but if they don't think it will shift units they won't accept it. So that avenue may not always be available to the copyright holder.
I think the principle of putting these recordings up is good but the proper channel's should be used and where there are musicians involved that are still recording, then at the very least they should be asked for their blessing.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by bogman
Re: A treasure trove of music
There really are two different arguments being made here. One is legalistic (the copyright law says ....). The other is normative (what is the greater good, regardless of the letter of the law - or, as Dickens wrote, the law is an ass. )
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by Strummer007
Re: A treasure trove of music
There is also a third. In between the law on one side and your 'greater good' there is the musicians, who you don't seem to care a t@ss about.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by bogman
Re: A treasure trove of music
Since when do 'fabulously wealthy music corporations' put out Irish music?
Most Irish music seems to be released by small outfits who are struggling to earn a buck, and doing much of what they do out of love of the tunes, just like the musicians!!!
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by AlBrown
Re: A treasure trove of music
Beat me to it 'ob ' I thought Floss made an extreamly good and to my view a telling point . Does the artist actually want this music to be out there .
I wonder if in the future Bob Dylan will feel the same about his new Christmas record
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by bazouki dave
Re: A treasure trove of music
iTunes is a straight jacket, and artists need not consider it as the only means of ofering digital music to paying listeners. King Crimson, the Grateful Dead, Radiohead, a whole host of other groups outside the traditional folk genre have found way around this. And it is more economical than than burning and distributing compact discs with liner notes and artwork.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by gravelwalks
Can any one point me in the direction of a fabuously wealthy music corporation to promote my new album ?
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by bazouki dave
Re: A treasure trove of music
Gravelwalks
I think if an artist wants to promote his or her work/ album in that manner its up to them ,not a third party with out their agreement
Thats the point really .
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by bazouki dave
Re: A treasure trove of music
All wildcat bloggers or torrent trackers aside, I was just pointing out that iTunes isn't the only way an artist can sell digital music. CO raised the point that iTunes may not take your average workaday trad music, perhaps in favor of more lucrative offerings. Good point that, if iTunes were the only place on the net to get digital music. They're fantastic and even make a good model in a lot of ways. But I'm afraid that its presence and position in the market could be detrimental to variety. Less competition isn't a good thing for consumers. More direct downloads from artist and label websites, for example, would be a welcome change. I already buy 90% of my hard copy music on the net, I would love to be able to cut out the shipping and handling costs.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by gravelwalks
Re: A treasure trove of music
That's true gravelwalks but it's still not simple on a small scale. There was a small company that started to do trad downloads a couple of years ago (tradtunes.com possibly, can't quite remember) but despite having the main trad names in Scotland they could not generate enough turnover to make it work. Download is not always easy for small record companies.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by bogman
Re: A treasure trove of music
That was to your previous post gravelwalks. Yes, direct downloads is definitely good for trad.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by bogman
Re: A treasure trove of music
OK OK, everyone take it easy. The capitalist class is SO pleased to have so many defenders here, especially among the worker bees! Good on ye all! Well done!
...but seriously folks. Any company complaining about something they have out of print?
So go release it on iTunes then and quit yer bitching.
How hard is it to open a website and do e-commerce in this day and age? Any one of us with half a brain can do it. No damn excuses.
Now all you fine pub room lawyers can continue with your legal work. If you'll excuse me, my anti-authoritarianism is showing. Off to the powder room for me!
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: A treasure trove of music
Case in point:
If some duffer can make this blog in his spare time, what excuse does ANY for profit company, regardless of size, have for NOT doing e-commerce with their catalog?
There isn't one. Some dude did it himself for no money.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: A treasure trove of music
SWFL, it's not that simple. As soon as something is on a commercial basis there are costs involved. http://www.tradtunes.com/ The homepage now says why the service had to cease.
# Posted on November 10th 2009 by bogman
Re: A treasure trove of music
Swfl
Plus you still don't answer the point about the permission of the Artist
If an artist wants to sell their music that way it's up to them not up to you.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by bazouki dave
Re: A treasure trove of music
I'm perfectly comfortable with the idea of copying recordings around. Who among us didn't do that as a kid, when we were getting into music? And yet we all likely poured a hefty chunk of our limited disposable income into LPs, tapes, and CDs... Hell, it was illegal copies of Altan, Chieftans, and Seamus Connolly that got me interested in playing Irish music to begin with!
Yes, copying and filesharing this stuff is probably illegal (though I'm skeptical that anyone will really press charges here--especially across international borders), and possibly immoral (depending on whether you feel providing something for free is worse than keeping it hidden from the world). But actual harm here is virtually impossible to assess. The people who download the most are the same people who buy the most, and the idea that every download is a lost sale is simply silly. (I didn't even know who Denis Doody, or Mick Hanly was before I downloaded their albums. Now I'd be happy to pay to hear either of them).
Copying and sharing is a reality. You can argue back and forth about whether it's a good or a bad thing, but while you do that, I've got a fiddle lesson to teach. I pointed my student at that Tommy Peoples recording, and told him to learn a tune from the source...
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Georgi
Re: A treasure trove of music
You make a very valid point, Georgi. I had never heard of Denis Doody, either, but I really like that collection of tunes.
I tend to buy recordings from artists at concerts. I like to put the money into their hands, and the music is better for me having an idea of what they look like when they play. I am most impressed by musicians that take it on the road, whether 'famous' or more obscure. They put up with the hassle and discomfort of travel so that I can hear them play or sing. Good deal!
The internet ihas changed the way we hear and acquire music. Everyone with a computer and a mic can record their own, for fun or profit. I can't help but think that that could be a good thing. Record companies have provided a service in the past, but their model is from the past.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Batlady
Re: A treasure trove of music
Great discussion. This bit from the back of a trad CD wasn't written by a lawyer, but (or that's why) it makes good sense:
"Please support independent musicians by not copying this CD when purchase is an option."
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Tintin
Re: A treasure trove of music
This is a problem Thomas Kuhn would have loved, as we are in the midst of a textbook paradigm shift (even though he talked about the natural sciences, his ideas are applicable elsewhere). We have developed a certain construct or model of music based on ideas of ownership, property, the fact that you "own" the music you create and you sell it, and this weird relationship between musicians and record companies where musicians give up some of their ownership of their "product" in exchange for services the record company can provide, such as making recordings and distributing them. It's a very capitalistic paradigm, of producers and consumers and copyrights and all these kinds of constructs. A lot of people have a lot invested in this paradigm providing an effective model for making a career out of being a musician. It sort of worked pretty well up until now -- and I use all those qualifiers for the reasons Georgi stated so well above: that copies of CDs and tapes and records have been around for ages.
