April 25th, 2024
The Fan Alliance
In the past year, many artists have had to stand up for fair pay because major corporations and tech companies are not paying musicians fairly. Fans have the power to unite and demand a better ecosystem for musicians. Donald Cohen, a long time labor organizer and lover of the arts, has created the Fan Alliance, a network of music lovers who will work together to advocate for musicians. Learn more about how you can help signing the pledge here: https://www.thefanalliance.org
April 14, 2022:
We WON!
Your hard work and efforts these past few months have come to fruition as Music Workers are being given access to funding at the State level. As highlighted by the recent NYTimes piece, Music Workers will be given access to a new $200M fund that is being created to help those who have faced losses from touring and other business expenses during COVID. The details of this new fund are still being worked out, but please fill out this form if you wish to be updated by MWA and we will provide all the guidance and information as we receive it. The questions on the form will be helpful for us to guide elected officials on who is going to be accessing the fund.
In the meantime, there are still funds available in an existing New York State Small Business Recovery Grant Program. We have commitments from elected officials to make this program easier to access for all Music Workers, but for some of you, there might be an opportunity to access these funds today. Please click on this link and consider applying for funds if you are an incorporated business or a 1040 Schedule-C tax filer.
Contact MWA IMMEDIATELY at musicworkersalliance@gmail.com and let us know if you could access the funds or what (if any) obstacles you encountered. Your feedback is essential to our ongoing fight to make the politicians live up to their promises of accessible funding for indie musicians!
April 8, 2022:
Artists and musicians are getting a new source for aid in the New York State budget.
By Julia Carmel for The New York Times
Many independent musicians and artists have spent the last two years walking on eggshells, risking their own money to plan tours and shows that could be canceled.
But under New York State’s new budget deal, which was announced on Thursday and awaits final approval, musicians and artists who have been negatively impacted by coronavirus protocols would be eligible to apply for funding through a $200 million Seed Funding Program.
Performers and artists who sank money into a performance or appearance that was canceled for Covid-related reasons could be eligible for retroactive grants from the program, said State Senator Brad Hoylman, a leading proponent of the fund. He views it as an addition to the state’s $800 million COVID-19 Pandemic Small Business Recovery Grant Program, which was established last year and which freelance and independent arts workers are not eligible to apply to.
“These are the original gig workers, and what we’ve seen in recent months is that after the second wave of Covid abated, they were free to take gigs across the country and the world,” said Mr. Hoylman, who represents parts of Midtown and Lower Manhattan. “Many of them were far from home, ready to work when a band member got sick, or they themselves fell ill.”
Mr. Hoylman, who worked alongside Music Workers Alliance to develop the new fund, added that many of these performers were stuck in other cities and countries as Covid surged during the Delta and Omicron waves, “unable to pay for their expenses and get home because their concerts and appearances were canceled.”
Marc Ribot, 67, a touring guitarist based in Brooklyn, said that he and his musician peers make most of their money on tour.
“I toured with my band Ceramic Dog in Europe in late November and early December, and I can tell you it was like swimming two or three feet in front of a shark,” Mr. Ribot said. “We played in Berlin and two nights later, Berlin shut down, and it was like that in more than one city. We lost two gigs, and I think one or two others switched to livestreaming.”
These cancellations, he said, can cost thousands of dollars per tour in nonrefundable plane and train tickets and accommodations.
“What looked like an 18-month vacation from the outside was, from the inside, 18 months in which I always had gigs that I had to practice for and prepare for,” he said. “Then you find out three weeks or two weeks in advance: ‘Actually, it’s not possible.’ No one wants to cancel until they’re sure.”
But under the budget deal, someone like Mr. Ribot would be able to apply for grants to recoup some of that money.
Musicians and artists “took gigs once restrictions were dropped, but the surge ended up killing their immediate prospects for work,” Mr. Hoylman said, adding that he believed New York owed it to them to help out.
“Artists are the lifeblood of our city’s cultural identity,” he said.
