Sonic Publics| Music, Copyright, and Technology: A Dialectic in Five Moments (original) (raw)
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Music, Copyright, and Technology: A Dialectic in Five Moments
International Journal of Communication, 2019
This article traces the coevolution of musical culture, law, and technology over the arc of modern Western legal and cultural history, from the Renaissance to the present day. This historical analysis is intended to lend context and substance to contemporary conversations about the role of the Internet and digital production platforms, as well as Internet-based intellectual property laws, such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, in shaping contemporary global musical culture. I propose a 5-stage coevolutionary process, based on the dialectical relationships between (1) laws and regulations, (2) market dynamics, (3) codes and practices, (4) music technologies, and (5) concepts of authorship.
Classical Musicians & Copyright in the Digital Age: A Preliminary Investigation
Caml Review Revue De L Acbm, 2013
Digital technology has greatly increased access to music, both recordings and scores, protected by copyright. A large body of research addresses intellectual property (IP) issues in the recorded music industry, and Diane Parr Walker discusses how American copyright law adversely affects digital music libraries. 1 However, the use of digitally accessible scores among Canadian classical music professionals remains largely overlooked. This paper provides the background for a research project investigating the relationship between copyright law and Canadian classical musicians in the digital age. The project will use a Canada-wide survey and a series of focus groups to analyze the everyday information-seeking behaviours of classical music professionals and to examine the intellectual property policies that encourage musicians to obey or contravene the law.
The social construction of music markets: Copyright and technology in the digital age
The social construction of culture markets: Between incentives to creation and access to culture, 2016
The social construction of music markets: Copyright and technology in the digital age. In López-Sintas, J. (Ed.). The social construction of culture markets: Between incentives to creation and access to culture. Barcelona, Spain: OmniaScience. pp. 101-121. * This chapter is based on a presentation given at the 5th Vienna Music Business Research Days, 1-3 October 2014.
Copyright, Freedom of Expression® and Artistic Communication in the Internet Era: The Recorded Music
Based on the case of music in the internet, this paper explores the framework and the parameters of the conflict arising between copyright (in the sense of the protection granted by law to the authors by allowing them to prohibit unauthorized use of their works) and the right of the citizens to be informed. It presents some paradoxes that often result during litigation the degree to which the established legal approach of the peer-to-peer music file exchange complies with recent developments. The paper discusses also the challenges that the internet creates for the recording industry, the phases of the "war on copyright infringement" in which the industry is involved, as well as its strategy. A major asymmetry is actually established in this field: the very notion of intellectual property - being socially constructed (and therefore culturally determined) - is incompatible with new types of practice and new forms of culture that proliferate in the internet and the public "cybersphere". Furthermore, it is incompatible also with cultures ignoring the concepts of individual creativity and of the autonomous and accomplished individual artwork. Finally, the paper discusses some issues which are really at stake and extend far beyond the industry concerns about lost profits.
'History of Copyright: A Chronology in Relation to Music', Music Business Journal (2001) [ONLINE].
Music Business Journal, 2001
History of copyright: a chronology in relation to music [1455-2001] (later updated to 2006, then to 2015), and as applicable in Britain, unless otherwise stated. First published in Music Business Journal (Ligo Publishing Ltd.) in 2001. Republished, in updated form, in the Musicians' and Songwriters' Yearbook 2008 (London: A&C Black, 31st July 2007), 339-345. KEYWORDS: Copyright, History of Copyright, Copyright Law, Intellectual Property Law, Music Copyright, Copyright in Music, Music and Copyright, "Jonathan David Little"
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
For over 150 years, copyright law in the United States reflected and reinforced the model of music as a two-stage art of composition and performance. Composition -a deliberative activity that allowed rethinking and editing -produced a score, a stable, visually perceptible representation of melody, harmony and rhythm that used a system of mostly discrete notation. A score was realized in performance, a real-time, low-deliberation, no-editing activity that was evanescent, unrepeatable, purely aural, and continuous. Copyright law protected musical compositions embodied in scores. It did not protect performances.
This article is an attempt to reflect on the critical role of collectivisation in music copyright in the 20th century. It traces the initial struggles of the Performing Right Society (PRS) to explore how music copyright was constituted and how it handled the transition from rights to royalties in a context of rapidly changing technologies. In so doing, it follows the initial controversies around the ways in which specific tariffs affected musical labour, the development of litigation techniques and the establishment of bureaucratic infrastructures that connected musical data to rights. The argument is that copyright and collective management were constitutive of distinctive business activities that triggered what came to be defined as the "music industry". Our suggestion is that music copyright in Britain was anchored in practices and strategies developed by this emerging collective subject built around copyright, which, in turn, shaped the ways in which the industry imagined itself. Introduction 1 More than two decades ago, Helen Wallace highlighted the differences between book and music publishing. "Unlike book publishing", she said, "the physical sale of the music itself is not the core business; the central asset is the copyright which, again unlike book publishing, rests with the publisher". 2 Such a commercially significant difference left distinctive marks in music copyright throughout the 20th century, and was particularly evident in the constitution of the Performing Right Society (PRS). As is well documented in standard histories of copyright, the music publisher William Boosey (1864-1933) from Chappell & Co, was behind the move that established the collecting society. Although the history of the society is often told as a success story, the first decades of the society were highly controversial, full of conflicts and hesitations over its methods of operation and constitution. Even for closely related music publishers, the society was not the only (or the best) way to conduct business. For instance, his cousin's company, Boosey & Co, was initially reluctant to participate in the new society. 3 Likewise, Novello & Co did not join until 1936, two decades after its birth. 4 This essay traces the initial struggles of the collective to explore how music copyright was constituted in the 20th century and how it handled the transition from recognition to distribution, from rights to royalties, in a context of rapidly changing technologies. In so *232 doing, it follows initial controversies around the ways in which specific tariffs affected musical labour to argue that copyright and collective management were constitutive of distinctive business activities that triggered what came to be defined as the "music industry". More specifically, our suggestion is that music copyright in Britain was anchored in practices and strategies developed by this emerging collective subject built around copyright, which, in turn, shaped the ways in which the industry imagined itself.
This chapter is concerned with copyright and music. Its stress on the material geographies and practice challenges the norms of debate that have been dominated by concern with the immaterial and the virtual. The chapter argues that such conceptual and practical focus on de-materialization has obscured, or distracted, analyses to such an extent that it has rendered invisible the geographical. Not surprisingly debates have been dazzled by technological changes, to the extent that they have – erroneously – displaced other concerns. The premature announcement of the “death of distance” being a case in point. The chapter argues for the need to turn our attention on the social and spatial embedding of musical practice if we are to fully comprehend its emergent forms in the “digital age.” This chapter is positioned against the notion of a ‘digital age : a term that is associated with teleological theories of development. Moreover, it is a term that has deep roots in the writings of conservative futurists (Bell 1973, Toffler 1980), and much of the contemporary ‘technology commentariat’ spun out from Wired magazine (Kelly 1998). A telling critical exposition of such writing can be found in the exploration of the ‘Californian Ideology’ (Barbrook and Cameron 1995).
Composers' Rights in a Digital World
Abstract — This paper looks into how music composers’ rights to their work are dependent on the nature of a work as well as its origin and underlying philosophy. Some differences and overlaps between French Droit d’auteur, Anglo-Saxon Copyright and the Copyleft movement will be explored. I will briefly touch on examples from my own compositional practice.