Now we have all this new technology and the paradigm I described isn't working as well anymore. You can distribute a lot more free music a hell of a lot faster via the internet than you ever good copying cassett tapes. People keep coming up with software that tries to block this and other people write more software that gets around the blocking software. It's a never ending battle. Dragut's website is a great example of the model breaking down but it's so hazy -- out of print recordings, etc. that it is causing a huge long thread of controversy on this website. The record companies are hanging on by their fingernails since any eedjit with a computer and a mike can record an album and if they have a printer they can print album covers and make their own CD. The lines between producers and consumers have gotten blurrier as the consumer has acquired a hell of a lot more control.
Whether you like it or not, the old paradigm that has sort of worked, at least in our living memory, isn't working now. Whether you agree or disagree with Dragut's website, it is endemic of the problems faced by the music industry right now. Fighting it, whether it's by shutting websites like this one down or finding new and ingenius ways to encrypt albums or whatever, isn't the way forward. I think the industry needs to adopt a new model and slowly but surely, it probably will.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by TheSilverSpear
Re: A treasure trove of music
I don't know if there's a rule about citing Kuhn, sort of like Godwin's Law, but I'm going to leave that aside for the moment.
I want to address something that Floss the Tethers has brought up:
"I think we should abide by musicians' intentions and that's yet another thing Dragut Reis doesn't really understand."
I thought about trying to contact the musicians and ask them what they thought about it, but then I realized what a sticky position that would put them in. Mick Hanly, for example, doesn't own the copyright to these recordings as far as I know. What happens if he starts telling people "sure, go ahead and download them, I don't mind". Well, that in itself could be a violation of copyright law - especially if someone were to offer him money for the recordings. Sorry, a pay-pal account with his name on it next to the download button - same thing, to the law, I suppose.
I don't imagine that Kevin Burke will be dropping by either, to tell a bunch of trad music fanatics (who have just got through savaging Frankie Gavin for a business decision to use a band name) that they shouldn't download a set of tunes - tunes that they probably already own on records anyway. What has he got to gain by it? He might hate the idea of this recording being available - he seems to take a lot of pride in making excellent records, musically and sonically, and this is a one-off recording from a night at the Cobblestone. Good, nothing very different from other recordings, nothing special, nothing to warrant it being released.
Or, who knows, he might not mind at all - after all, people on this board likely have bought a lot of records that he's on, some of which he even got paid for. Most of the people reading thesession.org pay for tickets to hear him play when he comes to town, maybe he doesn't mind if people get a little extra something. You don't know, any more than I do. The only thing that we do know is that there's little incentive for him to speak up on the matter either way. Whatever he thinks about it, there's not a lot of upside in him saying anything about it on a website, "in front of god and everybody", as they say.
If either of the two decides to prove me wrong, I'd love to hear what they or any of the other artists represented here have to say about the matter, but unless and until they do, I think it's less than fair to speak in their names. Most of the arguments made here so far are quite worthy of consideration on their own merits.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: A treasure trove of music
Ah Silver Spear talking like that I am sure you will be Dr Silver Spear in no time at don'ch know
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by bazouki dave
Re: A treasure trove of music
Silver Spear is right. making a living out of selling units of music that don't require presence is an outmoded concept. It isn't even a concept that has much history. I love the way people like FlosstheTethers get so worked up about it.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by pavlf
Re: A treasure trove of music
and should all those people who play just like (or try to) other people pay money to the PRS or whoever everytime they execute a roll in say the style of Kevin Burke, one that they learned off Promenade, say, back in the 80s? Surely that's reproduction too?
10p for each triplet after the style of Tommy Peoples.
50 for a Matt Moloy flute cran (more notes)
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by pavlf
Re: A treasure trove of music
Aside from the cost of production I wonder if the value placed on a recording by consumers has gone down.
In the 1930s how long would it have taken to play through an average record collection - 2 hours ? 4 hours ? Every 78 available to buy would have been a special treat.
In the 1970s I and most people who records I borrowed (...) probably could play through their collection in a day or so (if they had wanted to).
Now, how long would it take to listen through just the archived Late Session programmes ?
Traditional music is being made available to listen to legally for free faster than one person could listen to it, probably even if you ignore repeats of tracks. And a lot of it is recorded live.
I often wonder if musicians get played well for live performances that are broadcast. Er, especially when listening to my recording of that Malloy/Carty/McGlynn broadcast taken off the radio...
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by david_h
Re: A treasure trove of music
It's a great thread all right. It's a wonderful compendium of excuses and justifications for obtaining something that exists only by dint of someone else's blood, sweat, tears and talent (and cash) for nothing. Garn, just nick it and live with it - after all, no-one's coming to get you for it, which kind of makes it OK, eh?
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
@ Steve: "It's a wonderful compendium of excuses and justifications for obtaining something that exists only by dint of someone else's blood, sweat, tears and talent (and cash) for nothing".
Doesn't that sound like everything? Not just a debate about some trad recordings.
to each according to their needs and from each according to their abilities .....
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by pavlf
Re: A treasure trove of music
I wish I knew something about the history of copyright in the music industry, as it would be interesting to know how this "units of music" (thanks for the term, pavif!) as private property model developed. There would have been some sort of historical process behind it. Anyway, whether or not you agree with obtaining free music, the point is that the units of music as private property model isn't working. No matter which side of this debate you are on, you can surely see that. Screaming that stealing music is wrong won't help, since it is apparent from this thread alone that not everyone shares the exact same construct of a unit of music as private property. This has always been a somewhat tenuous classification, far more tenuous than say, the classification of a car as private property. I can't go into a Tesco and buy keys and a kit for hot wiring a car like I can buy some blank CDs. With the internet and the technology for making recordings available for free to a large number of users, these small cracks, which are hardly new, in how various people understand and apply constructs of music and property have become giant gaping canyons.
Sure, this website might be shut down, but others like it -- and not just for trad music -- will inevitably appear. And people will continue to burn CDs, use bit torrent type things, etc. etc. You can expend lots of energy putting out small fires, but the fires are endemic of the big, systematic problem and until you address that, you'll be perpetually fighting these wee fires.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by TheSilverSpear
Re: A treasure trove of music
The units - after Guttenberg - used to be sheet music (see Dennis Potter's Pennies From Heaven ... pun intended by Potter), which, in a temporal sense, is therefore more traditional than recordings.
