FOR CREATIVE PEOPLE

FOR CREATIVE PEOPLE

There are some basic truths about creativity:

1. Whatever you’re doing will be largely

incomprehensible to just about everybody.

2. Nothing is straightforward, unless you’re talking to

someone who can get things done.

3. There are more scams and parasites in media than

anywhere else.

4. The artist is generally battered by everything,

simultaneously, usually while doing the most difficult part of

any job, and always at the most inopportune times.

5. Everybody and every second can be a pain in the

butt.

So, in the interests of making life a little easier for the poor

bastards trying to achieve something, this page is devoted

to useful resources.

THIS REQUIRES A LITTLE

PATIENCE, SO BORROW

SOME, IF YOU’VE RUN

OUT. YOU NEED TO GET

THESE THINGS RIGHT.

This page has got a long way to go before it's got all the

links and resources it needs. But it's a start, and covers

some basics.

Believe me, you do

not

need, either as an

artist or as a human being, the kind of obscene grief you

can get from industries devoted to nothing but money.

NEW:

ENGLISH USAGE

Given the amount of pontification

on the subject... 16 November 2006

Copyright

There is nothing more important, or more irritating, than intellectual property

rights. Few things

in media are

more expensive, too, so it’s worth learning

this stuff.

Currently, global copyright is a hybrid of the old paper technology

and

some dogged if vague attempts to deal with the new media.

TAKE

NOTHING FOR GRANTED

. Every facet of the issues is turning into case

law.

The Free Expression Policy Project, through NYU, is an excellent and very necessary

introduction to the broader perspectives of copyright laws and freedom of expression. THIS

DOES AFFECT YOU, whatever you do, and whatever you say. The whole theory of freedom of

speech boils down to what you can do, and what people can prevent you from doing.

t's as

basic

as breathing.

Anything can be copied. There is no such thing as copy-proof, particularly in music, and on the

net. That’s just a physical fact. It is ludicrously easy. You need to establish clear ownership of your

intellectual property rights. That still doesn’t stop copying, but it does prevent your stuff from

being sold to a large extent, because nobody in their right minds doing legitimate business will

touch infringements. It’s just too messy.

The Free Expression Policy Project makes a case regarding the legitimate use of materials for

satire and expression, and the legitimate right to access those materials. It also comments very

pithily on the issues regarding copyright-associated laws which effectively muzzle expression.

These laws are heavily property oriented

They

contain the potential for a series of damaging

shots at

freedom of speech

if they're used that way

, and should be distrusted accordingly

those with opinions they like to be able to express

The possibilities look quite nasty

The US Copyright Office

is one of the main drivers of global practices for copyright. Their site is

thorough, the information useful,

particularly about fundamentals,

and their formal processes look

pretty meticulous. This is the

way the machine works, and any artist needs to know that.

Regulation, when it works, can do a

lot to simplify things that can get way too complex. US

and in the interests of seeing the problems, this is the

status quo.

IMPORTANT NOTE: THE US COPYRIGHT OFFICE DOES NOT, IN ANY CONTEXT,

ENDORSE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES

THIS SITE. IT IS NOT IMPLIED THAT ANY

OPINIONS, ADVICE OR INFORMATION GIVEN ON THIS SITE IS SOURCED FROM

ENDORSED BY

THAT AGENCY.

published anywhere.published Your own national copyright office will probably be able to help to some
extent, but anywhere.extent, but remember this is now a very small world, and it's hard to avoid the
ballpark.

Your own national copyright office will probably be able to help to some extent, but remember this is
now a very small world, and it's hard to avoid the ballpark.

Writing - Publishing Scams

For some reason, there are plenty of people prepared to waste

creative people's

time

and money

on pointless exercises

. Writers, in particular, need to be extremely

cautious. (This is

from experience.) The basic routine is payment for “services”

related

to publishing your work

. Legitimate publishers

and agents don’t work like that. They

don’t need to

do things like that, and they have nothing to gain

In one memorable case I saw a

n Australian

firm charging $250

per phone call

, for

writers to ring up

about their own books… sound like fun?

This, you do not, and never will, need.

Writer Bewar

is a good website run by writers,

which maintains a regular supply of information regarding things ranging from

outright scams to non-payment of royalties. There’s a lot of useful, fundamental,

specific, discussion of principles and practices which really ought to be taught in

colleges. Things are messy enough without new generations of uninformed people

getting caught in the blender.

