Frankly, My Dear I DO Give A Damn

Following on from the post about Soopsworld ‘doing’ Digital Music Piracy and the Digital Economy Bill I (on a massive masochistic streak, clearly) proceeded to wade through a series of reports on the subject including the actual Digital Economy Bill. Yes, I probably was trying to prove a point but what that point was – yeah not entirely certain. Those of you that follow me on Twitter will be familiar with my random (of course – part of my own personal branding, dahling) mutterings/rantings on the DEB. Why do I suddenly give a sh*t about all this stuff?

As I said before, politics make me nervous, most of the time I feel like I don’t know enough on the subject as a whole to justify voicing an opinion (clearly not an issue for most politicians these days, it would appear) but when stuff like the Digital Economy Bill came up in public debate that affects me as both as a consumer because I’m conscious of getting ripped off/ripping anyone else off , my ears pricked up and suddenly I wasn’t happy with burying my head in the sand and I wanted to know what the hell was going on with this bunch of politicians that had so little respect for the subject, hardly any of them showed up to vote.

Like a lot of people, I am wary of politics predominantly because of the politicians themselves. I don’t trust  pretty much any of them as far as I can throw them and their ignorance of pretty much anything to do with The Future (i.e. digitally related anything) makes me dislike them and disrespect them even more. The biggest eye opener for me on the subject didn’t come from wading through the executive summaries of the DEB or it’s predeceasing White Paper (come on, I’m not THAT hardcore),  or even from UK Music’s Liberating Creativity report (which made a much more interesting read FYI) – it was the level of ignorance of the people who were meant to be deciding on the law being put through, the MPs that were voting. Seriously, go to the Guardian Tech’s live blog of the whole debacle – it’s a shocker. I may have read a couple of reports but I don’t claim to be an expert on the digital economy, I just wanted to understand things a bit better on a broader scale.

Ultimately what this all comes down to is that music is one of the biggest passions in my life, it’s the fuel to my fire, *insert further cheesy metaphors here*, etc etc  that’s what started all this train of thought off – the piracy, the bizarre attitude that creators of content(including music) shouldn’t be paid for their work – this attitude has to change globally. If someone nicked all my blogs and published them as their own (okay, total hypothetical/fantasy scenario but work with me here), I’d be furious, just like if you were talented enough to compose and produce awesome music (which you may do, I have no idea who reads this) and some joker just pinched it without giving you any money for your work, you wouldn’t exactly be thrilled would you? Over-simplifying the subject,  but you get the point, I hope.

By coincidence/synchronicity/whatever,  just after I’d written the blog about the piracy/attempting to unravel the DEB and ranting on behalf of musicians, etc, I was lucky enough to have a campaign called Music Matters come on my radar when I won tickets to their launch party of the collaboration they’ve done with Future Shorts. They get it, check out their website http://www.whymusicmatters.org/  and keep them on your radar.

Forget Soap-Boxes, Some Of Us Just Have A Conscience…

Politics make me uncomfortable, I’ll be honest. You could respond to that quite simply that that is sort of the point. They’re meant to make us think, to question things. Like a lot of people, I can rant until the cows come home when I feel there has been an injustice but throw me into deliberately political debate and I wouldn’t feel quite so confidently vocal. I guess a lot of politicians bank on this attitude – it means so much can be pushed through while we remain oblivious until it affects us either directly or hits our sense of morality somehow.

I joked in a previous blog that soopsworld would ‘do’ Digital Music Piracy. The Digital Economy Bill is far too large a topic with so many meandering corridors of thought leading off it that I doubt I thoroughly understand the whole picture and I’m very conscious of sounding like an ignorant bystander despite the trawling through endless digital music news-feeds and websites. I can comment from a consumer point of view.

