I’m glad that we are reading a book that deals with the other side of the story. Although Boyle and Lessig both made it clear that they believe in copyright law, they both talk more about the threat to fair use than the one posed to the culture business. My opinions on the topic of copyright law are more aligned with those expressed in the The Public Domain and Remix, than what I have read so far in Free Ride, but I do agree with much of what Levine says and I share some of his concerns. For example, I agree that artists should be compensated for their works, and I have never downloaded any music illegally from a file sharing service. This is in part because I don’t buy very much music and I’m more interested in convenience and quality than getting things for free. In addition, I don’t mind paying artists for works that I enjoy.
However, I don’t think “the internet threat” (Boyle , 2008) is one that litigation can solve on it’s own. Levine uses the example of a speeding ticket. I agree that we need laws to protect artists rights but speeding tickets are in the hundreds of dollars and the litigation from these lawsuits is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Furthermore, the music industry has no where near the manpower to police the whole internet in any kind of fair or effective way. I also think Levine is too quick to let the record companies off the hook for being behind the times. They remind me of the American automobile industry in the 70’s, unable to change the way they did business until competitors forced them to do so. For instance, I love the fact that I can now buy one song off of an album for 99 cents (okay more often than not it is a buck thirty nine ) instead of being forced to buy a whole album. If the artist doesn’t want to sell it that way, then more power to them, but that’s the way I usually buy music. So I agree that we need to pay for our music, but I think the record industry kept the prices artificially high. So while I don’t agree with Napster promoting piracy, I do think they were given an opening by an industry that didn’t know how to deal with the new reality brought on by the world wide web.
Levine also seems to correlate the days before people could copy and share media on the internet with higher quality entertainment. As I watch Mad Men, Breaking Bad , Downton Abby and other shows on TV, I don’t find myself yearning for Thursday night must see TV. There also seem to be plenty of blockbuster movies. Robert Downy Jr. didn’t seem too worried about losing money on Ironman 3 when I saw him interviewed on the Daily Show a few nights ago. So where I find myself disagreeing with Levine is not on the basic fact that we should pay for music and movies etc., it’s more about how bad the problem is and what we should do about it. Levine states that “It’s time to ask seriously whether the culture business as we know it can survive the digital age.” (Levine, 2011) However, I first would want to ask if it should survive “as we know it”. While Levine sees the dent in Thursday night, I see plenty to watch, and many new ways to enjoy music like Pandora and iHeart Radio. They only are free in the sense that TV or radio is free. You still have commercials and if you don’t want commercials you have to pay.
While is doen't make me lose any sleep to read about the likes of the Disney corporation and Hollywood being beat up by technology companies, I do think they have an obvious and valid right to protect their intellectual property. However, like Boyle, I see more danger in locking up our culture with excessive copyright than letting citizens such as myself remix work and use it as long as we are not selling it. Levine discusses Lessig’s example of Disney borrowing previous work to make Steamboat Willie, but I would much rather have read his take on Boyle’s discussion of Ray Charles. It seems pretty obvious to me that the singer could never have made “I Got a Woman” today. I think Disney and the music business will find a way to always make a profit, but I think our “culture” is more at risk than our “culture business”. Our creativity and culture should not be available to only those who can afford to pay copyrights. At the very least I want the laws to be clearer so that don’t unknowingly break them. I feel like collateral damage in the copyright wars. Sniff. Sniff.
Boyle , R. (2008). The public domain. (1.4.1 ed., p. 96). New Haven: Yale University Press.
Levine, R. (2011). Free ride. (1st ed., Vol. 3.1, p. 9). New York: Doubleday.
Pete,
ReplyDeleteVery interesting post this week! I liked your discussion about copyright and the different viewpoints presented by the authors we have read. I like how you used the music industry as an example. It seems as if you have presented the idea that if an industry makes adjustments to continue to be successful in selling their product, they should reap the benefits. I agree with this notion. I too, believe that it is very convenient to buy one song off an album. I also agree that we should pay artists for their work instead of just illegally downloading it. As we progress as a society, businesses have to adapt to the technology that drives our daily lives. One issue I see with copyright law and proper compensation for producing a work is the complete control over price that we sometimes see. Textbook prices are often ridiculous, however since colleges require these books, students are often out of luck. I think that we need to find a way to bring these artificially high prices down to market value. Good thoughts this week, you prompted my thinking in many different directions.