Recordings were a pardigm shift. Now the process of their reconfiguration in the capitalist model is another. Like Silver Spear says, shout all you like, it's not going to stop. And it isn't really being driven by abberant subjects, miscreants and immoral n'er do wells.
Musicians need to find a new model. And anyway, it's not like the old one did many people so many favours is it?
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by pavlf
Re: A treasure trove of music
I'll be sure and title my next post "A Burning Question"
Enjoying the discussion. BTW...just for the "record" ...I've bought my fair share. And the only ones I intend to [or indeed am interested in] download[ing] from this site are from artists who are long gone and where one can't possibly get their music any other *reasonable* way -- now or likely in the future.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by mtodd
Re: A treasure trove of music
I have tried to get permission from artists with regards to their music, as I've stated, but it's quite difficult, as many of them are dead.
Those who are alive are a bit rubbish at replying to emails.
Did anybody up on their high horses stop to consider whether the artists' wishes are consulted before their concerts etc. are posted on Youtube? Not one person has mentioned the most famous pirate site in the world, for some reason. The fact is, as many have noted, the internet has changed the way in which the world of media works irreversibly. I don't think I've done any harm by posting these wonderful recordings for people to hear, and contrary to certain self-righteous individuals' assumptions, I have contacted a number of record companies who are in ownership of copyright, and I am aware of those recordings which are intended for re-release and those that are not. It is possible to understand copyright law, and still disagree with it. I may not be a lawyer, but I'm not an idiot, and I'm certainly not a thief. I always buy CDs direct from the artists when I travel to their gigs, and I'll buy them a pint when they're out for a tune. I just don't buy into the outdated economic and legal shibboleths because I don't believe in them. Some record companies did a great job promoting traditional music, and did a great job for their recording artists. Some did well for themselves, and screwed their artists over, and continue to do so. The internet is now part of the capitalist marketplace, and if business doesn't adapt, it dies. That's what capitalism is all about kid.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Dragut Reis
Re: A treasure trove of music
The man in the street might well see the whole issue summed up as "You can't play with my toys ... they're mine!" The problem is that the issue is backed up by copyright law (unknown in the Baroque period), but copyright law - as with most other legislation - soon gets bedeviled by that other law: The Law of Unintended Consequences.
Thank God I was never a copyright lawyer.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by lazyhound
Re: A treasure trove of music
It's great...here we are trying -- quite vainly -- to control what simply cannot be controlled....freedom of access, human nature, sharing and basic human curiosity ["hey, that's cool, never hear of that guy/woman...I'll have a listen"]
The fact is, control has been wrested from the controllers [by the web/digital technology] and has been place in the hands of the people.
And the people will rule. That's just common sense. But still we cling vainly to an outmoded and hopelessly inadequate system of reward and punishment.
Interesting.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by mtodd
Re: A treasure trove of music
"Screaming that stealing music is wrong won't help..."
Nobody's screaming. But if you get something for nothing without permission you are, er, stealing. That was a good one about I've bought my fair share anyway. So it's OK to steal a Rembrandt as long as I've already bought three Rembrandts... That's another good one that justifies it because you can buy blank CDs at Tesco. You can bet your life that, in the early 80s when only one factory was capable of producing CDs, had the record companies been able to predict that, less than 20 years down the line, any fool would be able to make a perfect copy of any CD at home for 10p, they'd have slapped the most titanic copy-protection possible on CDs from the outset. Not too many of us are squeaky clean but a lot of us draw our own lines in the sand. No-one's going to come and get us, that's the luxury of this discussion (how different the arguments would be if that wasn't the case!). Just do what you do do quietly and cut out the convoluted justifications!
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
It's not the same Steve, and the analogy doesn't hold any more water now than it did 30 posts ago. A painting is a concrete object, whereas copyright protects property in the abstract. Stealing a painting deprives its owner of his possession, whereas the copying of recorded material deprives nobody, unless it is depriving them of profit. In the case of music that will not produce profit for the copyright owners because they have either lost the master tapes or decided not to re-release for other reasons, it deprives them of nothing, other than the potential to make profit, and that is something of which they are already depriving themselves. These are not legalistic arguments, obviously, but they do have an obvious logic. It is necessary for busineses to adapt in order to make profit and survive. The internet is forcing them to adapt, or die, and if illicit recordings made available on the internet force music companies into the 21st century, and forcibly encourage them to release old recordings in legal formats, then that in itself will have made the whole exercise worthwhile.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Dragut Reis
Re: A treasure trove of music
Controlling what cannot be controlled.
The Greatful Dead figured this out years ago, well ahead of the curve, exactly what Silver Spear is saying. There's been a shift. The Dead were well ahead of it, but they made the plan clear.
They encouraged bootlegging and made their money on playing live and merchandise sales.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: A treasure trove of music
You seem to want to rewrite the law because you don't like what copyright owners do. The fact is that the copyright owners can do what they like, and if they want to cut their noses off to spite their own faces they have the absolute right to do just that. I hate what Mr Bulmer, for example, is doing (or not doing) with the masters of Nic Jones's albums, but they are his and I have no right to take the law into my own hands. If I grab a pristine vinyl copy of Noah's Ark Trap and make dozens of CD-Rs with it and spread 'em around, even if I give 'em away, I may not be depriving Bulmer of any profits now but I am compromising his ability to do so at a later date if he ever comes to his senses. He may have other sources of income that obviates any need for him to "adapt or die." The masters are his and it is 100% his decision as to whether he wishes to deprive himself of a profit or defer the day when he makes one. I can't tell you how much I detest what he's done but that just can't cloud the facts, and the most salient fact is that those masters are his. I don't like it one little bit but there it is. If I win the lottery I'll make him an offer he can't refuse and give the masters back to Nic Jones. As I say, we all find our own ways round all this, and no-one's coming to get us and I severely doubt that hellfire will be ours. Venial sins are still sins.
Steve (atheist actually)
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
"if you get something for nothing without permission you are, er, stealing"
Damn. Somebody should have told me that when I learned that tune last night from my friend Tina (without asking her permission) that I was stealing it from her.
