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 to various commercial products. As commercial products, such artistic ideas target audiences of consumers who are 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 the production of 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 along the years and are now disproving that creative commons legislation should possess more power than the actual art itself. Those that 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 are massively commercialised from the beginning of the 20th century onwards, the situation is evolving and improving under the tremendous impact of modern technologies, and the internet in particular. In support of this point I plan to discuss three examples from the commercial arts, which demonstrate that the above paradox is gradually being dealt with. 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 the attitude of the consumers: a product needs to be legally consumed, which guarantees that the artist and the producer will make a certain profit. A creative commons license is required so that a product is sold legally in the form of an authorised copy, instead of being 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 circulations of popular music, which were legally bought, reproduced and broadcasted to the public. Even though radio stations advertised the latest songs and promoted their sales, producers were worried that the public would record the broadcastings and reproduce the songs at home by 'non-authorised' means, resulting to a drop in sales. For those that remember, this was the 'Golden Age of Cassettes'. There must had been more than thirty different brands of radio/tape recorders sold in the market back in 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 broadcastings, or perhaps minimise the quality of the recorded copy to zero, which would result to the purchase of the original High Fidelity product (1). The solution they came up with was completely ridiculous. They demanded from radio broadcasters to talk while they played new songs, and mask the actual music with random and totally useless pieces of information. I remember that whenever this happened, the fury and the amount of cursing that came out of my mouth was 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, which is this: 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 additionally required the purchase of a record player. This resulted to a whole generation (my generation) feeling happy and nostalgic for being brought up with tapes from live radio broadcastings, and many producers ending 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, which I somehow considered to be Greek. The melody was the same but the version I had in mind was with Greek lyrics, while the one I listened to on that day was with Turkish lyrics. This confusion made me wonder which version of the song was the original and which artist copied whom; however, such question had absolutely no ground as it is widely accepted by all musicians that music (meaning melody) is the most wide-spread international language.

Nowadays, creative commons restrictions in the music industry are challenged by the online reproduction of artistic products and their circulation through internet media for free. 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 that there is no need in controlling the circulation their new releases; instead, they upload them straight from the beginning on Youtube, where everybody can access and listen to their work for free. The reason this change is happening is because social media allow artists to circulate their work faster than they did in the past, and to a wider audience; therefore, it is easier to become famous. This way they can construct a demand for their work and make profit from selling their music, but mostly from selling secondary products related to their original creation. Nowadays, bands tent to profit more from selling concert tickets, T-shirts, clothing and accessories, than 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 bi-product is commercialised instead.

Cinema

Cinema is another industry where creative commons legislation plays an important role. As with music, the producers of films are concerned whether consumers buy the original products of the industry legally, instead of downloading or streaming them through online media for free. For the film industry, the internet operates as a mean of illegal reproduction and circulation of films, affecting sales negatively, pretty much in the same way tape-recording affected the music industry back in the 1980s. Unlike music, which is supplemented by a large variety of commercial bi-products, in the cinema industry the film is the only commercial product for sale; therefore, this product is prone to strict copyright restricting for obvious reasons.

It is interesting that despite all efforts to control the illegal circulation of films through online media, the popularity of illegal downloads is a fact. It seems likely that the more efforts is put in stopping illegal copies, the more popular they become. In my opinion, the main issue behind this is the cost of purchase, which is in many cases restrictive, as with the purchase of vinyl records and CDs twenty years ago in Greece. The reason this is happening is obvious: music and films are usually produced by large multinational corporations, which tent to cost their original products according to the income of the consumers and the inflation of relatively rich 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 of mine in 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 cost to be sold according to the minimum wage of an average Western worker (North American or Western European), the price of the product 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 the price for a night at the cinema could reach up to £12. There are, of course, different costs included in the price of a cinema ticket other that the royalties of the actual film (e.g. rents, utility bills, council bills, mortgages, etc.). Would these, however, justify a 300% rise of the final price within the same country? If this is indeed the case, then someone needs to explain why this is happening to the consumers.

In my opinion, the above reasons are enough to disappoint the consumers and turn them to the consumption of illegal copies. The easiness, speed and anonymity in the circulation of such copies on the internet is astonishing regardless 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 the downloading and circulation of 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 become successful if it never attracts the attention of a large audience, which is guaranteed by online media; therefore, some compromising 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 together with the wealthy monarchs that once funded it, just as Soviet cinema died out as soon as Soviet propaganda had no reasons of existence.

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 in mainstream commercial productions of Western cinematography only, 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 least commercial a film production is perceived to be, the more the likelihood for the film to be released to the public for free soon after its première. Having watched a lot of these films, I can confirm that despite not being super commercial, their artistic quality is remarkable.

Finally, there seem to be a lot of mainstream Hollywood productions that 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 rentals offering the newest film circulations for a monthly subscription that could be as cheap as a fiver. Such online rentals offer the consumers films and series to be watched legally at a reasonable price online, 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 for 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 having 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 copyrights legislation noted in academic publications in the arts and the 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 are meant to reserve and protect the author's rights, and also to guarantee the commercial exploitation of the final product by the publisher. Whatever the agreements behind creative commons in literature, these only seem to affect 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 because, unlike all other forms of entertainment, literature is the least commercial and the least probable to be copied and shared illegally. As opposed to music and films, nobody bothers copying a book or reproducing its content illegally to be sold in the black market, unless the audience is living under a totalitarian regime that sensors specific forms of literature, which have no other way to circulate.

Furthermore, any artistic inspiration 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 for the price of plain paper. If a book is so bad, it always makes me wonder what the necessity of copyright restrictions.

Another problem with the consumption of literature is time. Reading a books takes a lot longer than the consumption of 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 completely unusual for a reader to stock piles of new books expecting to catch up in the feature by reading all of them. It is simply unrealistic as the production of books happens a lot faster than the time an average person can read one of them. It is not unusual for best-seller books to sell even more once they become film scenarios and are played on the big screen. In a recent survey, the majority of people that enjoyed specific films in the cinema had never come across the original book that was once converted to a film scenario.

By contrast to popular music and films, literature can be translated in other languages and its copies can be sold in prices matching the average income and inflation of a specific population. When the translation of a new book takes place, creative commons are usually re-established in the country the translated copy aims to sell. Even more often, when literature products become old, any later editions after the original tend to become cheaper because the demand drops. This is probably the reason why products of classical 19th century literature can be found in multiple editions from different publishers, and at cheap prices. In general, the situation with copyrights in literature is a lot fairer than in other forms of entertainment, as these are re-adapted according to the nature of the market.

Finally, the consumption of literature is connected with a long-established tradition, in which books are considered sources of knowledge that must be shared openly for free. 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 for obtaining books through donations from private readers. The fact that a book can only be purchased once yet shared among many, who will never buy the same book from the market, does not seem to put pressure on publishers to impose stricter restrictions. And even if copies are to be bought from the market, readers can find second hand copies for cheap prices at charity shops or the internet. In conclusion, some well-established social norms, which regard books as sources of free public education, make the rigidity of creative commons restrictions on literature unnecessary, if only applicable on limited occasions.

Notes

1. 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.
2. This calculation is according to the author's own wage back in 2000, when he used to work at minimum wage jobs in the private sector in Greece.