Traditional copyright exists in order to protect the rights of creators. The idea is that if they know their work will be protected and they can profit from it, there will be an incentive for them to create new works. This in turn means that consumers or audiences have a wide range of works to choose from. We all benefit from the cultural richness of a diverse range of artists creating a large number of works.
That's a nice theory, and an admirable goal. But in real life, things don't always work smoothly. There are several problems with the laws of copyright as they exist today, and with the business models that emerged around them in the 20th century.
In the music world one of the biggest problems is that of getting music heard. It's not enough to write music and then leave it in a desk drawer where nobody will hear it. Before mass communications were around, the way to get music heard was to perform it as much as possible and try to get friends and associates to do the same. The printing press and increasing literacy changed that a fair amount, but performance was still a very important factor: interpreting sheet music is a skill that takes years to learn. Audio recording and playback technology, paired with the broadcasting possibilities of radio and television, changed it profoundly. It was possible, if one could raise the funds, to have music played to hundreds, thousands, even millions of people at once. It was possible to play music once, twice, ten times until it was nearly perfect, and then sell a duplicate of that nearly perfect recording without having to do it again. Word of mouth became less important than airtime.
High-quality recording equipment was still relatively expensive in the 20th century. To have a song recorded was simply beyond the means of most musicians. So a system emerged where publishers and recording companies would enter into a partnership with composers and performers. The creators of the music would give up some control over their work in exchange for money, and the recording companies or publishers would worry about the details of recording equipment, typesetting and printing of sheet music, and distribution of the finished product.
Again, this is alright in theory. But what happened in practise was this: recording technology got cheaper. Mass distribution got cheaper. Recording companies got better at marketing, and at making money. It was very difficult to get music heard in the mass media without some sort of deal with a recording company, and very difficult to get a deal with a recording company at all, and even then profits were not guaranteed. Depending on the details of the contract a composer might not make money even for a very successful recording. And the mass media was the only one where significant amounts of money were available to be made. The widespread availability of cheap recorded music meant that live performances weren't so easy to fix any more. Copyright became something the recording companies would defend in order to preserve their profits, but which didn't necessarily benefit artists, and which actually reduced the average audience's access to a variety of music. People who wanted something different from the offerings of the mainstream media had to go out of their way to find it.
This, too, is changing: technology has moved on. The biggest change is that the mass media is becoming more and more audience-controlled. This article will be posted on a website; many of the people reading it will have websites or blogs of their own. People are creating, for the sake of it. Some may get paid in advertising revenue or support themselves through other means, but many don't bother. Some of the best bloggers out there have day jobs. A significant portion of people are starting to question or outright ignore what the mainstream media says, whether that's in journalism or visual art or written fiction or music. The thresholds to mass broadcasting are much lower than they have been before, and a lot of voices have something to say.
What that means, in practical terms, is that distribution of media is back to word of mouth again, but in a much different environment than the one where personal, face-to-face contact was the main form of communication. Word of mouth has gone global. And it's noisy.
For creators this has some interesting implications. Broadcasting is cheaper than it has ever been, but so is copy&paste. Artists who try to keep their copyrighted works out of the public domain have only limited success in doing so: a Google image search for 'Gary Larson' is a rather telling demonstration. Before the printing press, if someone stole work and claimed it as their own, the original creator couldn't necessarily stop the thief making profit but could still make some of their own by continuing to distribute or perform their work as much as possible. Mass duplication makes that a technology race as well a social skills race, and ultimately the choice to say anything at all is also an acceptance of the risk that someone else might try to steal it.
The challenges for the music industry are similar to those for the written word; the technology is different, but not far behind. The technology exists to record a music rehearsal at a reasonable quality and put it online; it costs less than a month's rent. The expertise required to do so is learnable and does not belong to an elite class. The equipment to create a CD-quality recording isn't much more expensive than that. In sheet music the same issues exist: music notation and typesetting programs are cheap and reasonably easy to use, and no composer need rely on a traditional publisher to distribute their work. But once it's out there, the creator has very little control over their work and can't easily dictate whether it is duplicated. Most small-scale creators certainly can't afford legal fees against someone who attempts to profit from their work. Participation is an act of trust.
Artists and audiences need new business models to deal with this environment.
One option is to lean toward more control, more stringent laws to prevent the theft and piracy of intellectual property. That way lies stifling bureaucracy and an endless arms race against what technology can do. And as shown, it doesn't always benefit artists or audiences. It stifles word of mouth, which may be the most powerful advertising there is. It creates a situation where economic might and the whims of those who wield it dictate the livelihood of artists and the listening opportunities of audiences.
Alternately there is the careful path toward increased openness and trust. It is possible to build communities where intellectual property rights are respected, but not in a punitive manner: where people create for the sake of creating, not for the reward, but where reward is still possible.
The London Alternative Copyright Choir exists to explore some of the alternative business models available, at least as far as choral music is concerned.
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