Copyright and how it's generally ignored.

Something really hit home for me a while back while talking to the rest of my class during a very philosophical lecture...the thing is that when talking to fellow musicians you can talk about what your music means and what copyrights you use and how you release your music to generate the best income etc., but when talking to the target audience...they really don't appear to care. They'll illegally download our music, illegally distribute our music, illegally remix our music, and that generally pisses off people in the music industry, particularly the major record labels who are doing everything they can to stamp out this new 'free music' culture we seem to have going.


A lot of people blame the internet for this sudden change in customer ethics and are fighting to have hundreds if not thousands of websites shut down in order to save the apparently dying music industry.

What a lot of people seem to forget is that has happened before in the past with the invention of recording. The moment recording studios, recording and playback devices etc., musicians all over hit the roof claiming that these new records that were being produced would detract from their income as a live performer. People would stop coming out to see them, they'd no longer be able to fill out a concert hall because people could get the same experience at home.

What they didn't realize is that the home recorded experience is completely different to the live performance experience, and people were still coming out to see their performances as well as buy their records. Anything these performers lost in tickets sales, they probably more than made up for in record sales, and so the music industry adapted to this new technology quickly and effectively. It was a scary jump, threatening the collapse of live music, but we made it through and today our live performances just continue to get bigger, louder, more elaborate and more exciting, despite having unlimited access to all the same music at home.

Rather than try to shut down all the sites that are allowing illegal distribution of music, it might be better to use them to our advantage, or at least learn from them. There is a music revolution staring us in the face, and the music powers that be are breaking into a sweat over it. Anyone would thing change was bad thing, but if it wasn't for change, we wouldn't have some of the immensely popular genres we have today that the powers that be are happily milking for all they're worth.

A lot of artists are now allowing free download of their music from their own websites with an option to donate to the artist rather than force a set price that people may not be willing to pay. This will serve as a view of world economy for a start, showing us how many people are willing to pay and how much they are willing to pay. Maybe if we weren't in a recession, people would be more willing to pay more, or even pay in the first place rather than just download for free, but it also shows us how people see our music, how much they believe it is actually worth and in turn speaks more than words. If people persistently pay £3 for an album they would be paying £10 for in HMV, that says that either they feel they are being ripped off by HMV, or the music isn't worth that much. Or Both.

But this still doesn't solve the illegal distribution. Current Copyright says that you cannot make copies of our work, you cannot distribute our work, you cannot broadcast our work or profit from our work among many other ridiculous restrictions. Copying music from your CD you have bought to your PC and then to your MP3 player or iPod is technically piracy as you are making illegal copies of the original work, but when have you ever seen anyone get arrested for owning an MP3 player?

One way to get around this is with Creative Commons Copyrights. CC isn't just a way of 'dealing with' the illegal distribution problem, but is also a sign of change in the music industry. CC is a way of musicians saying that they accept that they can do nothing to stop this illegal distribution and copying, so rather than fight it, they're effectively making illegal and okay to do it to these selected works under CC.

Creative Commons has started to be something of a badge or respect for artists, too. Artists using the standard 'All Rights Reserved' copyright can often be seen as greedy and just in it for the money. They are effectively saying "You can buy the CD and listen to it on a CD player and nothing else. Don't make any copies, don't sell it on, con't copy it to any players of any forms, don't play it publicly - that CD is for your ears only."
An artist using CC has a variety of licenses they can use to distribute their music, including 'Attribution', 'Attribution Share Alike', 'Attribution No Derivatives', 'Attribution Non Commercial', 'Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike', and 'Attribution 'Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives.'

The license with the most freedom is the 'Attribution' licence which allows other to distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, so long as they credit you for the original.

The next licence is 'Attribution Share Alike' which is the same as attribution but all new works based on your works MUST carry the same licence as the original work, with credit to you.


Next we have 'Attribution NoDerivs' which allows for both commercial and non commercial distribution provided that is remains unchanged and shows credit to you.

Alongside this there is 'Attribution Non Commercial', which allows people to remix, tweak and build upon your works, and redistribute them non commercially, with new licences, but does not allow them to profit from their new creations based on your work. Again, you must be credited.

Above this there is the 'Attribution Non commercial Share Alike' licence. It's a bit of a mouthful but it's simple enough. Other people may remix, tweak and build upon your work and redistribute it non commercially provided that they credit you, do not profit form the new work and that their work shares the same licence as the original.

Finally, there is the 'Attribution Non Commercial, NoDerivs' licence, the most restrictive of the licences. This allows others to download and share the music, but they cannot change them or use them commercially at all.

These licences allow for a lot more freedom than standard copyright, and also brings into debate the legality of downloading and distributing music freely. This won't solve the problem entirely, but will certainly help along the way. People will still defy some of the more restrictive licences, but since the CC licences can often be seen as a badge of respect for the artist, showing that the artist is more open minded, more in it for the music than the money, then people will be more likely to consider how they treat the product and what they do with it. People may also find that artists that use CC may be willing to make exceptions to the licence if they are asked beforehand.

I personally do use the most restrictive licences for my work, but I do it in order to keep track of what is happening to my work. I clearly state in the credits to my albums that I do not allow people to build upon my work or remix it etc., but I also state that if they want to remix or build upon my work, then they should message me, and I will most likely allow it. I personally have no problem with someone remixing my work and using it for commercial purposes, but I would draw the line at my music being used to promote something I don't believe in, for example, anyone wanting to use my music in Nazi propaganda can get stuffed straight away and there will be hell to pay if I catch any people like that using my music to promote racism and sexism etc. Using the most restrictive licence in this sense is just my way of being fair, saying that if I'm not making money of off this product, why should they? It also allows for communication between me and the fans and people I could possibly one day work with, which in turn promotes a much healthier music network.

I should also mention that so far all my music is free download, and selected releases do have the option for donations. Having discovered some of my music on illegal download sites, I decided that it's best not to fight it, but rather use it.

A lot of people's first thoughts upon seeing their music on an illegal music download site might be "THOSE CHEEKY SWINES!" or something to that effect. However, when I saw my music on one of these sites, my first thoughts were "If my music is here, then someone obviously thinks my music is good enough to be distributed to other people, they think it's good enough to be spread around, showcased, talked about, downloaded and listened to - no one is going to waste the time and effort to upload shit music!"
I saw this violation of copyright as quite flattering, and when I went on to read the comments below my music, I found that they were all positive and that they had all downloaded the music and enjoyed it, and even gave constructive criticism! I had found a part of the music world where people appreciated my music! the release was a free download to begin with, so I wasn't bothered that they weren't paying, and the download link was to my bandcamp page, so I still got the hits and the demographics from it.

I have essentially cut out most of these people's work, giving them an easy ride. The music is already up for free d/l on a platform that isn't likely to get shut down, there's no need to re up load, no need to sign up to get faster download speeds, it's all there waiting for them.

Fair enough, I'm not making any money off of this, but at the same time, I'm not a huge artist, I'm currently very underground, still building up a fan base, but I've also come to the conclusion that releasing music won't be my main source of income, and that I will have to look for alternatives. But that is something for an entirely different post altogether, and I feel like I've waffled on about this enough now, so here's a link to my FREE music, I hope you enjoy it, I hope I've given you some food for thought on the copyright issue =)
http://music.judahcarvanna.com/