In Digital Music Wars, Burkart and McCourt outline the history of a problem within a specific period of time to show Internet culture’s influence on the music industry. What I feel was not investigated thoroughly in their book, and barely at all in the reading from Vaidhyanathan is the issue of temporary access, raised by David in the blog, which also arises in software distribution as licensure. Likewise uninvestigated, operating behind the scenes, are points raised by Jacques Attali and Theodor Adorno. These issues lie at the root of the problem and temporary rights is not a solution to the problem, but instead creates another arena of argument.
Former Secretary of Economics of France Jacques Attali argues for a new system of classification of music in his book Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Attali posits the need for new theories and forms to “speak to new realities”(4). Adorno’s “Culture Industry Reconsidered” criticizes the large industries of culture in ways that parallel and illustrate Attali’s category, an analogue to the postmodern classification, repetition. What happens because of repetition is both beneficial and detrimental to the modern music industry.
The main mark of Attali’s repetition is mass production. Adorno concedes that music, classified as a ‘cultural form’, already had the markings of a product as soon as it earned a living for the musician. The new reality created by the culture industry is that music now has the goal of making a profit translated directly onto it (Adorno, 4). The result is a commodity, a product mass-produced and replicated to absurdity. Mass production allows for higher profits, but replicated absurdity has a lower perceived value. This is easy to sell, but the value will consistently be degraded in the eyes of the more engaged consumer.
Adorno describes culture as something that does not normally adjust itself to peacefully co-exist with the needs of humanity, but rather it would by its very nature mount a dissent against the solidified relationships of power humanity labors under (4). Art, as a political animal created by people, cannot help but be informed by relationships of power and thereby criticize and acknowledge them. Adorno illustrates the conflict with creativity created by the culture industry’s standardization and conformity. Art, via the artistic processes, is generally reflexive towards itself and has a reflexive relationship with the viewer, but this product has only the process of reproduction from the outset (Adorno 14). Mass produced art is a copy of an image that was originally captured by the artist.
As a replicated commodity, music is unfettered from reality, floating meaninglessly as a mediated golem. As musical products are pushed, they are infused with a sense of individuality. This marketed individuality and artificially front-loaded authenticity argues against the reality of the situation; these products are a duplicated sameness, not examples of new originality. By means of advertising and literal repetition, the “industry intentionally integrates its consumers from above” (Adorno, 4). Attali describes what happens when music is turned into product and ‘fetishized’; it is sold “as spectacle”, its consumption generalized, and then “stockpiled until it loses all meaning” (Attali, 5). Again, this is good for business only in the short term, because the sales pitch implies a unique meaning inherent in the product, but that meaning is undermined through both replication and sameness
Further, this ‘commodified’ art, as product, must be nearly devoid of these critiques if it is to maintain the highest profit value. Advertising’s job is made easier when the products are devoid of the aforementioned type of criticism, allowing the idea men to simply create an artificial link to the ‘new’. What once had the opportunity to engage and challenge the audience becomes merely a soundtrack for a moment or activity. It is even likely the industry had a specific moment or activity in mind when it thought to produce and promote the music itself. The mass replicated art can be seen as an antidote to criticism of power relations inherent in art produced by more labor intensive means. The marketed form lacks true art’s critique of power therefore the critics are silenced.
These golems are masked behind false description and classification of genre, leading to a set of choices that are real the same choice. By marketing revolution, the industry contains it within acceptable parameters (read non-revolution called revolution) and maintains the self-satisfying order that a profit-driven machine desires. This results in an imposed order which is beneficial for sales and therefore to the industries, and commands people “to toe the line” (Adorno 8).
Attali’s repetition may be seen as the plight of music in the postmodern era. This complete commodity is, via replication and by definition of reproducible, disconnected from the relationships and circumstances that created it; hence the golem. Adorno sees the selling of these simulacra and the necessary elimination of choice as equal to (and leading towards) fascism. Attali sees it as a locus of control, a type and mode of silencing by means of repetition.
So what does this have to do with copyright violation and ownership? These golems have limited utility as art, but as an expression of an idea, no matter how useless or trite, are copyrighted. For most people however, the limited utility of these works creates a sense of little value. While there are many arguments that there was a failure on the part of the industry to capitalize on an opportunity (Burkart and McCourt, Vaidhyanathan), even if they had, there are many people that wouldn’t accept the industry’s involvement anyways with the implied and explicit suppression of genuine critique. The golems are crap. Unintellectual property.
Compounding this problem for an industry interested in controlling profits and tastes were the payola scandals in which radio DJ’s were being paid to saturate the airwaves. This problem continuously resurfaces in one form or another. Briefly mentioned in Digital Music Wars, Billboard’s charts, routinely published in magazines like Rolling Stone and posted in stores, had accounting issues that when rectified, suddenly showed the best selling artist to be an unknown Garth Brooks who played, god forbid, something as unhip as country.
This series of failures to ‘get it’ and to control the tastes of the mass market are for many proof that the industry has only its own interest at heart. Many see the copyright issue as a legal way to control dissemination and control the greater discourse. For the rebels, the industry itself must change. The mass culture industry lacks credibility in general, and the music industry does specifically.
When some of these notions are applied to the software industry, some of the same things are visible. Microsoft has proposed (in court, I believed) that a license is non-transferrable. There is no first sale doctrine to protect someone reselling software. Microsoft maintains that a user purchases the right to use software, that this right is non-transferrable, and that it can even be temporary. There have been explorations into subscription service software that is in the cloud, which you access via the web with a password. Apple argues that to modify the operating system on an iPhone is a violation of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). What I have done on my computer, modifying software, is a violation of the agreement I made when I checked yes and installed it. It’s mine to use, not modify.
In a class blog, a fellow student mentions how he feels he only has temporary rights to a song. In many ways, the music industry agrees. I’d argue it was never what you wanted your music to be to begin with. This issue of temporary and limited ownership isn’t likely to go away. Speaking on behalf of BMG-Sony, Jennifer Pariser said “when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song” at the trial of Jamie Thomas. She has now been tapped to be senior VP of Litigation and legal affairs for the RIAA. Your rights are temporary and defined. Just last week, a writers guild spokesman argued that the text-to-speech function on Amazon’s new Kindle reader amounted to a ‘performance’, violating copyright and should be viewed as threat to the audio book industry. These kinds of logical gymnastic stunts should be viewed for what they are; power grabs on the part of a threatened, morally corrupt industry that is failing to see an opportunity instead of a threat.
