Copyhype

Collective Soul on Taylor Swift, U2, & Music’s Future — “While digital streaming has been a boon for consumers, it has had a chilling effect on musicians, the majority of whom argue that it has eroded their ability to earn back the money and time they’ve invested in creating their unique song catalogues. [Collective Soul lead singer Ed] Roland offers his take on some of the challenges facing young artists…”

Content Creators Coalition comes to APAP with plea for fair compensation — This week, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters hosted a panel on artist rights issues featuring artists like Rosanne Cash, Marc Ribot, and Melvin Gibbs.

More than 100 Creatives sign letter thanking Senator Leahy for urging credit card companies to cut ties with pirate sites — Over 100 actors, writers, directors, producers, and others applauded the Senator for his work imploring credit card companies to “implement voluntary steps that can prevent their services from being misused to fund pirate websites.”

Involuntary Distribution Business Subsidies — The Dead Kennedy’s East Bay Ray writes “One of the talking points that various tech company commentators, academics and bloggers have used to try to justify companies exploiting an artist’s work without consent (a loophole in safe harbor ) is that it would lessen the barrier for tech companies to start up. The idea is that creators should be required to give something up to facilitate this goal. Business start-ups are all well and good, but to require anyone to involuntarily subsidize a business, internet or otherwise, with something they have put time, effort, money, and skill into is extremely problematic.”

In defense of quality — “The web is working hard to change this—in particular, companies run by web entrepreneurs who so worship the God of Page Views as to drain life of qualitative meaning entirely. It’s all about quantity, all about getting the most people to click a link or like or follow.”

Artist Rights Leaders: Taylor Swift — “When we look back on the last year, there’s probably no one who did more for artist rights than Taylor Swift. She really did not need to take on these issues, she could easily have sat back and let the money roll in. And yet she did.”