A keynote interview from musician and producer Steve Albini at the Primavera Pro conference in Barcelona got a wide airing this weekend, not least for his suggestion that existing copyright models will become as unacceptable as smoking in public venues. “Social acceptance of public smoking disappeared, and it’s now rare to find a place indoors where you can smoke. And that’s not because there was a single decree. It’s because society changed in its treatment of public spaces,” said Albini. “I think were seeing that the intellectual construct of copyright and intellectual property ownership is not realistic. Ideas once expressed become part of the common mentality. And music once expressed becomes part of the common environment. I think that the idea of intellectual property will naturally have to be modified to accommodate the way that people naturally exchange ideas and music and information.” In familiar form, Albini went on to compare defenders of the existing copyright model as “people on horseback trying to fight against the automobile” and warned that “piracy is people boarding a slip with violence and killing people and physically stealing material goods that are then no longer available to people who used to own them. I think equating somebody downloading something on his iPhone with that is preposterous”.
Steve Albini: old copyright model will go way of public smoking
