The authorised version - learning about copyright

by Chris UnLimited 21. March 2010 12:05

STUFF BY ME WEEK-ENDING 21 MAR 2010

So, the dissertation I blogged about earlier in the year has been read and marked and passed by the powers that be at London Metropolitan University.

And I'm glad to say that it has been well received by my academic colleagues. Positively enough, it seems, to compensate for the increasingly rushed essays and insanely crammed exams that occured a little too often in the final 18 months of my second degree, as my real life got even more busy than normal, and once I lost the time management guidance of my former co-studier Sanjana, who went a slightly faster route than me in getting her law degree.

My strategy for ensuring there was a piece of paper for me at the end of this six year journey was increasingly based around acing the dissertation, and it looks like that strategy might have worked. Though technically I have to wait for a confirmation letter from the univeristy before I - I don't know - write on my blog that I now have an LLB after my name.

With all this in mind, my plan this week was to post a precis of or introduction to my dissertation - which explores the concept of 'authorising infringement' in copyright law - leading up to a link to the 57 page paper itself. But then I checked back to the last blog entry where I mentioned this bit of work and discovered that's sort of what I did then. So instead, I thought I'd link back to that blog post here and then the disseration itself here (800k PDF). If you're so minded, you can check out either or both. But prepare yourself for a copyright law overload.

People often ask me why it was in 2004, aged 28, I decided to embark on a six year law degree, given I have no intention of ever becoming a lawyer (because, if I had, I'd have done the much quicker CPE). There were various reasons.

First, history has always been my primary academic passion (even though my Edinburgh degree was in the English language), and a study of English law is, in many ways, a quirky way of reviewing English history.

Second, I realised that I had gone through primary, secondary and higher education at good schools and colleges without anyone ever explaining to me how the British courts system works, which seemed like a bit of a failure of the education system to me. I mean, I don't have any desire to find myself in court, but it strikes me that everyone should have a basic understanding of how their judicial system works.

Third, I often sat in meetings with lawyers and accountants and business people and know it alls who would say things like "but the law says this", and I'd sit there thinking "I'm pretty sure you're wrong, but I'm not in a position to argue".

Fourth, as a business owner you're frequently advised to hire the services of lawyers to take care of company matters. Sometimes that is good advice, but often it's advice that originates with lawyers on the clock. I wanted to be able to make informed decisions on when legal advice really was necessary.

And fifth, I had a gut instinct that the law says very little about anything, and that fascinates me. My gut instinct was right, by the way, and as a result the whole legal process fascinates me more now than ever before.

But the one thing that didn't really occur to me back in early 2004 was just how much some legal training would help in my other guise as a journalist who writes primarily about the music business. This was a foolish oversight. Over half of the music industry is in the business of monetising intellectual property, something that only exists because the law says so. I can not begin to tell you how much more the music business makes sense the more you know about copyright and copyright law, and I'm not just saying that because I'm now running a beginners guide to the subject for music industry professionals!

I had been writing about the file-sharing story for CMU since pretty much the first MP3 was shared across the Napster network, and had reported on all the court cases that followed, and been highly critical of the record industry's reaction to P2P along the way. To be able to revist that story for this disseration, but now with a solid understanding of the legalities on which the file-sharing battle was and still is fought, was simply fascinating.

And it's only by combining my ten years of industry insights with the legal knowledge I have now obtained, that I feel I can confidently say that CMU's coverage of ongoing music copyright stories, like The Pirate Bay and the Oink trials and even the Digital Economy Bill, is among the most balanced, accurate and informed on the net.

So there you go. Six years of legal training has made me arrogant. Well, that's not a surprise. If you've any interest in the file-sharing story then do check out my dissertation. Though, if all things copyright send you straight to sleep, well, the good news is that with this paper out of the way, I'll probably be blogging about it less in the future.

--------------------------------------------------

STUFF I WROTE THIS WEEK
A round up of some of the news stories and articles I wrote for UnLimited's media in the last seven days...

--

MUSIC BUSINESS STUFF...

Lib Dems to amend amendment as DEB heads for final Lords vote [CMU Daily 15/03/10]

Might Warner and KKR mount joint bid for EMI? [CMU Daily 15/03/10]

PRS revenues up up up [CMU Daily 15/03/10]

Max Hole promoted to COO at Universal International [CMU Daily 15/03/10]

Digital Economy Bill passed by the Lords [CMU Daily 16/03/10]

Sony do $200 million deal with Jacko estate [CMU Daily 16/03/10]

Sony drop Jedward [CMU Daily 16/03/10]

Berklee to launch course in DIY music marketing [CMU Daily 16/03/10]

More Digital Economy Bill nonsense [CMU Daily 17/03/10]