> Message: 2 > Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2008 17:22:27 -0400 > From: "Denver Gingerich" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: [FC-discuss] A blow against synch licensing? > To: "Discussion of Free Culture in general and this organization in > particular" <[email protected]> > Message-ID: > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> I'm not sure I agree with the sense of entitlement that seems to be > present in this kind of an argument. Just because a particular song > would help make a filmmaker's point does not mean that the filmmaker > is allowed to use the song at a price the filmmaker believes to be > reasonable. Transactions should take place only when both the buyer > and the seller feel the price is reasonable. Entitlement aside, I think it would make the most sense to use market conditions to determine a price. Therefore, if demand for a particular set of music is low, the price should also be low. In this particular case, no one is publishing the music, and therefore demand must be low at this time. It's quite unreasonable to charge a disproportionate sum - much like domain name squatters sitting on a particular .com domain that they will never use, they try to charge whatever they think they can get when someone asks to use it, not what makes sense for the market. That smacks pretty clearly of extortion and racketeering to me at worst, and as unfair business practice at best, trying to gouge out a completely unreasonable profit. Letting music corporations make all the rules and set ridiculous prices means they're going to sacrifice culture for undeserved gains and hold heritage hostage. > I think it is partly because my thinking is long-term that you take > issue with my suggestion that you should find different songs. > Eventually all of the songs you need will be in the public domain. If > we can encourage artists to use libre licenses on their works while > waiting for existing "all rights reserved" works to become public > domain, then we will eventually have a society where mixing content > and culture is the norm and isn't impeded by these silly problems > you're running into. Since you're not really aware of the history of Nina's artistic work and personal history, and you haven't seen the movie, you don't understand the significance of using Annette Hanshaw's music. The music resonates with the story of the Ramayana and with Nina's biography - additionally, the characters sing the lyrics in the film, so it makes zero sense to start over from scratch as it basically means creating an entirely different film. Simply put, the suggestion of using another body of music is akin to telling Coppola that "Flight of the Valkyries" should not have been used in the air cavalry scene in Apocalypse Now; it's the right artistic choice to use the music that fits, and the movie/scene would not have been remotely the same if any other music were used. Mike _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