Writer Beware

contains a very thorough collection of

links, and if you send them a question, they do respond promptly

ANYBODY you're

dealing with, check with them first,

particularly if you found that person on the net

VANITY PUBLISHING

/SELF PUBLISHING

is another wonderful idea which

also

achieves not only the

removal from your person of a lot of money (you’d only

have spent it on food, anyway)

but also the

truly worthless production of things which

may never see the inside of a retailer.

Note the contrast between people actually

working in real sales, and this strange blue

sky approach to marketing. Suspicion

bordering on paranoia is probably the best

place to start talking about selling your

stuff. One of the most undersold, uninspiring,

uninformative sites I've ever seen was a

vanity site. Even a coroner wouldn't have

looked at it twice. They also claimed to be on

major internet

shopping sites, and I couldn't find them.

New meaning to the word

"services", being "anything we can claim to have done that

we can charge you for".

BLOGS

are yet another way of avoiding peace of mind.

You will find that many paid

blogs also require that you sign over your copyright to the material they publish

. Some

writers do more writing than eating, but the fact is that writers tend to incorporate their

own commercial content material,

partly because of writing in their own normal styles

in blogs.

The result is that you can be literally writing your own stuff for someone else,

and have a signed contract giving it away.

I don't know if there's any case law, but the

prognosis would be "pretty iffy

at best

SEARCH

whoever you’re thinking of sending material. Thanks to the

orld

ide

hinge, any horror stories will be there in some form. There can also be contradictory

articles from publishers or agents trying to spin or defuse negative comments, so use

some judgment about what you get. NOTE: When writing these horror stories,

remember that you don’t have to defame anyone or accuse them of crimes.

Don’t give

them any ammunition to use against you.

It hurts your own case. Express your views

as an opinion, based on your experiences. You’re not a court, and some of these

scams aren’t actually illegal, they’re just real, disgusting, nuisances

If there’s one topic about which I have invented a whole new language while cursing in several

languages, the music industry is it. One of the milder terms is “slumf

kers”,

with all the implications of

ancestral discretion that implies,

and there’s a range in the

other languages, too. As you might have

gathered from the site, I’m slightly musical, and if you ever want

to be cured of eating, I could literally do

a book on things that would make you never want to eat again. (I

don’t usually talk about it. It’s ancient

history, the scar tissues are about

1970

miles deep, and it’s best

left alone. Let's just say I'm still

extremely pissed off, (and unpaid) decades later.)

However-

1. People do swipe material.

2. There is an ignoble tradition of not paying for anything. (In fairness, it does depend on who

you’re

dealing with, but it’s not a good idea to be guessing about payment. So don’t.)

3. You need to be incredibly careful, and make sure your own stuff doesn’t infringe. (It’s time

consuming, but worth it.)

4. Costs are incredible, if you do things that way, and have to depend on other people for

production.

There’s a word.

Depend

. Musicians can be truly thankful for the current generation of gizmos. You can

now do a lot of things which took an army of people in the old days. You can do some competitive

costing and keep your own outlays under control. Even if it’s someone else’s money, nobody in

production is a registered charity, and they charge like it, and that can affect things rather nastily….

Particularly if you overrun your contract money. You’re really paying for someone’s opinion of their own

work, most of the time, but that tends to run into a lot of digits. If you want to depend on anything,

depend

on your own judgment about how to get the things done, and how much they cost.

Thanks to digital technology, any sound byte can now be analyzed and compared to another. So real

can

tell you if you’re infringing, or if someone’s infringing you.

Modern music and recording production have a few pitfalls, though. Things like sequencers, wave

generators, and other common usage equipment have their own idiosyncrasies, not least of which is

using standard rhythms and patterns. These can affect times and pitch, and surprise, surprise, you

wind

up with something which sounds and looks very much like someone else’s property.

The electronic sounds aren’t usually copyright unless they’re custom made patches. That’s really the

problem. Original digital sounds were pretty lousy, ironically a lot worse than some of the old analog

sounds. The issue, then and now, is that they’re standardized to the point that quite literally everything

using much the same mixes and balances, because they’re using pretty much the same equipment.

the scope for saying that something is a breach of copyright is therefore a lot greater. Talk about

“generic” product. That’s why, and it’s dangerou

MUSICAL IDENTITY CRISIS, ANYONE?

Slight digression here, but it relates to copyright in a very insidious way. It’s bad marketing to be

mistaken for other artists, even in theory. If you really want to be anonymous, sound like everyone else,

and you won’t need to join that monastery.

