[Sussex] [offtopic] Only Music business would try to get away with this

[Geoff Teale]

On Sun, 2006-04-30 at 08:26 +0100, Desmond Armstrong wrote:
> Rather than all this suing, of which, the only  benefit is in creating 
> rich lawyers, why not take example from the 'Arctic Monkies'.
> Make some downloads free using, open source methods of course.
> Then sell some CDs.
> All in all a very successfull model.

I believe more and more bands will follow this model (there are plenty
already - Artic Monkies didn't do anything new, they just got succesful
enough to make the news).

The sad truth is that bands that are already signed to labels are not
usually in a position to walk away and do what they like with their
music.  Record companies are exceptionally good at constructing
contracts that ensure that anything that is worth anything belongs to
the record company, and anything that costs money comes out of the
artists share.  Young artists are often so desperate to get signed that
they accept all manner of nasty conditions.

In that position all you can do is turn to the courts to break you out
of unfair contract conditions.  If you look back through the last few
decades you'll see artists like Michelle Shocked, George Michael and
Prince all suing their record companies to try and regain control of
their music.

As for rich lawyers... well they ain't saints, but I do slightly object
to the way people automatically paint a negative picture of them (hey,
that's my wife you're talking about! :-) ) .  As with doctors lawyers
have to go through a lot of training and stay on top of a lot of complex
information to do what they do and their pay refelects the value of that
service to the people using it.  

The benefit to society of having a legal system may not be as obvious as
the benefit of medical care, but it's just as real - courts decide
issues to try and avoid us all hacking each other to bits because we
don't like the hieght of our neighbours hedge row.  Law is the
underpinning of a civilised society - do it well and you get a good
society, do it badly and you get America,... whoops...


-- 
Geoff Teale <gteale at cmedresearch.com>
Cmed Technology Ltd.