Rah Rah Rah for (Intellectual Property) Rights

When sir Gigo assigned John Philip Sousa as one of the names we should be familiar with, for me, it was just another name. But when I found him on Wikipedia, I was obsessed. When I saw his picture, I realized that he (his music, mostly) had been featured in an episode in Playhouse Disney’s Little Einsteins, one of my daughter’s favorite shows. I’ve been hitting myself on the head trying to remember what song of his was featured. So, for more than a week now, I’ve been religiously watching the show with my 1- (almost 2-) year old not just for fun but to try to catch that episode to hear the music again.

I was on a mission, like Annie, June, Quincy, and Leo when they zoom through the sky with Rocket. I read on about him and his music compositions, to see if any title would ring a bell. None did, or the bells were rusty. Whichever it was, I just couldn’t place the music with the face (picture). But as I read on, I found out why this musician was assigned in the first place.

He thought very lowly about the emerging recording industry and thought that those “talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country.” Lawrence Lessig cited Sousa in arguing that copyrights give the control of music to record labels.

The primary objective of having a system of copyrights is to encourage creativity, to increase knowledge. The economic rights granted to copyright owners are mere incentives. The point of having incentives is to give the copyright owner (usually the creator/author) control of how he will make money out of his creation. If a musician decides to go with a recording label and get paid in the process, well, there you go; that’s how he chose to control his economic rights.

I also disagree with Sousa. Recordings give a musician from one part of the world a chance to listen to music by other musicians from other parts of the world. And learn what lesson he can and reflect it in his work. Multiplied n times over, creativity and knowledge is increased n times (or some other mathematical function). But to have recordings in the first place, I think, requires a system of copyrights where he will have control of how he can personally benefit from his work. Otherwise, it will be scary for that musician to release a work if someone can make money out of it without him getting a choice piece of the pie, or any piece at all.