Let's Get Real

by George Ziemann -- March 21, 2008

The music wars will never end if someone without a vested interest in the outcome, and yet in full possession of all the facts, does not step forward with a logical, realistic plan that acknowledges the needs of the artists and creators, remembering that these are the only persons the copyright laws were allowed to protect, and offers an incentive to all artists to continue to write and play music.

I've been doing music for a very long time. My vested interest is my love for music. My life experiences and contact with representatives of the music business have led me to the conclusion a love for music and respect for record labels has become mutually exclusive. I have a bias and believe that what is good for the record labels is rarely, if ever, good for music or musicians. As a result, I am almost certainly not to be trusted to devise such a solution.

I'm going to offer one anyway. Tell me what's wrong with it.
Step One -- Put All the Seeds in One Sack

Before anyone even thinks of trying to collect money, an accurate system of measuring what music is being shared needs to be in place, whether the music is shared through legal web sites such as this one or offered without the artists' permission over peer-to-peer.

Create a music repository with the goal of including a high quality copy of every song ever recorded, with lesser quality offered for those who can't hear the difference and just know they can get more songs on their iPod if they're 128k than if they're 256k. Start it with a source copy of everything from all of the major labels, independent labels and every other artist who submits their music and works from there.

The Problem -- Who holds the sack? How about we start out with who doesn't get to hold it.

* Any company owned in whole or in part by any entity listed on the RIAA membership, its board of directors or the boards of any of the member companies.
* The U.S. Copyright Office (we need someone with a grasp of technology)

Any sufficiently technologically advanced entity which can be trusted to report accurate results. The Internet Archive is a non-profit organization with an infrastructure already in place to do this sort of thing. So is Apple, even though its music collection is currently for-profit. But no questions have ever surfaced about the accuracy of what they have reported in terms of files transferred.

The source files could be mirrored to several places which would simply report on the number of file transfers for each file monthly. It takes me about 20 seconds to produce such a summary with the web statistics from this site showing each mp3 file and how many times it was downloaded or streamed during any time period.
Step Two -- Sow the Seeds

This will be the most difficult portion of this idea to accomplish, as it requires the cooperation of musicians in general and the people who write the search functions for p2p software. It also provides an incentive for each of them to participate.

Part 1 -- Reprogram p2p software to look at the repository first and, if the song is listed, return no other results. Since the p2p makes a primary effort to find an authorized copy, this reduces their legal exposure significantly.

Part 2 -- Musicians point all the links to their songs to the repository instead of hosting them themselves or paying others to do so. Even if we never get to the "pay them fairly" part, every artist, big or small, would save money; if we do ever see payouts, everyone's tunes are in the same pile -- all music is created equal.

There's more to this idea, of course, including the question what to do with the record labels' rightful portion of proceeds from music that is out of print because they have determined it has no further commercial value. That's where my bias comes in.

However, until Step One takes place, there's no point in considering collecting money, much less passing it out.

[url=http://azoz.com/newsarchive/2008dash03/RealPlan.html]Source: AzOz[/url]