What we witness is a battle over intellectual property rights. It is prudent, for our sanity, to understand that we live in a capitalist system where property rights trump all other rights. In an era when corporations are deemed to be humans, where that particular race of humans has unlimited access to and control over the politicians that rule our lives, how could it be otherwise? Until and unless the system itself is changed so that human rights are the basis for society, there will be endless battles between people like us - the 99% - and the privileged few cloaked in corporate power.
I have been scrupulous on this site to avoid copyright violations, and totally open to remove posts if someone who owns the intellectual property right to a recording requests I delete it. Yet realistically, considering the obscurity of copyright tendrils that may exist among corporations - and most likely do not connect to musicians, by the way - I may inadvertently violate rights, when I intend only to help preserve for humanity valuable works of art. So there is the possibility that my blog may be eliminated by corporate action, as the battle for a free internet broadens. Therefore please write down or bookmark this address: rhythmconnection.org. I may try to mirror this blog at that address, but will certainly attempt to carry on there, if Google bows to its master.
15 comments:
I appreciate your conscientiousness along with your good taste. Keep on trucking.
Thanks. I actually found it painless to move my Soul Brothers post to my older site, and am going to begin moving all my posts over there. Cheers!
Yours is a blog I respect and love, just like the others you mentioned in your post.
Is you alternate site immune to the corporatistas?
Sincerely
Wuod K
All of Nauma's blog (Freedom Blues, Black Star and O Earth are off!!!
I think taht we need another type of project to collect and share what we love; Yoyo proposed sort of a wiki ...
I can hear Orwell giggling, I told you so, I told you so.
@ Wuod K: Thank you for your kind words, which mean much to me. I believe since I own the domain where my other site is hosted, on an independent ISP, that my site would be secure.
@ dialAfrica: Nauma's disappearance followed Owl's, and that's what prompted this post. Yes,
we need to think about an independent alternative, but I think we each must think about how to fight back.
@ Kokolo: Actually, I think Orwell would be crying and saying, "I told you so. Why didn't you listen?"
Yes, he is probably crying, as we are going to, not for the music, but for a lot of things in life we thought are free. Let's see, peole think they own the land, water is already f...ed, when do you think they will sell us sunbeams or parcel of air. I must stop before this goes too far. Good luck with backuping.
What angers me the most is that the only they want get rid blogs like this one and Global Groove is because it promotes African music more than American or English speaking music. Most Americans have dismay of African music because it is too advanced and it has so much uniqueness especially Congolese music.
But don't worry Rhythm Connection. You will win because these fools will realize that the importance of African music.
Property rights do not trump other rights. They are the rights on which all the other rights are predicated --- unless you think state-owned "public" media guarantees free speech, for just one example.
You do understand that giving away music performed by living musicians deprives them of the fruits of their labor? Or that a compilation produced by someone with the expertise to find the music, assemble it, get it remastered, and produced for sale deprives him of his labor?
It might behoove you to turn off the music every once in a while and read some books. I recommend Hayek to start.
And forget the nonsense from posters trying to make you feel good and bloviating about Orwell without understanding him.
You know right from wrong. And you know what some people were doing wasn't right.
Although I was inclined to delete this comment because it is easy to spout anonymously, I thought it might be interesting to respond. I'll ignore the snarky insinuations about relative knowledge and the patronizing attribution of morals, which only reflect the author's smug arrogance. My focus in this blog is music, and I admit it is something of an obsession, yet my path to this obsession passed through post-graduate development economics studies and years working in underdeveloped countries. I had to laugh at the reference to "'public'" media"; my last job was manager of a community radio station. Yes, I do believe that "public," community-owned radio does provide a tiny space for speech that is excluded or opposed by hegemonic corporate media.
Let's turn to the substance of this comment. I wonder if the author's first language is English? Saying all other rights are derived from (predicated on) property rights is reiterating what I said. We agree on that point. Kings owned everything and had the power to allocate rights according to their whims. Today in most countries, apart from places where kings or other despots continue to rule, corporate-controlled governments allow other rights as convenient for commerce. You apparently side with free-market ideologue Hayek, abhorring the concept of "state-owned" public entities, while embracing the use of state-owned coercive power to protect property rights. I do not give property deistic reverence.
