A Bill of Goods?

By Bill Ivey, Director, Curb Center, Vanderbilt University

Marty is right about the need to organize and the inevitable problems that will arise as internal differences are encountered and engaged.  And what organization can serve as the umbrella?  Jean underlined the rather pitiful arts weigh-in on media consolidation, and was dead on in identifying the narrow "arts advocacy comfort zone" of the nonprofit community.  Tim has a right to be depressed!

I've been bothered for years by the sight of some accomplished artist -- a songwriter, actor, etc. -- positioned as an advocate for some policy change that really only benefits IP-dependent corporations.  The notion that artists and companies share the same values when it comes to the character of our arts system is a crock.  Companies worry about the theft of assets; artists worry about obscurity.  These two concerns overlap at times, but often they don't.  What's the real benefit to an artist of copyright protection that reaches beyond three-quarters of a century?  What's the real benefit to an artist if your publishing company or record company uses licensing fees to prevent your composition from being sampled. or prevents your film clip from being part of a documentary.  We need to begin the organizational conversation Marty envisions by figuring out what an artist-oriented regime of laws and regulations would look like.  The last thirty years have certainly provided us with more than we wanted to know about how culture works when the footprint of copyright is enlarged, when media is consolidated, and when the Internet gets chopped up into something that looks like old-time late-night TV.  A more nuanced, public-purpose-oriented arts system is possible, but we need that Marty-style conversation to see where all the parties agree, where we can't come together, and how we might organize.

And I also think we need to engage the public at large.  The "system" ultimately shapes the way America interacts with information, with cultural heritage, with political speech and personal creativity.  Just as the environmental movement was ultimately about everybody, the character of our nation's expressive life is important to us all.

July 20, 2010 7:10 AM | | Comments (1) |

1 Comments

Bill, I think you might want to qualify that a bit. Artists' interests are not aligned with the handful of major corporations that still control the vast majority of our creative media production and distribution systems.

But artists' interests are often aligned with small, ethically-run independent record companies, for example. The explosive growth of the modern independent music movement in the 90s and 2000s is largely because people wanted to propagate models that were more artist-centered, democratic, and participatory, that worked outside the industry gatekeepers. Many of the folks who run these labels are recording artists themselves, and are typically dedicated advocates for their artists' interests both in business realms and political realms-- many of them have long been among the most vocal opponents of media consolidation.

Unfortunately, it's become fashionable in the copyright-reform community to talk about "the music industry" as if it were a monolithic entity, as if there were no difference between Merge Records and Sony. This has obscured important realities, leading to a circumstance where a teenage fan might think she's sticking it to the man by downloading a copy of the new Ted Leo album instead of buying. It's important that as we try to make our system more nuanced and more public-purpose-oriented, we make sure that our description of present reality is appropriately nuanced as well.

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