Artist Rights vs. Consumer Rights
Alric Knebel
about plans in the future to sell DVDs and CDs with some sort of coding
device so that once it was played in a particular player, it couldn't be
played in any other. That would mean if you bought a DVD, you couldn't
lend it to your sister. It also means that if you played the CD in your
home unit, you couldn't carry it out to your car. The way I see it, by
the lifestyles of people in the entertainment industry, whatever piracy
is going on is not worth all of this. The affects of piracy are
minimal, I think, especially when you consider the lifestyle of the
average American. If you go on KaZaa, there are about a 500 million
files. Sounds like a lot, but when you consider that a lot of this
stuff is pornography, jpegs, videos (stuff you can see for free on CMT,
VH1, and MTV), mpegs of SNL segments, and tons and tons of other odd
stuff, you have to ask yourself what really is the loss to the industry
by this so-called piracy. Record sales indicate that the vast majority
of people BUY the music and movies they want. A lot of times, people go
to P2P software to get weird stuff: bootleg performances, rare TV
appearances, and so on. This simply ads to the popularity of the
artist, if you ask me.
For instance, I found on KaZaa a famous live performance by Shania Twain
of "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" from the Grammy Awards a few years back.
You can see in the mpeg I downloaded the CBS logo in the lower
right-hand corner, where clearly a person had a video tape and converted
the image to mpeg. You can't get that performance anywhere else. I
also downloaded some mpegs of Sarah Brightman performing live in Korea.
Again, you can't find this stuff anywhere, or I would be more than glad
to pay for cleaned-up versions of them. As they are, they are merely
interesting.
There is an element to P2P participation that corporations are refusing
to acknowledge. Complete corporate control over the artist makes the
artist appear inaccessible to the fans. But fandom is a personal
experience, and whoever it is we like, we tend to feel that the objects
of our fandom share a mutual affection for us -- or at least a
reciprocal appreciation for what we bring to their lives. After all,
they owe us EVERYTHING. Therefore, we want to personalize the
experience by circumventing the corporate control by accessing the
artist directly. This is why I believe bootlegs are an essential
element to star appreciation. No one is going to buy a bootleg of an
artist they don't already have much of the artist's corporate-produced
material. The Grateful Dead understood this, as do The Black Crows and
Joe Satriani. I saw a report on The Grateful Dead in which Jerry Garcia
said they ENCOURAGE bootlegging, because they want their fans to go home
with something of a souvenir of the show. In this report, the camera
panned over a pre-concert crowd: It looked like a forest, there were so
many microphones sticking up everywhere as the fans were setting up in
pretty much the same way the band was. Their music never did anything
for me, but their following was devout, and despite the fact that at one
point they hadn't produced a studio album in years, they placed among
the top-five grossing tours the same year The Eagles reunited for the
"Hell Freezes Over" tour.
The point I'm trying to make is, people like Jack Valenti are making
more noise than all of this is worth. Sure, it's good to remind people
of the artist's rights. I, for one, will not download very much
material of artists I truly like; I much prefer the official copies,
with all the neat packaging. I look for the unofficial stuff, mostly.
And not only that, the sound quality of a lot of the KaZaa stuff is
horrible, despite all this talk about digital copying. I can play a CD
on my computer and the sound is very, very good, but one of those wavs
or mp3s are very different, unless I made it myself. Not in EVERY case,
but in most cases, the sound quality is inferior. The artist can relax
in this aspect, and no real fan is going to deny the object of his or
her affection the bucks to give them further artistic freedom. With the
artist's Therefore, let us not forget CONSUMER rights. If I buy a DVD,
I want it to play on ALL DVD players. What if I buy one of those DVDs
and my DVD player breaks? When I buy a CD, I want to play it in my car,
too. AND in my DVD player, if I so desire.
Now, someone might rush in with the argument that when I buy any of
these official products, I'm purchasing a license. Nonsense. A friend
of mine pointed out that if that's the case, when the item I purchased
becomes damaged, I should be able to send the damaged copy in for a
replacement. Now THAT'S an argument I've never heard before. I've
bought The Doors' first album five times: Three times on vinyl, once on
cassette, and finally -- and hopefully for the last time -- on CD. If I
purchased merely the license, then Electra owes me a few bucks, because
I've overpaid for the rights to it.
I thought the technology mentioned in THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR was
scary. If that technology was introduced as a marketing strategy, I
would for sure cease participating in the market place for art. I like
some element of control over the things I pay for, a sense of ownership
that comes from collecting. These advances will simply not do.
Alric Knebel