Since:
- The issue is not going away any time soon.
- Problems financing online biblical content are similar.
- Although illegal copying of music is widespread it is publicly discussed seldom in Christian circles.
As background, here is how I understand our situation:
- Christian ministry needs to be paid for
- although amateur efforts are great professionals are needed too
- few churches can really employ musical originators
- Copying of recorded music is:
- endemic - can YOU be certain you have no "pirated" material on your MP3 player. or family computer
- technically easy - despite record companies flirting with dubious protection technologies (think Sony and "rootkits") in fact all they do is restrain the less determined or technically literate users from "pirating"
- culturally almost accepted1 (see 1 above, opinions are still quite split, but informal evidence suggests an inverse correlation of age and knowledge of, and respect for, copyright laws)
- No one has yet found a way to turn downloads into cash (dreams of advertising revenues may change this, but have yet to be proven viable for material other than blogs and other text-based sites dedicated to such a business model)
- The morality (and cultural desirability) of the notion of intellectual "property" is debatable2 .
I wish I knew! That is my point. I do not see a future where renewed private morality ensures that we all dutifully avoid "consuming" pirate music, videos etc.. DRM schemes will fail (they represent at best an ineffective sea wall against a storm tide). Advertising may succeed though as I wrote below:It is expensive to produce music and tour. How do you propose Christian musicians do this in a world that is used to paying for the products it consumes?
I think Keith's claim that we live in a "world that is used to paying for the products it consumes" is not true any longer for "intellectual products", at least when they are distributable online. And in such a world I begin to wonder if a return to some form of patronage (see "Subscription, advertising and appeals online") is the only answer. To some extent this is already our situation, churches support preachers and increasingly musicians, educational institutions support certain forms of publication (at least through research time, but increasingly through direct payment towards publication), companies sponsor sports teams and symphony orchestras...
...welcome to the new renaissance!
NB. Claude has posted again in "Christians and the Copyright Laws" on the specific issues of Christian music, I have not commented on that post here as this post is already too broad and I wanted to ficus on the financing of publishing (of music, and other intellectual "products") today.
Peter Kirk also has an interesting and careful discussion "Is breach of copyright theft?" which is well worth adding to your reading on this topic! In a comment on his own post Peter refers to "Copyrights and Copying: Why the Laws Should Be Changed" by Vern Poythress concluding:
I am still in the middle of the first semester marking crisis, and so reading Poythress and further comment will have to wait!
what might happen if the restrictions on copying were loosened.
Not quite, he can look at what happens in the many countries in the world (mostly towards the East) where such restrictions, even if existing in theory, are in practice not enforced and ignored by almost everyone. I used to live in such a country. But his speculations seem reasonably accurate about what things were like there: life went on, but intellectual work tended to depend on sponsorship.
1. How culturally acceptable it is may be debated, "pirating" intellectual property is evidently illegal in most countries, but the ubquity and scale of copying (here I offer the increase in plagiarism in student essays as hard evidence) suggests that culture and law are at odds here. [return]
2. The notion of "intellectual property is modern, it was introduced to protect "authors" from publishers. It is now used mainly to protect publishers from the public. It is culturally vital that ideas (including artistic "ideas") get remixed. The concept of property relates to physical objects, "intellectual property is immaterial. Yet "authors" need to derive a living from their work, unless all creativity is to be a spare time activity. [return]
Labels: copyright
¶ 3:24 PM
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It's interesting to watch the fringes of the music industry. More than a few 'indie' type artists are making a living by giving away their music, and selling 'value-added' bits like live shows, or early previews of their music. Of course, this depends on being the sort of musician that people will pay to see in person, but the idea's there.
Others are selling things by escrow -- they'll take, say, $5 donations, and if they get to a predefined amount they'll go ahead and finish producing whatever the work is, with copies to those who 'donated'. If they don't raise enough money, the cash gets returned to the donors, and the work goes back on the shelf.
Also, in certain sectors piracy is largely tolerated -- Adobe seems to not mind too much about students pirating Photoshop (businesses is another matter altogether), because those students are then getting creative jobs, where their employers will buy photoshop for them, partly because it's the standard, but partly because they already know it.
But yes, interesting questions.
By 
Matt W, at
June 26, 2007 5:03 PM
few churches can really employ musical originators
Maybe few churches do employ them. But plenty of churches seem to employ pastors who find time to write books, and mostly don't depend on income from them (Rick Warren may be an exception). Also quite a lot of churches employ worship leaders. If a reasonable number of churches would employ worship leaders who also write original songs, and encourage them to do so, then these songs could be made available freely. Why don't churches do this? Perhaps because they pay the worship leader so little that he or she has to rely on sales of music. But if churches really believed in their worship leaders, they would pay them enough that the songs could be distributed free. In the long run it would be to their advantage, because having a well known worship leader attracts a larger congregation and so more tithe money; also the church (rather than the worship leader) can profit by staging concerts.
By Peter Kirk, at
June 26, 2007 10:00 PM
In the Netherlands we have the same problem. Some time ago I wrote an article about this problem and supposed to introduce "open source" music, free to use for no commercial events.
By J. P. van de Giessen, at
June 27, 2007 5:48 AM
Tim,
The problem will not go away because many people don't see anything wrong with taking what belongs to another person. You are busy with markings (grading for Americans). I finished my grading but now I am very busy with editing the Self-Study report.
I a few days, when I finish editing the Self-Study Report, I will respond to Peter’s post and comment on the article by Vern Poythress. I believe this article deserves a response. If you read it, tell me what you think of the article.
Claude Mariottini
