The online service Jamendo announced today that one million albums have been distributed through their service, free and licensed under the Creative Commons, by individuals globally. One million albums in the US is certified platinum, and that Jamendo has had this success is significant, especially given that these are albums created by artists whom are "giving them away", or in other words, freely sharing their creations. The gut reaction in Western culture is to chuckle and quip "that's because nobody wants to buy it". Anybody who was ever involved, or even consistently exposed to, a scene of local musicians (whom make little money) knows the fallacy of the consumption = value equation. Perhaps more tellingly, many people who've consistently been exposed the the music of the Top 40 stations feel the same way.Anyhow, on Jamendo, I click on the "rock" genre from here in Conway, Arkansas and have over seven hundred albums presented to be from artists in France, Brazil, Germany, Hungrary, Israel, California, Argentina and nearly anywhere else available in a couple clicks.
Jamendo describes itself as follows:
jamendo is a new model for artists to promote, publish, and be paid for their music.
On jamendo, the artists distribute their music under Creative Commons licenses. In a nutshell, they allow you to download, remix and share their music freely. It's a "Some rights reserved" agreement, perfectly suited for the new century.
These new rules allow jamendo to use the powerful new means of digital distribution like Peer-to-Peer networks such as BitTorrent or eMule to legally distribute albums at near-zero cost.
jamendo users can discover and share albums, but also review them or start a discussion on the forums. Albums are democratically rated based on the visitors’ reviews. If they fancy an artist they can support him by making a donation.
jamendo is the only platform that joins together :
- A legal framework protecting the artists (thanks to the Creative Commons licenses).
- Free, simple and quick access to the music, for everyone.
- The use of the lastest Peer-to-Peer technologies
- The possibility of making direct donations to the artists.
I don't want my entries here to center around musical culture, and the copyright issues therein, but 1.) music has been the earliest battleground over digital copyright (napster, kazza) and 2.) music is one of the oldest and most accessible elements of culture. Jamendo is specifically interesting in its use of Bit Torrent, a new distribution technology that has several particularly significant attributes.
In keeping with the still emerging democratic nature of the net, torrents take a unique and distributive, if not democratic, approach to content distribution. Unlike early P2P (peer-to-peer) protocols, torrent downloads refer to and draw the bandwidth of no central host. Instead, the distribution responsibilities and bandwidth are shared by all the users actively of the shared torrent. Users who are 'leech', or download from the pool, while other users who are finished downloading 'seed', or distribute the file through there own bandwidth allocations/limitations. Bandwidth, in it's digital use, is the increasingly commodified range through which information can travel over networks. And it costs money. If jamendo had to provide the bandwidth for those million album downloads at 60mbs a pop, it simply could not afford to under it's current business model, focused as it is on cultural free exchange (and limited advertisement revenue). Torrents cut out the intermediaries of distribution, whether analog record labels or digital backbone hosting, and allow for a more free exchange of culture.
Because of this, they also pose a new challenge to the traditional authorities of cultural production. The technology has, naturally, become a popular medium of choose in undermining control of copyrighted material. And it community hubs a new target of legal action. It can't be shut down in the same way napster and kazza, however, due to it's decentralized nature. The lawsuits continue, however.
How torrents fit into the tradition of copyright policy formulation, and how it may be exceptional.
In so many ways, copyrights holder struggle to retain control here mirrors previous battles. New technologies of distributing content never quiet fit into existing copyright laws, as Litman discusses. For one, the policy writers are generally not in a position to foresee future technologies. But if broad limits on control were established, the law would have far less trouble adapting. However, the process by which bills are written and policy created establishes a web of convoluted and narrow exceptions forged by and for existing copyright interests with little room for future developments. For this reason, battles over copyright interpretations and implementations have raged nearly continuously throughout the 20th century. At the turn of the century, piano rolls challenged composers control over performance, leading to a 1905-06 legislative conflict; later motion pictures and "talk boxes" (1912), and radio (1920's). This trend continues through to the debate over VCRS in the early 80's, home recording equipment in the early 90's, and internet distribution recently. In each of the cases, interested bodies (consumers not included) have been brought together to haggle over legislation, writing it by committee, each using its influence to carve a narrow exception in law for its own business model of copyright use and excluding all parties not at the table, the general public included.
What is unique about bit torrent, and the 'net trend it represents, is that there is no central entity profiting in the same way from it's use. For this reason, their is no interested party in the traditional, D.C.-lobby sense to sit at a table with the MPAA and RIAA and spar over positions and come to an argreement. Piano roll vendors, motion picture firms, radio broadcaster associations, et al were all making significant and specific profits from their sales of copyrighted material and related paraphernalia, and so could fund lobbiest and influence policy makers. Torrents and their like create more free information, rather than new ways to profit from it, and so have so such centralized and empowered interests. This makes it difficult for a internet distribution advocate to emerge in the policy realm outside of the historically underpowered consumer coalition.
Likewise, however, it also makes it difficult for conservative copyright forces to shut down the practice.The folks that profit over bandwidth use have clearly sided with the conservative interests, as they seek to share in profits from sale of copyrighted material via creating a tiered network. This leaves unorganized but ubiquitous internet uses who don't have a Sony to fight for their right to record TV for home use, as had happened in the early 80's. Google and other content aggregators are showing interest, but don't have the same sort of interests; copyright issues are not central to their business model (their actions surrounding their YouTube property will be the true indicator). By my account, the two fold uniqueness of the net-as-distributive system for its 1.) lack of a central vested interest(s) to influence policy and 2.) lack of a central interest(s) to prosecute (ISPs have carved an exception) makes for a unique historical point in the history of copyright.
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