Tag: trichordist

What’s the deal with the IRFA?

Photo by JGroup

Musician David Lowery, founder of Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, has become one of the most vocal defendants of artists’ rights in the digital age. A co-founder of The Trichordist, Lowery and his colleagues write some very detailed, professional assessments of the state of the music industry since digital file sharing, streaming, and purchasing have become a reality.

Presently under fire by Lowery and others is a bill called the Internet Radio Fairness Act, which appears, for now, to benefit one company — Pandora.  I haven’t had a chance to read the bill yet, but analysis from a few sources sounds an awful lot like new-era business seeking a very old-school model for profitability — free labor.  To the generalist glancing at some post about the IRFA on social media, it sounds progressive and reasonable, namely the headline that states “the Internet Radio company wants to pay the same rates as terrestrial radio.”  No surprise, it ain’t that simple. In addition to Lowery’s piece, I would read some of the analysis by Chris Castle, who has been following the details fairly closely.

The most disconcerting criticisms I’ve read is that the bill is a union buster, designed to weaken or destroy the collective bargaining rights of artists. One paragraph in the bill is particularly troubling:

 “Nothing in this paragraph shall be construed to permit any copyright owners of sound recordings acting jointly, or any common agent or collective representing such copyright owners, to take any action that would prohibit, interfere with, or impede direct licensing by copyright owners of sound recordings [including artists who own their own sound recordings] in competition with licensing by any common agent or collective, and any such action that affects interstate commerce shall be deemed a contract, combination or conspiracy in restraint of trade in violation of section 1 of the Sherman Act (15 U.S.C. 1).’.  [For which there are both civil and criminal penalties.]”

Like I say, I haven’t had a chance to read the bill in full yet, and I’m not a lawyer.  What I do know is that Internet companies do not deserve a free pass when it comes to the question of influence peddling. If Pandora cannot turn a profit without a law that strips artists of collective bargaining rights, then so long Pandora.  It wasn’t that long ago when industrialists claimed they could not build important infrastructure without treating American workers like virtual slaves.  The right to bargain for the value of one’s work cannot be recast in this technological era as a barrier to the innovation of entertainment any more than it ought to have been claimed as a barrier to building a railroad over a century ago.  And considering how often the Internet industries cry foul every time a member of the creative community goes to Washington, this bill sounds more hypocritical and lopsided than it does “fair.”

In Defense of (a little) Elitism

Imagine your diet will henceforth be determined by the tastes of a majority of American ten-year-olds.  This may sound as unlikely as it does unappetizing, but the prospect is not really all that different from the basis for at least one of the arguments of the copyleft crowd with regard to distributing creative content via the Web.  One assumption behind DIY culture seems to be that the best work is being systematically squashed by big media conglomerates, and that the level playing field of the Web will allow great art to emerge through the ultimate, democratic means — popularity supported by algorithms.  This theory has proven generally untrue for journalism, music, and publishing; and we’re now on the leading edge of its proving untrue for filmed entertainment.

Gavin Casleton, in this article shared on The Trichordist, sums up his observations about popularity combined with search algorithms thus:  “When you release the valve without well-tuned filters in place, you get what we have now:  muddy waters (not the artist, the metaphor).  You have tracks from seasoned artists like Radiohead distributed side by side with garbage (not the band, the metaphor), and you have transferred the burden and blessing of filtering from more official gatekeepers to the consumer….[but] when almost all new aggregators are adopting the algorithm that sorts results by Most Popular, you tend to end up with the same results.”

The apparent good in this digital-age model — that it is populist — is also its own weakness when we look at results in various media.  Most obviously, it doesn’t take more than a glance at the effects of extreme populism on journalism to realize that we now have news tailored to every taste — conservative, liberal, alternative, user-generated, subversive, and just plain wacko. No one can argue that the consumer isn’t “getting what he wants, and for free,” but the democratization of journalism has broadened the concept to include literally anyone with a computer.  As with Caselton’s Radiohead example, the best journalists in the world now swim in murky waters amid every crackpot, amateur netizen who considers himself a reporter.

Likewise, overemphasis on populism does not inherently produce the best art, either for the creators, the industry in question, or for society as a whole.  Anyone who has taken an art-history or literature class knows that many works immediately unpopular in their time are now among the canon of world masterpieces. The digital-age conceit (because the Web is an egomaniac’s paradise) is that the consumer always knows best; but this apparently fair and reasonable-sounding attitude may well be a greater culture killer than all the suits in Hollywood have ever been.  Why?  Because, just like solid news reporting, great art is not created by popular consent; to the contrary, it is often created in spite of it. When we shift the “burden and blessing” of gatekeeping from a finite number of professionals involved in the process to an infinite number of amateurs detached from the process, we are simultaneously creating work by committee in real-time while undermining the principle of investment in that work in the first place.

It is necessary that both artist and investor take risks. Sometimes art will succeed and money will fail, sometimes the other way around; and occasionally both will succeed or fail together.  Specifically, of course, I am thinking about my own industry and the fact that filmmaking, on a scale greater than other media, requires substantial investment and collaboration among professionals to produce damn good, let alone exceptional, work.

