The Velvick Underground

Intellectual Property?

After failing to get a copy-protected CD I bought to play in my car stereo, I feel obliged to have a rant at the music industry, so here goes...

I work in the IT industry, the only output of my work is information, so I don't need anyone to tell me that intellectual 'property' needs to be protected, but I still think that the record industry’s attitude stinks.

The problem is in the language 'intellectual property', 'to own copyright'. The whole concept of ownership is a man-made one which we use to make the world a bit easier to manage. It's a really useful concept for allocating and managing physical resources; if you own a car then it’s yours and it’s wrong for anyone else to do anything to it. But when we talk about intangible things like information, I think we're being misled by talking in terms of ownership.

A thought experiment: Every CD is basically just a very long binary number, there's only a finite number of music CDs that could possible be made. Say you took a computer with a really big hard disk, and created every CD it was possible to make. Does this mean that the next time someone releases a successful CD you could sue them for copyright infringement? It raises the question 'Is information created or discovered?'

The reality is there is no such thing as pure creation. If I write some really good song lyrics, most of the words are probably things I've heard other people say, just changed a bit. Every creative act is inspired by things we see and hear all around us, so to copy those patterns and then try and fence-off that part of our collective culture as being the sole property of one person is an act of theft in itself. Besides, that was never the objective of copyright laws, which are supposed to encourage information sharing by allowing the creator/discover to make a reasonable profit from their work.

I think probably the unfortunate reality for the popular music industry (in it's current form at least) is that it's day has passed. With a modern desktop PC and an internet connection I have everything I need to publish my own music (everything that is, except for any trace of musical talent). The entire physical infrastructure built up by record companies is rapidly depreciating in value and usefulness, and it's much easier to blame piracy than face the fact that your industry is being commoditized, and replaced by a far simpler cheaper alternative.

Compounding this, you have the problem that music is not the dominant media in the same way it was 40 years ago. Every art form reaches a point where there is very little left to be said, and for the last 20 years modern popular music's primary point of reference has been older popular music. Oasis could recreate The Beatles in the mid-90's, but will a future band be able to find anything new to say in 20 years time? Maybe its just my age (just hit 30), but I can't help feeling true creativity in the popular music industry is getting rarer and rarer, and if there is a modern equivalent of the Beatles, then they're working in a different medium (probably making films or writing computer games). The record companies find themselves in what is still a very profitable business, but I think that they're probably fighting a battle which they're destined to lose.

PS. How did I eventually get to listen to the CD in my car? I had to copy the music to my PC (I've never seen any copy protection prevents me ripping tracks to my PC) then burn it on new CD, which worked fine. If the music industry's objective is to discourage CD copying, then that's quite an own-goal.

Posted by timv at December 24, 2004 12:09 PM