Joel Tenenbaum recently went head to head with four recording companies in the American courts, the result of which was an order to pay a sum of $675,000. Joel Tenenbaum will try to appeal the verdict, but if it’s upheld he intends to file for bankruptcy .
In my opinion, while the jury’s decision to award $22,500 for each infringement is significantly lower than the sum the labels requested ($4.5 million dollars), the judgement still seems overly severe.
Obviously, the world has changed since the time the music industry lay it’s roots. Previously there was a very real need for a companies which could promote, produce the tracks (onto real world media) and distribute the music to the fans – but now the role of recording companies seems very different. It seems to me that their primary purpose is to act as the guardians of intellectual property – and this is where I think the injustice resides.
The skill and effort required to write music is often awe inspiring, and there can’t be many art-forms which bring as much joy to as many people – but why is this effort seen as something which should be rewarded perpetually? Why is the finite amount of effort required to make music treated as a gold-mine or a cash-cow? Previously there were many costs associated with making and distributing a record, cassette tape or CD – but now, in the digital age, these costs are far closer to nil.
Concepts based around profiting from intellectual property are essentially flawed, because they refuse to acknowledge principles of scarcity – principles, upon which, our economies have previously been based. (We should all be able to appreciate what happens when these principles are ignored, thanks to the financial clusterfck we’re currently recovering from.)
To be able to price something, traditionally we ask how much of a resource is available. In the case of information (which by it’s very nature is a resource which can be copied infinitely) record companies are forced to either employ DRM (which is fundamentally flawed), or more recently (due to the failure of DRM solutions) to bully society into changing it’s behaviour, to protect this infinitely available resource.
Which brings us to the case of this guy being sued. I think the huge amounts of money involved are simply a sign of the fear and determination of these music corp. behemoths – they have to win at any cost, because if they loose one case – their game is up.
Some commentators have stated that Joel Tenenbaum deserves the penalty because he committed the crime – to these people I’d ask how much of a crime has been committed. If a person truly believes that a wrong has been done, I’d imagine they’re either being disingenuous because they stand to profit from the slow drip of money being syphoned through the music industry or are just plain stupid.
In all honesty I think that once an artist has been recompensed handsomely for their efforts, the cash should stop – I think that should be it. There are many more ways to make a living from music than trying to sell music as IP. The age of the music industry is over – and they should embrace change fully. While (in my opinion) profiting from IP can’t be sustained, creating an industry based upon selling services is realistic – they just need to adjust their models.
I can’t see how any other situation is fair – and it makes me angry that our societies’ notions of what’s acceptable are being dictated by the greed of huge corporations and their vast legions of lawyers.