There never was a second Beatles, because nobody ever needed one. (The whole idea dropped

dead

in about 1964.) The copies just didn't work. This is another side to the copyright issue, and it’s a

genuine

bastard. The greatest misconception in marketing history is that “Because you liked that,

you’ll like this.” It was always wrong. No music lover is likely to mistake some rehash for one of their

favorites. The industry didn't figure it out, and has stuck to the same basic sales routines. This is a

culture

of copying, and it doesn't take much effort to create problems.

Marketing methods combined with same-production methods can affect copyright. I know of at least

one

band that split because they were arguing more about technology than music. So who’s playing

the

music? Given this hideous generic garbage, it might as well be a machine. That also means more

of the

same, literally. The danger is that "generic" to this degree also means sounding virtually

identical.

try to remove

your rights from you.

Frankly, I find a lot of current music is playing far too safe. So much so it’s just not worth listening to.

I’ve heard most of the “innovations” before, too, and I have some trouble believing that just because

something’s written in a Flat key it’s avant-garde. Slop Pop is just that. Think of all the potentially great

female singers doing remakes of “Ooo-ooooohhhhh” and you see what a total waste this crap is.

Puberty

isn’t supposed to be that dull, and definitely not that unimaginative.

There is a reason for all this non-innovation, though, and it’s largely in the how the culture of the market

affects the audience. One of the reasons that lack of identity is becoming such an issue in music is that

the audiences don’t really get a word in, except when buying. The other end of the ritual, which

generally

doesn’t attach any significance to what it’s selling other than the sales figures, doesn’t get it.

Never has,

by the way.

Fortunately/miraculously, the market has also now succeeded, somehow, in totally losing track of an

entire generation of younger listeners. They actually can’t find them, and even if they do, don’t know

what

they’re doing. This is a huge credit to the current youth market, that they’ve escaped this Gerbil

Employment Agency called global media. The very first generation to finally get rid of the bastards. It’s

real triumph for the human race.

If there was ever a green light to musicians to try something worth doing, this would be it. This is also

the

cue to be yourself as a musician. OK, maybe you’re not Mozart. Neither was Beethoven, Purcell,

Handel,

Chopin, Elgar… What a musician really contributes to music is identity and character.

For the sake of whatever God you know, please do that.

The whole idea of public domain means “out of copyright”. In theory, anyone can use it. In practice, don’

assume that just because someone says something’s “public domain” that it is.

Also don’t drive home on the freeway blindfolded.

Some things are public domain, some aren’t.

You don’t have to guess about this. Copyright in mass media has a lineage which can be traced pretty

reliably. Say you’re looking for an old TV series. The probability is that even if the original distributor

and/or rights owner has offloaded the material, or merged, or gone bankrupt, or whatever, somebody

did

own the copyrights, and those interests did have to be formally made over to someone, if they still

exist.

(Sometimes they aren’t, and that makes things a lot stickier. They may, for example, be part of an

estate,

or some third party’s asset. You might search for everything but probate or liquidation while

looking for

where the rights went.

Professional help is a good idea.

)

Sometimes there's no owner, but the rights should still exist, and should have been assigned.

In this

situation you can also get a real grey area where the rights are in limbo. The rights, unless assigned,

are

still

potentially

owned by someone

, and the reasonable assumption is that the person entitled has

a claim

to those rights

The fact is that anything published has an inherent copyright, and you should

know

that.

In this case, for “copyright”, read

also

“property” and it makes a lot more sense.

Rights, including subsidiary rights, are assets, literally, commodities. They do usually have a value, and

tend to show up on the books and in valuations of media companies to prove

that accountancy isn’

t all boring, or some mindless pursuit of accuracy and verifiable financial statements.

The deadly side of this situation is that in this state the rights aren’t visible to the public or the industry,

there's no current product, like an out of print book. This particularly applies to older material, which

commonly considered “public domain”, and frequently isn't. So in all innocence, you can take a nice

walk

in the minefield to discover that someone thinks you can pay for their retirement.

So-

Check

everything

Get professional advice

. Contact the last definite owner of the rights, if at all

possible. You may even be able to acquire the rights.

The idea is that you establish a legitimate claim to your use of the material. “Public domain” can mean

much the same thing as “back of a truck” at the wrong times, like in court hearings. It’s about as good a

defence, too.