POPULAR MUSIC SECTION of the SOCIETY FOR ETHNOMUSICOLOGY
About this site. As members of the Society for Ethnomusicology and its Popular Music Section increasingly debate issues of copyright, the ethics of music ownership, and conventions of fair use, we have decided to publish important elements of our scholarly inquiries into these issues on the PMSSEM website. This site contains abstracts of papers delivered at SEM 1999 (at Austin, Texas) on issues of copyright and musical ownership. The full text of the papers cannot be reproduced here, for they are the basis for a proposed book-length anthology on copyright, to be edited by Anthony McCann and part of the forthcoming Routledge series, Perspectives on Global Pop (Gage Averill, Series Editor).
To follow up on the issues raised by these authors, please feel free to participate in PMSSEM's copyright listserve group, PMSCOPY-L@listserv.tamu.edu. To join, send an email message to Harry Berger, at hberger@unix.tamu.edu. Or, you can contact the PMSSEM Copyright Subcommittee Co-Chairs Anthony McCann (anthony.mccann@ul.ie) and Jennifer Milioto jmmiliot@midway.uchicago.edu). For your convenience, some direct email links to some authors are also provided in the text.
| PMSSEM Home |
In the summer of 1998, I spent two months in Argentina with a specific mission in mind: I needed to obtain copyright permissions to publish several different song lyrics, along with their corresponding translations and musical transcriptions, in a book I am writing on Argentine cuarteto music. I knew that the process would entail going to SADAIC, the national songwriters' association, in Buenos Aires. Since I needed to obtain releases for some long interview transcripts as well, I also planned to spend considerable time in Córdoba, the site of my research, tracking down musicians and songwriters at night-long dances. Another project was to see if I could include a compact disc with my book.
In this paper, I describe what I underwent during my copyright quest to get what I needed. Among other things, I explain how I wrote my own permission letters/translations, pleaded with publishing/record companies, received little besides reprimands from SADAIC, found that two songs were registered in Chile, and dealt with a star singer's lawyer. I then give practical suggestions to future copyright-seekers in the field of popular music. Topics addressed are how to plan ahead before traveling, what kind of information/permissions to collect, how to put together sample forms, what equipment, paperwork, and resources to bring along, how to contact and deal with state agencies, and local confusion of terminology regarding copyright.
Jane L. Florine earned her Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from The Florida State University. Her research interests/publications lie mostly in the folk, popular, and art music traditions of Argentina, where she lived from 1975-1987. She is at present Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology/Musicology at Chicago State University.
| PMSSEM Home | back to Table of Contents |
Email
the author at bijlf@csu.edu. |
The paper reports on a case in which two Taiwan aboriginal singers, Kuo Ying-nan and his wife Kuo Shin-chu, sued Capitol-EMI Music, Virgin Records, Charisma Records, et al, in protest of the unacknowledged, nor financial rewarded, use of their voices by the popular music group Enigma in its song "Return to Innocence."
In 1978, a Han-Chinese ethnomusicologist recorded the Kuos as part of an island-wide movement to collect and preserve Taiwan's folk music. After a number of international transactions--all of which took place without the aboriginal singers' knowledge--one of the recordings of the Kuos' voices became the basis for Enigma's enormously popular song. Even though about half of the song featured their singing, liner notes accompanying Enigma's CD gave no mention of the Kuos' musical contribution. Enigma paid no part of its huge profits to the Kuos or to their Amis tribe. The Kuos only learned of their "participation" in the Enigma project when a friend phoned from Taipei and reported that he had heard them on the radio.
With the backing of a Taiwan-owned record company, the Kuos recently launched their lawsuit in a US District Court. The case is virtually unprecedented because indigenous musicians typically do not have access to resources that might allow them to support expensive legal battles. Foremost among the issues raised by this case are those of recognition and ownership of cultural property. The notion of the "single author" stands firmly at the base of contemporary intellectual property laws, and is--for all intents and purposes--applied indiscriminately and universally. The concept of "authorship" acts, in the words of James Boyle, as "a gate through which one must pass in order to be given property rights, a gate that shuts out a disproportionate number of non-Western, traditional, collaborative, or folkloric modes of production." Hoping to capitalize on the biases of the current copyright regime, the EMI/Capitol lawyers asserted that the Kuos could not claim ownership to what was a traditional folk song; in other words, they claimed that the piece was in the public domain, and therefore, free for anyone to use.
Due to the nature of the Amis creative process which includes a great degree of individual creativity, the Kuos' lawyers could justifiably argue their case within the boundaries of existing copyright laws. The lawyers gambled that they could get Kuo and his song through the 'authorship gate', so to speak, and won. By taking this approach, however, the current copyright regime was not directly challenged and no new legal precedent was set.