Of course the comparison to Rembrandts is fundamentally flawed, because paintings are a commodity in limited supply. If I copy your CD, I haven't stolen it from you because you still have it. The only actual harm done is that somebody *theoretically* lost a sale (I say theoretically because much of the copying is done of things that people WOULDN'T have bought).
Steve Shaw said:
"You can bet your life that, in the early 80s when only one factory was capable of producing CDs, had the record companies been able to predict that, less than 20 years down the line, any fool would be able to make a perfect copy of any CD at home for 10p, they'd have slapped the most titanic copy-protection possible on CDs from the outset."
This would be a very safe bet.
This comment shows a distinct lack of understanding of the history of the music industry. The fact is, the music industry has been hollering that the sky was falling on music ever since the invention of the gramophone. They believed that cylinders, cassettes, VCRs and MP3s would all destroy the music business (in all cases, they were wildly wrong):
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/10/100-years-of-big-content-fearing-technologyin-its-own-words.ars
Copy protection doesn't, and never did, work. Time and time again, it only punished the people who bothered to actually buy the product (with security-destroying rootkits, requirements to buy special hardware, not being able to listen on the player of your choice, etc). The pirates not only broke the copy protection, but in doing so made a better product (eg: one you could listen to anywhere and that didn't damage your computer).
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Georgi
Re: A treasure trove of music
Cheese Graterful Dead, that is.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: A treasure trove of music
"You seem to want to rewrite the law because you don't like what copyright owners do. The fact is that the copyright owners can do what they like, and if they want to cut their noses off to spite their own faces they have the absolute right to do just that."
Perhaps he wants to rewrite the law because it's stupid, and it hurts humanity?
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Georgi
Re: A treasure trove of music
SWFL - it's true that the Grateful Dead did make a viable business allowing taping of their concerts, but keep in mind that they were, and still are, some of the most stringent enforcers around when it comes to the copyrights they choose to maintain. They chose to give away the right to make and distribute copies of their live shows, but at some of the same shows they would bust people for selling a T-shirt with one of their registered images (the skull and lightning bolt, for example, or the skull and roses - there was a list that the band released). Today, if you go to archive.org, you'll find that some of the band's most popular shows are not available there, because they're available for purchase as official live albums, such as the Dick's Picks series, and the band has asked that they not be distributed on-line - "asked" in the sense of "invoked their status as copyright holder". So there's not a lot of hope for an anti-copyright position in the Grateful Dead case.
But even if it were as simple as "the Grateful Dead gave away their music, and made money", the most important part of that sentence is the part where the band makes the decision. None of the artists on Dragut's site have publicly stated that they approve of this, so there's no indication that this is part of anyone's business model. The Grateful Dead case might be an argument to sway someone to the model you'd like them to follow, but it has no bearing on whether or not there's a violation of any moral or ethical principles involved in Dragut's site. Legal principles, obviously, are totally disregarded - I think it's safe to say that "out of print" does not indicate that copyright has been abandoned.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: A treasure trove of music
(I should clarify that last remark)
I shudder to think what would have become of western civilization if the ancient monks scribbling away in their monasteries had to adhere to today's copyright laws...
Bootlegging/copying might be against the law, but it's a fact of life, and I would contend that it often (eg: in cases like Ceol Alainn) does more good than actual harm.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Georgi
Re: A treasure trove of music
The tune you learned from Tina was either in copyright or not. We are not talking about obtaining stuff by learning it. If that were stealing and humanity was simultaneously infinitely moral we'd all still be grunting at each other's naked hairy bodies in between helpings of mammoth sh*te stew. There is nothing illegal or immoral about learning any tune, but you are stepping over a line, ever so slightly, if that tune is Ashokan Farewell, for example, and you play it in the pub without asking first. De minimis non curat lex, though, eh, and we all do it. It's about as victimless as it can get. Stick that tune on your CD, though, and you're nicking unless you pay. There is a difference.
Copy protection? It's only illegal for CDs because the record industry didn't see the future. Suppose they had brought it in. Well, there would have been around 12-15 years' worth of the CD experience before anyone at home could have had any need to break the code, let alone make copies of anything on blank CDs, because they didn't have computers. We would have been in a whole different mindset and we wouldn't have needed clumsy and panic-stricken attempts to bring in the kind of copy-protection that damages computers or makes CDs unplayable on some kit..
Whether I understand the music industry or not is entirely beside the point. It's whether we can honestly confront the difference between right and not-quite-so-right. Just because someone else is being a bastard doesn't justify me becoming one as well, even if they're big bastards and I'm only a little one. That doesn't mean I might not choose to be one.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
I'm making beautiful, unprofitable music available for people to hear. That doesn't make me a bastard.
Bulmer is within his legal rights, I'm not. Which one of is doing more harm to the music we love?
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Dragut Reis
Re: A treasure trove of music
justify my becoming one. Aargh.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
Dragut chose to share some wonderful music that he decided would benefit...and be for the greater benefit...of musicians at large. He could have just as easily chose NOT to share and and hoard it out of either fear of "legal issues" [good moral escape clause] or miserliness.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by mtodd
Re: A treasure trove of music
He is. So? He paid for the legal right to withhold that stuff if he so chose, and he did.
Carry on, mate! We're all behind you!
99%....
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
Which was a response to dragut.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
What a wonderful discussion. I'm surprised there's only been a single reference to the history and purpose of copyright law. Of course it changes over time (recently in favor of megacorps as they keep extending the horizon so Disney can keep making profits on Mickey Mouse) but the original purpose of copyright law is most definitely NOT to enable people to make money.
The reason for copyright is to increase the production of intellectual capital. The reasoning is that with some incentive to produce, more will be produced. So profit is a consequence of the law, not its raison d'etre. As long as the profit motive is pursued without regard to the purpose of providing incentive to create, the law is out of step with its reason for existence. When a law doesn't do what it's designed for anymore, a couple of things can happen. One is that those with a vested interest in the status quo use their political clout to keep making money at the expense of artistic creation. Another is that people defy the law until the whole thing comes to a head and the law gets changed. Both of these are happening here. Which will win? Don't touch that dial! (which for the younger readers is an archaic reference to a knob that used to control channel selection on televisions sets).
BTW, another problem with the law is that the creation is done by the artists, but most of the "incentive" provided by the law goes toward production and distribution. Now that production and distribution are virtually free, we need a model where artists are compensated for creation, but producers/distributors lose their stranglehold on the process.
