h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Lawiers? my legal team? I don't believe in copyright, art, even bad art should be owned by everyone
...
and I feel the same with many of my projects. at the last ocunt I've something like over 400 unfinished songs I've started composing, started recording, nearly* finished recording.... and a couple or a handful of 'kind of finished' ones, that I've sort of finished but just ain't quite* happy enough with the overall finished product to say finished for certain

How many of those are about Bolivian chipmunks or handcuffed ponies?

I'll go look.

1. Robot pony handcuff Blues.
2. Bolivian Robot Chipmunk rap.
3. radiant pony tailback princess 1
4. radiant pony tailback princess 2

So, only approximately 1% I can't remember what the radiant pony tailback princess 2 was at all

2legs titles are the very very best....dunno about his music though

WOT?????????


'g'

Doing the titles is as much fun as the err... well some of it I can just about get away with calling "music"
Recently I've been working on "unholy Union", "This way up", "stitching up the bad work", "space pirates", "Rastabubble Dub", "I have this problem with my Trousers" "Deep Cut final Insision" and "Collared Master"
But most of the newer ones at any point in time are called boring things like "drum thing 23 May 2009"

I can't do this on my PC, but how about 'Satan Sings', each letter alternately the right way up, then upside down????

(Royalties 0.5% please)!


'g'

> I don't believe in copyright, art, even bad art should be owned by everyone

Eventually it is, this is one of the fundamental points of IP laws (and one that, as I've argued, the entertainment industry increasingly ignores about which something needs to be done). The thing is, people need an incentive to produce art and the IP laws provide that. Without them, people will still produce art but they'll produce far less because there's far far less incentive. Ultimately, it's a way of the government guaranteeing far more art enters the public domain.

What's really screwed up the perception of these perfectly good laws is the middlemen in the entertainment industry. The people who deserve to be paid for art is the artists but most of the money ends up in the pockets of these middlemen who justify themselves because their considerable financial reserves can be used to promote artists and, ultimately, most artists make their money from a small and (importantly) specific portion of what these behemoths make.

It's for this reason I don't buy the "they say piracy is bad but Sony are still rich" argument that's become popular with pirates and their apologists - it's not about the industry, it's about the individual artists. Sony can shoulder, say, 10% of their profit being lost to piracy (and that's a conservative estimate - no one actually knows how much is actually lost to piracy) but a minor recording artist, writer or filmmaker who needs to pay the bills doesn't have that luxury so much, especially as they only get paid according to how much of their stuff sells.

(lurk)

>> a minor recording artist, writer or filmmaker who needs to pay the bills doesn't have that luxury so much, especially as they only get paid according to how much of their stuff sells.<<

And yet, if they were paid a higher percentage of the income they generate...

"And yet, if they were paid a higher percentage of the income they generate..."

Well, yeah, exactly. But it's very hard for artists to be promoted and get their stuff in the shops without the middlemen so they pretty-much need them. There are literally thousands upon thousands of artists with stuff to sell so the best way to make yourself stand-out from the crowd is to get promoted which takes money, lots of it.

The internet was supposed to be changing all that but really it's just demonstrated how much 'noise' there is out there. A few people have become famous online but the way this happens seems to be largely random and the result of doing something that accidentally becomes a 'meme' or 'viral'. Deliberate attempts to replicate these successes usually fail.

So that makes it ok for the artists to be exploited?

"So that makes it ok for the artists to be exploited?"

You make it sound like lines of poor, unhappy artists, cursing the system as they go, being forced to their desks by evil top-hatted capitalists. They choose to be 'exploited', they *want* to sign-up with big publishers. I'm trying to become a writer at the moment and looking forward to being 'exploited' in this way.

As I said, it'd be better if the artists could make more money and the middlemen less but the artists need the middlemen and no workable alternative has been found. If it could, artists would desert the publishers overnight.

If they want to take the alternative route of single-person publishing they can, but in the vast majority of cases there's more money in it for them if they sign-up with a publisher/agent/whatever.

No, you misunderstand me. I don't say remove the middlemen, I say stop giving them so huge a cut They're just in a position of power because they can dictate rates, and are making good use of that.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/10/copyright-law-digital-economy-bill

FB

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/10925414

Now stories like do a lot to undermine the Creative Industry if oyu ask me. It is ridiculous, and people who wish to defend piracy will use heavty handed bully boy tactics like this to make the record industry seem ridiculous.

EMI should know better.

FB

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTkyMDU4NjA4.html

If people are interested. I found it pretty funny. I always thought parody was protected in these sort of tihngs...

FB

I'm not so sure to what extent it is. I used to have a collection of the songs Spitting Image used to have in the shows. One noticeable thing about it was how, when they did a rip-off of a well-known song, they made it close enough to make it recognisable, but yet made the tune quite a bit different, too. Presumably this was down to copyright reasons.

Oh, and of the origional question; Effers if you want any origional musical recordings (instrumental), to use without any copyright limitations or any such nonsese you can nic anything I've recorded of my own which is 'out there' as it were... or if you want something of a particular style of music, (so long as It won't involve vocals), I'll record it for you...

FB, the record industry are ridiculous unfortunately.