This presentation was part of the roundtable, "Copyright and Conceptions of Intellectual Property in Cross-Cultural Perspective."
Nancy Guy is an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego. Her regional specialization is the musics of Taiwan and China. Her current work focuses mainly on politics, copyright/cultural ownership, and identify issues.
| PMSSEM Home | back to Table of Contents |
Email
the author at nguy@ucsd.edu. |
What are the implications of recent changes in copyright laws,
and their applications, for the field of ethnomusicology? This
question will be discussed in terms of the legal and ethical dimensions
of fieldwork, archiving, and publication. This will include discussion
of attribution, ownership, responsibility, trust, and appropriation,
exploring questions raised by examples such as the destruction
of
Toelken's `Yellowman Tapes'.
The discussion will also explore the implications of new copyright legislation for theoretical developments in ethnomusicology. The study of intellectual property rights can provide insights into the dynamics of innovation, creativity and cultural production. The discussion will also throw light on the relationship between music and technology in both popular music and traditional forms. A clear understanding of the theoretical implications of intellectual property, and copyright in particular, can shed crucial light on the cultural history of the music industry.
| PMSSEM Home | back to Table of Contents |
As Ethnomusicologists we are continually faced with distinct
concepts of intellectual property in the various cultures that
we investigate. We must navigate through each group's understanding
of their music, not only out of respect for our informants, but
also to further our understanding of music's position in culture.
This conscientious approach to ethnomusicological study is often
further complicated when dealing with popular musics and the various
corporations, copyright systems, and other institutions involved
in the industry. Understanding the individual's concept of their
cultural production, while also considering cultural products
in relation to existing, or non-existing, copyright laws, can
at times be an extremely frustrating task.
This roundtable discussion will present several views of copyright in cross-cultural perspective. We seek not only to investigate the idea of "copyright" as culturally based, but also plan to discuss ways of handling the variety of legal systems, or lack there of, while respecting our informants' rights. Topics such as piracy in Eastern Europe, the concept of "copy" in Japan and it's resultant effect on popular music production, and a report on the legal case involving the Ami tribe singers and Enigma's record label, will serve as a location to begin discussing larger issues and broader cultural areas. It is hoped that a variety of ethnomusicologists will share their experiences in order to improve our understanding of the position of copyright and concepts of intellectual property in a variety of cultures.
| PMSSEM Home | back to Table of Contents |
Email
the author at jmmiliot@midway.uchicago.edu. |
Numerous scholars have analyzed the ideological presuppositions of music copyright. In this paper I argue that ideology critique needs to be located within a rounded, more ethnographic study.
Goodwin, Sanjek, and others have pointed out how digital technology threatens the ideological value of work and the Romantic conception of authorship, both supposedly embodied in copyright law. But the legal response to new developments in music technology has also been influenced by a particular economic theory of property rights, one which equates copyright's limited monopoly with real property, and infringement with theft.
More important, these ideological values and economic theories do not in themselves determine who owns, controls, and profits from music, for how long, and how much. Rather, their effects are filtered through a maze of social, political, economic, legal, and organizational factors. Ethnomusicologists have yet to synoptically view the ensemble of these factors. In this paper, I briefly survey some of them, emphasizing (1) the industry's interest in preventing the legal system from deciding copyright questions, (2) the role of organizations such as the Recording Industry Association of America, (3) the "statistical simulation of property" supervised by the performing rights organizations, and the effects of bureaucratic politics within those organizations.
Marc Perlman, Assistant Professor of Music at Brown University, specializes in the musical traditions of Indonesia. He has also done research on audiophilia and the Historical Performance Movement, and is currently studying Irish and Burmese music.
| PMSSEM Home | back to Table of Contents |
In Tanzania, as in other parts of the world, issues of copyright infringement and music piracy continually affect musicians and their ability to earn a living from their music. Though musicians may place copyright notices on the cassette tapes and compact discs they sell, there are few local or governmental institutions in place to enforce copyright laws. As a result, musicians often find their music being illegally copied and sold both locally, nationally, and internationally. This forces musicians to either develop their own ways of dealing with copyright infringement or adapt their practices to copyright laws.
In this paper, I use interviews with musicians, producers, and music pirates to explore the state of music piracy in Tanzania and the cultural shifts that musicians have made in using copyright law to protect their interests. In examining music piracy, I use three narratives about Tanzanian musicians to contextualize their place within the music industry and their reasons for looking to copyright law to protect their economic and musical interests. In examining copyright, I identify four prominent shifts that musicians have made in their interaction with copyright legislature: 1) the change from collective to individual ownership of music; 2) the increased commercialization of music (i.e. turning song into capital and property); 3) the practices of producing cassettes with copyright protection; and 4) musicians joining copyright organizations in order to register their music. By examining these shifts, one can gain a clearer understanding of the globalization of copyright law and its use by Tanzanian musicians.
