Creationism and the creative commons madness - Part 2: The commercial arts
The problem with copyright licensing in the commercial arts
In the arts, new ideas are generated by artistic inspiration, which is materialised in various commercial products. As commercial products, these artistic ideas target consumers interested in purchasing specific types of art. An artistic product may consist of text, image and/or sound, presented in a rational or irrational manner, which produces an aesthetic and/or emotional effect on the audience. Such emotions and aesthetic effects are likely to inspire the production of new ideas and new art.
As manifestations of fluid human behaviour, the arts view the world through alternative frameworks of interpretation, during which every interpretation is a new creation; therefore, if new creations reflect alternative perspectives that are meant to multiply and contribute to a large aesthetic result, what is the point of restricting and controlling them? Is the application of Creative Commons restrictions a paradox to the main aim and reason of existence of the arts? Although the answer is yes, the commercial arts have adapted over the years and are now disproving the notion that the Creative Commons legislation should have more power than the actual art itself. Those who think the opposite are not regarded as artists but as sellers and merchants, the art of which is normally condemned under labels such as ‘mass culture’.
Although artistic products have been massively commercialised since the beginning of the 20th century, the situation is evolving and improving under the tremendous impact of modern technologies, particularly the internet. In support of this point, I plan to discuss three examples from the commercial arts that demonstrate that the above paradox is gradually being addressed. Those three examples, demonstrating shifting attitudes towards Creative Commons restrictions, come from music, cinema, and literature.
Music
Music is one of the most popular and widely consumed products of artistic creation. As with other forms of art, the main force behind it is inspiration, and even though the actual product can be protected under Creative Commons legislation, the effects of this inspiration cannot. Any form of original music can inspire other artists to produce their own new music, and although the original creation is reserved under the artist’s name, the impact of his/her music on new artists is completely out of control.
If this is indeed the case, then why are Creative Commons necessary? The only reason I can think of relates to consumer attitudes: a product must be legally consumed to guarantee that the artist and producer will make a certain profit. A Creative Commons license is required so that a product can be sold legally as an authorised copy, rather than reproduced illegally through other popular media. The next question is whether this works. In my opinion, it is long proven that it does not, and here is a nice story to support my point:
When I was a teenager in the late 1980s and early 1990s, radio stations in Greece were multiplying like mushrooms in a forest. Such radio stations promoted the latest circulation of popular music, which was legally bought, reproduced and broadcast to the public. Even though radio stations advertised the latest songs and promoted their sales, producers were worried that the public would record the broadcasts and reproduce the songs at home by ‘non-authorised’ means, resulting in a drop in sales. For those who remember, this was the ‘Golden Age of Cassettes’. There must have been more than thirty different brands of radio/tape recorders sold in the market back in the days, and God knows how many brands of cassettes sold in the shops. Radio-recording and tape-swapping were two of the most popular activities among teenagers, not to mention the element of romanticism behind the whole process: passing a message to a girl you liked often included putting together a music cassette for her with your own voice recorded on it saying irrational romantic stupidities; which were then reproduced together with the songs and shared with the rest of the school, resulting to embarrassing situations. Tape-recording continued in later years despite the technological advancement from vinyl records and cassettes to compact disks (CDs). Nothing could stop it other than the complete abandonment of radio/cassette recorders; but until that happened, producers in the 1980s needed to find ways to stop the public from recording broadcasts, or perhaps minimise the quality of the recorded copy to zero, which would result in the purchase of the original High Fidelity product (1). The solution they came up with was completely ridiculous. They demanded that radio broadcasters talk while they played new songs and mask the actual music with random, totally useless pieces of information. I remember that whenever this happened, the fury and the amount of cursing that came out of my mouth were enough to deny me a place in the Kingdom of Heaven for the rest of my life. Even though I now recall these moments with nostalgia, I need to restrain myself and get back to my original point: even though broadcasters kept talking and spoiling the songs, people kept recording them and stopped paying attention to their voices. The reason was simple. For working-class youths, buying a cheap Taiwanese radio/cassette recorder and a box of ten cassettes was cheaper than purchasing a single original vinyl record, which also required a record player. This resulted in a whole generation (my generation) feeling happy and nostalgic for being brought up with tapes from live radio broadcasts, and many producers ending up poor and bankrupt several years later.
Another problem that demonstrates the inadequacy of Creative Commons restrictions on music relates to the nature of the artistic product. Music consists of melody and lyrics, and the latter are originally written down in a specific language. Even though the melody can be the same in any reproduction, the language of the lyrics can be different; therefore, the same melody with lyrics in a different language consists of a completely new artistic product, which does not require the recognition that the original melody was the intellectual property of another artist. During one of my visits to Turkey some time ago, I remember listening to a song at a restaurant that I somehow considered Greek. The melody was the same, but the version I had in mind had Greek lyrics, while the one I listened to that day had Turkish lyrics. This confusion made me wonder which version of the song was the original and which artist copied whom; however, such a question had absolutely no ground, as it is widely accepted among musicians that music (i.e., melody) is the most widely used international language.