Read full article from The NY TIMES here: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/08/nyregion/ny-budget-artists-musicians.html
March 22, 2022:
New York Music Workers Seek Eligibility for Pandemic Relief Grants
Music Workers Alliance is advocating for music workers' inclusion in a proposed grant program that could provide hundreds of millions in relief funds.
BY TAYLOR MIMS for BILLBOARD
New York touring musicians – led by the Music Workers Alliance – are seeking additional pandemic relief from the state after a tumultuous touring season this winter. Musicians including Esperanza Spalding and Marc Ribot are advocating on behalf of New York’s touring workers to be included in the New York State Legislator’s Small Business Recovery Grant — included in the New York State Senate’s budget proposal — as micro-businesses. Inclusion in the grant program would give music workers — or “independent arts contractors,” as they’re described in the budget — access to possibly hundreds of millions of dollars in relief funds.
Full Article on BILLBOARD here: https://www.billboard.com/pro/new-york-music-workers-pandemic-relief-grants-state-budget/
March 10, 2022:
Covid and Canceled Gigs Have Left Musicians High and Dry
Yet most working musicians have been marginalized or excluded from current Covid relief funding.
By Marc Ribot for THE NATION
In January, I performed with a group of musicians and dancers at the Salle Jacques Brel, a 400-seat venue on the outskirts of Paris. We’d rehearsed a program of Haitian-based music and dancing for two days, were excited to be playing again—it was my first gig in Paris since the pandemic—and honored to be included in a festival line-up with such great musicians as David Murray, Sylvie Courvoisier, and William Parker.
But there was a catch. Three hours before the concert, I had to take a rapid antigen test in order to fly to Italy the following day. If the test came back positive, I would have to quarantine in my hotel at my own expense until I tested negative. I would be unable to perform or to return home; I’d be stranded without payment for the concert and rehearsals while also responsible for my travel, lodging, and rebooking costs.
Another complication: The fate of my colleagues was linked to mine. I was booked as a “featured artist” on the program in Paris, so if I could not perform, the presenter could also cancel the concert without any payment for my 12 colleagues.
I stood silently in line with would-be immigrants, emigrants, workers and the just plain worried, in the bleak twilight outside the Rue Bercy Pharmacy/testing center: We were fidgeting, smoking, staring blankly at our phones. Waiting. Finally, my results came back: “Negatif.”
Continue reading full op-ed from THE NATION here: https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/covid-touring-musicians-aid/
March 04, 2022:
Musicians Organize Around DMCA Law, Time’s Up for Spotify
Indie musicians take on big tech in campaign to stop mass online copyright infringement.
By Annie Levin • THE OBSERVER
Music Workers Alliance (MWA), a labor empowerment organization for independent musicians, DJs, and sound engineers, has launched a campaign for streaming justice. They are lobbying congress to change a law that has allowed companies like Google and YouTube to make billions off mass copyright infringement; and which enables streaming services like Spotify to pay musicians starvation wages.
“Mass copyright infringement devalues all music everywhere and creates an open black market,” Ben Brock, drummer and MWA member said at MWA’s campaign launch rally in February.
At the launch, MWA members spoke out about copyright infringement in their industry. They described how an album, once released, appears on YouTube where it can be listened to for free. “Even if your music isn’t specifically on YouTube, it affects how much consumers will pay for all music everywhere,” Brock said to the attendees at the rally. Because of sites like YouTube, where all music can be accessed for free, streaming services like Spotify can get away with paying musicians a starvation average wage of $0.0038 per stream. A musician must have their song streamed almost half a million times a month to make minimum wage. Far from making a profit, musicians often end up in debt after making an album. This kind of mass wage theft is taken for granted in the music industry, where musicians are now expected to make most of their money from touring. According to the tech industry, music, like information, wants to be free. This is an ideology that has made billions for tech while reducing content creators to technological serfdom.
Marc Ribot, a guitarist who has collaborated with Tom Waits and Elvis Costello, spoke at the MWA campaign launch about the dramatic shift in the recording industry in the last 20 years.
“Post Napster, I saw my income from recording go down precipitously,” Ribot said at the rally. “When my income was dropping, I started to hear the beginning of what would become an avalanche of jive.” He said he was told that music wanted to be free and that musicians had to give it away if they wanted to be part of the new normal. New technology and regulations were coming any minute, he was told, to shore up his falling income. But those regulations never came. “For 20 years we waited for the tech companies to agree on standard technical measures to stop the looting of our industry,” said Ribot. “Well, time’s up.”
Without the ability to tour during the pandemic, musicians experienced mass unemployment. Where workers in other industries were able to continue making income online, musicians weren’t. They were unable to sell a product that could be gotten for free on YouTube.
Continue reading from THE OBSERVER here: https://observer.com/2022/03/musicians-organize-around-dmca-law-times-up-for-spotify/
March 22, 2021:
The American Prospect
Islands in the Stream
Musicians are in peril, at the mercy of giant monopolies that profit off their work.
Marc Ribot and Olympia Kazi, an activist who had gotten New York City’s onerous cabaret law repealed, co-founded another group, the Music Workers Alliance. Like many pandemic-era organizing efforts, MWA concerned itself first with mutual aid for struggling artists. But while better streaming royalties, an end to copyright infringement, and basic fairness in the digital marketplace are on MWA’s agenda, they’re also concerned about working conditions at live venues, minimum pay rates, protections against discrimination and harassment, and a piece of any live-streaming club revenue. An initial rally was held in Manhattan in February.
“I went on a nonconsensual strike and I’m alive, it makes me a little braver,” Ribot said. “It’s more militant than I’ve ever seen. It’s no accident that the CIO started in the 1930s in the middle of the Depression.”
Read the full article: https://prospect.org/power/islands-in-the-stream-spotify-youtube-music-monopoly/
April 28, 2020:
A CALL BY MUSICAL ARTISTS FOR BASIC FAIRNESS IN THE DIGITAL MARKETPLACE
At market closing on April 10th, while tens of thousands of musicians and DJs across the country tried to access unemployment benefits, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Larry Page of Google/Youtube had earned $6.2 billion and $3.6 billion, respectively, for the week, according to Forbes. On that same day, the Music Workers Alliance launched an emergency petition directed to Facebook, Google and YouTube asking for relief and justice. Please consider signing and sharing.
PETITION
Read more on BrooklynVegan
May 22, 2018:
Medium: Dissonant Intervals & Bittersweet Symphonies: Music’s Past, Present & Future
by Neil Turkewitz for THE MEDIUM
And legendary guitarist, Marc Ribot, sent me something so on point and articulate that I include it in full, notwithstanding the fact that it could stand as an article by itself:
“No one owes me or any other musician a living. But we and the businesses that pay us should have the same right as any other American: to earn our livings through a fair market, one based on the consent of the seller and the willingness of the buyer. As anyone Googling our work can see: that is not the case now. I’m not “anti-technology”: I’ve been running pro-tools and EmagicLogic since the early 90’s, and remember when my CompuServe address was a number. My latest release streams on Spotify, and I do roughly the same online marketing and distribution as other contemporary artists.
But the oft repeated myth that bands can now produce recordings on “no budget” (and therefore somehow don’t need to get paid) is… bullshit.
The computer itself, software, mics, mic-pre’s, compressors, A to D coverters, etc cost money. Composing, rehearsing, recording, overdubbing, mixing, editing, sequencing, mastering, designing, marketing, and promoting all take time. Farmers deduct what it costs to feed and house their animals during the time it takes to bring them to market. Surely, even those who don’t believe we deserve minimum wage should grant us the same economic consideration as a cow.
I’ve personally witnessed the worst of both indie and major label behavior. In fact, I’ve participated in indie musicians’ collective action to fight record company rip-offs. But even the worst of them understood that not paying us for our work WAS a rip-off. Google et al are attempting to normalize the worst practices of the past: on a scale that Leonard Chess couldn’t even imagine.
While record companies have certainly robbed many artists — and Artists of Color in particular — celebrating their collapse makes as much sense as celebrating a mass eviction because the building had cockroaches.
If Silicon Valley apologists now claim we should pay for our record budgets through touring income: well exactly which new artists, who by definition must make a recording BEFORE touring, are likely to have $5–15 grand sitting around to self finance years of self recording and poorly paid promotional touring?
Are we really SO besotted with our new streaming toys that we can’t recognize the institutionally racist consequences of what amounts to a new exclusionary entrance fee… (not to mention the less visible but equally destructive damage to music’s working class base)? Telling young musicians that they must fund their own recordings is the redlining of the new millennium. To the great extent that race and class are intertwined, it is racist. It’s unfair to talented working class kids of all races, and will create a homogenous culture of the privileged as surely as post-war red-lining created the lily white suburbs of the past.
If all this was really “technological unemployment” due to “creative destruction,” then we could — and would have to — accept it. But these terms refer to improvements in the technologies of production replacing less efficient technologies. This is not what is going on.
Musicians still make the music people listen to today, using technology roughly similar to what we used 20 years ago. Our music is producing more profit than ever: just not for us. This isn’t “disruptive innovation”, it is exploitation pure and simple, and it needs to stop.
The simple fact is this: our budgets collapsed post Napster, and although the effects of streaming are uneven, they will not and cannot repair the damage done as long as major online corporations enjoy a special privilege exemption from the normal obligation of businesses to obey the law. Until the “Safe Harbors” are limited for corporations which fail to use the available technology to stop mass infringement on their premises, there will be no economic justice for working musicians.
All the rest is hype.”
Read full article here: MEDIUM
March 5, 2018:
The Trichordist Guest Post Marc Ribot: The Red Ink Beneath Streaming’s “New Dawn”
Guest Post from the legendary guitarist Marc Ribot. One point that Mr. Ribot makes we would like to further emphasize at the outset: without DMCA reform there is no “market” for Copyright Royalty Judges to set rates under the MMA. This comes on the heels of a paper from Stan Liebowitz at the University of Texas. The Liebowitz study clarifies how the safe harbor, contrary to its intended purpose, creates an inefficient and unfair advantage for UUCs when bargaining with copyright owners, meaning that UUCs either do not pay for copyright permissions or, if they pay something, they pay less than the market rate.
____________________________________
The following article examines the effect of ECM’s switch to Spotify – and the larger, tectonic shifts in the industry of ECM’s move is part –on indie jazz labels and artists: and suggests a course of action.
The Red Ink Beneath Streaming’s “New Dawn”
“structural” failure, “not viable” “we’re fucked”
The Music Modernization Act (MMA) , creates a mechanism for setting of rates and payment of royalties to publishers by streaming services, while insulating the services from liability for claims outside its structure. It is widely seen as clearing the way for Spotify’s long awaited IPO.
This, in turn, is seen as a harbinger of the coming of Age Of Streaming.
January 5, 2018:
I see labor organizing as a way out of this situation we are in – an interview with Marc Ribot
Marc Ribot’s excellence as a versatile guitarist, an improviser and a composer is well known among fans and music lovers. What has received less attention is his activism for labor rights of musicians, his view on and experience with labor organizing. After his exciting concert with The Young Philadelphians at the 33rd Belgrade Jazz Festival, Mašina had the opportunity to discuss with him a subject – he says – he gladly talks about: politics.
Let’s start from Bread and Roses. It’s a workers’ and women’s rights song. The lyrics are a poem written by James Oppenheim and the title is a phrase associated with a successful textile workers’ strike and a speech given by Rose Schneiderman, socialist, feminist and labor unionist. Why did you cover this song years ago with Ceramic Dog, did it have a political importance for you?
November 6, 2017:
T Bone Burnett on the Broken DMCA Safe Harbors
May 3, 2017:
The following is a letter from a group of concerned NYC based musicians to our French friends who have considered abstaining this Sunday:
Dear Friends,
The election of Donald Trump has been, for us, a nightmare. We are writing because, seeing Le Pen’s growing numbers, and, listening to French debates around abstention, we are experiencing a nightmarish déjà vu. We hope you can benefit from our experience.
Like many of you, many of us opposed Hillary Clinton’s neo-liberalism, and now oppose Macron’s. But the cure for neo-liberal oppression — in France, Britain, Hungary, or the US —is NOT the election of our respective National Fronts.
We’ll let the academics debate the extent to which the racism, xenophobia, and authoritarianism of the TRUMP/FARAGE/LE PEN axis conforms to the tropes of historical fascism.
We say: NO PASSARAN! And ask everybody to support A POPULAR FRONT to stop them.
There will be many opportunities – on the streets, at the point of production, and at the ballot box --to prove to Macron that a vote against Le Pen was NOT a vote for his neo-liberal agenda.
But this Sunday, FRENCH VOTERS HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO KEEP THE NATIONAL FRONT’S HANDS OFF THE LEVERS OF FRENCH STATE POWER.
PLEASE USE IT!
NO TO ABSTENTIONS!
NO TO LE PEN!
YES TO A POPULAR FRONT AGAINST THE TRUMP/FARAGE/LE PEN AXIS.
Yes, we need to fight corporate capitalism’s attack on our rights and livelihoods.
But the idea that this fight will be made easier by the election of Le Pen is terribly wrong.
This Sunday, you can stop them.
YES TO THE CONTINUATION OF THE FIGHT FOR PEOPLE OVER PROFITS.
No abstentions. No Le Pen.
Love,
Your Friends From NYC:
Marc Ribot
Jack Dejohnette
Mary Halvorson
Roy Nathanson
Marco Cappelli
Ches Smith
http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2017/05/03/lettre-de-new-york-a-nos-amis-francais-qui-envisage-de-s-abstenir-le-7-mai_5121757_3232.html
Une lettre à nos amis Français des États Unis qui ont envisagé de s’abstenir ce dimanche :
Chers amis, l’élection de Donald Trump a été, pour nous, un cauchemar. Nous vous écrivons parce que, vu le nombre croissant de supporters Le Pen et en écoutant l’interview télévisé de Mélenchon refusant de supporter Macron, nous vivons un déjà-vu cauchemardesque. Nous espérons que vous pouvez bénéficier de notre expérience.
Comme beaucoup d'entre vous, nous avons opposé le néolibéralisme d’Hillary et maintenant nous nous opposons à celui de Macron. Mais le remède contre l’oppression néolibéral — en France, en Grande-Bretagne, en Hongrie ou aux États-Unis — n’est pas l’élection de nos Fronts national respectifs
Nous laisserons les universitaires débattrent de la mesure à laquelle le racisme, la xénophobie et l’autoritarisme de l’axe TRUMP/FARAGE/LE PEN est conforme aux figures du fascisme historique.
Nous disons : NO PASSARAN ! Et demandons à tout le monde de soutenir le Front Populaire pour les arrêter.
Vous aurez de nombreuses occasions – dans les rues, au point de production et dans les urnes--pour prouver à Macron qu’un vote contre Le Pen n’était pas un vote pour son agenda néo-libéral.
Mais ce dimanche, les électeurs FRANÇAIS vous avez la possibilité d’arrêter que la main du Front National ne s’abatte sur les leviers du pouvoir de l’état FRANÇAIS
S’IL VOUS PLAÎT UTILISEZ-LE !
PAS D’ABSTENTIONS
NON À LE PEN
OUI À UN FRONT POPULAIRE CONTRE L’AXE TRUMP/FARAGE/LE PEN
Oui, nous devons lutter contre l'attaque du capitalisme d'entreprise sur nos droits et nos moyens de subsistance.
Mais l'idée que l'élection de Le Pen rendra cette lutte plus facile est terriblement faux.
Ce dimanche, vous pouvez les arrêter.
OUI À LA CONTINUATION DE LA LUTTE POUR LES PERSONNES SUR LES BÉNÉFICES.
PAS D’ABSTENTIONS. NON À LE PEN.
Amicalement,
Vos amis de New York :
April 20, 2017:
Marc Ribot: Barriers to Participation
The musician and activist on the creative life of cities, the fight for economic justice in the digital era, and his quest to rescue public spaces from corporate gangsters and antipluralist militants.
By Farhad Mirza and Anna Calori
Read the full inteview here:
https://www.guernicamag.com/marc-ribot-barriers-to-participation/
April 11, 2017:
“Stand Up Against Intolerance and Hatred in Our Community”
“Stand Up Against Intolerance and Hatred in Our Community”
Solidarity Celebration at BSP in Kingston
– April 23 event features music, speakers and networking for positive action –
KINGSTON, NY (April 10, 2017) – Soon after the 2017 U.S. Presidential inauguration, a Woodstock area family suffered several anti-Semitic bias incidents. This family’s story is by no means an isolated incident here in Ulster County, and it is increasingly typical of life for Black, Latino, LGBT, Jewish and Muslim communities who are vulnerable to abuse and attack in our new political reality. Recognizing that this local incident is part of a virulent trend of racist, misogynist and xenophobic behavior in the United States, several regional musicians and other New York State artists decided to take a stand.
On Sunday, April 23 from 2-4 p.m. at BSP, 323 Wall Street, in Uptown Kingston, a newly formed local coalition of artists and community members will hold an event to express solidarity with all communities at risk.
“We want to show that we are going to stand up against intolerance and hatred,” said guitarist and composer, Marc Ribot, a friend of local residents and one of several artists slated to perform at the event. “We intend this to be a celebration of strength and diversity and to show our unified resistance to bias and the conditions that cause and allow it.”
Local organizers will use the creative and positive power of the arts to open up conversations among community members. The group plans to build a locally based, visible and ongoing network of faith-based, cultural and community groups, and individuals who are willing to stand up against hate. Ribot will speak briefly about Artists Unite Against Hate, a downstate NY group endorsing the event.
Musicians scheduled to perform on April 23 at BSP include Ceramic Dog (Marc Ribot, Ches Smith and Shahzad Ismailly); Nfamara Badjie; The Paul Green Rock Academy; Bill Brovold and Friends; and the Jamie Saft Trio with Brad Jones & Ben Perowsky plus special guests. Additional speakers and endorsing organizations will be announced at a later date.
The event is free to the public. Contributions will be accepted and any proceeds will be donated to local organizations working on these issues here in the Hudson Valley.
Organizations that wish to display materials or participate as speakers, and anyone who wants to assist with future events or join the mailing list, should visit the Facebook page for the event for further information: https://www.facebook.com/events/1011025145708989/.
Contact: Rennie Scott-Childress 845.616.3687 (rscottchildress@gmail.com)
January 3, 2017:
Don’t Mourn/ORGANIZE!
We lost more than “the progressive agenda” in this year’s election: Donald Trump’s regime is an attack on Constitutional Democracy itself.
Below are contacts for people who are fighting back.
[We thank NY City Council Member Brad Lander #GetOrganizedBK bradlander.nyc/news/updates/getorganize... for the list].
Fighting Trump appointments: FB page is Indivisible Nation, Twitter at indvisible_nat., email liliraytolangmail.com
Fighting corruption & conflicts-of-interest email jenniferfriedlin@gmail.com
Preparing for the Women’s March On Washington: www.womensmarch.com or Facebook page
Solidarity w/ immigrant neighbors (with CM Menchaca) email RAbdul@council.nyc.gov.
Fighting bias, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism email ALevers@council.nyc.gov.
Electoral working group groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/getorganizedbk—-electoral-working-group
Outreach to more conservative places groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/out-of-state-partnerships
Threats to safety net programs groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/brooklyn-safety-net-defense-organizing
Programs for our schools/educators vsell@council.nyc.gov
Women’s health/reproductive rights Facebook.com/ppnycaction
Arts as activism groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/artsasactivismgetorganizedbk
for: First Amendment rights and Holding media accountable: http://bradlander.nyc/news/updates/getorganizedbk-working-group-updates
circulated by popfrontfordemocracy@gmail.com
***For those in the US outside of NYC, I’d recommend that you contact your own local elected officials at the city or congressional district level, and recommend that they start doing what Lander is doing in Bklyn (and if they can’t be bothered: I d suggest finding someone willing to run against them in the next democratic primary who can).
January 3, 2017:
GhostShip: Mourn the Dead: Fight Like Hell For The Living- Guest Post by Marc Ribot on Trichordist
"We now know that “the music” didn’t die in 2003. Musicians still make music (using similar technological tools to those in use since the 90’s). People still listen to the music musicians make. Their listening is still mediated by corporations, and still produces (now more than ever) profits for those corporations. Only now those profits aren’t shared by the people who produce them. This isn’t ‘creative destruction’, or ‘technological unemployment’: its exploitation pure and simple."
Read the full article at Trichordist
May 5, 2016:
“Silent Concert”
On Tuesday, 5/3, at 12 noon, musicians held a “SILENT CONCERT/Demonstration For Artists Rights” outside the Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse, 40 Foley Square, New York.
Unfortunately, couldn’t be there myself — on tour "showing my skills to pay my bills": but I don’t mind writing in airports/train stations. And so:
The event coincided with hearings on section 512 of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) being held by the U.S. Copyright Office (USCO) inside the courthouse.
The DMCA is the 1998 law governing copyright in the digital domain. Loopholes in the DMCA have left artists effectively powerless to prevent massive for-profit infringement, leading to the growth of a huge and damaging black market (yup kids, that’s what we call corporate ad-based for-profit piracy: and that's exactly what it is) in our work. If the devil is in the details, section 512 of the DMCA is our devil’s house.
The purpose of the SILENT CONCERT was to "ask Congress to fix the DMCA in order to protect artists’ rights in the digital age.”
The actual event consisted of working artists/musicians standing with their instruments in a “silent concert” symbolizing “the music left un made… because…[section 512 of the DMCA] has permitted massive for-profit infringement that has devalued our music.”
The “silent” musicians handed out literature calling for changes in the “Safe Harbor” clause of DMCA which “permits online service providers to profit from infringement… without liability” claiming Safe Harbors should be denied to hosting platforms which ignore “red flag” knowledge of infringement on their site.
The literature urged Congress to update the DMCA takedown notice system so that each uncontested takedown notice applies permanently and automatically to all identical or nearly identical files. This way, artists won’t have to play whac-a-mole with thousands of repeating infringements in order to exercise their rights.
The leaflet goes on:
“The technology already exists to protect creators fairly, in a way that will NOT interfere with free speech, and will NOT “shut down the internet!”
Have copyright protection and take-down systems been created that reasonably address civil libertarian concerns?
Here’s Audible Magic Corporation’s response:
“[the] technology could be implemented today." - Ikezoye, Vance, Audible Magic spokesperson April 3, 2016
YouTube manages to run its own automated “Content ID” software without appearing to engage in ‘censorship’.
Unfortunately access to this protective software comes at a cost.
Independent artists must give YouTube access to their entire catalogue and use Content ID to monetize — thereby making YouTube money – in order to get access to its protection from infringement.
Q: What kind of racket profits by selling ‘protections’ against infringements they themselves make possible?
A: A protection racket.
Q: Why – other than the fact that its parent corporation is worth 500 billion and this is the USA -- is this legal? Why isn’t YouTube required to protect the rights of ALL those on its premises, like any other business?
A: Because of the Safe Harbor clause of section 512 of the DMCA.
The ‘silent’ musicians called on Congress to further the development of “Standard Technical Measures” (STM’s) that would enable an automated ‘takedown’ system to work, and, as an incentive, to deny Safe Harbor to hosting platforms which, once STM’s are established, refuse to adopt them.
They tried to remind law makers:
“We’re not asking for a special privilege, but a basic American right: a fair market for our work."
This protest was a small part of a new wave of activism by creators who are no longer afraid to speak out directly about reforming the DMCA. In March, I helped gather signatures for "A Creators’ View of the Music Ecosystem and Notice and Takedown". [a document circulated by the artists' rights group c3 (Content Creators Coalition) and presented to the US Copyright Office, (see the list of signers here: DMCA Signatures.pdf)] . The response was off the hook… everyone I asked signed.
The signers weren’t just “Rock Stars”, or functionaries from some 'built out’ advocacy organization, and this wasn’t just “the industry”. They were working musicians/ artists of all genres, ages, and levels of commercial success.
Almost none would have signed 3 years ago.
This increase in activism is the opposite of what one would expect if the rosy tech industry claims of digital economic uplift for creators were true. It presents a challenge to the ‘optimistic' statistical inferences drawn by Steven Johnson [“The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn’t” NY Times, 8/23/2015].
No working artist I know believes such claims. If one thinks for a moment, the idea that the music market -- or ANY market — can somehow flourish while an open black market makes its products available for free -- is not only counterintuitive, its absurd.
As working studio drummer, composer, producer, music director extraordinaire (and Silent Concert ‘performer’) Steve Jordan put it:
“more people are hearing [our] music than ever before. So you would think that you would be making more money than ever before. But in actuality we’re making less money than we’re ever made, because people are allowed to use our material for next to nothing everywhere in the world now. So its actually worked against us. Only a few people in the record industry have actually made money off this deal. The rest of us are all canaries in the coal mine….” [Steve Jordan intvw by Joel Schlemowitz 5/3/16]
The toxic economic environment created by the DMCA’s loopholes is what musicians working in recording and recording related live performance deal with every day.
And we don’t need Mr. Johnson’s macro economic statistical weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
So yeah, I’ll stay on the road longer each year to make up for lost recording income. I’m one of the lucky few able to do so. God help younger, working class, or less established artists trying to break through now (or older artists unable to take the grind, or composers, or parents of young children etc etc). Current conditions serve as an entry barrier to all the above.
Is that a ‘creative apocalypse’? I guess not if you can afford to pay for your own recordings + $5-10,000 for a publicist + lose money on touring for awhile. Or if you only like music made by those who can.
(talented poor kids willing to sign exploitive “360” deals can play too. Life-long indebtedness may be their personal “apocalypse”. But the rest of us can enjoy their music – for free if we want. Sweet!)
And speaking of touring vs those who believe that black markets help producers: I wonder exactly what the latter think is happening to conditions on the touring circuit now that virtually every artist has to go on the road more each year like I do? Supply and demand anyone?
Oh, nevermind.
Sorry I missed the Silent Concert/demo. But you can be assured that until Congress stands up to the digital black marketeers, and restores a fair market for creators’ work in the digital domain, there will be plenty of others. We’ll be back... we have nowhere else to go.
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M Ribot is a guitarist, recording musician, and artists rights activist with the Musicians Action group.
Note: the 5/3 event was intended to deliver a message to Congress and the public, and was in no way meant as a criticism of the U.S. Copyright Office, whose work in gathering stakeholder testimony deserves the respect of all parties.
Note: the Silent Concert was sponsored by the Musicians Action group musiciansactiongroup@yahoo.com. However, the views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
Further reading:
Composer Maria Schneider has finally come out and said what every artist I know who’s informed on the issues thinks:
"… for the vast majority of the artistic community, including me, and every musician I know (and I know thousands), YouTube is a resounding disaster.There’s no use in beating around the bush, so I’m going to cut to the chase – I’m of the firm opinion that YouTube should immediately lose its DMCA “safe harbor” status."
What does that mean? It means that like every other US businesses, YouTube and other hosting platforms should be held responsible for the damage caused by infringements they knowingly permit, or actively to encourage, on their premises.
I have only one thing to add to Maria’s statement:
Amen.