Posts by Simon Grigg
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I have to agree with Peter...Music Industry / Recording Industry..either / or, National don't have a track record for listening to, or caring about, either.
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Which is why it is such a pity it has been enshrined in legislation. Along with a whole lot of other technical "solutions" that will soon be outdated. This is of course our biggest beef with Minister Tizard's law
I have to be honest Don, I'm not keeping up with the flow of this in NZ but I am going to try and get my head around it today. Distance tends to limit the amount of stuff you can absorb from half a world away but this is clearly of interest to me, if only as a copyright owner / administrator in NZ. What I can say is that I wholeheartedly agree that the three strikes, as written in the law, seems to me to be both draconian and Luddite in it's application and understanding
robbery, I don't think Simon has been trying to hand our arses on a plate. He has made several points, many of which I agree with, one of which I don't
No, plates and arses in any form were and are not part of my intended discourse.
It is worth remembering that Copyright and Patent law applies to many fields of endeavour, yours is just one of them.
Agreed but these are often used in different ways and it's unrealistic to apply blanket rules. There seems to be a failure in Robin's logic to factor in the changes in the use of music in recent years (20-30) beyond pointing to a site where one can download free an album or two.
A couple of points:
a) when copyright terms were first envisaged and applied to recorded music the lifespan of a recording was limited. It generally lasted a few short years. This was the case up until the 1980s. In 1975 all the Beatles and Rolling Stones albums from the 60s were unavailable in New Zealand..deleted as obsolete. Same with the first two Pink Floyd albums. Records had a short lifespan. The digital revolution starting with the CD and moving online changed all that. Coupled with an aging population, music had a much longer lifespan..it's intrinsic value and potential earning power increased by decades, which drove extensions in copyright.
b) Creative Commons and the like are great but effectively, regardless of the volume available...10,000 albums free etc...reduce the amount available to you as it becomes a swamp with nothing standing out. Pop music (and that's what it all is regardless of how alternative or underground you may percieve it to be) survives by hype and momentum. You take that away and the excitement that drives it goes and it all turns into a grey morass. That hype and momentum is driven by copyright and the potential return from that copyright.
c) Like Rob, I've yet to see a reasonable argument why the physical property in the recording industry (and don't confuse the song with the recording..they are two different discussions), the master tape should not be considered physical property constructed from a series of ideas in the same way a house or car is. Just because I want to sample them is not a good enough argument but I've seen little else. -
That's good to hear, I'm glad it's changing. (And yes, I know you know a bit about the music biz ;-)
It's been a few decades (since the eighties) since the publishing rules changed, partially as a result of a few major law suits (Sting vs Virgin, Elton John vs DJM etc) and partially as result of a new generation of indie publishers and managers asking and offering better terms. That forced the hand of the old school guys who used to buy writers' works for the duration of copyright, often for shitty money (ask Lennon-McCartney) and convoluted sub publishing arrangements which reduced royalties to a pittance.
That, coupled with digital communication and global collection agencies have really reduced the role of the big boys. Which of course is a major reason they're so keen on copyright extension...to get the maximum return from those copyrights they own 100% before they lose them..all those standards from the early to mid 20th century are goldmines but have a time limit on them. Without these old copyrights the record companies, who own the publishers, are in a pretty shaky position.
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I wasn't making a big assumption, just a little one, and pointing out that if you're worried about losing your collection there's a perfectly good way of preventing it already on offer. Buy a disc. it costs about the same if you buy from the right places.
Why should you have to? Answer..you shouldn't. Respecting the copyright owner and respecting the customer goes both ways. But since in the music cosmos DRM is gonna be a what-were-they-thinking museum piece in a year or two, it's largely academic now anyway.
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kind of ignores the whole buying a disc and ripping it and having the disc as back up angle
That's a big assumption Rob when in some genres up to 50% of sales are now digital.
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No, how it works now is that I'd approach the copyright holder, which is probably not you.
Not true at all...music publishing is something I know a wee bit about (ok a lot). Virtually all songwriters these days own their own publishing copyrights, which may or may not be leased to another body usually for a fat advance to allow them to either live or buy a new car or whatever. And more and more acts simply control their rights 100% themselves using the network of global rights bodies to collect on their behalf.
If you don't need the advance there is no need to assign your publishing to anyone.
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But I then wanted to perform that song or make it available for money, I'd seek your permission and work out a deal that enabled me to do just that.
Uhh..in other words pretty much how music publishing works now....
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I'm given to understand it was a marketing gimmick.
Yes and no, it was a marketing tool and from Radiohead's POV a seriously successful one but it was also an attempt to explore alternatives and a variety of other acts have taken up the challenge, not least of whom was Brian Eno and David Byrne, which I covered here.
It wasn't a a dead end or just a marketing gimmick.
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And Palin has decided that the way to deal with the Troopergate report is simply to lie again. This woman can't help it.
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She didn't get a chance, to McCain's credit
She, Gayle Quinnell, was interviewed afterwords and said:
I don’t trust Barack Obama because he’s an Arab,” she said. “He’s a Muslim. I’m afraid if he ever got to be president what would happen to this country
But McCain's response to her was little better...why are Arabs not 'decent family men' by implication?