The author, his fans and the publisher - the third extra

Starting this topic, I want to apologize in advance to habrazhiteli.
The topic is already utterly tortured, and comments on posts on the “Copyright” blog are being developed according to a repeatedly rehearsed script. I will try not to meet your worst expectations.

1. The reasons for which I took the keyboard

It so happened that I love the work of one not very famous musical group. And some time ago, musicians playing in this group published an open letter to their fans. It strongly hooked me, and from the moment of its reading I had this text brewing, which I am writing now.

2. My attitude to the issue of copyright

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The situation in which the publishers find themselves is quite natural, and more than once it has been discussed here. Guys, your time of trading with carriers and boiling on the “mediation” between the authors and their fans is over. Forget about super profits, stop lobbying for illegitimate laws and abandon attempts to financially try to slow down technical progress. Will not work. We will move to anonymous encrypted networks, we will exchange files - unless the Internet itself is destroyed.

From a human point of view, it makes no difference to buy a book and give it to your son, friend, or little-known person, or your whole family, all your friends, or a thousand strangers on a torrent tracker. Declaring the latter illegal, it is necessary to recognize the illegality of the first points. This is the illegitimacy of the existing copyright laws. Our right to share with our relatives, relatives, friends or strangers the information we have — it is, like the right to breathe, universal. Yes, the authors are financially affected by this, because the coming digital era rejects the previously existing reward schemes. But this fact does not at all justify an attempt to deprive people of another of their right to the free exchange of information.

I have the right, after reading the book, to read it to a friend? And the second? And what is the difference from a LEGAL point of view, how well do I know the person I want to share with? And where is the border between “giving a couple of friends” and “laid out in common”? You either have the right to give the book to any number of other people, or you have no right to give it to anyone . Following established logic, the transfer of a purchased book to a friend / relative is pure piracy.

3. Returning to the topic of the article.

But let us leave alone the publishers and all sorts of "copyright advocates" who somehow feed on the expense of someone's creativity. I did not want to talk about them, but about the very authors who are the creators of the new content. Here and now I want to mention a group that I really like, and which recently posted a manifesto on its website. The essence of the manifesto was as follows:

Dear fans. You download our music from the trackers, and we have nothing to feed the children and pay for an apartment, because the sales of the disks have almost stopped

I found it appropriate to re-deploy their open letter to google docs so as not to overwhelm their site with habraeffect. Who cares - an open letter here . I was very hooked on the letter, and after reading it, I somehow tried to contact the performers, wrote letters ... about this - just below.

I do not aim to advertise someone here. We are talking about enough niche music, and about the group of a low “weight category” - not like the same Radiohead, allowing itself to upload a new album on the site for free download. It is in such small groups that the “copyright crisis” strikes - if earlier they had something from the sale of discs, now almost nothing.

But it is the music of such groups that has value as something creative, as some kind of cultural product - and therefore, we must look for an opportunity in new conditions to look for points of contact, look for the possibility of paying such people for work - so that, figuratively speaking, there is where to live and what is .

4. Why are laws copyrighted illegitimate

When writing recorders appeared, people had the opportunity to copy tapes. The state was not able to prohibit it, because any way to monitor the implementation of such a law would violate the human right to privacy. Thus, it was necessary to look at home copying through fingers. Now the situation is repeated, but in a different capacity - a person anywhere in the world is able to receive or transmit information to any other part of the world using encrypted channels. It is also impossible to control without interfering with private life, without intercepting traffic or establishing surveillance! But fattened right holders can not agree with this, declaring that it is impossible to control out of law.

5. Finally, specifics, or why I wrote all this

I decided to write a further text in the style of “the appeal of the fan to the authors-performers”, as a response to the open letter mentioned above. So...

My dears

To begin with, I'm a very old fan of yours. At the Grushinsky Festival, I didn’t miss a single of your concerts, I jumped at your concerts, knocking my hands to the numbness from the applause, I shouted “Thank you!” And “We love you!”. You could repeatedly see my happy face in the crowd that surrounded the stage - in camouflage pants and a T-shirt, despite the rainfall (it was like that) - I was there and did not go anywhere.
I have read your open letter more than once. I tried to contact you, wrote letters to which I did not receive an answer, tried to transfer money from my bank card, faced some wild difficulties in converting money and inability to buy web money, with your silence and indifference when I wrote you in a letter It’s impossible to transfer money to you - please help. ” In your open letter, you said how bad it is to put your music on the trackers, and that’s why discs are no longer sold.

