The copyright dilemma

Monday, 1 September 2008

I am working on several projects (not only music), and in all these projects the main difficulty is always the copyright. As a matter of fact, this whole copyright-issue is one of the projects. I have been thinking and writing a lot about the many aspects of copyright and of possible ways to solve the current problems. It seems clear to me that the current situation is so far from perfect that it is needed to come up with better ideas.
On some of my projects I work with other people and recently this blog became part of the discussion. I was told that what I do here endangers the project, because it is illegal. I don’t think that I am doing anything wrong, but that is not the issue. What matters is what other people think, in this case the people who have more legal power. My first reaction is always ”F**k you!”, but after some deeper thinking I realised that this is not a solution. Nor have I any desire to have sex with men my age or older. But most of all, I don’t want to cause problems.
So, in the past few days I have been taking away the music of this site that has copyright. It is not much, and most of the removed songs are now replaced by videos. But nevertheless, it ridiculous for a blog that is about music, but for this moment I couldn’t think of a better solution. The weird thing is that I truly believe that I support artists.
Most of the music in this Soundtrack is copyright free: either it is older than 50 years, or it is made by friends, or it is no music but other forms of audio, or it is so rare and obscure that I cannot imagine that I am offending other people’s opinions about copyright.
I have not written much about my struggles with copyright in this blog. The main reason is that there are already so many other people writing about it. And because I think, talk and write about it so much already, I preferred to write about other things. I will continue to do that, but from now on I will also share with you some of my thoughts on and experiences with the copyright dilemma.
It may sound as the beginning of the end of this blog, but I can assure that this is not the case. As a matter of fact, I knew from the beginning that something was coming. I don’t see much problems for the future of this blog. Just wait and see. And I would love to hear and read information concerning what I call ”the copyright dilemma”. I think I will publish all my material on an other place than this blog, but that depends on how much it will be. For now I first have to revisit the blog.
Here is a band that tackles the copyright dilemma in ways that in my opinion do not contribute much to a solution. But their standpoint is to be taken serious. And when it comes to ”nerd-rap” the Futuristic Sex Robots are top of the bill. Check out their other songs too! They are all over the Internet.

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