[ EEPI-Discuss ] Re: Don't bring political partisanship into this discussion. What's right for the Dems is right for the GOP.

[David Tomlinson <d.tomlinson@tiscali.co.uk>]

I agree with David Wade about post, but for now the main issue.

I will be quoting extensively from this paper 
http://ssrn.com/abstract_id=719777
Copyright Class War and suggest that like
http://ssrn.com/abstract_id=582602
Property, Intellectual Property, and Free Riding it is worth reading in 
full as background.

Dan Krimm wrote:
> 
> Recording music is hardly limited to the narrow paradigm of 'musicians
> getting together in a studio with a "Notorious Lead Vocalist" and making a
> record' -- all of my arguments are intended to support the idea of breaking
> down the barriers to entry in the music marketplace and allowing DIY
> (do-it-yourself) artists to compete in a viable market on the merits of
> what they create, rather than allowing the huge oligopoly to continue to
> exclusively dominate the music business based on a star-based fad dynamic
> (which would endure in the absence of property rights to the works
> themselves -- by obliterating property rights you would lock-in the
> celebrity dynamic as the dominant market structure).
> 

In my view you are missapplying Coase and Property Rights are in 
conflict with your Social Contract (utilitarian view).

http://ssrn.com/abstract_id=719777 Copyright Class War p282
"Natural law suggests that doubts should be resolved in favor of the 
owner; the law of property, based on the concept of rivalrous land or 
chattels that can be possessed by just one person at a time, tends to 
skew the outcomes of cases toward the copyright owner. Copyright in this 
view is a sort of Lockean justice, whereby something becomes the 
property of its creator and the law merely confirms what the owner is 
already entitled to and specifies remedies for infringement. A statutory 
basis for copyright, on the other hand, implies a utilitarian approach 
that grants just enough to the author to stimulate the production of 
creative works, for the ultimate benefit of the public."
> 
> I'm very impatient with the suggestion that, just because artists create
> art because they *want* to (they certainly do, I can attest to that
> firsthand since I am a musician -- exclusively avocational these days),
> they shouldn't get compensated for the societal value of that work.  It's
> not ultimately about the selfish interests of artists, though I do have
> those in mind as well.  It's about the value to society.
> 
Coase or the Utilitarian view you can't have both.

> Works left uncreated by one artist or group will never be created by
> another artist/group to substitute.  In fact, as an artist ages, the older
> artist will not create the works that would have been created by the
> younger artist.  When artists fail to make works that they might have made
> if they had enough resources, those works are forever lost to society, and
> whatever value they may have provided is lost.
> 

There is no limit to the art that should be produced or consumed, or any 
contraint on the resources to be expended. Yes that sounds like 
collective licencing to me.

http://ssrn.com/abstract_id=719777 Copyright Class War p281

"Like its predecessors, the Statute of Anne principally benefitted 
publishers, granting them statutory monopolies for limited times. 
Authors were merely straw men, expected to assign their rights to 
publishers, who were enlisted by the publishers to enhance their case 
before Parliament.146 Nevertheless, for the publishers, asserting the
rights of authors was a brilliant tactic. It was so good, in fact, that 
it is still employed today.147"

> Artists (including me and all the musical artists I've ever known and
> worked with) do want to get fairly compensated for the value they create,
> because if it's good enough taken as a full collection of works there is an
> expectation that they could collect a full-time living from the use of that
> content and thus concentrate all their creative energies on the art instead
> of having to cannibalize that energy to pay the rent with other means.
> That is, it is to society's benefit that talented artists be enabled to
> make art full time (not necessarily to become famous or filthy rich), and
> that a market exist to express the value of their work for that purpose.
> If they do it well, then they should be rewarded.  If they suck, then the
> market should fail to compensate them.
> 
There is no market, only an open ended tax.

> In short, just because big record labels have abused the copyright paradigm
> doesn't mean that some sort of property rights shouldn't apply to creative
> works.
> 
Yes it does, abuse often results in the forfit of rights (which was the 
wrong model in the first place).

Copyright has been rendered obsolete by the internet where the consumer 
pays for distribution and storage, and the barriers to entry are about 
the same as producing a demo track for the music industry. (You can 
still have the music industry as a publicist, if you wish to use the 
venture capital model).

Recorded music distributed on P2P is marketing not a product.

> If I read the comments here correctly (it's a little enigmatic) the main
> objection implied here is to the scare-word "tax" -- but this objection is
> being conflated with an objection to property rights at all.  These are two
> separate issues, though somewhat interrelated.
> 
tax    ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (tks)
n.

    1. A contribution for the support of a government required of 
persons, groups, or businesses within the domain of that government.
    2. A fee or dues levied on the members of an organization to meet 
its expenses.
    3. A burdensome or excessive demand; a strain.


> There is nothing to apologize for in suggesting taxation as a method of
> governance.  Taxation is one valid response to the structural impossibility
> of markets to address the production of public goods (and avoid negative
> externalities) of value to society in general.  Even hard-line libertarians
> tend to agree that things like military justify government and taxation.
> It's not a matter of *if* taxation is justified *at all*, but *what*
> qualifies as justified for taxation.  

I agree, popular music should not fall within the domain of government 
and therefore tax. There is a free market in Live Music constrained by 
physical property. That market would still exist and support artists and 
works of art.

