A Musician Speaks of Heavy-Handed Record Companies

I have loved music since I was old enough to sit upright.

Musical geniuses abound in our society, and they are happy to demonstrate their talents.

And musicians deserve to receive financial gain from their artistry. I doubt that anyone will dispute that.

Somewhere along the line, middlemen decided that they could make a buck by taking the musical artists' output and packaging it and selling it to the public. No problems there. Fair enough.

Unfortunately, greed quickly entered the picture.

Artists found themselves producing gold records and seeing little of the profits (e.g. Billy Joel's classic Piano Man, released in 1973, went gold. He revealed in a Rolling Stone interview that he received “next to nothing” from Columbia Records.).

Today's FamilyFirst site asks you to take a look at changing the way you purchase music. It's written by a professional musician. Her name is Miriam Rainsford. She is a composer, singer and songwriter in classical, electroacoustic and underground dance music. She's involved with the Madonna Remix Project and working on the book, Copyleft: Creativity, Technology and Freedom?.

She makes some good points:

"Musicians are often unwilling to speak out against the tight constraints of their record labels, afraid of biting the hand that feeds. But an increasing number of artists are embracing the changes in digital technology as a potential revolution which may free them from the shackles of the commercial record industry. As an independent, computer-based composer whose work deals directly with fair use rights in an interactive world, I will dare to venture an answer."

"DRM, whether in software or hardware form, is impossible to employ without some level of infringement of the user's civil liberties. Whether this is simply a matter of denying fair use rights, or delving deeper into setups such as TCPA/Palladium which entertain the possibility of remote data-mining, the risks to privacy are very real. When combined with anti-circumvention legislation, this results in a situation where the terms of copyright law are no longer defined by the government but by the publisher."

It's a long read. Please take the time to read it. I know that I'm sick and tired of the MPAA and RIAA suing grandmothers and thirteen-year-olds because they fear the money they receive for promoting outdated technologies and limiting the use of new ones may be dwindling.

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