Elvis Costello may be the greatest songwriter working today. He put out one of the best albums of his long career just a few months ago, The Delivery Man.
Still, Elvis Costello has become a tool of the record industry, having signed an amicus brief to submit to the US Supreme Court supporting the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences' lawsuit attempting to shut down all the P2P networks.
You expect this out of some of these acts. Jimmy Buffet and especially the Eagles have always been major tools. Then there are the #(*$ Dixie Chicks, from whom no one expects anything but self-serving nonsense.
Still, it's disappointing to see this from Elvis Costello. He once raged against the machine. "I want to bite the hand that feeds me. I want to bite that hand so badly. I want to make them wish they'd never SEEN me."
Yet here he is now, LICKING the hand that feeds him. Here where it actually means something, he's throwing his weight behind the industry directly against the consumers and fans. He's ready to help the industry hacks shut down innovation and the beautiful abundance of the internet over thinking that he should make a few more nickels.
Here's the top thing that's come along ever to really shake the corrupt industry powers that be- and the author of "Radio Radio" wants to help them destroy it.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - bmarkey
That's really odd, given that he put this message right above the FBI "Anti-Piracy" notice on the back cover of The Delivery Man:
"The artist does not endorse the following warning. The FBI doesn't have his home phone number and he hopes that they don't have yours."
Why the about-face, I wonder?
2 - Dave Nalle
I lay it on the corrupting influence of Burt Bacharach - working with him would make anyone sell out.
Dave
3 - Distorted Angel
Elvis has been on record for quite some ttime now with regard to illegal file-sharing. He regards it as theft, so this shouldn't come as a huge surprise. His stand on this is actually rather odd, since he himself has said that most of his income is derived from his catalog, not from his record sales, which have never been sky-high to begin with (and I would imagine that touring brings in a few dollars, too).
4 - Mark Saleski
it's a real shame.
al's right though, The Delivery Man is killer.
5 - ClubhouseCancer
"most of his income is derived from his catalog, not from his record sales"
Huh?
6 - Aaman
Like JCPenney, I assume:)
7 - Distorted Angel
Geesh, guys, it means that he makes most of his money off of the publishing rights to his incredibly vast catalog of songs.
8 - Tom Johnson
File me under "completely flabbergasted." Why would Costello put that comment on the back of his CD and then stand behind something like this? What a goddamned hypocrite.
9 - Eric Olsen
"publishing catalog"
10 - Distorted Angel
Yeah. That's what I meant.
11 - ClubhouseCancer
Oh, I thought you meant his back catalog. BTW, I think Elvis is right. Illegal downloading is just stealing music, and I don't do it. Of course, I am in a unique position (media) in that I get every CD I could ever want (and thousands I don't want) for free, so my opinions on this topic are atypical. But it seems to me that in the absence of any real way for musicians to get paid for illegally downloaded tracks, it's just stealing from them.
12 - Eduard
Well, let's not be so harsh if Costello wants to protect artists' rights, that's cool with me. But I think at stake here is not so much the artist rights but the publishing house rights. The artist only gets about 10% royalties, and while I can see how piracy can put a dent in that income, most of the people who like real music (as in Costello, as opposed to the Eagles or the Dixie Chix) will also gladly pay for it. I know for one I'll gladly spend every penny on good stuff that comes out BECAUSE there is so little of it. So the main concern here is how to dupe the consumer into buying more crap, not in preventing sophisticated listeners from sharing music that they truly love, since that's pretty damn impossible anyway. Just my 2c...
13 - Mark Saleski
Illegal downloading is just stealing music
and this is the crux of the entire argument about downloading.
firstly, is it actually stealing?
and then, is it illegal?
circling around all of this is the question of does/did downloading hurt artists? the answer to that has generally been a resounding "no".
14 - ClubhouseCancer
Yes, the music business is totally unfair, and buying their shitty, often recycled product (I'm looking at you, Henley!) puts money in the hands of awful people (see Q-Tip's rule #4,080). But that doesn't mean we can steal it.
If the Gap opened in your town without adequate security, would you steal a shirt just because you could? What about if you knew that the people who made the shirt (let's say Guatemalan kids, for example) were mistreated and didn't stand to benefit from the sale?
These aren't rhetorical, BTW. I think there is a real argument to be made that stealing the Gap shirt is OK morally. I don't buy that argument myself, but there is certainly a valid point. Does the analogy hold?
