Record retailers attempt to nullify copyright law
‘The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behavior like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores. And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday,’ said Entertainment Retailers Association spokesman Paul Quirk.
Prince is giving away his ten-track album in an upcoming issue of the UK’s Sunday Mail, but record retailers all over the world are upset about the deal, exercising their opinion that the record retailers should, of course, hold a monopoly over music distribution and, according to the quote above, bully artists in mobster fashion as to where they must sell their records.
In other words, using their economic clout, retailers are blackmailing artists and essentially nullifying copyright law in general. An artist has copyrights in order to grant themselves full control over what they have put their time, money and effort into creating, and thus it’s their choice where and how the music is distributed. Because retailers only care about the bottom-line, unwilling to respect the fact that the music belongs to the creators and not the retailers, they are all too willing to corrode the strength of law that exists for good reasons.
The best thing that songwriters and musicians can do is give their music away, the exact opposite of what retailers want. Big-time musicians and garage bands, it doesn’t matter–in the end, they won’t exist and we can make a living.
From Boing Boing, quote from The Guardian.
Leave a Reply