Social Culture / Norms: The Means of Control on Port 80: Boardwalk: Pop Music

Individual behavior in transactions involving intellectual property is rooted in social norms. These norms are people's perceptions of:

fairness and responsibility

fear, shame, guilt

convenience, and pragmatism

the individual as beneficiary, victim, or patron

enforceability of different options

I can find very little research on individual beliefs about IP and how individuals perceive the relationship of their actions to broader social and economic interests.

sharing vs stealing

... a clear concept of what it is we do. What it is we sell. What is at the root of what we are.

It's not the latest technological breakthrough that drives our success. It's not the promotion and marketing. It's not even the sales.

It's the dreams.

We don't sell records. We sell dreams. And the most important thing for us to remember, through this entire discussion, is that to be allowed into someone's living room, someone's bedroom, someone's life, is an immense privilege. It is an enormous leap of faith on the listener's part. It is so very much bigger than we ourselves can ever be.

No one remembers their first kiss by the car they were in - they remember the song that was playing on the radio. No teenager finds solace in the plastics industry - but they find it in the records we put out. We are there for them from cradle to grave, rocking their children to sleep when they're young, and singing their souls to peace when they leave this earth.

We deal in dreams. And hope. And desire. And the utter magnificense of the human spirit.

Our industry gives voice to the voiceless, who throng to purchase our goods because we give them back a part of themselves they'd forgotten. We provide succor, and sustenance, and a memory of better times gone by - and better times to come.

So let us not forget the grand, and noble, role we play in human culture.

This is all part of the Big Flip in publishing generally, where the old notion of "filter, then publish" is giving way to "publish, then filter." There is no need for Slashdot's or Kuro5hin's owners to sort the good posts from the bad in advance, no need for Blogdex or Daypop to pressure people not to post drivel, because lightweight filters applied after the fact work better at large scale than paying editors to enforce minimum quality in advance. A side-effect of the Big Flip is that the division between amateur and professional turns into a spectrum, giving us a world where unpaid writers are discussed side-by-side with New York Times columnists.

The music industry is largely untouched by the Big Flip. The industry harvests the aggregate taste of music lovers and sells it back to us as popularity, without offering anyone the chance to be heard without their approval. The industry's judgment, not ours, still determines the entire domain in which any collaborative filtering will subsequently operate. A working "publish, then filter" system that used our collective judgment to sort new music before it gets played on the radio or sold at the record store would be a revolution. ...

Digital changes in music have given us amateur production and distribution, but left intact professional control of fame. It used to be hard to record music, but no longer. It used to be hard to reproduce and distribute music, but no longer. It is still hard to find and publicize good new music. We have created a number of tools that make filtering and publicizing both easy and effective in other domains. The application of those tools to new music could change the musical landscape.

Formerr Turner CEO Jamie Kellner: "Because of the ad skips.... It's theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you're actually stealing the programming."

Copyright controllers distort the meaning of the words “stealing” and “theft” for their own purposes. Naughton (2003) contends that the use of such language “would make an excellent Orwellian case study.” “Stealing” and “theft” have emotive value because they are considered to be evil acts by most people. They are proscribed activities in the Judaeo-Christian Ten Commandments, and in the sacred books of other religions. The copyright controllers use these words to strengthen their case for extending the meaning of copyright.

According to the Oxford English dictionary, however, “to steal” is defined as: “To take away dishonestly (portable property, cattle, etc., belonging to another) (Oxford University Press, 1989). As copying takes nothing away from anyone (the owners still possess their copy) and as intellectual content is not property, then copying content is not stealing. In the U.S., this interpretation was strengthened by a Supreme Court decision that:

"infringement is not theft [as the infringer] did not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use. . . infringement does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. . . The Copyright Act employs a separate term to define one who misappropriates: infringer (Dowling v. United States, 1985)."

Given these facts, it is incorrect, and perhaps even dishonest, for the copyright controllers to use the term “stealing” in reference to copying materials. Nothing is taken “away” from anyone. The owner still has it. Jefferson (1813) put it this way: “He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.” When you copy without damaging or use someone's creative work and take ideas or impressions or methodologies or whatever from a creative work, or simply take enjoyment from it, you are NOT stealing, not from any religious, ethical, or legal point of view.

The so-called owners possess the copy right for the creation, not a property right. As Madison noted (see above) copyright is specifically not a property right. Stealing and theft as confirmed by both the Oxford and Merriam Webster (Merriam-Webster, 2004) dictionaries involves the taking of “property” belonging to another. Since, there is no property, it cannot be stealing.

The problem for copyright controllers is that they cannot find religious texts condemning “infringement” and so it is difficult for them to get public support using this legalistic terminology. The ancient religious writers, as we mentioned previously, were quite adept at copying and adapting the works of others and would doubtless have not found copying to be immoral. Without extensive copying in a manner that might today be considered to be infringement or even plagiarism, there would be no religious texts, nor classical literature. It is difficult for the copyright controllers to build a moral case against copying when the ancients actively encouraged it.

Rev. Frame (2002) notes that if it were a moral issue, then copyrights should never expire. “If it is morally wrong to copy a piece of music in June of 1989, it is also morally wrong to copy that same piece of music in June of 1991. (Moral principles, by their very nature, are eternal, as God is eternal).” As all human progress is based on copying, any society that adopted and followed this as a moral principle would not have progressed and would have stagnated. All human knowledge is based on copying. Can you imagine how well a prehistoric tribe would have survived if it had felt that copying spears or bows and arrows used by other tribes, was immoral? We have such a situation today where poverty-stricken countries are not permitted to copy the content and software applications created by the rich countries. They are being told that it is “stealing” if they deign to copy software, scholarly articles, and texts that might educate their people.

Lecturer Dr. Michael Bull is "the world's leading -- perhaps only -- expert on the social impact of personal stereo devices," according to The New York Times.

Bull, a lecturer in media and culture at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, is the author of Sounding out the City: Personal Stereos and the Management of Everyday Life, a book Bull calls the "definitive treatment" of the impact of the Sony Walkman and its descendants.

Now Bull has turned his attention to Apple's iPod.

Bull is currently interviewing iPod owners about how, when, where and why they use the iPod, and how it integrates into their everyday lives.

wired:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/home-network.htm

wireless:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/wireless-network.htm

powerline:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/power-network.htm


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modified: September 7, 2004 by Douglas Anderson http://RicciStreet.net/port80/boardwalk/pop/norms.htm

Popular Music: The Means of Control

Social Culture / Norms

enforceability of different options

sharing vs stealing

Popular Music:
The Means of Control