15 - bhw
I think that whether or not it's actually hurting the artists is separate from whether or not it's illegal. Anyway, it can be argued pretty well that it's hurting the copyright owners, which usually isn't the artist. [Yes, I've heard the counter-arguments, too.]
It is illegal, according to our current copyright laws. The copyright owner gets to dictate your use of/access to the material.
I think that the music and movie industries should change with the times, but the law seems to be on their side at the moment. The copyright laws should probably change with the times, too.
16 - ClubhouseCancer
And yes, Mark, I believe that downloading doesn't hurt every artist, and often helps. (I often download free things and later buy the whole album.) But the artist must be the one to decide, not the consumer.
In my above analogy: "After I stole the shirt, I realized how great red shirts really are, and I've since bought a bunch from you."
And again, Mark, since I have no dog in this fight, my opinions are screwed up. 'm not black-and-white about it, but I think if I want people to sample my music for free, there's a way to offer it as such.
If the Gap wants to give stuff away as bait to make folks buy more stuff, that's their prerogative, and no one else's.
And I'm unaware of any argument that claims illegal downloading is not stealing or that it's not illegal.
17 - Mark Saleski
the gap/physical product comparison doesn't quite work as the one key with downloading music is this assumption:
a song downloaded is one that would otherwise have been purchased.
not true.
as an example, i've purchased several copies of Dark Side Of The Moon, first on vinyl, then on cd, and then again on vinyl.
but if i download "The Great Gig In The Sky" today, i'm stealing.
don't think so.
18 - bhw
I think that's where the industry needs to come up with some new ideas about what it means to purchase and "own" a song, record, etc.
Unfortunately, I think it might require some sort of tracking DB. OTherwise, how would the record company know that you've already paid for that song on a different distribution format?
19 - ClubhouseCancer
But, Mark, the item is OFFERED for sale. The other part is marketing, and not the consumer's business.
"No one would have bought that red shirt anyway, so I stole it."
It's tempting to rationalize it, but it's still getting something for nothing. What's the argument that it's not stealing?
20 - Eric Olsen
I've gone back and forth on this and now dont know what I really think, but the "stealing" argument can really only apply to physical items that once taken are no longer available to be sold. Downloading without permission, legally, is a violation of copyright law, but it isn't "stealing." It may be morally the equivalent of stealing, as in the biblical sense, but it isn't the same thing, legally, as walking out of the Gap with a shirt you didn't pay for.
21 - Distorted Angel
But if you have the option of buying the CD in a store, and you now "own" the music because you've illegally downloaded it, you have something you should have paid for but didn't.
22 - Tom Johnson
Here's a real world example of why filesharing is good:
I like owning "the real deal" if I like a CD. When Wilco released Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, I bought it. Early the next year, they offered a downloadable EP if you owned YHF. I did, but I wanted a real CD, and knew that the Australian "tour edition" of YHF contained a bonus CD with those same songs on it. I bought it. Two years later I own an Ipod and when it came time to rip YHF, I found that I could not. Why? Because Nonesuch in Australia uses some kind of asinine copy-protection (which, of course, only hurts the people who buy the CD, but that's beside the point here.) Long story short, I couldn't rip that disc, of the EP, and had to fire up Soulseek to track down the album and the EP (because my Australian version of the album does not contain the code used to download the EP tracks from the Wilco site - ASININE.) So I had to be illegal to do something very legal in the US.
And I can't possibly count the number of albums that I've bought because I tracked down some mp3s to check out. It's a LOT. An issue the industry is worried about, but they don't want to talk about, is the other side of that argument: I've also found out that I really, really disliked a lot of things I've downloaded, and then didn't buy those CDs.
23 - Eric Olsen
DA and TJ, you're both right, hence my current ambivalence
24 - ClubhouseCancer
I don't follow, Eric. Seems like you're creating a new category of product out of whole cloth, one that cannot be stolen.
If I stole a lithograph from an artist, he could always just print another one, right?
Steal: "To take the property of another without permission or right."
This is hard for people who get everything for free to relate to, but that's really a very selective definition, Eric.
If you hacked into a for-pay website and got the content for free, is THAT stealing? After all, the product is still out there for others.
25 - Eric Olsen
this isn't my opinion, this is the law: downloading for personal use isn't theft, it is a civil copyright violation. That's why the RIAA and MPAA have been suing all these people, who would have been arrested and charged with criminal offenses for "stealing." Shoplifting is stealing, it is a criminal offense; unauthorized downloading is copyright violation, not a criminal offense