Danger: Music Law on the way

«With strong consensus, the Music Law in the Senate«, Reports the site News Argentine National Congress. It is very likely that on September 28 the Senate will pass another law that will strengthen the legal harassment of internet users. The bill is driven by the senator Eric Calcagno, from the bench of the Front for Victory, among other senators.

Public money, private profit.

Seven times the word “subsidy” appears in the text of the Draft Law of the National Institute of Music (INAMU), the word "consideration", only one. In effect, while the project regulates and foresees the way in which vouchers, credits and subsidies coming largely from state funds, nothing contemplates on mechanisms of consideration to the benefits received. On the contrary, lPublic resources will often be transformed into private goods (as in the production of a phonogram), protected by the penal code, and by the institute itself; if there is any doubt:

"The INAMU's functions will be: […] v) To elaborate policies aimed at eradicating illegal reproductions of phonograms and / or videograms and clandestine or unauthorized digital communications."

That is, You, me, and in particular the musicians who are the most voracious consumers of music, we will have a new actor, "the INAMU", which will join the constellation of organizations such as CAPIF, SADAIC, Argentores or Legal Software, which dedicate their resources to legal harassment of social practices installed long ago : share.

And last but not least, to share phonograms and / or videograms produced from public resources! The cost of financing is socialized, while its product is privatized: the rights to the music produced are exclusive to the producer, the performer or the author, without any minimum commitment to the public.

Shouldn't, on the contrary, demand greater guarantees of access to the goods that the public is helping to finance? The same law is clear when it comes to broadcasting live music and making it reach the sectors with the least possibility of access:

"The area of ​​cultural-social promotion will aim at actions that are directly related to the promotion of cultural and social events linked to a musical event, allowing access to music for low-income sectors that do not have the possibility of participation."

Why is the immaterial field different? In this area, it seems that the social perspective is subversive, and as in the old nineties, private property is sacred. Musicians must be well indoctrinated, the project also says:

"Promote among musicians the knowledge of the scope of intellectual property, collective management rights institutions, their rights as workers, as well as those institutions that defend their interests and rights."

What if the "area of ​​cultural-social promotion" also established some other form of alternative licensing, which would help both the promotion of the music produced, as well as the public access to those resources? Have they found out what has been happening in the remote BrazilHave they found out about Fora do Eixo?

Musicians criminalized by musicians

The paradox is that it is those musicians who are marginalized from the commercial circuit, who benefit the most from new technologies, and who are most exposed to legal harassment: be it P2P networks, music publishing software, or web platforms to upload and download music and video ...What musicians don't download abundant music online, or do they buy homemade copies of records? How many independent recording studios have proper licenses for the software they use? How many Pro Tools "Legal" feed the music under? Will INAMU join Software Legal in the repression of crime?

"There is a part of me that perceives that the illegal exchange of music by P2P is just a more sophisticated version of what we did in the 80s with home tapes" he said Ed O'Brien by Radiohead. Undoubtedly, since the first technologies that facilitated access to music through personal copies appeared, like cassettes, the same musicians were the first to take advantage of them, especially at the beginning of their careers.

"One is a musician and also, in addition to producing, copies music" stated recently in Página / 12 Lolo Fuentes, guitarist for Miranda !. In the same way that writers are the most frequent visitors to libraries, where books, no matter how much copyright they have, can be read without paying a peso, the musicians who are intended to benefit from this law, are the first to take advantage of "illicit reproductions of phonograms and / or videograms", "clandestine or unauthorized digital communications" —and let's add, illegal copies of software— to access the music they need to listen to and the digital instruments they need to use: these resources constitute the materialization of the music libraries to which they access.

The canon with lambskin

The subtle divergences between the independent musicians, and the officers, more than a matter of substance, is a subtle nuance in the tone of the speech: if we visit, for example, the UMI site We are not going to find anything about alternative forms of licensing and distribution that are a little more appropriate to the reality that a musician has to live in the current context. On the contrary, the difference between one and the other, as was made clear in this conference, is that some want to impose their laws by force, and others agree a little more.

A first draft of this same project of the Institute of Music, back in 2007, was the one that generated the first attempt at digital canon, which put everyone on alert

"Create the Fund for the Promotion of Culture [...] It will be made up of the amounts collected by the implementation of a canon for any object that allows the storage, recording and / or reproduction of music and images."

Now in 2011 the door has not been completely closed, among the financing mechanisms of the INAMU it is foreseen:

"The Financing Fund shall be created, which will be administered by INAMU and which will be made up of the following resources: […] l) Specific taxes that for the purposes of this Law may be created in the future."

Can you guess for what type of tax the next INAMU lobby will be to secure its financing?

The news reads: "In today's meeting, Filmus stated that" the financing that the Institute of Music will have will have to be carefully analyzed and remarked that "greater efforts should be made to find new forms of financing." Fimus was another of the promoters of the digital canon in 2009, what forms of financing are you thinking about?

It should not be forgotten that many of the measures that provide a framework for the criminalization of users, musicians, students or librarians, sneak surreptitiously into laws that seem to point in another direction: another institute, that of the book, is a clear example , together with the bombastic "Law for the Promotion of Books and Reading", whose underlying objective was to add publishers as plaintiffs to initiate legal cases ... mainly against readers who encouraged reading through photocopies or exchange of books on the Internet . Also the "Sustainable Economy Law", later known as the Sinde Law, was a project full of progressive measures, where it was sneaked in as an accessory, a section that established an administrative body to close websites without clear judicial supervision. As can be seen, you have to be careful, you start talking about noble ends, and you end up criminally prosecuting a university professor for creating digital libraries. Hopefully this bill, gets rid of the burden in time.

Source: Right to Read