Hollywood Reporter: Katy Perry, Steven Tyler and Lionel Richie are just a few of hundreds of artists, songwriters and others in the music industry who are calling on Washington to reform the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, according to a statement issued Thursday by the Recording Industry Association of America.
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There are two sides to every story, and that logic follows with the DMCA. While, yes, artists have seen royalties reduced in recent years thanks to the advent of streaming services that don't sell songs to consumers, the amount of pure listening that is taking place is higher than ever. The blatant copyright abuse has worked for and against artists, as well, with some extraneous copyright protection on Youtube causing people to have issues at every turn. A shining example of this was our own Rube Goldberg documentary, which was taken down due to the use of a Beyonce cover in the song that flagged Youtube's copyright detectors. I understand that music is a commercial industry before anything else for the vast majority of creators, but to stifle the creators of other media for the sake of gaining what amounts to a few more cents on your bottom lines comes off less as an appeal to our integrity and more as a sign of your greed. I agree with the fact that the act was passed before all these new ways to use music were created, and as such the laws are outdated. However, whether or not artists will be able to put aside their desire for a tiny bit more money and stop the madness is another story entirely.
This is hard for me to chose a side. All through middle school and some of high school I was very set on the fact that I was never going to use Itunes or buy music online. I liked to have the actual CD which I carried around with me and used in a walkman. But it reached a point of impracticality. My favorite music store shut down and it became so much cheaper to just buy online. Now its gone another step where buying online isn't so much a thing anymore, because of radio apps like Pandora and Spotify. With youtube being the biggest place to release videos now, its really easy to download music from their, for free. I can see why artists are so upset, it shouldn't be their job to police every website. But the amount of time and money and technology it must take to really prevent pirating all the music is a lot so I can see why the DMCA tried to pass it off. I just wonder what is to come, if laws are going to get stricter or if people are just going to relax and let it happen with how easy and adaptable the internet is.
Yet another installment on the DMCA debates, and this time featuring big names in the music industry. Once again, I feel myself torn on the subject. I think artists should be able to make a living off of their work, and that they should be fairly compensated. I don’t believe in the ‘I’ll pay you in experience’ nonsense. But I also feel art should be accessible and available to everyone regardless of economic background. And I realize those two ideals conflict, but in this case, I think I side with the industry, though not for the reasons you’d expect. I couldn’t care less whether Katy Perry loses a few thousand dollars due to public sharing, but I do care that smaller groups and artists get their fair pay. With the takedown notice and reporting lying in the hands of the producing company, it means that larger artists are going to automatically get preference on their work being monitored for infringement. But if the obligation for policing is on the side of the Copyright Office, they are more likely to treat each artists and equals and police evenly. They are also likely to police less stringently but that’s beside the point.
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