Some of the world's best music comes from New Zealand. People give you a blank look if you tell them this, but it's true: so-called "kiwi rock"-generally melodic pop with a slight bitterness borrowed from punk and an eccentric streak borrowed from psychedelia-is gorgeous stuff.
It's also impossible to find. Kiwi CDs have a way of vanishing from print in the US faster than you can pull out your credit card, and to solve this problem, several music blogs now offer various Kiwi classics for free download. Problem solved!
Or not. These sites are unauthorized-though they'll usually remove files at band request-and many Christians believe unauthorized music downloading is, simply, stealing. They have a point: Artists should be paid for their work. (And, yes, record companies deserve some consideration too, though some don't deserve much). Content wants to be free, Internet boosters argue, but, as some "content creators" argue back, rent wants to be paid. Unrefrlective freeloading-getting music and movies for free via pirate sites-can hurt artists' livelihoods. Novelist Ben Kunkel goes so far as to call it "the suicide of the intellectual classes," this mass willingness to enjoy each others' work for free.
But what if the work in question just isn't available? You can wildly overpay for used CDs, but bands don't see that money either. I've heard two answers to this dilemma:
1. Filesharing=stealing. Even if you can't buy The Verlaines' masterpiece Bird Dog, downloading it violates the Verlaines' rights and those of their record company. Case closed.
2. Honor among pirates. You could download the Tall Dwarfs' Hello Cruel World, then send the band eight bucks-more than they'd see from a CD sale-thus steering around the problems inherent in the music industry and, some say, in copyright law itself.
Lately I've leaned toward a third possibility: perhaps file-sharing can be instrumental in building an audience for new and under-advertised artists. Radio is supposed to give us the chance to sample new music, but it abdicated that responsibility long ago. By sharing the work of deserving, obscure artists, we may help them build a new audience, thus laying the groundwork for their return to print-even future financial success. The Clean, one of the most influential of all kiwi bands, were initially little-known in the US, but-partly because of home taping and file-sharing-a new generation of Clean fans greeted the American release of The Clean Anthology in 2003 with cheers and checkbooks. The album remains in print today.
There's no obvious solution to the problems involved in file-sharing-creative ownership, corporate media monopolization, free-riding, etc. But we can, at least, consider the impact it has on artists, using it to publicize good work rather than merely enriching our music collections.
What do you think? As Christians, how should we look at the issue of file-sharing?
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Comments (12)
It seems like the dilemma you are describing could be remedied by someone putting together a makeshift on-line Kiwi alternative music radio station–Podcasting–to gain awareness and an Indy alternative to ITunes...or simply making sure the bands offer the music for sale on their own web sites. There are always legal alternatives for the persistent music fan.
I'm not going to weigh in one the file-sharing debate.
But as a Kiwi/New Zealander, I do have to say I think New Zealand makes a lot of terrible music. Just my two cents.
Sam30, I suspect we're dealing with an instance of the British-TV problem. Y'all know how it is: until recently, most of the British TV that made it to broadcast in the US was the incredibly great stuff (Dr. Who, Monty Python, The Office, etc.), and so I figure the BBC must just be better than US TV. "Those English!" I'd think, admiringly. Then I visited England and realized we've all been getting the cream of the crop, and most British TV is as vulgar and stupid as US TV, if not worse. (See also: French movies.) Similarly, there's probably plenty of Kiwi music that sucks, but the stuff that gets latched onto by indie rock fans over here is, you know, the Clean, the JPS Experience, Able Tasmans, etc.
Unless you're hating on the JPS Experience, in which case, well, we're gonna have words, buddy.
I completely see what you're saying.
I agree to a certain point, you will be getting the cream of the crop. But at the same time, I realise that I'm not the target market for Indie rock. I'm a hardcore punk dude. So I find it hard to appreciate a lot of the music that is put out in NZ.
Two of NZ's current up-and-comers are worth checking out though - Midnight Youth and Luger Boa. I think those two bands are very listenable.