Nowadays, Creative Commons restrictions in the music industry are challenged by the online reproduction and free circulation of artistic works. The internet operates in a similar manner as radio stations did back in the 1980s, only this time they allow people to generate their own favourite playlists online and to reproduce them without the intervention of broadcasters and radio producers. The power of the internet is so decisive that the entire attitude towards Creative Commons is gradually changing. Popular music bands realise there is no need to control the circulation of their new releases; instead, they upload them straight from the start on YouTube, where everyone can access and listen to their work for free. The reason this change is happening is that social media allows artists to circulate their work faster than in the past and to a wider audience; therefore, it is easier to become famous. This way, they can build demand for their work and make a profit by selling their music, but mostly by selling secondary products related to their original creation. Nowadays, bands tend to profit more from selling concert tickets, T-shirts, clothing and accessories than from selling their actual music. This shows that the main commercialised product, which is immediately subject to Creative Commons restrictions, is failing to generate the expected profit; hence, another by-product is commercialised instead.
Cinema
Cinema is another industry where Creative Commons legislation plays an important role. As with music, film producers are concerned about whether consumers buy the industry's original products legally rather than downloading or streaming them for free online. In the film industry, the internet enables illegal reproduction and circulation of films, negatively affecting sales, much as tape-recording did in the music industry back in the 1980s. Unlike music, which is supplemented by a wide variety of commercial by-products, in the cinema industry, the film is the only commercial product for sale; therefore, it is subject to strict copyright restrictions for obvious reasons.
It is interesting that, despite all efforts to curb the illegal online circulation of films, the popularity of illegal downloads persists. It seems likely that the more efforts are put into stopping illegal copies, the more popular they become. In my opinion, the main issue here is the cost of purchase, which, in many cases, is restrictive, as with vinyl records and CDs purchased twenty years ago in Greece. The reason this is happening is obvious: music and films are usually produced by large multinational corporations, which tend to tailor their products to consumers' incomes and inflation in relatively wealthy Western countries. For example, if the cost of a record, CD or DVD in Britain used to be £10 back in 2000, the same product was sold in Greece for the equivalent of 5,500 Drachmas, which was translated to 4% of the monthly salary of a minimum wage worker (2). I presume the same percentage for a worker in Brazil, Argentina, Russia, Nigeria and China would have been significantly higher. During a recent visit to Athens, a city severely affected by economic recession, I remember paying 12 Euros to watch a film, knowing that this amount represented 4.3% of the monthly salary of a Greek minimum wage worker that year. Even worse, if a father in Greece wished to take his family to the cinema to watch the same film, he would have spent 17-22% of his monthly income in one night. So, how fair is this?
Even if a film is priced at the average Western worker's minimum wage (North American or Western European), its price seems to fluctuate when sold in different cities within the same country. I remember two years ago watching films in Cardiff for £4, which was the average ticket price for all cinemas in town on a Friday evening. When I arrived in Ipswich, I noticed that a night at the cinema could cost up to £12. There are, of course, different costs included in the price of a cinema ticket other than the royalties of the actual film (e.g. rents, utility bills, council bills, mortgages, etc.). Would these, however, justify a 300% rise in the final price within the same country? If this is indeed the case, someone needs to explain to consumers why this is happening.
In my opinion, the above reasons are enough to disappoint consumers and lead them to consume illegal copies. The ease, speed and anonymity with which such copies circulate on the internet are astonishing, regardless of Creative Commons restrictions and web policing, and wherever such downloads have been banned or penalised, advancements in internet technologies have made clear that the battle between pirates and producers is not over yet. At this point, one will probably argue that if people are encouraged to download illegal copies for free, then the industry will eventually die out and will have nothing new to offer. I definitely agree with this point, and I must clarify that I do not support downloading or circulating illegal copies. In fact, as a former musician, I strongly believe that artists need to make a profit and must be rewarded for their efforts, but to play devil’s advocate, there are three points that I need to make in support of the opposite point, too. Firstly, bad artists will never make a profit, no matter how much a producer prices their work. Secondly, no film will succeed if it never attracts a large audience, which online media can guarantee; therefore, some compromise is necessary. Thirdly, it is a historical fact that artistic industries die out when their funding is depleted, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. For example, Classical Western European music vanished along with the wealthy monarchs who once funded it, just as Soviet cinema died out once Soviet propaganda had no reason to exist.