When the film director proposes some creative choice, he may meet resistance from any number of gatekeepers — from his most trusted Director of Photography to some guy in the studio marketing department who has never taken a decent vacation photo, let alone made a movie.  Ironically, though, the web-based, populist model would take what might be wrong with the marketing guy — that he thinks he knows the audience — and exacerbate the problem exponentially by insinuating audience taste even more invasively into the creative process.   Frankly, I’d rather deal with the marketing guy than an algorithm.

The consumer/audience is, of course, the ultimate arbiter of work once it has been produced, but history demonstrates that too much attention to the whims of viewers within the process is less likely to produce the next Citizen Kane so much as the next Fear Factor.

It’s not the song, Stupid, it’s the right.

No doubt, the U.S. Pirate Party will be in a caffeinated kerfuffle over yesterday’s upholding by the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston of the $675,000 fine being levied at Joel Tenenbaum for illegally downloading and sharing 30 songs several years ago.  And no doubt anyone under the age of about 35, who very likely has a lot more than 30 illegally downloaded songs in his possession is thinking, “Dude, this is ridiculous. That’s too big a penalty for just downloading music. If you follow the debates surrounding copyright in the digital age, you will frequently encounter the slogan “Copying Isn’t Theft,” and the argument behind this assertion goes as follows:

If I take your car, then I have your car and you no longer have it.  That’s theft.  But if make a copy of your car so that you have your car and I have the copy, that’s not theft because you still have your car.

Of course, it’s not possible to digitally copy a car, but the copy zealots still assert that the logic holds up when we transfer the discussion to authored works that can be digitally reproduced and distributed.  In short, “I have the song, but I have not taken your song, so I have not stolen anything. And, by extension, the other ten million people who have copies have not stolen anything either.”

As the father of three, I recognize this as classic kid logic, which is invariably based on the unilateral premise that individual desire trumps all competing forces, particularly any matters too complex for the child to comprehend.  When my five-year-old wants something, he will propose what sounds to him like solid reasoning but what is really just a variation on the theme “because I want it.”  Of course, one of the many thankless roles of the parent is to teach children that indeed there are considerations beyond their individual desires — health, safety, fairness, legality, courtesy — that shall be enforced whether the child understands the principle or not. The hope is that, as they grow, they will understand the principle, not merely the rule.

What the children of the digital age need to learn as they are now entering the world of grown-ups is that it’s not the song or the movie or the book they’re stealing, but the rights of the creator.  When a few million college kids copy and share a digital file of a creative work, they believe this is not stealing because 1) they’re focused on the file itself; and 2) they’re focused on what they want.  And it is always the folly of youth to confuse desire with rights while failing to recognize, to paraphrase Kant, that their rights end when they infringe on the rights of another.

Imagine you’re having a blow-out party that’s going well into the wee hours.  You’re not committing any serious crimes, but you are keeping your neighbor awake, who finally gets fed up and calls the police.  When the police arrive and tell you to turn down the volume, you may think The Man is infringing on your right to have a good time, but the reality is that he’s balancing your right with your neighbor’s equally valid right to a night’s sleep in his own home. This may seem like a prudish example, but it really is that simple.

Copying is a violation of an individual’s right that has been part of our constitution for as long as we have had a constitution. The person doing the copying may think his own actions are irrelevant in the scheme of things, but we see many examples where individuals, especially younger people, are willing to take personal responsibility for collective harm.  Shifting attitudes  toward environmentalism is perhaps the most obvious; my children don’t know what it means not to recycle, but this was hardly the norm during my own childhood.

The generation that enjoys media enough to want to copy and share it in such high volume needs to understand that creative work is a resource that can be squandered like any other; and there are legitimate data to prove the harm being done to creative industries by illegal downloading and file sharing.  If those industries fail, they take millions of jobs with them (maybe even a job these same kids would like to have one day) and quite possibly the music, books, and movies will disappear, too. It is time to stop listening to vested interests (namely Google) who tell you it’s not only okay to copy, but that it’s a right and a societal benefit.  This is simply not the case.

I feel a little bit bad for Joel Tenenbaum inasmuch as he did something that he has been told is innocuous.  His legal team has likely convinced him that he’s a poster boy for the cause of free speech, freedom of information, transparency in government, anti-corporate-greed, and probably a few other causes that are in no way related to what he actually did.  The unfortunate reality is that he was a grown-up who made a childish decision; and he now has a grown-up problem on his hands.  I hope when the case is finally closed, that Google will at least pay his fines.  To be clear on this case, Tenenbaum’s real mistake is not the downloading of 30 songs per se.  He was a recidivist downloader, who refuted C&D requests, offers of relatively minor fines, and chose to fight this battle on principle.  I don’t think anyone should be pulled out at random to face potentially staggering penalties.  Tennnebaum’s choice, however, to be the face of a precedent-setting case forces the recording industry to pursue vigorously.  It is on principle where Joel Tennenbaum is wrong.

ADDENDUM:   In fairness, and apropos of a comment I received on this post, I ought not to have suggested Google pay Tenenbaum’s fines but instead suggested that his lawyer, Charles Nesson, do so.  This is not a David and Goliath fight.  Nesson, through Tenenbaum, is gunning for copyright law itself and banking on a Supreme Court appearance and a landmark, law-changing case.  So, while I do blame the likes of Google for fostering a general psychology about file sharing, I think it’s fair to say that Nesson’s hubris is the fuel behind this particular case; and when they lose, I hope Tenenbaum won’t be left alone to pay the bill.