Conclusion
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Musical culture and industry are in a state of flux, and the rapid changes we have witnessed since the turn of the 21st Century clearly have something to do with the explosion of networked digital technologies such as PCs, smartphones, portable media devices, and the Internet, which binds the rest together. On this much, nearly everyone can agree.
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 Where this book differs from the bulk of the commentary and coverage of these changes is in how these disruptions are framed. The recording industry, which has been very successful in setting the terms of the public debate thus far, paints a bleak portrait: a venerable industrial sector, bolstered by centuries of copyright law and responsible for billions of dollars in economic value, has been ransacked by digital pirates intent on destruction and the ignorant masses who have fallen under their sway. We see this story told all the time, in news articles, business reports and legal decisions. The only problem is, it’s not the whole story.
¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 2 As I have argued in this chapter, music is a fundamental aspect of human consciousness, akin to language or gesture, and the privatization of musical expression is a relatively new development in the scope of social history, motivated primarily by profit seeking and social regulation, rather than cultural innovation and the public interest. And ever since its inception, the music industry has been in a state of constant flux, seeking to exploit new technologies, expand its legal scope of powers, and otherwise “stack the deck” in its own self-interest, with the aim of naturalizing its unnatural monopoly.
¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 Copyright laws are not handed down by God on stone tablets; they are written by legislators, who respond to lobbying by corporations and trade organizations (more on that in Chapter 9). In order to justify the creation and continued expansion of copyright, the music industry has had to identify a problem that the laws are intended to solve. From the beginning, this problem has been framed in terms of “piracy,” although the exact nature of the purported piratical threat has evolved along with the technological and legal environment, from the importation of foreign scores to the reproduction of domestic ones to the use of popular compositions on radio and recordings to the redistribution of popular recordings, and finally to “home taping” and online peer-to-peer sharing.
¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 If a pirate in Cicero’s day was the “enemy of all,” a malevolent agent exploiting the vulnerabilities of the weak and the outer boundaries of sovereignty in the interest of personal profit, consider who best fits that description today. Is it one of the tens of thousands of Americans who have been prosecuted for sharing songs with one another via LimeWire or BitTorrent? Is it one of the billions of people around the world who share music, videos, text and images via YouTube, Twitter and Facebook? Or is it one of a tiny handful of commercial enterprises that jealously protect their financial interests in our shared culture by maligning, surveilling, bankrupting and imprisoning those who are too obstinate to acquiesce, too poor to fight back, or too weak to resist?
S.A.
Chrissy.
Jesse Lifshitz
Is the privatization of musical expression truly a relatively new development in the scope of social history? I think that as long as the concept of currency or trade has existed, people have been willing to exploit music for private gain. I imagine Moses knew a few musicians who performed for gold and silver. There were certainly minstrels playing songs for money in the temple when Jesus had his “den of thieves” hissy fit. Mozart died poor because people were happy to take his money…..were the lenders and hangers-on exploiting his musical expression for private gain? From Beethoven to MC Hammer….
Good points, all. Commercial exploitation of music (and of everything else) has certainly been around since the dawn of mercantilism. But the privatization of music — the premise that it can be owned by an individual or commercial entity — is relatively recent, and represents a far greater impediment to cultural processes.
It’s like the difference between laying bricks for money, and owning the exclusive right to lay bricks for money.