Now turning to music, there still is some agreement between us, and I'll point that out presently. "Giving away music performed by living musicians" is ambiguous because it ignores precisely the commodity status of the music. Usually, and almost always with the music on this blog and others similar, musicians were separated from ownership of the music through a contract. Their intellectual property was "sold" to a corporation, often for a pittance, Distributing their music now, whether sold or "given," usually has no relevance to compensation for "the fruits of their labor." Conversely, a corporation's decision not to distribute a musician's fruit, usually because there is no profit potential, doubly robs a musician of his/her labor. Having already taken ownership of the music, the corporation buries the art and deprives musicians, if they are living, of the "resume" they need to successfully market their ongoing creative products.
Principled producers of compilations, which I think includes most of them, hope to direct income to the musicians, either directly through retained royalty arrangements or through re-exposure to potential consumers of their current work. Some compilation producers are impelled explicitly by the desire to direct compensation, fair-trade-like, directly to musicians.
Where I agree with you in terms of music distribution, Anonymous, is about distributing in-print and even new albums for free via the internet or for a fee in market stalls. That is called "piracy," and it has had a disastrous impact on music throughout the world. Piracy does rob musicians of the "fruits of their labor," and in fact it has devastated the entire music industry. Many companies that produced the recordings that catalyzed my addiction have collapsed. Recently I reviewed a new CD release from a small record company, and as I posted it I found that another blog site had posted the entire album! Those are blogs sites I do not list on my site, and I have little sympathy for their disappearance. Yet copyright infringements are not usually that evident, and while some people deify profits and wealth and the "free market" capitalism that makes them possible, others do not share that religion.
Well said. I wish Anonymous had the guts to post under a real name. The reference to Hayek is laughable. A tree is known by the fruit it bears, and Hayek's tree, no matter how impeccable in theory, has created the fruit of enslavement for 99% of the planet by the affluent few. The fight over access to diverse and uplifting music is but a skirmish in the bigger fight over human freedom, but it is part of the struggle as it was in an earlier struggle against racism in the U.S.
Well said, my friend, you told off that silly capitalist superbly! I would sugest HE reads some books...
Keep on keeping on...
We shall defeat them one by one!
Mike
Slovenia
The frist anonymous is another idiot who shows what happens when you rely too much on western music. They whine about rights for artists. What the hell is wrong with selling albums. That is a big sin. Seriously. That is proof of the goal really it is. It is only for people who promote non AMERICAN and WESTERN MUSIC which many I can listen too. This fool is just another person who knows nothing about African music. People who know African music like myself know this is an agenda to get rid of African music.
@: FPK: I do not think we need to attribute to this situation or that ideologue, the desire to eliminate African music. Personally I think that African music is the basis for nearly all the world’s music, and therefore it would be impossible to erase it. Your observation suggests a racist impulse, whereas I believe that our economic system, centered on profit, provides a simpler explanation. The companies that for a time judged it profitable to publish African music, even to promote it beyond country borders, did so. Or perhaps better said, people moved by passion for the music have tried and continue to hope that they can produce these recordings without going broke.
While the explanation is simple, the situation is complex. Great bursts of recordings in African countries and elsewhere have occurred when they could be sold profitably within a culture connected to the music. Some people got rich, but two things undermined this profitability. First, piracy diminished the market size for producers, and it became more difficult or impossible to meet production and distribution costs, not to mention make a profit. Secondly, in many countries the majority of the population has become more impoverished as the inherent inequality of global capitalism has become ever more evident. Again, the market collapses and recordings diminish or disappear. And by the way, building a business plan based on selling music to a culture completely disconnected to it is putting a lot of faith into a fickle and ephemeral market.
Clearly it is the system itself that marginalizes both art and the artists, except for those few that serve the whims of the rich. I think that blogs, especially some of those linked on my page, serve as libraries or museums of “lost and found” sounds. Perhaps it’s over grandiose and virtuous to say, but to some extent these blogs are preserving the cultural heritage of many countries. Wouldn’t it be great if we could coalesce, say, the complete history of Congolese popular music, and make it available for free to anyone/everyone in the Congos?
Thanks for all the interesting comments and the discussion that ensued. Thanks FPK and Kokolo for making several good points in your recent comments (that are not posted). I've decided to close comments and move on, and continue further debate, if you wish, through email.
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