Category: regulation
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An Act for the Encouragement of…
The Statute of Anne, enacted in England in 1710, opens with a statement of intent: An Act for the Encouragement of Learning I have argued elsewhere that it succeeded. Whether by the mechanisms intended, essentially the first modern copyright, or by serendipity as some would have it, Learning was Encouraged, universal literacy and scientific advance…
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Net Neutrality Won’t Help Music. Here’s Why…
With the best intentions, some in the music industry are adding their voices to protest the US FCC’s rollback of net neutrality regulations. Keeping them won’t help the music industry; pretending it will means the real threats to open and fair digital markets will remain unaddressed. To recap, net neutrality, as it is framed in…
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A New Social Contract For Music
Music, in its various forms, has done quite well in the age of copyright. Digital technology has brought with it many tipping points, when old certainties give way to chaos before finding new stable states. Any new stability will rely, as copyright always did, on some strong ideas to act as a foundation on which we…
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A Fair Way to Bridge the Value Gap
The music industry says that artists, labels, and songwriters are getting a raw deal from services that allow users to upload content. The beef is that user-uploaded songs, which may generate advertising revenue for the service and the uploader, compete directly with those same songs uploaded by the copyright owner. The difference in revenue between…
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Pricing Music Fans in the New Data Economy
In 2003 digital artist Angie Waller released a wonderful project she called ‘Data Mining the Amazon’. Asked about it by art community Rhizome Waller offered the following: I was surprised that books about military battles and corporate takeovers pointed to the soothing CDs of Enya and Sarah Brightman. No record shop until Amazon had been able to…
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One Music Copyright Can Be Better Than Two
Music copyright was developed in nineteenth century France as a response to an obvious unfairness. Bars and restaurants could hire musicians to entertain their customers, raising sales and profits. The restaurant owner benefited, the musicians got paid, but the composers got nothing. No credible argument was offered that the sheet music sales or future commissions…
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Change How We Think First, Technology Second
Many years ago I was asked to discuss with the board of a trade association how the music industry was changing. One prominent executive summed up by saying “complexity has served us well”. A few days ago Spotify’s James Duffett-Smith was moved to exclaim “music industry licensing and copyright structures are legendary in their complexity”…
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The World Is Singing A New Song
We live in an age of everyday activism, with every purchase an expression of values as well as needs. Ideas about fairness go far beyond the impact of certified fair trading schemes; they permeate consumer marketing. Social media drives a radical transparency in supply chains, with no exploitation tacitly excused. Alongside fairness we have discovered a new appreciation…
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Europe’s Digital Single Market is Good for Music
Accustomed as music companies are to territorial licensing, pricing, windowing, and marketing it is understandable that there should be at least scepticism if not outright hostility to the European Union’s Digital Single Market strategy. Swedes with an average GDP (PPP) per capita of $45,000 can afford more music than Bulgarians with $15,000. It doesn’t take…
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The Dog in the Manger
Nobody ever claims to have contributed to a traffic jam, despite all the evidence around them when they are doing so. And clearly had they not contributed, the jam would have been less of a delay for everyone, especially them. So it is with yearly summaries of markets; the great temptation is to see the…