<<<stepping back down to the floor, pointing at the soap-box beside me.... "Who's next?">>>
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Brink
Re: A treasure trove of music
Brink
Wouldn't copyright also, directly or indirectly, or both, increase the perceived value [the intellectual captital] of a work as it were? thereby making it profitable to make and distribute it? ie, a money making venture.
I suppose one problem may be that in the new "free" universe that digital tech has created is we're trying [and confused about] what the term "value" now means? Value to whom? Well, it all depends...the greater good, or the good of only a few who think they can make money on something that time has forgot.
These records aren't creating value for the defunct record labels...but they still have great cultural value. And so....if something has that should it then not be distributed just because it's intellectual value can't be measured in business terms??
In other words, making the music freely available might not make some people money, but it might make nevertheless make many people very happy and the culture of irish music all the richer both in spirit and in depth of knowledge.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by mtodd
Re: A treasure trove of music
Mtodd,
It sounds like you're taking my point precisely. The law exists to incent creative works for the greater good. The incentive comes in the form of compensation to the providers for a limited period of time.
If I recall from my one-year of law school, it came from the general need for usable maps. Society pays the creator of the map for a limited period of time in exchange for having a map that can be used in perpetuity. It was all very practical and civilized, but the doctrine has been extended to cover other areas of creativity, and the protection time-frames have become dramatically longer.
My argument isn't intended to infer that this behavior isn't against the law, with the risks and penalties that might entail. But I'm an American, and my entire country is based in large part on violating the laws of the British Empire. The Boston Tea Party was certainly illegal, but most Americans think the legal breach was justifiable.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Brink
Re: A treasure trove of music
If people can't make a living (or are out of pocket) doing creative things people may not do those creative things.
If a creative things brings in an income forever why not go sit on the beach rather than creating anything else.
Am I following this ? doesn't seem to difficult ?
And if people can rip stuff off for free why should they bother about "society" and "the greater good"
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by david_h
Re: A treasure trove of music
http://www.topicrecords.co.uk/Index_Link_Files/topic_records_history.html
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by david_h
Re: A treasure trove of music
Put another way:
When is it OK to break a law that isn't keeping pace with the times?
a) Never
b) Whenever you feel like it
c) When you're willing to face fines, imprisonment, and the ire of society on the chance that you're not really a criminal, but in fact at the vanguard of social change?
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Brink
Re: A treasure trove of music
"making the music freely available might not make some people money, but it might make nevertheless make many people very happy and the culture of irish music all the richer both in spirit and in depth of knowledge"
ha, ha, ha.
Why on earth do you think musicians should put the time in and pay for recording and pressing just for your hippie ideals?
What if a group of people decided that what you do for a living should be free 'for the greater good'? Would you continue doing it? People like you are the death of music not the life.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by bogman
Re: A treasure trove of music
I think there is a lot of ontological confusion over what music *is* and what ownership of music means. And as brink said, the problem is exacerbated by ad hoc meaning given to the consequences of copyright law (profit) which ignores its original intent. Steve is saying that a tune like Ashokan Farewell (or whatever) has the same ontological status as a Rembrandt painting or a car, essentially a physical thing that someone can own. And if you take that physical thing without the owner's permission, that's stealing. Others here are saying it's a lot more complicated than that, that a song or tune is ambiguous; it's not a physical thing you can see, touch, and yes, own, but has a different ontological status. The music industry has adopted the former -- as I said earlier, it would be worthwhile knowing the history of the law and its development as it pertains to music -- but only tenuously. No one here would ever say that professional musicians should be denied a living, but they are challenging the model of music as property and saying it's something else, something that modern constructs of property and ownership don't describe very well, hence the legal conundrums surrounding the of sharing music. In spite of what modern intellectual law property law says about it, there is simply no consensus as to what ontological space music occupies.
The law itself is a cultural artifact with a history of uncertainty and contestation. It's not transhistorical and we should be wary of reifying it. It's worth looking at why the law is what it is, what historical processes lead to its current configuration. It is surely worth considering the possibility of better, more adaptive legal framework. If we legally and ontologically reclassify music, we can have jurisprudence which compensates artists for creation (as brink said) but releases the industry from the stranglehold of not only record companies, but also that of conceptual understandings of property and control which are no longer applicable (if they ever really were), and don't do much more than pitch various users of the music industry against each other.
Often in legal history, intellectual justifications are attached to laws and systems long after the initial reasons for creating them have become antiquated. The law themselves get reified, so even though outmoded, novel square problems are squished and jammed into the legal round holes. Laws generally only change under duress and usually peacemeal, so until a crisis (back to Kuhn) forces a major change in the law, it can very much be an awkward cobbled together jurisprudential mess.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by TheSilverSpear
Re: A treasure trove of music
It is quite clear that in the glorious traditional past when there were no CDs, no tapes, no gramophone records and best of all no sheet music, no one could make a living and there wasn't any music.
Or alternatively it was only once all this copying thing for a fee - started happening that anything became possible. After all if we can all copy freely it's obviously all over.
Thieves, bastards, hippies, just a few of the names thrown around at anyone who has had the temerity to question 'the law'. There isn't any 'law'. There are only laws.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by pavlf
Re: A treasure trove of music
My, this really is one of the best discussions we've had in a very long while here, but it's becoming increasingly hard to respond to the points made - simply because there are so many!
Let's be clear about a few things (and these aren't in any order of importance).
1) The Irish music industry, a mere droplet in an ocean of lachrymation, has never produced a band capable of exploiting its own product in a manner similar to The Grateful Dead. Indeed, there's only one band, Dervish, which has steadfastly managed to maintain control of its own recorded output.
Contrarily, the Irish music industry is replete with tales of foolishly signed contracts and rip-off deals (Planxty and The Bothy Band being the tip of the iceberg, though many others have suffered).
2) There has never been any great recording industry interest in Ireland. Polydor and Philips (which were both relative small fry in the grand scheme of things in the 1970s and 1980s) did have offices in Dublin, but the list of Irish musicians who've actually signed to major (in the sense of truly global) labels is ridiculously small. In traditional music terms that list boils down to two names: The Chieftains and Altan.
3) The majority of labels which have released traditional Irish music are relatively small enterprises. Even the big ones within that selective field are pretty tiny in comparison to, for example, the Universal Music Group.
Comments have been made here about the failure of said labels to make available their back catalogue, so let me provide a couple of clear examples which suggest that is an ill-founded viewpoint.
