Copy - It’s Alright

(OPINION)

- Words, Joel Dignam.

In response to ‘The Ethos of Immediate Gratification’.

The cheap and efficient online distribution of digital music files is a technological breakthrough - a technological breakthrough that only benefits artists and consumers. File-sharing turns music into an infinite resource. It used to be the case that if one million people wanted a copy of that album, one million CDs would need to be produced and distributed. Now, an album can be created and distributed to any number of people cheaply and quickly. Why would we want to change this?

Artists benefit from the existence of file-sharing. The major issue facing musicians is not that too many people are ‘stealing’ their music, but that too few people even know of their music. While the handful of megabands who have already achieved international fame may miss out on potential sales, the majority of artists, struggling for recognition, can use modern technology to make their music available to everyone, and thus acquire a following – as many bands have done through Myspace. Only wildly successful bands can live off album sales; the reason that bands sell albums is to popularise their music so that they can profit from better attended gigs and greater merchandising. File-sharing, while it may disadvantage the minority of soundly established outfits, is a boon to independent musicians or the proverbial garage band.

Copyright does not exist to penalise stealing or immorality. The purpose of copyright law is to promote the development of the arts, by making it profitable for people to produce artistic work. As new technologies blossom, it is senseless to marry ourselves to outdated distribution models. Copyright laws must be updated to recognise the change in the way that intellectual property is now shared.