Music industry steals musician's copyright

The music industry is always complaining about "copyright theft". Except when they do it, of course...

Which brings me to the case of Edwyn Collins, the Scottish musician whose most famous hit is probably A Girl Like You. He has been barred from uploading his own music to MySpace, because the music industry erroneously say they own the copyright:

Edwyn Collins has been barred from streaming his own song through MySpace. Management for the former Orange Juice frontman have been unable to convince the website that they own the rights to A Girl Like You, despite the fact that they, er, do.

"MySpace are not equipped to deal with the notion that anyone other than a major [label] can claim a copyright," complained Grace Maxwell, Collins's wife and manager. Maxwell made the unpleasant discovery after trying to upload A Girl Like You, the singer's 1994 hit, to his own MySpace page. "Lo and behold," she wrote in a blog, "it would not upload. I was told Edwyn was attempting to breach a copyright and he was sent to the Orwellian MySpace copyright re-education page. Quite chilling, actually."

Worse, the music industry has actually been selling music that Collins owns the copyright to:

A Girl Like You is available FOR SALE all over the internet. Not by Edwyn, by all sorts of respectable major labels whose licence to sell it ran out years ago and who do not account to him. Attempting to make them cease and desist would use up the rest of my life. Because this is what they do and what they've always done.

This is the same music industry that's been pushing for massive fines and internet disconnections for people who illegally copy music. They should be fined at the same rate: Jammie Thomas-Rassett was fined $80,000 per infraction, times say 10,000 downloads, would come to $800 million. Or if they were fined at the statutory maximum for $250,000 per infringement, that would be $2.5 billion. And of course the industry should receive the same level of punishment for all the other musicians they have been ripping off.

Will Lord Mandelson go after these serial copyright infringers? Don't hold your breath. In their election manifesto, Labour promised they would govern "for the many, not the few", so you'd think that when they had to choose between seven million filesharers, and a few rich music corporations, it'd be a no brainer. And it was a no brainer: Labour unerringly chose the side of their rich friends, in the process giving millions of British voters a slap in the face.

As Collins' wife and manager, Grace Maxwell, says:

Andrew Loog Oldham said that getting ripped off (by the industry) was your entrance fee to the music business of the sixties, so get over it. He's right and things have not changed. We are very over it, but nonetheless aware of who the biggest bootleggers around are. It's not the filesharers. Personally, we've always loved bootlegs.

But anyway, as an earlier post said, this is not really an argument worth having. The gig's up. You might as well take a position about when you want the sun to come up in the morning. It's over. Now let's get on with working out a wonderful new way for music lovers to enjoy music for free or for a small subscription that makes it legal and easy to hear ANYTHING and allows the artist to reap the rewards of such freedom of access. Viva la revolucion!

 Musicians are waking up to the fact that the music industry is their enemy, not their friend.