Artistic Integrity

One of the things mentioned in this weeks lecture on walled gardens and creative commons was that twentith century copyright industries are economically significant and politically influential, compared to copyright in the 18th century where is was a novel solution to encouraging the productive use of creative and intellectual resources. I think that these days the debate raging over intellectual property and copyright in the music industry is far too focused over the former, rather than the latter.

Everyone seems to think that today's artists are soley focused on profits, and they just want to copyright their work and stop peer-to-peer downloading because they don't want to lose money. People just dismiss the argument that perhaps bands just want to preserve their artistic integrity. The Red Hot Chilli Peppers have recently made a genuine plea with fans not to download their latest album 'Stadium Arcadium' before it's released as leaked online copies are of inferior quality, and it comprimises the bands artistic integrity. The bassist flea saying that it would break their heart. Sounds corny but it does seem genuine, I mean do you really think that RHCP are still doing it for the money? really...

(a humerous parody of the peer sharing debate is shown in Southparks Christian Rock Hard episode).