Firstly, the Topic label (some of whose recordings have been made available by Dragut Reis) has a truly estimable back catalogue, spanning more than fifty years of recordings. Yet, because interest in folk and traditional music is at best marginal, it has always struggled to stay above the breadline (and, indeed, has a very small staff and operates from premises which should have been upgraded a couple of decades ago).
The Irish element of Topic's back catalogue is relatively small, but that doesn't mean that the label has no interest in it. For instance, as part of its 70th anniversary celebrations, it reissued a remastered version of its McPeake Family recordings (the first time ever that the McPeakes had appeared on CD). The key word in that paragraph is 'remastered' since I know first-hand that the label's CEO is not interested in simply making available MP3 versions of the original vinyl recordings. He would want to do justice to the musicians and release recordings which did full justice to their playing or singing. The problem is that he simply does not have the resources to do so. Why don't you contact him directly, DR, and offer your services?
Secondly, let's take Mulligan as an example. Until recently the rights to the label were lost in some licensing quagmire. In 2008 Compass Records acquired the rights to the label, but whether said rights included the UK rest on a High Court case between the label and the nefarious Dave Bulmer's Celtic Music. As far as I'm aware the High Court has yet to announce its findings.
Dragut Reis has made available several Mulligan recordings to which he clearly has no rights of ownership, but, more importantly, nor does he have the right to second guess the label's intentions regarding albums released by musicians such as Bobby Casey or Mick Hanly.
4) The original Dragut Reis was, of course, a pirate. It's therefore a great pity that the one posting here hasn't checked some of the links available on his site. If he'd done so, he'd find other bloggers offering copies of commercially available CDs, such as John Doherty's 'The Floating Bow'. Any claims of 'innocence' should be rapidly replaced by 'It's a fair cop, gov'.
Finally, there's this:
'I'm making beautiful, unprofitable music available for people to hear. That doesn't make me a bastard.'
Yes, you are making the music available to anyone, but with a degree of self-righteousness, ill-founded assumptions and illegality that simply beggars belief.
Think on, man, think on.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Floss the Tethers
Re: A treasure trove of music
Why are the people supporting the law, and upholding the moral good always so nasty???
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by pavlf
Re: A treasure trove of music
A recording is a product, taking it is theft. To steal someones produce is nasty, not pointing out that it's wrong to do so. Just because someone elses product is easier to steal than yours does not make it right. Laws don't even have to come into that.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by bogman
Re: A treasure trove of music
So, what’s a viable solution? Obviously, the current paradigm works about as well as alcohol (or pot) prohibition. What sort of system would work for all the stakeholders?
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Bob himself
Re: A treasure trove of music
Just because one is attempting to reach a clear and honest view of how things are, without twisting, turning, contorting, justifying and excusing, it doesn't mean that one is supporting the law. At least not in the sense of defending it. And I for one am not upholding any moral good. I'm one of those small bastards, for sure. Those who know me may have kilometrage that varies.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
Capitalism is founded upon taking people's products and giving them less than their worth in return. Is it therefore nasty? An argument supporting capitalism that declares it's basic tentets nasty seems likely to fail.
What should work well for musicians is making music. Not selling abstracted units. That worked for a very short time in the whole history of making music.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by pavlf
Re: A treasure trove of music
So you'd be happy if no more abstract units were made then?
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by bogman
Re: A treasure trove of music
Don't be silly CO.
As pointed out above, Planxty and the Bothies didn't make anything out of their, let's call them albums ... but they didn't suddenly cease making music did they? All of those people carried on playing. Albums, though they didn't make them any money, helped them to do that. They became well-known on the backs of fabulous recordings, fantastic playing etc etc. Just because they didn't make any money out of the albums didn't mean their music suddenly ceased to exist. An album as some kind of precious commodity, an exhalted copy bearing a simplified notion of worth and ownership isn't the natural order of things - no more than anything else to do with products and exchange is, I'd add.
I'm sorry anyway, I'm probably too far to the left and thinking that society is constructed upon a pile of crap and lies is likely nothing to do with any of this.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by pavlf
Re: A treasure trove of music
As far as I remember, they didn't make much money from their sell-out gigs either. I think I recall Christy saying that in the first Planxty's farewell tour they scarcely broke even. So let's see. No money from albums and no money from gigs. Capitalism, anyone?
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
In the words of Dragut Reis (unless he ripped those of as well)
"It is quite possible that O'Mealy was duped, as he was reputedly reluctant to be recorded because people, he felt, would be less likely to come out to hear him perform if they had access to his music at home."
So are people now suggesting the opposite - "abstract units" that only benefit the musician by being a promotional tool ?
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by david_h
Re: A treasure trove of music
Haha, but that's it isn't it? That is capitalism. No one much likes your music, at least not as much as we've made them like david cassidy so tough luck.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by pavlf
Re: A treasure trove of music
There's one model that works really well - free to air television.
You don't pay for watching shows that someone else has made, which they want you to see anyway, because that is how they make their money. You don't pay either to watch the advertisements on your television screen in among the show that you're watching. The television station gets paid by the advertiser and the show maker gets paid by the television station. Enough of the viewing audience out there buys enough of the stuff being advertised to pay for it all. That's private sector funding.
The alternative I guess is to get all taxpayers to pay for it, by government-funded free to air television with no ads (they'll probably put ads in anyway, you know what the government can be like, and there's nothing you'll be able to do about it, but write blogs).
Same model will go for the music. The internet will change the way music is marketed and paid for; it won't stop people copying it though, it will make that even easier.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Duijera Dubh
Re: A treasure trove of music
It's a little rich for you to be accusing me of self-righteousness Geoff. I bow to your encyclopaedic knowledge of the traditional Irish music recording industry, but your assumptions of moral guardianship are a little megolomaniac, to say the least. I'm not self-righteous, just indignant and opinionated. I would prefer it if Dave re-mastered the entire back catalogue of Irish material in the vaults, but that's not going to happen in the near future, perhaps never. In the meantime, I've made available a few home-rips of great albums for people to enjoy. Those who don't want to buy excellent quality re-mastered editions won't buy them anyway. Audiophiles like myself, and countless others, will always buy legitimate copies as soon as they are available. This really isn't as big a deal as you, and others, are making out. I'm not an ogre, I respect the wishes of those who don't want to be associated with my site. You can vouch for that personally, though I doubt that fits in to your (rather slef-righteous) agenda. Just stop worrying about it so much. The Irish music industry is it's own worst enemy, as you've already pointed out. People like me are only encouraging interest in old-style music. It will pay off in the future. Just not for me, because I'm not trying to rip anyone off. Fuc king hippie that I am.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Dragut Reis
Re: A treasure trove of music
Who would pay to go and listen to someone playing without ever having heard them, or without the recommendation of someone else who has?
