I didn't ask if I could use this photo.
March 15 2010
If the Pianobabbler gave away his music, would he thrive more, or less?
I compose, ergo I copyright. The Pianobabbler is a copyright copywright.
Copyright copywright. A wright in Old English means worker. The Pianobabbler works as a creator of music. That work results in a copyright he holds in the music. That copyright multiplies, copies itself, as he produces more compositions.
Hence, the Pianobabbler is a copyright copywright.
From his songs, the Pianobabbler receives royalty cheques with a frequency inversely proportional to their welcome. Which means, not often enough. Long live copyright. Bring on the cheques.
Let no one count, then, the Pianobabbler as a hierodule of the copylefty pinky commie cohort. You know them: Michael Geist, Cory Doctorow, Siva Vaidyanathan, to name but a few of those sanctified in the pantheon of scandal. Together they menace the system as we know it. The system... pity the dying record labels, may the Lord have mercy on their souls, and pity the suffering movie studios, let us pray...
The brimstone, too, which burns there in such prodigious quantity fills all hell with its intolerable stench; and the bodies of the damned themselves exhale such a pestilential odour that, as saint Bonaventure says, one of them alone would suffice to infect the whole world...
I digress. And I jest. And, in truth, for all the copywright the Pianobabbler may be, I admire the work of Messrs. Geist, Doctorow, and Vaidyanathan.
Still, I question. Should we support the artificial monopoly over creation that the law grants creators? Or should we see copyright as copywrong, stifling creativity by locking down otherwise cross-pollinating works?
Would more people know my music if I gave it away? Or would fewer people pay for it?
The case against copyright: Cory Doctorow gives his science-fiction books away for free on the Internet. His sales are astronomical.
The case for: recording sales have crumbled and crashed. Presumably, because of copyright-infringing file-sharing.
My jury remains in deliberations on this subject. I don't want musicians to suffer. With $15,000 annual income, on average, we need all the protection we can get. We only have our music to sell. By selling that music, we survive materially, allowing us to flourish artistically.
Copyright offers some protection, although it is a flaccid force before the tsunami of the Bittorrent.
Conversely, I have learned, and I believe this: that open always triumphs. The drug wars, Prohibition, movie censorship, Sunday shopping: moralists and others looked to close down these behaviours using force. They failed. One may as well try to push a rushing river back upstream, as try to close down an expanding social system through coercion.
Listening to the two sides, the RIAA types vs. the open types, the former sound more like Prohibitionists, the later like prescient seers.
Better than Cory Doctorow, though, one can make the case for looser copyright in one word: Google. By riding the warrior steed of openness, advocating open standards, giving away products for which we'd otherwise pay- office software, telephony, email, storage, maps, photos, you name it -Google has attracted enough traffic and business to just about take ownership of the universe.
So, I ask: If the Pianobabbler gave away his music, would he thrive more, or less? Google or RIAA?
I'm still working my answer through.
Meanwhile, I'm going to work on another song, and wait for a royalty cheque.
The Pianobabbler has babbled.
- Click here for the Government of Canada Copyright Guide
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