From value gap to a new framework of IP law

Record labels and other actors from the old music industry have long complained that the new configuration of music business in internet has created a value gap, i.e., a hole in the value chain of the music. We are in a context in which there is less money to share, and revenues ends up in the hands of the new digital intermediaries, like YouTube, which do not invest in music but mainly in technology.

The holes in the value chain are a classic problem in the industry: musicians have always complained that, to be paid per session, they never see reward if the recording is successful (it is also true that they do not share the hardship if it is not). Producers have complained repeatedly of the same, as it was analyzed (in the Spanish context) in the round table The rights of intellectual property of the artistic producer, organized last year by the Master in Intellectual Property of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.  In the world of music, nobody trusts anyone: the cake is smaller than ever, and the numbers on revenues are not clear.

Protest against intermediaries is not only the reflection of an economic problem. It is the swansong of a system of property intellectual who has been built patch after patch, based on the negotiations between old and new actors to adapt to new interests affecting not too much the status quo (Litman, 2006). A system without the capacity to think about how obsolete are old categories , built from the old bookish paradigm. What is an author today? What is a user? What is an editor? These categories need to be redefined in the age of Google, Facebook, copyleft and the prosumer. The environment has changed, but not the logic of the law.

Academic research may help to clarify what is the real role of each of the parties in this new environment. It is necessary to define, above labels, what each party do, what each party think they do (which are not necessarily equivalent) and what the other actors in the field think that other parties do. This research can only be built crossing the empirical data with a vision from the inside, based on collaborative field work. This research should include all actors, even those whose economic contribution is small or poor: it should deal with the problem of how to include users, whose point of view tends to be despised by the industry, due largely to the difficulty of finding a body that represents users (Drahos and Braithwaite, quoted in Klein, 2015, 115)

How can you contribute academic analysis? First of all, in a context in which each of the parties have conflicting interests, it provides a neutral space, a point of equilibrium where all voices can be heard in search of a balanced position. In addition, since the academy is not a player with economic interests in the field, the research has presumption of objectivity, not to be ballasted by the pursuit of a position of dominance over other actors.

In this way, the research would represent both the public interest and the needs of each of the parties; these only can challenge their views and ways of work being questioned from an external point of view that use different categories and values that the ones assumed by those involved in the music industry.

REFERENCES

Klein, Bethany; Moss, Giles; Edwards, Lee. Understanding copyright. 2015. Sage. London

Litman, Jessica. Digital copyright. 2006. Prometheus Books, Amhers, NY.