Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 A Venetian Operatic Contract of 1714
- 2 What Choirs Also Sang: Aspects of Provincial Music Publishing in Late-nineteenth-century England
- 3 The Modernisation of London Concert Life around 1900
- 4 Debussy, Durand et Cie: A French Composer and His Publisher (1884–1917)
- 5 Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979): The Teacher in the Marketplace
- 6 Copyright as a Component of the Music Industry
- 7 Illegality and the Music Industry
- 8 The Tarnished Image? Folk ‘Industry’ and the Media
- 9 Collective Responsibilities: The Arts Council, Community Arts and the Music Industry in Ireland
- 10 Paying One's Dues: The Music Business, the City and Urban Regeneration
- 11 Learning to Crawl: The Rapid Rise of Music Industry Education
- Index of Personal Names
7 - Illegality and the Music Industry
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 A Venetian Operatic Contract of 1714
- 2 What Choirs Also Sang: Aspects of Provincial Music Publishing in Late-nineteenth-century England
- 3 The Modernisation of London Concert Life around 1900
- 4 Debussy, Durand et Cie: A French Composer and His Publisher (1884–1917)
- 5 Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979): The Teacher in the Marketplace
- 6 Copyright as a Component of the Music Industry
- 7 Illegality and the Music Industry
- 8 The Tarnished Image? Folk ‘Industry’ and the Media
- 9 Collective Responsibilities: The Arts Council, Community Arts and the Music Industry in Ireland
- 10 Paying One's Dues: The Music Business, the City and Urban Regeneration
- 11 Learning to Crawl: The Rapid Rise of Music Industry Education
- Index of Personal Names
Summary
Music and the Law
The starting point of this chapter is straightforward: the music industry is dependent on the law. All business in capitalist societies is dependent, of course, on the law: on enforceable contracts and on markets whose ‘freedom’ is a matter of regulation. But the music industry is especially dependent on the law. Some of the implications of this have already been described by Dave Laing in his sophisticated account of ‘The Text of the Law’ that defines the copyright system. But copyright is only one of the legal issues with which contemporary music-makers have to be concerned, and I can best illustrate the peculiar importance of the law for everyday musical life journalistically. While I was writing the first draft of this chapter in autumn 2000, I noted the following:
• The issue for 30 August of Music and Copyright (a high-priced fortnightly subscription newsletter for music industry executives and investors) carried a press release from the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society detailing its anti-piracy actions in the UK in the first six months of 2000. These began with a raid on a house in Caerphilly in which five hundred CDs were taken and finished with a seizure of 2,500 mp3 files at a computer fair in Hull. In total, during this period, sixty people were arrested and goods worth £2.7 million confiscated.
• The September 2000 issue of Business Affairs Report (a quarterly supplement of the British trade paper Music Week) carried five stories:
Massive Attack talk to lawyers over Tories’ conference tune. ‘Massive Attack have not and will never support the Conservative Party or their policies,’ the statement says. ‘Their music has been used by the Tories without their knowledge or permission.’ Conservative central office has made light of the usage, but the law states that permission must be obtained from the copyright owner before compositions can be appropriated for specific use – for instance, in connection with a political campaign.
IFPI litigation expert to lead piracy team. This is a story about personnel changes in the International Federation of Phonographic Industries, the music business's international trade body. ‘This appointment reflects the growing importance of plant litigation in IFPI's work, and the increasing effectiveness of our strategy to make the CD pirates pay for their infringements.’
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Business of Music , pp. 195 - 216Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2002