[free-sklyarov] Call to artists

Keith Handy keith at indierecords.com
Tue Jul 31 16:26:50 PDT 2001


I suggest we make a worldwide call for support from artists, musicians,
and authors in addition to programmers.

I say this because although some publishing companies might have the
decency to speak out on this manner, the DMCA works on their behalf. 
This applies as well to the major record labels, bloated software
companies, and so forth.  The internet, from its arrival into popular
culture, has primarily been a threat to MARKETING ENTITIES and other
such middle-men.  The DMCA was pushed into law, I think, by their fear
(a fear legitimately grounded in the reality) that we might not need
them anymore.

As any technology comes into existence, there is a public backlash
because of the shifts in power, and the eradicating of the needs that
employ some of us.  If the invention of a new machine eliminated the
need for certain laborers, those people lost their jobs.  Often times
there were moves to outlaw or heavily restrict the new technology for
this very reason, and innovators were sacrificed for the short-term good
of the workers.

It is my impression that this is exactly what passed the DMCA, only now
the ones fearing for their jobs happen to have an obscene amount of
prestige and buying power.  It is not a copyright law; we already *had*
copyright law, and it was more than enough to serve its original purpose
of guaranteeing authors (and other creative people) the right to profit
from the work of their own minds.  If someone blatantly ripped off your
work and passed it off as their own, you could take them to court, prove
it, and get the money that should have been yours.

But the proponents of DMCA, as far as I can tell, are not artists,
writers, musicians, or programmers.  They are, as far as I can tell,
MARKETING PEOPLE, who are quite possibly in mortal fear of their own
obsoletion.

I am almost tempted to feel sympathy for them, but after reading
numerous accounts (often from the artists themselves, look up Courtney
Love's essay for a prime example) about how they've been ripping off
their own clients for years, I don't believe that rescuing them from the
inevitable is a high moral priority at this point.  Those who have been
good and fair to their artists will probably continue to be empolyed by
those artists, even as the nature of the work changes.

Yes, I know I'm making extremely broad generalizations (I'm certainly
not speaking for Metallica here), but I think this is the general
anatomy of the issue, and I think we could get a few *huge*, well-known
names (not just computer legends, but the kind of celebrities that
non-computer people would listen to) speaking out on our behalf -- if we
bypass the middlemen -- and bring our cause out into the light.

-Keith

P.S. if you haven't seen my piggy yet:
http://www.indierecords.com/protest/pig.htm




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