Ali, I'm writing my master's thesis on the viral movement that arose against SOPA, and this is exactly what I'm looking for:
"I've seen similar claims made related to the misconception of the public momentum against SOPA being primarily orchestrated and financed by Google, but I'm not sure if that's related." If you could hook me up with places you've seen that, I'd be really grateful! In a kind of way, a "free culture" movement did arise as part of this viral movement against SOPA -- yet it lacked the level of definition that our "Free Culture" movement has. For some, it was all out anti-IP (free=gratis). For others, it was about preserving participatory culture & protecting noncommercial re-use & transformation of media -- essentially people wanting to use others' photos on their tumblr accounts, etc. (free=libre). Which mirrors our own cause. Yet a lot of claims were bought into about the "shutting down" of social networks, and the movement really exaggerated the idea of internet censorship... to cause more emotional than rational opposition, and thus a lack of clarity on what people really were standing for. In terms of this article, however, it seems that the authors have coined their own "free culture" movement as they understand it, based on an anti-property paradigm (I had friends posting on facebook about whether we should abandon IP during SOPA), and ignorant of what exists in terms of our "Free Culture". I suppose this is a case of "they know nothing of my work". I wonder if this was borrowed from the SOPA movement. Which makes me curious, what presence and outreach did we, Free Culture, have during SOPA in reaching out to the viral movement? Do we have a twitter? Were we "preaching" our conception of "libre" freedom? Or were we "clumped" with everyone else, leading to these possible mis-characterizations? Also, Fred Benenson, if you're reading this, your visualization of SOPA on twitter is completely awesome! I'd love to chat about it, and possibly use the data in my research, with permission. (http://fredbenenson.com/blog/2012/01/18/twitter-conversations-about-sopa/) Thoughts welcome, Jared [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> On Jun 19, 2012, at 8:51 AM, Ali Sternburg wrote: Thanks! Good stuff. More on the Cary Sherman talk here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57450807-93/riaa-ceo-cary-sherman-walks-into-tech-lions-den/ More music industry data here (this was prepared for Wednesday's hearing on the potential UMG-EMI merger): http://www.consumerfed.org/pdfs/Studies.CaseAganstUMG-EMIMerger.pdf On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 11:37 AM, Jennifer Baek <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Forgive me if this is a little ranty. I'm at work, but wanted to respond. Statistics will be different depending on where its coming from. At Personal Democracy Forum, Clay Sherman from the RIAA spouted statistics, which may hold truth in some contexts. Sherman said there are 41 percent fewer people describing themselves as musicians now then in 1999. John Perry Barlow. who spoke after Sherman. said that he believes more people than ever are earning a living from music because they don't have to deal with music labels. Who's right?? I like to think that one's assessment of the harm to the music "industry" depends on how you look at or want to define the industry: Is the industry defined by record sales? Is the industry defined by record labels? Or is it defined by how many musicians are out there making a living? How many people are listening, attending, concerts, and/or buying merch? What is the definition of harm and who is being harmed? I think it needs to be clarified who's stakes we are really talking about before we can work towards any sort of solution. Here's the link to his talk: http://personaldemocracy.com/media/music-industry-digital-age The argument made in this "Letter to Emily" seems quite dated. Even the RIAA-guy recognizes that the music industry and the means of making revenue are changing. The "music industry" is catching on that they should work to meet consumer behavior and expectations, and part of this entails working with technology companies and innovators to come up with new business models to save the industry. Sherman cited things like Spotify, which more and more of my facebook friends are catching on to, Rhapsody, etc. Hey, these things work and people use it! Maybe it's not bringing the industry to its former "glory." Yes, the BIG THREE are no longer the gatekeepers exploiting, aggrandizing, and profitting off of artists. (How much do musicians make from record sales anyways? Such a small %. I mean... there is something called a 360 deal). Look, I don't really see that as such a bad thing. I agree with Ali, SFC should release a statement-- or at the very least tackle whatever misconception there is about free culture. We can collectively work on one in an Etherpad! Thx for reading, Jennifer On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 11:13 AM, Ali Sternburg <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: (Disclaimer: I've only skimmed, and I don't know anything about the author or the site.) I'm not even sure who and what he's referring to every time he says Free Culture (which he capitalizes) movement. People who don't pay for music but just because they're lazy and cheap and not because of principles? I think a response by the SFC Board or Core could be warranted. This article is getting a lot of comments and shares. (Example: I'm Facebook friends with Rivers Cuomo from Weezer for some reason (I think because we went to the same college and I saw a lot of friends were, I don't remember) and he shared it.) Alex, I've seen similar claims made related to the misconception of the public momentum against SOPA being primarily orchestrated and financed by Google, but I'm not sure if that's related. Alec, in response to those numbers, some excerpts from: http://www.techdirt.com/skyisrising/ (the annotated Google Doc<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Qtoe_7a7qMIfmR7L8DueyLqtXxZwMYiRQycoHRyhVkM/edit?pli=1> version) On the consumption side, music is also being consumed at near record-setting levels. According to Nielsen SoundScan<http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110106006565/en/Nielsen-Company-Billboard%E2%80%99s-2010-Music-Industry-Report> figures, the overall sale of music (including albums, singles, digital tracks, etc.) exceeded 1.5 billion transactions