|
Some facts about music and copyright:
When you purchase a CD you own one physical copy of the material. You do not own the contents of the CD. The contents remain the property of the copyright owner - who licensed the intellectual property (the songs) to the owner of the recording.
This is an important concept to understand. The concept of copyrighting intellectual property is what allowed books to be published, symphonies written and movies made. Understand the difference between the CONCRETE - which is the actual CD, and the ABSTRACT - which is the content.
As such it is not and has never been legal to tape a record, tape songs off the radio, photocopy sheet music, copy CDs, share mp3s or make your own compilation CDs out of CDs you have bought.
If you had the right to make a compilation CD, you would also have the right to sell it, as you would own it. Can you see this? If you could do that, anyone could take anyone elses work and make money, while the creator of it saw nothing.
Taping songs, copying CDs, photocopying sheet music, and sharing mp3s all deprive artists of income. Imagine if a whole school handed out 500 photocopies of a song you wrote. That's 500 sheet music sales you missed out on, while those with the music may even make money off you - by say playing your song a a gig.
If you own a business you do not have the right to play a CD you bought to generate business. Clothing stores that play music, pay a license to do so. They fill out forms detailing what songs they've played, and a the money from the licenses get's distributed back to the songwriters. Radio stations, TV stations pay this fee as well. APRA in Australia is nonprofit, and distributes all it receives (after costs). Thus the amount of money you see for your song playing on radio varies from year to year.
You do not have the right to use a song or recording as an advertisement for your business without obtaining a license for the song, or buying the song.
Buying a song is very different to buying a CD that that song is on. Very different.
If you owned the song you could advertise with it, copy it, sell it, share it. Whatever you like.
So please, in forming an opinion about how "right and wrong" filesharing is, keep in mind the difference between CONCRETE property and INTELLECTUAL property, and understand you only ever owned the single physical copy, nothing else. The laws protecting copyright have been in existence for 200 years at least. What is new is the magnitude of the current piracy, and that this new generation of thieves seem to somehow think it is their right to own music that they didn't create.
Many thanks for reading.
Hugh
|