Don't Touch My Usher

[Lightning Rod]

I worry about copyright issues about as much as I worry about drug laws. They are both rated high on the absurdity scale.

The Recording Industry Association of America has sued over ten thousand people, mostly college students, for file sharing. Not one of these cases has come to court, but RIAA has reaped more than thirty million bucks in out-of-court settlements. It's pure intimidation. Much like the drug laws.

I had a friend who was busted with two reefers in 1968. He was sentenced to thirty years in the penitentiary. This was at a time when everyone and their cat on a college campus smoked pot. After he hocked his house and his business and his car and placed the proceeds on the desk of his high-priced attorney, the case was overturned on appeal. The whole exercise had nothing to do with justice, it was pure symbolic intimidation. If they had arrested everyone who smoked pot in that small college town, they would have gone broke building prisons. The same is true today concerning the topic of downloading free music. if RIAA sued everyone who used P2P software, the courts would not have time for rape and murder cases.

The topic of intellectual property has always been a sticky issue for me. There is something in the deepest core of my being that revolts at the concept that one person can own an idea. I've had enough ideas to know that ideas don't come from me, I'm only the radio. The ideas are out there, I just tune into them.

At the same time I am an artist and I define myself by the things that I create, the poems, the songs, the jokes, the books, the pictures. I feel like I own them in a temporary sort of way. They passed though me. They are like my children. When you create something, you give it to the world. No royalties. My children go where they please, where they are wanted and accepted.

But also, as an artist and a creator of intellectual property, I would like to be compensated for my efforts at least enough to continue with them. If I write a song, I give it to the world. But if Marilyn Manson does a cover of it and makes a million bucks, I would expect a share. And if he didn't give it to me I would not resort to the courts, I would just get my Louisville slugger and go break his knees.

And that's what the RIAA is doing now, breaking knees. Of the millions of people who are filesharing music on the internet, RIAA has selected ten-thousand to sue as a symbolic (and profitable) gesture.

But can you own an idea? Ideas are like the Gospel. They are worth nothing unless you give them away. Ideas are different than physical products. The family of the guy who invented the wheel doesn't get a royalty every time Goodyear sells a tire. Edison is long dead and he still lights up our lives. When you buy a light bulb, are you buying a physical object, or the idea that Edison had?

Let's consider a song. When you buy a CD, are you buying the song or are you buying the physical reproduction of the song? If you download a song, should you put 4 cents on your PayPal account for the artist? That's about what an artist gets from a record company for royalties on a copy sold. Suppose you are driving down the street in your car and you hear an Elvis Costello tune on the radio. Did you pay for that? No. Should you send Elvis four cents? No. The radio station that was making advertising money from the play of the record is the party that pays Elvis. And that's the same thing that happens on the internet. When a P2P filesharing exchange happens, nobody is making any money. It's much the same as broadcast radio. The end user (the listener) doesn't pay, the advertiser pays.

Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in the case of Dowling vs US in 1985, "[copyright infringement] does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud...The infringer invades a statutorily defined province guaranteed to the copyright holder alone. But he does not assume physical control over copyright; nor does he wholly deprive its owner of its use."

The Poet's Eye sees that the RIAA is like the DEA, another nazi organization that can't comprehend that times and technologies have changed and that nobody benefits from a clampdown on the flow of dope or information or art. But that doesn't answer my question. Who owns ideas?