How bad is piracy today?
But forget the Pirate Bay… Piracy is now mainstream. Not since the Holocaust have we seen so many people of a select group forcibly stripped of their livelihoods in a public euphoria of false morals. As one who is of Jewish descent, I can say that I make this statement in a very narrow fashion, but there are similarities. Creators are being vilified, laughed off and treated with indifference by scary multitudes of people who care not for artists’ lives or liberties–let alone the concerns involved in the making of art. The new “norm” is being heralded as “liberation” from the “contrived” and “unfair” standards of fees and payments that have traditionally been worked out in a fair market society. Instead, this is the new unfair market society. The “Jews” in this valid analogy are creators. We are losing our homes, our futures and our ability to take care of our children. Laugh. I dare you. And unlike the streetlamp lighters, the world still needs creators!
At the center of all of this is YouTube. In fact, YouTube has much of my work up there right now. There are millions of plays of my music and in a direct way, these plays have done their part to drive the popularity of YouTube (along with thousands of other artists). And yet, I’ve not received one thin dime from YouTube or Google. And I refuse to grant them a license to my material under their onerous “compensation” plan. How is it that an artist like Lady Gaga can have a million plays on legal sites like Spotify, and at most, she is reported to have earned little more than $100.00 USD in personal royalties for all of this interest? And is YouTube any more fair than Spotify? Decidedly not. What incentive does any tech operation have to pay artists? And as a niche artist, how can I possibly be encouraged by any of this?