 I think my viewpoint has more to do with my age/background than where I work, realistically  My access to  the internet didn’t properly start until ’97 at uni,  Myspace was my first proper digital music experience even before Itunes and before that my music education was dominated by HMV sales. I think coupled with working in small scale music venues with music communities interweaved around them – maybe because a lot of my mates have been in bands, I don’t feel so great about file-sharing. I can make the mental link that there are people at the other end of the chain not getting paid for their work that aren’t megastars and yes, they DO need the cash actually – possibly an attitude that has become depressingly rare.

 I watched the BBC’s heavily edited take on the subject in last night’s Panorama. They gave it a good stab but it felt like a lot had been left out. What shocked me more than anything, and I probably am being  super-naive here, is how little people gave a sh*t that they were essentially doing the digital equivalent of shoplifting. One woman said of her kids enormous music consumption (nicked) – as long as it wasn’t porn, she didn’t see a problem with that.

Another thing that really stood out for me, however was the observation that the 16-24yr olds that are apparently the main offenders were the biggest consumers of music, in that on top of all the file-shared stuff – they were still BUYING music so to penalize them would be pretty dumb because then the record companies/artists will shoot themselves in the foot even more. Especially when it’s been reported that last year digital sales overtook cds. This is why it isn’t a black & white case – if you don’t listen to the radio(which quite a lot of people don’t) – without knowing about the music, how are you going to buy it? Of course streaming is the way forward but the main issue this seems to be about is changing the attitude that music, amongst everything else being shared, should be free.

You’d expect to be paid for a day’s work, why should the creators of music/content be any different?

Forget Soap-Boxes, Some Of Us Just Have A Conscience…

Politics make me uncomfortable, I’ll be honest. You could respond to that quite simply that that is sort of the point. They’re meant to make us think, to question things. Like a lot of people, I can rant until the cows come home when I feel there has been an injustice but throw me into deliberately political debate and I wouldn’t feel quite so confidently vocal. I guess a lot of politicians bank on this attitude – it means so much can be pushed through while we remain oblivious until it affects us either directly or hits our sense of morality somehow.

I joked in a previous blog that soopsworld would ‘do’ Digital Music Piracy. The Digital Economy Bill is far too large a topic with so many meandering corridors of thought leading off it that I doubt I thoroughly understand the whole picture and I’m very conscious of sounding like an ignorant bystander despite the trawling through endless digital music news-feeds and websites. I can comment from a consumer point of view.

I think my viewpoint has more to do with my age/background than where I work, realistically  My access to  the internet didn’t properly start until ’97 at uni,  Myspace was my first proper digital music experience even before Itunes and before that my music education was dominated by HMV sales. I think coupled with working in small scale music venues with music communities interweaved around them – maybe because a lot of my mates have been in bands, I don’t feel so great about file-sharing. I can make the mental link that there are people at the other end of the chain not getting paid for their work that aren’t megastars and yes, they DO need the cash actually – possibly an attitude that has become depressingly rare.

 I watched the BBC’s heavily edited take on the subject in last night’s Panorama. They gave it a good stab but it felt like a lot had been left out. What shocked me more than anything, and I probably am being  super-naive here, is how little people gave a sh*t that they were essentially doing the digital equivalent of shoplifting. One woman said of her kids enormous music consumption (nicked) – as long as it wasn’t porn, she didn’t see a problem with that.

Another thing that really stood out for me, however was the observation that the 16-24yr olds that are apparently the main offenders were the biggest consumers of music, in that on top of all the file-shared stuff – they were still BUYING music so to penalize them would be pretty dumb because then the record companies/artists will shoot themselves in the foot even more. Especially when it’s been reported that last year digital sales overtook cds. This is why it isn’t a black & white case – if you don’t listen to the radio(which quite a lot of people don’t) – without knowing about the music, how are you going to buy it? Of course streaming is the way forward but the main issue this seems to be about is changing the attitude that music, amongst everything else being shared, should be free.

You’d expect to be paid for a day’s work, why should the creators of music/content be any different?