Alex Perullo is a Ph.D. Candidate in Ethnomusicology and Folklore at Indiana University. He is currently researching issues of music piracy and copyright laws in the Tanzanian music industry for his dissertation.
| PMSSEM Home | back to Table of Contents |
Email
the author at iperullo@indiana.edu. |
This workshop, sponsored by the Popular Music Section,will consist of a half hour paper, a formal response and a discussion period. The paper explores the relationship between of digital sound technology and issues of ownership, authorship and agency. Copyright statutes depend upon the notion of "fixed form": intellectual property must consist of material that exists in a "hard copy"; is transmissible over time and space; and will be the same from one point of use to another. Obviously, music that is created and would not otherwise exist without digital technology possesses few of these qualities. That does not mean that the present copyright law undermines or outlaws such compositions, but the statutes nonetheless fail fully to address and protect the substance, moreover in some cases the very raison d'etre, of these works. Furthermore, their lack of fixity pricks holes in the statutes as well as makes more difficult the ownership, and subsequent protection of, that property. One element of authorship this workshop addresses is the apparent erasure of the individual author, or the "author effect" as it has been called. Works that do not exhibit or attest to the individual actions and efforts of concrete individuals fail to illustrate what I will refer to as the "sweat equity principle" - the fact that individual effort and agency must be a constituent, even visible part of music-making. Finally, the apparent absence of "sweat" in much digital music raises the consideration of whether individual agency is being eroded or more radically redefined.
| PMSSEM Home | back to Table of Contents |
As we are becoming increasingly aware, the continued diminishment of Fair Use is an issue that effects our lives as Music Educators in very real and practical ways. From the use of music in classrooms to negotiating the minefields of fieldwork or publication, the continued enclosure of Fair Use has major implications for the academic community and the open community of scholarship. It is imperative that moves are undertaken by a representative cross-section of music educators to address these issues.
Recognising that Fair Use issues are of international concern, but also recognising that our time on earth is finite and we need to start somewhere, it is felt that these early stages of the Music and Fair Use Forum should concentrate on the context of the United States. This is justified firstly because the United States is at the forefront of expansionism as regards intellectual property legislation, secondly on account of the growing forces in support of Fair Use and the Public Domain within the US, and thirdly as the vast majority of SEM membership is based in the US. Once the test case of the US has been adequately understood it is hoped that this forum will extend its remit to international concerns.
It is with this purpose in mind that the Popular Music Section of the Society for Ethnomusicology is initiating a Music and Fair Use Forum. Although initially restricted to PMSSEM, it is envisaged that progress in this area will only make sense, and will only achieve full impetus, if Fair Use activists within PMSSEM align themselves with those who have similar concerns in other organisations that deal with the practical realities of Music Education. Toronto 2000 seems like an ideal opportunity to proceed in this direction.
With this in mind, we have developed the following list of issues to be addressed:
a) develop a clear understanding of the letter of copyright legislation in the US as regards Fair Use and Music Education,
b) compile a catalogue of difficulties which Music Educators have faced when confronted with copyright and Fair Use legislation and practices (Reebee Garofalo has already been pursuing this line of inquiry), and collate recommendations concerning what Music Educators would regard as 'fair practice', to be developed as a 'wish list' for ethical practice in writing, teaching, and publishing,
c) contact a representative cross-section of major publishers to inform ourselves of some industry standards for Fair Use,
d) develop a set of US Fair Use Guidelines and Music Education for the members of SEM on the basis of this understanding, to be reviewed at SEM 2000, and ultimately be submitted for approval to the SEM board. This will eventually be extended to cover all international jurisdictions. It is hoped that a booklet would eventually be published,
e) seek legal review of the statement on Fair Use Guidlines and Music Education proposed by the Popular Music Section,
f) maintain an updated bulletin board on the PMSSEM website concerning the progress of this forum.
At this time, we would like everyone to review the above objectives. In particular, we would like to focus everyone's attention on points a, b,and c, which need to be completed in order to develop a statement for review at SEM 2000. Please let us know if you find the above objectives feasible, or if you have suggestions for alternative objectives, and how you feel we may best accomplish this work.
Membership of this forum is currently restricted to interested members of PMSSEM. It has been suggested that valuable legal and musical colleagues might be invited to participate in this forum and contribute their knowledge and expertise. Any comments on this suggestion, or any other point raised in this statement, are invited.
We look forward to hearing from all of you on the copyright subcommittee list.
Best,
Anthony McCann and Jennifer Milioto
| PMSSEM Home | back to Table of Contents |