Does Copyright Help Artists?

As Mick Jagger will tell you, during most of the history of recorded music, musicians weren't getting paid to record it.

I recently read this wonderful interview with Mick Jagger on the BBC website which had this fantastic extract about the impact of the internet on the music industry. What I love about this interview is that Mick Jagger is, of course, about as old a legend as you can find in the music industry:

...I'm talking about the internet.

But that's just one facet of the technology of music. Music has been aligned with technology for a long time. The model of records and record selling is a very complex subject and quite boring, to be honest.

But your view is valid because you have a huge catalogue, which is worth a lot of money, and you've been in the business a long time, so you have perspective.

Well, it's all changed in the last couple of years. We've gone through a period where everyone downloaded everything for nothing and we've gone into a grey period it's much easier to pay for things – assuming you've got any money.

Are you quite relaxed about it?

I am quite relaxed about it. But, you know, it is a massive change and it does alter the fact that people don't make as much money out of records.

But I have a take on that – people only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn't make any money out of records because record companies wouldn't pay you! They didn't pay anyone!

Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone.

So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there was a 25 year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the time they didn't.

So what does this have to do with copyright? Well, remember, the record labels and other content distributors (not creators!) keep saying that artists will starve unless there is copyright. But understand that for the entire 110 year period that Mick Jagger is talking about there was copyright, and yet artists were paid to record LPs and records for only a fraction (less than a quarter) of that period. During the rest of the time, the way they made money was by performing. There is nothing inherent in a stronger copyright regime that ensures artists (the creators!) will receive more money or compensation.

So when the record labels say that without stricter copyright legislation artists will suffer, what they really mean is that one specific business model – one that requires distributors and which they happen to do well by – will suffer. Artists, who traditionally didn’t receive much from the labels (and even during the good years, only a tiny few profited handsomely), have no guarantees that with stricter copyright they will see more revenue. Rather, the distributors will simply own artists content for longer and have greater control over its use.

This all matters because this country is about to go into a dark, dark place with the new copyright legislation. In exchange for protecting a single business model that profits not artists, but the distributors of content we will end up stalled for 30 years and cultural innovation will shift to other parts of the world where creativity, remix culture, and forms of artistic expression are kept more free.

Why is this? Because, as Stanford professor and copyright expert Larry Lessig argues, all creative work builds on the past:

Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.

The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it.

Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past.

Ours is less and less a free society.

Welcome to copyright reform. Creating a Canada where the past controls the creativity that gets built upon it.

This piece first appeared here