technoculture203-09

Bull makes a great point, that "downloading does not equate to sales" and that preventing it will only result in a loss of fans. Chris Anderson, in his book Free: The Future of a Radical Price explains how countries such as China have little concern with copyright laws, promoting piracy within the music industry. Whilst sites from which music is downloaded still pay artists for their music, the users download the music for free as revenue is generated by advertising on the site. This gets the artists name out there and increases the demand for tours where musicians can further make a profit. Furthermore the sites run competitions where the artist whom is most downloaded "wins" a tour funded by the site. This puts "music back in the hands of the people; [making] the majors and amateurs equal" as Bull suggests.

The idea of copyright itself is flawed. Copyright is not a choice, one first has to claim ownership in order to give it away. Yet how can we claim anything? Aren't all our actions, words, creations, etc based on something which already exists? Social constructionism is something I've mentioned before, which explains that our realities are based on the information we gain from one another, thus isn't everything a breach of copyright, even the term itself?

Finally copyright is a form of cultural imperialism. We are forced to accept Western ideas of copyright when much of history has been handed down via songs and storytelling. Although the 'invention' of copyright was understandable at its time of conception, there were much fewer artists, now with the vast increase in creative material, supply and demand are changing, shouldn't the laws surrounding it adjust too?