what ethical issues come related to copyright in musical composition and musical creations
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For example, how do you define fair use, or question the relentless pursuit of music pirates, or uphold moral rights for musicians, or keep copyright laws from stifling free culture in the name of free markets.
Many people outside the music industry have said that the laws are antiquated and should be adjusted to account for new technologies. The traditional institutions of the music industry are defensive, since new technologies have meant an enormous drop in revenues, (only some of which comes from music piracy). Musicians have been torn between various factions; older and better established musicians tend to side with the industry, while younger and less established musicians see opportunity in the new technologies.
HISTORY OF MUSIC COPYRIGHT CONTROVERSY
Stephen Foster
Music copyrights go back to 1575 in Britain, and performance rights go back to the 1700s in France. In the United States, books and maps were first copyrighted under the first federal constitution of 1787, but copyright laws had to be amended in 1831 to include sheet music, which became possible to mass produce with lithography.
Even so, infringement complaints were rarely heeded, and early 19th century songwriters like Stephen Foster (Camptown Races, Beautiful Dreamer, Old Kentucky Home) found it difficult to make a living. Royalty rates were nominal and there was no copyright enforcement, according to Andy Lykens’ Brief History of Copyright.
As New York’s “Tin Pan Alley” became the center of the music industry in the late 19th and early 20th century, concern about copyright and profits emerged as big business.
When Charles K. Harris’ 1891 song “After The Ball” sold over five million copies of sheet music, without copyright protection, the music industry demanded reform of copyright laws. One proposal was the 1895 Treloar Copyright Bill, which would have changed the term of copyright for published music from 24 to 40 years, renewable for an additional 20 instead of 14 years. The failure of the bill was largely due to a proposed mandate for US printing of foreign songs with US copyrights. In other words, if a French song publisher wanted a US copyright, the sheet music had to be printed in the US.
A second attempt at copyright reform DID pass, on January 6, 1897. The new law assessed damages in case of unauthorized public performance of a copyrighted dramatic or musical composition, and imprisonment if the unlawful performance “be willful and for profit.”
But what is a performance? The definition was relatively straightforward in 1897, when all music performances took place in theaters and owners of songs would take a percentage of the box office receipts. But ten years later, as Tin Pan Alley was entering its heyday, it became harder to define a performance. New technologies like the automatic“player” piano and phonographic recording were making music performances possible outside the theater. And commercial radio broadcasting, another performance venue, was on the horizon.
In 1908, the courts did not want to include these new venues under copyright protection. Player pianos did not infringe on music copyrights because they were simply mechanical reproductions, and not actual performances, according to the US Supreme Court in White-Smith Music Publishing Co. v Apollo, 1908.
But songwriters and piano companies rebelled, and Congress supported musicians the next year with the 1909 Copyright Act that included all player piano music under a compulsory license. The idea of a compulsory license was that a single company couldn’t get a monopoly over one recording; other musicians or companies could also play a song legally.
Performing Rights Organizations
The music industry’s reaction to compulsory licensing was to form a new kind of organization that sold blanket rights to performers. In 1914, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) was formed to manage licenses and to lobby for better protection.
When radio came along in the 1920s and 30s, ASCAP was able to take advantage of its monopoly over compulsory licensing, raising rates by 448 in the 1930s. Then, in 1940, ASCAP announced it would double its rates again, going from 5 percent of overall radio income to 10 percent. Apparently ASCAP was fairly confident, and they had most of the great songwriters of the day from Tin Pan Alley, like Irving Berlin, Otto Harbach, James Weldon Johnson, Jerome Kern and John Philip Sousa.
If there is one ironclad law of mass media, it is that monopolies will be challenged. The two big radio networks, NBC and CBS, formed their own licensing corporation called BMI and boycotted ASCAP. The boycott lasted from January to late October, 1941. ASCAP thought it would win, because its music included 1,250,000 songs. Instead, BMI signed up a new generation of musicians, including blues, jazz, country, folk and (soon) rock and roll.