And who hasn't gone to see someone playing, prefering instead to stay at home and listen to them on their CD/pirated mp3/flac ?
I'm not a driving force behind what's going on, but it is going on and I don't think it can be stopped. The real deep problem is one - i think - with the whole structure of a global capital economy. I think that this is reproduced in all kinds of ways and places, like here, where it might seem totally removed from larger issues.
I may of course also be wrong. I may be evil. Perhaps I am.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by pavlf
Re: A treasure trove of music
Floss, I do take your point about the links to sites with downloads of commercially-available material. Tell me which ones they are, and I'll remove them.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by Dragut Reis
Re: A treasure trove of music
There is a lot of ethical valence in "how things are" and the status of a recording is more ambiguous than CO's characterization thereof. I'm not making any moral judgments -- I am saying that *is* how things are because there is a 100+ post thread about it on this site and in the meantime, thousands of people are copying music and thousands are being p*ssed off about it. So I reiterate there is no consensus; what there is are fundamental ontological problems with current conceptual frameworks of a tune or a recording.
It seems as if various people on this thread are arguing what philosopher types call the "liberal theory" of power," which essentially asks, "which acts ought to be permitted and which acts ought to be prohibited." I'm saying that it's more complicated, that we ought to take a more Foucauldian approach (oh yes, we've gone from Kuhn to Foucault) and look at the historicity of power relations in the context of music industry. Law is an interface -- one of them -- for the exercise of power. So if you really want to dig underneath the surface and come to an understanding of why things are the way they are now and why it's such a huge problem, you'd want to analyze the power relationships between musicians, consumers, record companies, and other users of the industry. Power, however, is not only preventative; it is also creative and productive; it not only subjects one to forms of control, but also constructs him. I bring up some of Foucault's ideas on power because that is precisely what is at stake here -- how power is constructed, who has it, what does it ontologically mean? Money? Intellectual control? Right now we are seeing power in the music industry changing faster than the juridical apparatus and indeed even social can respond to it and as a result both do so clumsily. Who has power, who should have power, and how that can or even if it should be regulated are all highly contested right now given how much technology has altered older power structures and posed a challenge to the social and legal structures supporting them.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by TheSilverSpear
Re: A treasure trove of music
Emily...it gives me great honour to award you a PhD summa cum- laude, posthaste. You may now look for a job...good luck.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by mtodd
Re: A treasure trove of music
Emily Are you sure you are studying the right subject ?
I know there is no shortage of dead mad scottish people to look at but you seem to have a good grasp of this subject .
I wonder if this file sharing biz will bankrupt record companies so we will end up with artists making and selling their product themselves at gigs and on line .
The end of woolworths in the UK has hastened this future.
My cousin does gigs all round the UK hardly ever gets paid but sells 15 to twenty CDs a night at £14 a time .
He is not full time yet but is building a following,
I think thats the way to go for those who want to be a full time artists.
# Posted on November 11th 2009 by bazouki dave
Re: A treasure trove of music
Very interesting discussion. A random thought that popped into my head while reading was this: the sixties was probably the heyday for record sales (I can't be arsed to research this). There was no other way to have the music in your house on tap apart from buying the record. That's why every beatle-maniac had all their singles etc.
It sometimes feels that the recording industry / copyright laws regarding music are still wondering how to get back to that golden monopoly of media.
Ok, so not much of a thought really. Carry on, all.
Actually, just a wee summary too:
It's certainly illegal. It's moral in the wider sense of feeding a living culture, and the sharing of the marvellous exemplars of that culture to those who inhabit that culture. It's very grey water when we wonder what the individual artists' opinions are without knowing them.
p.s. Emily, I appreciated your Foucault angle. Thanks.
p.p.s. Mr Pirate, I'm thoroughly enjoying listening to what I've downloaded. I had quite a bit on worn-out tapes that had passed their day (yes, copied from LPs shock horror - in defense, there was sod all available for sale in Devon at the beginning of the 90s. Luckily my dad and stepdad both had good record collections).
I just had to admit my culpability.
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by mutatis mutandis
Re: A treasure trove of music
The more I read this, the more I realise I understand Foucault.
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
my brother told me that recordings over fifty years old no longer fall under copyright. Is this true?
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by richrua
Re: A treasure trove of music
Yes, 50 years from year of recording or publication, whichever is latest, until 2008, from which year copyright extends for 95 years.
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by Dragut Reis
Re: A treasure trove of music
If anyone is interested in the history of copyrights in American and British law, I now have an excellent (PDF) book on hand by an American law professor which gives an excellent overview. If anyone is interested, drop me a line and I can email it.
I will also add that it's not just hippies, pirates, liberals, whatever you want to call them, who recognize the positive benefits to society of allowing some amount of free access to cultural artifacts, such as music and films; it is also the United States Congress and the United States Supreme Court. When the Motion Picture Association of America sued Sony for creating technology which made it easy for people to record TV shows and movies, the VCR with the record button, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Sony. They actually argued that it wasn't their job to police these things but rather it was Congress' job to pass legislation which balanced competing interests. Justice Stevens, writing for the majority opinion argued,
"The protection given to copyrights is wholly statutory, and, in a case like this, in which Congress has not plainly marked the course to be followed by the judiciary, this Court must be circumspect in construing the scope of rights created by a statute that never contemplated such a calculus of interests. Any individual may reproduce a copyrighted work for a "fair use"; the copyright owner does not possess the exclusive right to such a use." (Sony Corp. v Universal Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984))
In this case and others like it (and there have been many), where the holders of a copyright demanded Congress or the courts enact legislation to regulate or enjoin some sort of new technology which fundamentally alters the relationship between copyright producers and consumers, Congress and the Courts have consistently refused to grant copyright holders absolute and exclusive rights to the value of their copyright. The courts and Congress acknowledge that while making sure authors and musicians get the fruit of their intellectual labours, there are also societal benefits in the free flow of information, ideas. In the Sony Corp case, Stevens said,
"it is Congress that has been assigned the task of defining the scope of the limited monopoly that should be granted to authors or to inventors in order to give the public appropriate access to their work product. Because this task involves a difficult balance between the interests of authors and inventors in the control and exploitation of their writings and discoveries on the one hand, and society's competing interest in the free flow of ideas, information, and commerce on the other hand, our patent and copyright statutes have been amended repeatedly." (464 US 417)
I think this case serves as a concrete example of my previous points -- that it is important, necessary even, to take into account social and historical processes and from this constitute an awareness of how our current framework of copyright and ownership of music has been constructed.
