May 10
17
Copyright Theft – What Mick Jagger Had To Say
You may have seen reference in the media to a new Rolling Stones documentary “Stones In Exile” shot during the year long orgy that the band conducted during the recording of Exile On Main Street – which is about to be re-released.
As you would expect the Stones have been doing some PR to support the release of the movie. (You have to hand it to those guys – they are absolute masters at managing and evolving their brand to meet the continuing expectations of the market).
Last night Sir Mick Jagger was briefly on the news talking up the movie.
What was interesting to me though, was that the interviewer asked Sir Mick what he thought about copyright theft, particularly that caused by P2P file sharing…
Here is the transcript of the interview that was on the news, courtesy of Boing Boing:
Jagger: Technology and music have been together since the beginning of
recording. [The internet is] just one facet of the technology of music.
Music has been aligned with technology for a long time. The model of
records and record selling is a very complex subject and quite boring,
to be honest.
BBC: But your view is valid because you have a huge catalogue, which is
worth a lot of money, and you've been in the business a long time, so
you have perspective.
Jagger: Well, it's all changed in the last couple of years. We've gone
through a period where everyone downloaded everything for nothing and
we've gone into a grey period it's much easier to pay for things –
assuming you've got any money.
BBC: Are you quite relaxed about it?
Jagger: I am quite relaxed about it. But, you know, it is a massive
change and it does alter the fact that people don't make as much money
out of records.
But I have a take on that – people only made money out of records for a
very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn't
make any money out of records because record companies wouldn't pay you!
They didn't pay anyone!
Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get
paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now
that period has gone.
So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there
was a 25 year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the
time they didn't.
I am not surprised to hear Sir Mick saying what he did. He is of course absolutely right. For most of the time during which recorded music has been sold, musicians have not been paid.
Back in the early days of black music, the artists were paid a session fee if they were lucky and the record companies, small businesses back then, went ahead and sold the records without any thought of royalties.
When I was signed to CBS Records in the mid sixties, my band was promised a royalty of about one and a half pennies (old UK currency) per single sold with an increase in royalty of a farthing if the contract was extended. That was after the company got to recoup all the recording costs… I have never seen a royalty statement, and the singles that we recorded have been on a few compilation albums over the last few years… Mind you, I am not bitching about this – just noting the facts.
So now the circle has turned yet again. But this time it is different. This time the content industry is trying to ensure that the legislation that governs copyrights is so totally comprehensive that nothing will escape them. That is through a piece of legislation that is not at all understood or appreciated by anyone other than a handful of lawyers and government officials who have been privy to the negotiations. ACTA is what it is called.
According to Wikipedia:
harbor for service providers so that they may not hesitate to provide
information about infringers; this may be used, for instance, to quickly
identify and stop infringers once their identities are confirmed by
their providers. Similarly, it provides for criminalization of copyright
infringement, granting law enforcement the powers to perform criminal
investigation, arrests and pursue criminal citations or prosecution of
suspects who may have infringed on copyright. It also allows criminal
investigations and invasive searches to be performed against individuals
for whom there is no probable cause, and in that regard weakens the
presumption of innocence and allows what would in the past have been
considered unlawful searches.
This is what you have to look forward to in the near future: A world where society (along with the whole planetary ecosystem) is in crisis because of global warming, volcanoes, economic turbulence, ocean acidification… a litany of problems… And if ACTA is enacted not only will you have to deal with all of the above, but also with the prospect of content companies being able to very possibly infringe on your civil rights too…
Now, I am not going to argue against the idea of copyright laws. I firmly believe in the remuneration of creative people for their work. But I am totally against the idea of a 70 year past the death of the writer period of copyright and I am totally against the idea of it being illegal for people to make digital copies of pieces of content that they have purchased.
I believe that the copyright law should be no longer than the patent laws that are in place so that it is much easier for derivative works to be created.
However, while the current laws are on foot, we have to deal with them as they are – consumers, creative people and the content companies themselves.
By the way here is the trailer for the movie: