Joi Ito is feeling stifled by music copyright. He hearkens back to his nightclub DJ days when he could mix freely, but doesn't feel like he can now.
What he conveniently forgets is that he CAN use the music he wants: he just has to pay a license fee. And the same was true of the nighclub where he worked: they paid performance fees for the right to play copyrighted music.
Now, I actually don't have any argument with the second part of Joi's statement: that artists should consider publishing under the Creative Commons license. It should be an artist's right to decide whether to put their material into the public domain, to copyright it and self-publish, or to copyright it and assign that copyright to an organization to market, publish and license it on their behalf. And I also support a diversity of options. But I do believe in the notion of intellectual property; an artist should have the rigt to say "I put a lot of work into creating this, and if you think it's good enough that you want to use it, then you need to pay me."
I don't believe that all music should be freely and immediately put in the public domain. From what I've read, I don't think that Lessig believes that either -- though he certainly has strong beliefs that copyrighted materials should pass into the public domain sooner rather than later. I don't have a strong opinion on the appropriate term length for copyright -- it's a complex issue, one that I haven't had time to study in the depth that it deserves. I'm not sure where Joi stands on this -- I could read a fairly radical belief into his blog entry, but I think I'll just read a non-controversial view that he thinks everyone would benefit from the existence of more materials in the public domain, and leave it at that.
9:32:10 PM  ; ;
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