That's what the answer should be for filing lawsuits and DMCA (take down) notices. Ignoring copyright abuse is like putting writers in the same position as Kitty Genovese. But it doesn't seem to interest everybody. Just a small circle of people who do the right thing.
That includes Marvin Gaye's estate. That includes Taylor Swift. Also Tom Petty.
Obviously, Gaye's estate saw dollar signs. MILLIONS of them. So they went after Pharrell and Robin Thicke. Petty, more congenial, pretended that it wasn't him, but oh, his managers, or his songwriting agency that decided to tap sensitive Sam Smith on the shoulder and ask for some money. Taylor Swift? Her problem was Spotify, which ignorant fools think is the answer to piracy. The problem? Spotify pays mere pennies while keeping the dollars, so she withdrew her music from their "service."
The hippie-dippie element in the music business has, too often, been "oh, man, like, live and let live." It's all good. Somebody steals from you, just let it be. Take the high road. It probably wasn't intentional, and you don't want to get the reputation for being a killjoy. (After all, Prince, Gene Simmons and others have been attacked by hackers and by "fans" for going after bootleg dealers and Internet pirates. The outcry: "Don't ruin our fun" and "Music should be free!").
One of the excuses these "Freedom" fighters give for chanting "copyright is COPY WRONG," is, aside from a misplaced love of Communism, the notion that "you should give the music away, and make money touring and selling t-shirts." This usually comes from some drone with a dull government office job. This worthy, who gets a pension, huffs at the thought of royalties "for work done long ago." Suggest, "go to work free, and take home some paper clips and paper, and make a few phone calls on office time," and you'd get an indignant, "I should be PAID for MY work."
Not everybody can tour and/or humiliate themselves by manning a little table afterward to sell t-shirts, by the way. One of the fortunate ones who still has a voice and some kind of audience, is Gordon Lightfoot. He recently mounted a new tour, and even did the miserable "spend time doing interviews" routine. One question he got was about the Tom Petty/Sam Smith legal action. He admitted that, yes, he too had been plagiarized. But did he file? No. Why? Because he didn't want to hurt pretty Whitney Houston's feelings.
The interview was with Matt Wake. Let's give credit where it's due, and yes, this IS "fair use," while uploading copyrighted songs to YouTube and taking YouTube monetization money isn't.
An irony is that elsewhere in the interview, Lightfoot mentioned how grateful he was for ROYALTIES. If he was starting out now, maybe he wouldn't be able to support his kids on the ROYALTIES he got from cover versions of his songs. Maybe he wouldn't even be in the business at all, seeing how "pay for play" has dominated the few remaining music venues, and that there are fewer record labels and more people getting mere pennies from Spotify, Amazon and iTunes while piracy remains rampant.
The sad fact is that pirates go after the BIG stars first, then the Gordon Lightfoot types, and lastly, if they can get a promo copy, some truly struggling indie artist. That's what's going on with the blogs, forums and torrents. The BIG stars, with few exceptions (like Taylor Swift) are making so much money, they a) don't want to seem greedy and b) often are so protected they don't even know how much abuse is out there.
If more of them put their clout into convincing lawmakers to strengthen laws that would block pirate websites and force sites such as Google and Ebay to permanently ban repeat offenders, it would benefit everyone. An indie artist asking for a takedown means almost nothing, and often the perps "re-up" and dare that small-timer to spend money on a lawyer to prosecute a case.
Lightfoot should've filed against Whitney Houston's management, if not Houston herself. Who's to say that she didn't know her song was close to his, but shrugged and figured, "I can get away with it," like George Harrison did when told "My Sweet Lord" was too much like "He's So Fine?" Arrogance should not be rewarded, and intentional or not, some deal should be reached when there's an abuse of copyright.
Being hippie-dippie about it, and "the good guy," and easygoing, is bad for business. It's bad all around. The message we see constantly on the Internet is that it's ok to break the rules, and that it's even cool. It's cool to have a dopey name, and run a blog where you daily give away entire albums of music and say "support the artists." It's ok on YouTube for uploaders to shrug and say "I don't own copyright, all rights are with the owner" while taking over the right to give that item away. Ebay routinely allows sellers to state, "sold collector to collector," when such a term should be a red flag.
Lightfoot may have been doing a lot better then than now. In fact, I'd be very surprised if that wasn't the case. Maybe NOW, he'd do the right thing and file if Robin Thicke borrowed too much from one of his songs.
Bad guy? Good guy? That's not the issue. The issue is "it's bad for business. It's bad all around."
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