> To create a market, one must first create property rights.  I have to say I
> don't take seriously the suggestion that we obliterate all property rights
> to music compositions and/or recordings.  It just doesn't seem at all
> politically feasible.
>
I thought it was a social contract (utilitarian), the BBC is supported 
by a hypothicated tax on households (the BBC prefers Licence Fee) and 
provides a Public Service. I don't think this is necessary for popular 
music, which can be supported by live performance. Although currently 
some BBC taxation goes to popular music and artists.

I think it is economically inevitable.

> But in a digital-computing/network context the enforcement of
> content-control rights is systematically problematic (hackers, the analog
> hole, etc.).  Nevertheless, if as a society we deem it is of value to
> create a market incentive to create creative works, then we have to assign
> some sort of rights and ensure they can somehow lead to payment in
> proportion to the aggregate social value of the works.  So instead of
> control rights we fall back to remuneration rights, enforced at point of
> access rather than enforced via a per-unit market transaction.
> 
Good we have ditched control, but you still have a consumption based 
model for a non-rivalrious good. (A consumption based model is 
inappropriate, even a percentage of the fund, still creates pressure for 
the expantion of the fund (tax). And it is a unnecessary and unjustified 
tax.

> But, taxing the distributed Internet is not the only way a viable service
> model could be designed to replace content-control-based markets.
> 
> We could enable bulk licensing for bulk catalogs, for example.  It could be
> in the form of a voluntary collective license applied to dedicated music
> services like Yahoo/LAUNCHcast, where you make your decision as a customer
> on an all-or-nothing basis.  However, I wouldn't mind seeing law that
> forces music services to allow any artist into their catalog on equitable
> terms with any other artist (in return for the service being able to
> include any work in its catalog at its own discretion).  In this model the
> "compulsion" would not be on the user but rather on the service and the
> artist in complementary ways.
> 
Join the club or be excluded from recorded popular music ? It lacks 
control, but stioll creates scarcity of non-rival goods.

> I actually feel that if such services were truly open to a full catalog (as
> far as that is practical -- let's call it "open access, discretionary use"
> in the form described above), such a service could feasibly "compete with
> free" and we could reasonably allow free file sharing outside of such
> systems into the domain of fair use, because it would not significantly
> undermine the market.
> 
If unrestricted filesharing would not preclude premium services, for 
people who valued the service (Exclusive or Collective Rights attempt to 
exclude unrestricted filesharing).

> Not all "compulsory licensing" looks the same, and it shouldn't be painted
> with the same brush.  Not all forms of blanket licensing involve "taxing
> the Internet".
> 
You don't understand my position.

Currently the live music market supports artists (with a few rich and 
famous exceptions) and the recorded music market supports publishers. It 
is only the recorded music market that is under threat by the removal of 
copyright.

Musicians would be required to perform for their income, as they do now.

 From the IPcentral blog (Pro-IP)
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/0,,SB111643067458336994-dZdpfVsBBc8Y17yRcFtFhF_8YWk_20060522,00.html?mod=blogs

"Newspaper publishers, book publishers, movie studios, music companies, 
ad agencies, television networks -- they're all trying to figure out how 
they fit into a new-media world. Their old way of doing business isn't 
as profitable as it used to be, but they haven't found a new way that's 
as profitable, either."

It's not the artist that has to rely on celebrity (There is a market for 
live music), but their publicist (aka Music Company)

"Don't sell music -- sell musicians. Record companies are in a 
paradoxical bind. Sales of recorded music have been falling for five 
years running. But musicians are more in demand than ever among a host 
of media and advertising outlets, from film studios to fashion labels to 
liquor companies. So Jimmy Iovine, chairman of Vivendi Universal SA's 
Interscope Geffen A&M Records, reasons it's high time people like him 
look for more outside deals to take advantage of their artists' visibility."

I would suggest the economic reality (rather than political will), is on 
my side. The social contract is a myth, that would continue to be used 
to tax the public on consumption on non-rival goods, and it is not even 
artists who are under threat.

The model for a Public Good, is Taxation, not Property Rights (even 
under Coase). Property Rights are open ended and can imply control and 
the right of veto. Collective Rights are just a co-op, and exist to 
increase the effectiveness of the rights.

p.s.
Dan.
You don't know my politics, or understand my position. I am pragmatic 
and a realist. Progressive and Radical differ in the rate or degree of 
change, but does not imply direction. That is why I included a 
dictionary definition of Radical.

Progressive: 2. Proceeding in steps; continuing steadily by increments: 
progressive change.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=progressive

pro-gres-sive    ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (pr-grsv)
adj.

    1. Moving forward; advancing.
    2. Proceeding in steps; continuing steadily by increments: 
progressive change.
    3. Promoting or favoring progress toward better conditions or new 
policies, ideas, or methods: a progressive politician; progressive 
business leadership.
    4. Progressive Of or relating to a Progressive Party: the 
Progressive platform of 1924.
    5. Of or relating to progressive education: a progressive school.
    6. Increasing in rate as the taxable amount increases: a progressive 
income tax.
    7. Pathology. Tending to become more severe or wider in scope: 
progressive paralysis.
    8. Grammar. Designating a verb form that expresses an action or 
condition in progress.

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