On another note, I need to stress that Creative Commons restrictions do not seem to apply across all film industries; in fact, they seem to be the norm only in mainstream commercial productions of Western cinematography, such as Hollywood. Over the last couple of years, I was surprised to realise that many new film releases from Russia, South Korea, Japan and China are publicly available on YouTube and other relevant search engines for free, in High Definition, and only a couple of months after their première in the cinemas. This means that the less commercial a film production is perceived to be, the more likely it is to be released to the public for free soon after its première. Having watched many of these films, I can confirm that, despite not being super commercial, their artistic quality is remarkable.
Finally, many mainstream Hollywood productions seem to fail to deliver the expected success and profit. Often, DVDs from relatively new releases are sold in supermarkets for as much as £2.99. Furthermore, it is not unusual for a ‘new’ film to be rented at a video club four months after its original release for a low price. Nowadays, there are online rental services offering the latest film releases for a monthly subscription that can cost as little as a fiver. Such online rentals allow consumers to watch films and series legally at a reasonable price, which is definitely a milestone in bridging the gap between expensive/legal and free/illegal copies.
In terms of cinema, it is obvious that Creative Commons restrictions can only be applied to specific films and only for a limited amount of time, roughly four months after their original release. After that time, the film’s price will drop regardless of such restrictions, making the maintenance of copyright licensing unaffordable. Furthermore, if the film is just another product of ‘mass culture’ with no commercial success, there seems to be no reason to have such copyright restrictions.
Literature
My last example, demonstrating the inadequacy of Creative Commons legislation, relates to literature. I decided to discuss this example last because the production of books is widely affected by the same copyright legislation that governs academic publications in the arts and humanities. When referring to literature, I mean books related to fiction for the entertainment of the broader public, or books related to the reproduction of factual information (e.g. historiographies, biographies, documentaries, political literature, etc.). The case of academic books, which convey scientific information, will be discussed in a separate article (Part 3).
As with music and cinema, Creative Commons for literature is meant to preserve and protect the author’s rights and also to guarantee the publisher's commercial exploitation of the final product. Whatever the agreements behind Creative Commons in literature, they seem to affect only the relationship between author and publisher. By contrast to music and cinema, there is almost nothing to be considered in relation to the public’s attitude. The reason for this is that, unlike all other forms of entertainment, literature is the least commercial and the least likely to be copied and shared illegally. Unlike music and films, nobody copies a book or reproduces its content illegally to sell it on the black market, unless the audience is living under a totalitarian regime that censors specific forms of literature, which have no other way to circulate. Artistic inspiration for generating literature is so fluid that no one can guarantee its success. Some of the authors’ new ideas tend to touch a small audience of specific consumers; the artistic language is never the same even from the same author, and in some cases, it is difficult to follow; stories do not necessarily promote an author’s individuality and do not target the individuality of a specific audience; and finally, the aesthetic result of the final product is always subjective. There are many occasions where books fail to satisfy the public, ending up on the benches of book bazaars, where these are being disposed of for the price of plain paper. If a book is so bad, it always makes me wonder what the necessity of copyright restrictions is.
Another problem with consuming literature is the time it takes. Reading a book takes much longer than consuming any other form of entertainment. By the time a 600-page book is read by an average working human being, loads of other books have gone by without the reader even noticing, or without the reader having any particular interest in buying. It is highly unusual for a reader to stockpile new books, expecting to catch up later by reading them all. It is simply unrealistic, as book production happens much faster than the average person can read one. It is not unusual for best-selling books to sell even more once they are adapted into films and played on the big screen. In a recent survey, the majority of people who enjoyed specific films in the cinema had never come across the original book that was adapted into the film. Popular music, films, and literature can be translated into other languages, and their copies can be sold at prices matching the average income and inflation of a specific population. When a new book is translated, Creative Commons are usually reinstated in the country where the translated copy aims to be sold. Even more often, when literary products become old, any later editions after the original tend to become cheaper because the demand drops. This is probably why works of 19th-century classical literature can be found in multiple editions from different publishers at low prices. In general, the situation with copyright in literature is much fairer than in other forms of entertainment, as these are re-adapted to the nature of the market.
Finally, the consumption of literature is connected to a long-established tradition in which books are considered sources of knowledge that must be shared openly and freely. Books can be borrowed or read for free at public libraries, educational institutions, local community interest organisations, or even at pubs. Institutions could purchase such copies directly from a publisher; however, there are no restrictions on obtaining books through donations from private readers. The fact that a book can be purchased only once yet shared among many who will never buy it from the market does not seem to put pressure on publishers to impose stricter restrictions. And even if copies are bought from the market, readers can find second-hand copies at low prices in charity shops or online. In conclusion, some well-established social norms that regard books as sources of free public education render the rigidity of Creative Commons restrictions on literature unnecessary, if applicable at all.
Notes
- For those born after AD 2000, High Fidelity, often abbreviated as Hi-Fi, was the equivalent of what is today known as High Definition, abbreviated as HD.
- This calculation is based on the author’s own wage back in 2000, when he worked at minimum-wage jobs in the private sector in Greece.