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by TheSilverSpear
Re: A treasure trove of music
When you watch a TV show or movie on TV you have paid for it, either through advertising putting prices up or via a licence fee. It might not feel as though you've paid for it, but you have. So taping it to watch another time is fair use. If you buy a CD and make a copy of it for your car that is also fair use. If you obtain an album without permission and without paying for it that is not fair use. If you buy a download from someone who has not obtained permission to distribute it that is not fair use either. All this fine talk about societal benefits and cultural rights and free flow of information is still just a pile of excuses for ignoring the law. Bad laws can have unintended consequences it's true, but so can advocating the sidestepping of those laws. I'm desperate to get a (legal) copy of that Nic Jones album but I won't die if I don't get hold of it. And let's not forget that we exist in this little bubble of Irish music which is a tiny minority interest. 99% of the cultural "treasure" that would be slopping around under a more liberal regime would be pop songs.
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
I believe that if you read carefully the copyright notifications on movies and tv shows you will see that you are not permitted to make copies of them, whether they appear on free to air or pay television. The view seems clearly to be that even though there are ads in among the movie or show, that does not entitle you to the right to copy that show or movie, whether you deem that you have paid for the right to do so or not, simply because you claim payment for the right through watching an ad, or indeed having paid your monthly pay tv premium.
You sound like you're trying to justify your taping of movies, ss.
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by Duijera Dubh
Re: A treasure trove of music
Steve, last time I checked what the BBC were saying about recording programs the impression I got was that it was OK to hold a recording to listen to it at a later time( I think they call it 'time shifting' ) but not to hold it indefintely. It may be something to do with the royalty they pay - I guess they don't have a licence to broadcast stuff and let people keep copies for ever.
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by david_h
Re: A treasure trove of music
"limited monopoly"...what a great phrase and concept! Brilliant.
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by mtodd
Re: A treasure trove of music
"If anyone is interested, drop me a line and I can email it."
So, er, is it not generally available online ...
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by david_h
Re: A treasure trove of music
...it is, but the link is copyright.
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by Duijera Dubh
Re: A treasure trove of music
If you read what I said I think you'll find that time-shifting is precisely what I was referring to. I do not try to justify anything I do which may be illegal. I'm not aware that making recordings from the telly of anything just so that I can watch it at a more convenient time (then delete it) is illegal. I have kept copies of all the Naked Guns, Airplane! and Blazing Saddles because as I said I'm one of those little bastards. I'm living with it.
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
Time-shifting is legal in the UK. I've just checked. The law applies to radio and TV broadcasts. It is not legal to hold on indefinitely to the recordings or spread 'em around. I don't know whether anyone has ever defined "indefinitely." I'm not expecting Frank Drebin to come knocking on my door any minute.
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
Sorry Steve. You adding the "then delete it" makes it clearer. At the risk of another misunderstanding - I may be out of date but I think the copying for the car (and copying to ipod etc) is technically illegal in the UK, rather than fair use. Although I recall being told by someone who seemed sure of the facts that vinyl to CD for personal use was OK because one had bought a licence to listen to the music; but that may have been a U.S.A. usage.
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by david_h
Re: A treasure trove of music
You're allowed to make a copy of a CD for your private use but you're not allowed to convert it to a different format, for your mp3 player for example. Wacky. I think this is currently being addressed.
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
Probably not allowed to copy the cover and "liner notes" though. A good road safety measure.
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by david_h
Re: A treasure trove of music
I think I'm wrong. It still isn't legal to copy a CD on to a computer. I was under a misapprehension, along with 60% of the UK public. Oops emoticon.
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
Which means that what I was prattling on about apropos of fair use is also damned. Swallow me hole.
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
Now I've just read something different somewhere else. Garrgh!
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: A treasure trove of music
I've copied everything. My whole life is a copy, the words I speak, the customs I reproduce, the music I play, triplets, rolls, slides, crans, variations, even the tunes I've made up. All of it. I've copied films, tv programmes, music, cds, flac files, mp3s, wavs, accs, m4as, apes, wvs, oggs, books, articles, clothing, mannerisms, hairstyles, shoes, shops, pubs, destinations, . The whole lot. And all of it, all of these things are material goods produced by someone else & reproduced by me.
The worst of it is that some people also copy from me.
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by pavlf
Re: A treasure trove of music
Paul...that has to be the funniest thing I've read in many a day. thanks for that.
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by mtodd
Re: A treasure trove of music
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by pavlf
Re: A treasure trove of music
I only ever read Foucault's 'History of Sexuality, Volume 1', which is probably not appropriate to this discussion.
However, I would like to correct one detail in DR's last post above. Copyright Law regarding recordings is still 50 years. The 95 years quoted is an EU proposal which has yet to be enacted.
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by Floss the Tethers
Re: A treasure trove of music
My point with the Supreme Court case I cited above was that even the courts and Congress have acknowledged there is ambiguity in terms of what you should and should not be able to do with music (or films). My point was that the MPAA, after that case, asked Congress to pass legislation requiring VCR manufacturers to either get rid of the "record" function or limit its use, and Congress didn't do a thing.
Foucault would suggest that this is a historical moment where power could have been shifted in a substantial way through juridical means, but it didn't happen. I think that tells us something.
At the end of the day, the kind of ownership models constructed by intellectual property laws are completely untenable outside of an authoritarian system of enforcement. All I'm arguing is that we shouldn't just accept the modern model as "the way things are" and reify it, but we should carefully examine its history and its theoretical underpinnings. We should ask if it is really the most efficacious way to be sure musicians get compensated for their creative contributions while sustaining a culture of openness and creative and intellectual freedom.
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by TheSilverSpear
Re: A treasure trove of music
“At the end of the day, the kind of ownership models constructed by intellectual property laws are completely untenable outside of an authoritarian system of enforcement.”
…and largely untenable even within an authoritarian system of enforcement.
# Posted on November 12th 2009 by Bob himself
Re: A treasure trove of music
O my, thanks for this!
# Posted on November 13th 2009 by dee.