1. Filesharing is not 'stealing' - stealing is where you take someone else's property, thus depriving them of said property. When you share a file, you are not depriving someone else of their copy. However, you are infringing the copyright of the author (depending on the license agreement).
2. Not all filesharing is illegal. This will depend on the license agreement.
3. There is an increasing number of musicians who are releasing their music under license agreements that allow you to share the music. The Creative Commons licenses are becoming popular for this. See www.jamendo.com for a load of freely available music, and www.creativecommons.org for information on the creative commons.
4. Copying a file and then sending money to the band does nothing to change the system that is causing the problem.
Bottom line of reusing anything should merely be this: honor the source. Beyond that, copyright lawyer zealots are on a crazed campaign of protectionism that is doomed to fail.
Also, let's realize our Western bias here; not only is the concept of 'property' a peculiarity of John Locke and an idol of free-market capitalism, but the idea of 'intellectual property'--owning a song, owning an idea--is a particularly absurd and even offensive idea in many other cultures.
Some people think the early Christians lived a form of socialism. But Peter was very clear about establishing rights of personal property ownership. He says to Annanias, “Why have you let Satan fill your heart? You lied to the Holy Spirit, and you kept some of the money for yourself. The property was yours to sell or not sell, as you wished. And after selling it, the money was also yours to give away. How could you do a thing like this? You weren’t lying to us but to God!”
And it seems to me that God established the first copyright with severe enforcement penalties “If anyone adds anything to what is written here, God will add to that person the plagues described in this book. And if anyone removes any of the words from this book of prophecy, God will remove that person’s share in the tree of life”
I am in the advertising business and if I write a song used in a radio commercial and spend thousands of dollars producing it it is my personal property. I would get quite upset to see another advertiser simply take the song, and attach their product. If I spend thousands of dollars and weeks of time creating a logo for a company only to see another artist trace it and use it for another company, I get upset. What is so bizarre about owning intellectual property. It’s more than just honoring the source. How about when you publish your book and it goes to the top of the New York Times list, I cut and paste the entire thing, change a few names only, honor you on a blurb on the jacket and publish it under my name?
Free market economics can quickly become an idol, and it's clear that it's a system that inherently enables hoarding and inequity. (Socialism, for that matter, enables government corruption--pick your poison, corrupt corporations or corrupt governments.)
I think the Bible calls us to wise discernment about the powers that be, economic ones included, not just accept at face value what our society says is best.
And again, the one thing copyright is good for is preventing unwanted reuse (or at least it tries to). But Creative Commons or something like it could be arranged and put on the books to protect authors.
Free markets and the ability to save one’s earning is our natural default, a God-given ancient system that requires responsibility, ethics and morals. It is only in recent past that John Locke, Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman defined it as a science and codified the rules and theorms. Communism is a brutal, spirit killing and incentive killing system that enables dictatorship, destroys personal responsibility, and allows massive scale genocide (60 million killed in the gulags of Russia, 100 million in the great leap forward, labor camps and famines of China).
There is quite a difference between Jesus criticizing the rich man who hoarded only for himself and designing an economy that does not allow one to save the fruits of his labor or have personal property. As Peter said, “The property was yours to sell or not sell, as you wished. And after selling it, the money was also yours to give away“. I know you think I am viewing the Bible from a western free market paradigm, but I think you may be viewing the Bible from a Marxist paradigm.
Firstly Intellectual Property and Copyright are 2 different things (although copyright is part of intellectual property).
Secondly, illegal filesharing and plagiarism are different things.
Thirdly, creative commons licensing is a copyright license - it in no way removes your right to be identified as the author, and it does continue to place limitations on the use and distribution of your work, so your logo/book scenarios would be null and void.
Fourthly, the main objection that filesharers have is not against the rights of artists to retain their ownership of a property, but against the organisations and corporations who insist on infringing _our_ rights on the assumption that we will abuse any freedoms we have, and who are gradually eroding any concept of ownership in our culture.
I should underline here that I am fervently against illegal filesharing, because it is illegal. But I have a great deal of sympathy for some of the major causes behind it.