I don’t need your disks, I don’t even have anywhere to insert them - I have a netbook without a CD-DVD as the main computer. I generally drives to anything. And yet, in spite of my respect for you, I am terribly pressured by the toad to pay some left-wing parasites who have nothing to do with creating your music. How many rubles do you get from one disc sold? I am willing to pay the full amount if it goes into your hands. But to pay 80% of the amount to some kind of left freaks, who will then, with the money received from me, will promote their anti-human laws in the government - dismiss.

Think about this. Your creativity is not the lowest. Your fans are not the most immoral and unprincipled people on the planet. But by requiring us not to share your music with others, you violate our human right. This is the right to say to your friend, “Boy, listen! You should like this ”- and give him a flash drive with your albums, and this is equivalent to your right, having read the book you bought, let it be read to your son or daughter .

I sincerely want to believe that you are doing this not from evil, but because you simply do not know what you are doing

you write. No, we do it not from evil, but about “you don’t know what you are doing” - we consciously exercise our right to share information, joy with others. It does not matter if it is a relative, an acquaintance or a complete stranger. And it is impossible to prohibit, because the development of technology has made it impossible to control it. We realize that in connection with the existing food chain “consumer -> publisher -> author” you also lose your livelihood.

The latter personally upsets me very much, and I even tried to change something - to contact you, transfer money in a volume that is guaranteed to exceed the amount you would receive if I bought ALL your discs. Only now, despite all the flaws in the old scheme in the new realities, you continue to sing to the copiers that “copying = theft”, not wanting to take your fans seriously and their desire to help you. Those lovers of your creativity that I know are very mature, conscious, thinking people. I speak now for myself - regularly, when I once again listen to your albums, I have a thought: recently there was a salary, I could transfer rubles to 200 authors ... But without intermediaries! If only there was a mechanism ...

And now - proposals on the merits! Instead of expressing dissatisfaction and contempt for the people who spread your music, write another open letter. Those people who post your albums are your fans. And they are only “for” if you continue to live and write new songs. Therefore, contact them, these people. Ask each distribution on the trackers to attach a file with a description, as minimal blood and without intermediaries to thank you for your work. And the file itself should not contain specific account numbers, referring instead to a special page on your site - to reduce the likelihood of fraud. And the site should be as clear and simple algorithms as possible - how to pay. Do not experience illusions - now the site has the numbers of wallets and stuff, but personally I could not transfer money with an alpha-bank card. You need to give as many payment methods as possible - someone has Yandex money, someone has WM, someone has bank cards, everyone has an exception — cell phones. You need to have ways to allow anyone who has a spontaneous desire to thank you - immediately to fulfill this desire. At the same time several factors should coincide:

• presence of desire
• availability of funds
• availability of technical ability to transfer funds
• feedback

The last two points depend only on you!

I spent one and a half hours trying to deal with payment systems I did not know, I got angry and spat on everything. Your timely response, your help - would solve the issue. Yes, even a SMS gateway with a slight overpayment in favor of the operator (if this is even possible) would have decided it.

People who transfer funds to you, you can take into account somewhere - who and how many listed. It is also necessary to give people the right to listen to your music so that it does not threaten them with criminal liability. If I, for example, transferred to you the amount of more than 1000 rubles or more - then mention on a special page of the site that if I have your music on any of the carriers, I listen to it legally. A little utopian, but the thought is worth considering and reworking.

Again, I’m not trying to breed a utopia here - the above measures will not give any superprofits ... But personally, I’m ready to regularly, when listening to your songs there is a corresponding mood, transfer not very large sums to your account. Small, about 100-200 rubles - and then, if it will be easy to do, and you will not have to feed someone else. The key word here is regular . And if there are a lot of such fans? And if you add people who want to make a one-time payment? Yes, even let it be a miserable 50p - if this person bought the disc, you would get a smaller amount from this sale! Anyway - this is a piece of bread.

I hope that my appeal will somehow reach the group, the name of which the curious can learn from their “open letter” at the link above.

And now - I will address to harabrachiteli, who have endured to this moment.
If in your playlist some small group takes a lot of space, it is unclear how to keep afloat - do not remain indifferent. Make contact with artists and authors, ask them to give feedback to fans and ways to thank them - and post requests to do this on forums and torrent trackers. If you can - write to the creators of distributions, suggest that they add a file to the distribution with an appeal and a link to the group website, which describes ways to pay for their work.

Let's establish contact between the authors and admirers of their work, not allowing third parties to this dialogue. We now have the Internet - and intermediaries are no longer needed, but the authors themselves are not aware of this. Let's explain and prove it to them.