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Nov. 9th, 2007 08:33 pm
Copyright and fair play
A few words about the WGA strike and Prince suing fansites...
( Unions FTW )
( Copyright law 101 )
Now, as for why I chose to put these two things together in one post: They are related.
( Old-skool distribution is done broke, and both fans and studios share blame )
Instant, flexible-size, direct digital distribution isn't the future, it's the present. But copyright holders just aren't taking advantage of this the way they should. In an ideal world, most of the middlemen who are sucking fans' money and not giving it to the artists should be cut out. Their original purpose--to negotiate with media manufacturers, theaters and such--has been eclipsed. Musical artists don't need people to produce and manage vast warehouses of CDs. They can just throw their new album up for download on their own site. TV producers don't need networks. They can post streaming video of their stuff. About the only thing that labels and studios are still good for is promotion, and these days, fans are doing plenty of that themselves, being enlisted by artists as "street teams" to pimp their stuff.
Some level of management is and always will be necessary--artists should be spending their time creating, not worrying about accounting and retaining legal teams--but the bloated major media conglomerate model is about to collapse under its own weight. I hope that this strike wakes the studios up to this fact before things get even more out of hand.
But if stability in the entertainment industry is going to happen, both fans and studios are going to have to get some big sticks out of their asses. Fans are going to have to demonstrate that they are willing to pay for their entertainment, as long as they can otherwise get it on their terms, and the studios are going to have to demonstrate that they are willing to set up distribution models to do this--ones that are fair to both audiences and talent.
( Unions FTW )
( Copyright law 101 )
Now, as for why I chose to put these two things together in one post: They are related.
( Old-skool distribution is done broke, and both fans and studios share blame )
Instant, flexible-size, direct digital distribution isn't the future, it's the present. But copyright holders just aren't taking advantage of this the way they should. In an ideal world, most of the middlemen who are sucking fans' money and not giving it to the artists should be cut out. Their original purpose--to negotiate with media manufacturers, theaters and such--has been eclipsed. Musical artists don't need people to produce and manage vast warehouses of CDs. They can just throw their new album up for download on their own site. TV producers don't need networks. They can post streaming video of their stuff. About the only thing that labels and studios are still good for is promotion, and these days, fans are doing plenty of that themselves, being enlisted by artists as "street teams" to pimp their stuff.
Some level of management is and always will be necessary--artists should be spending their time creating, not worrying about accounting and retaining legal teams--but the bloated major media conglomerate model is about to collapse under its own weight. I hope that this strike wakes the studios up to this fact before things get even more out of hand.
But if stability in the entertainment industry is going to happen, both fans and studios are going to have to get some big sticks out of their asses. Fans are going to have to demonstrate that they are willing to pay for their entertainment, as long as they can otherwise get it on their terms, and the studios are going to have to demonstrate that they are willing to set up distribution models to do this--ones that are fair to both audiences and talent.
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