music piracy

David Bowie – TopPop 1974, AVRO – Beeld En Geluid – Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0.

With David Bowie’s passing, the world lost a rock icon beyond compare. A musical innovator and stage and screen pioneer, Bowie challenged and expanded our sensibilities, standards and appreciation for his art. Ziggy Stardust, The Thin White Duke and The Man Who Fell to Earth left an indelible influence of originality and creativity on all those who followed and who are still to come.

Over a decade ago, though, this musical entrepreneur gave an interview to the New York Times in which he boldly foretold of the impending death of copyright in the face of progress, innovation and the changing of how music, in particular, is created and distributed:

I don’t even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don’t think it’s going to work by labels and distribution systems in the same way. The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it’s not going to happen. I’m fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing.

Continue reading “Copyright Is Not Dead” »