in 2010. That's up from 845 million transactions in 2000. These overall sales figures seem to rise and fall a bit over the years, but they don't necessarily drop<http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/mar/12/demise-music-industry-facts> during economic recessions. ... In 2005<http://www.ifpi.org/content/library/the-broader-music-industry.pdf>, the IFPI estimated the global music industry to be worth $132 billion -- which included revenues from music in radio advertising, recorded music sales, musical instrument sales, live performance revenues and portable digital music player sales (among a few other income categories). By 2010, the IFPI estimated the market to be worth $168 billion, but it had also changed how it categorized some of the revenues and added categories such as audio home systems, music-related video game sales and music revenues from TV advertising (in addition to a few other categories). ... But, despite the increasing production and consumption of music, the music industry doesn't seem rosy to everyone. The revenues from recorded music, such as CD sales, have been falling steadily<http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/news/e3i868d104ace88f495a07f9534916589ed> over the last several years. This shouldn't come as a huge surprise, either. Historically, music has been sold on various kinds of physical media: vinyl records, 8-track tapes, cassette tapes, CDs and other less well-known formats. Each of these formats has seen its peak, and each of them may someday cease to be sold entirely -- though that time has not come yet even for vinyl (as there are signs<http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/06/digital-music-leads-boost-in-record-sales/> that vinyl records still have plenty of useful life left and their sales were up ~41% for 2011). Still, as the CD format wanes, the revenues from selling CD albums are diminishing, too. The problem, it seems, is that consumers are buying more single tracks<http://musicbusinessresearch.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/the-recession-in-the-music-industry-a-cause-analysis/> now instead of entire albums and that consumers have an expectation that digital music tracks should be cheaper than purchasing plastic discs. The result is that the number of single digital tracks purchased is rising (initially with double-digit growth<http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/01/16/us-global-idUSTRE50F6NE20090116?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews&rpc=69>), but the revenue from selling single tracks isn't matching<http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1047366&c=1> that of the peak years of selling CD albums. This trend was apparent in 2007<http://www.economist.com/node/10498664?story_id=E1_TDQJRGGQ>, as the volume of physical recorded music was dropping (also by double digit percentages). The problem here is that the major labels have been relying on CD sales as their main income stream and are only just starting to diversify their revenue and business models. Interestingly, a former executive at Universal Music, Tim Renner, has said that the major labels had a chance to diversify their income streams when "they had the money and could have built the competence by buying concert agencies and merchandising companies." However, this hindsight isn't necessarily the way forward for the major music labels now. On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 9:44 AM, Alec Story <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: The letter quotes some numbers: Recorded music revenue is down 64% since 1999. Per capita spending on music is 47% lower than it was in 1973!! The number of professional musicians has fallen 25% since 2000. Of the 75,000 albums released in 2010 only 2,000 sold more than 5,000 copies. Only 1,000 sold more than 10,000 copies. Without going into details, 10,000 albums is about the point where independent artists begin to go into the black on professional album production, marketing and promotion. This is the first time I've heard that - everything else I've seen has suggested that big media companies have been growing just fine in the past decade. Can anyone who knows better comment? I'm sure that some of the revenue decrease is just due to the un-bundling of the album. On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 10:04 PM, Alex Leavitt <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Don't have much time to respond with anything lengthy at the moment; mainly wanted to share, since it garnered so many (supportive) comments. I think my main criticism is the characterization of the "free culture movement" as led by corporate stakeholders (eg., Megaupload, Google, etc.). I really felt like that came out of left field, but I've also never seen that critique before, so I'm wondering if anyone had additional thoughts. On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 6:54 PM, Rich Jones <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Interesting, Alex - would you like to share your opinions and start a discussion? This is the author, for those interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lowery R On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 6:33 PM, Alex Leavitt <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/letter-to-emily-white-at-npr-all-songs-considered/ Alex --- Alexander Leavitt PhD Student USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism http://alexleavitt.com<http://alexleavitt.com/> Twitter: @alexleavitt _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://lists.freeculture.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss FAQ: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Fc-discuss _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://lists.freeculture.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss FAQ: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Fc-discuss _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://lists.freeculture.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss FAQ: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Fc-discuss -- Alec Story Cornell University Biological Sciences, Computer Science 2012 _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://lists.freeculture.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss FAQ: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Fc-discuss -- Ali Sternburg, J.D. 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