Copyright Law - Record Labels - Research Proposal Example

Copyright law is far more interested in the owner of the copyright, such as record labels, than the artists Introduction Copyright refers to a set of exclusive rights which are granted to the author or creator of an original work. This includes the right to distribute, to copy and to adapt. Copyright protects expression of ideas and not the ideas themselves (Vaver, 2000). Copyright owners are granted exclusive statutory right to exercise control over copying and other exploitation over a specified period of time before it is allowed to enter the public domain. Music is one of the works covered by copyright law (Paul, 2007). However, copyright law in regard to music industry is complicated in that the artists are not usually the owners of their work. Instead, the copyright is owned by record companies which require artists to relinquish their rights to ownership in return for a royalty by signing contracts. However, the royalties received by artists are insignificant as compared to the returns received by record companies. The disparities that exist in relation to the increasing constriction of the rights of users form the basis of this proposal as to whether current laws are fulfilling the dual goals underlying law (Boytons, 2004). This project aims to find out whether record label owners are more protected than the artists. First literature review will be undertaken followed by justification of the study, outlining of the objectives of the study and finally methodology will be discussed. Literature review Copyright law is a global legal system which is involved in the regulation of the creation, ownership, control and use by the public of products which result from certain specific creative activities that are directed by the human brain. The resulting products are called expressions or works in the copyright legal terminology (Hoffmann, 1999). Copyright law gives owners of the copyrighted work to copy, modify and distribute these expressions. Everyone in the world is legally forbidden from copying, modifying or distributing these expressions unless the copyright owner grants permission or a legal escape clause called a users right is available. Copyright law may prohibit even the author who wrote a book or a musician who composed a song against copying if he is not the copyright owner (Samuels, 2000). Thus a copyright grants the owner exclusive right or privilege and an excluding right or a disqualification for everybody else. It is argued that copyright law provides a practical, legal and market framework for trading in intellectual property and works of the mind. The system allows conversion of creative and mental outputs into tradable commodities (Ellias & Richard, 2004). Copyrighted products are treated as property asset. Thus copyright is one of the legal sub discipline called intellectual property in addition to patents which protect inventions and trade marks which protect brand names. Since ideas and their expression are not as scarce as other physical property such as land, copyright law helps in creation of artificial scarcity. This helps to convert the expression of ideas into tradable commodities (Thierer & Wayne, 2002). Record label is the brand or a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos in the music industry. More often the record label refers to the company which manages such brands and trademarks in addition to coordinating the production, manufacturing, distribution, marketing and promotion and enforcement of copyright protection of both sound recording and music videos (Crews 2000). The companies are also involved in the scouting and development of new artists in addition to maintaining contracts with recording artists and their managers. Today recording artists rely upon record labels to broaden their audience, to promote their music and to market their albums. A record label usually enters into an exclusive recording contract with the artists for the purposes of marketing the recording of the artists in return to royalties upon selling the recordings. These contracts may be short lived or long lived. The contract requires the artist to either deliver a completed recording to the label or to jointly record with the label (Gellar, 2009; Vaidhyanathan, 2003). The royalties received by the artists is often insignificant in comparison to what label companies receive. In the contracts between the label company and the artist, the label company becomes the owners of the copyright while the artist relinquishes the ownership. Thus the artists lose the legal capability of copying, modifying and distributing the music that is copyright owned by the record label even though he is the one who composed and recorded it in partnership with the record label. Copyright law is criticized for embracing the concept of a “Romantic author” which refers to copyright protection. It focuses on creativity as being a collective and collaborative enterprise and not the result of the struggle of an isolated individual artist genius who comes up with an original exceptional work (Samuelson, 1995). Thus copyright law is criticized for aiding the “death of the author”. In the case of music industry the record label is the romantic author who obtains ownership of ‘his’ work and in this way copyright rewards and safeguards originality. Thus copyright law loses sight of the cultural value of work which entails collaboration and works where an individual author cannot be ascertained. Even though musician receive royalties for their music after relinquishing their copyrights to record labels, reports show that there has been an increasing drop of up to 90% in royalties since the 1990s mainly because of the advent of the internet and the advancement of file sharing technology (Deeporter & Parisi, 2002). Thus enforcement of copyright is hard when technology makes it so easy to obtain music or visual art without paying for it. World Intellectual Property organization (WIPO) is a United Nations agency mandated to promote the protection of intellectual property worldwide by ensuring administrative cooperation among its member states and other international agencies (Hoffmann, 1999). Under the WIPO copyright treaty (WCT), protection of the rights of authors in their literary and artistic works are developed and maintained. This treaty also encourages new international rules in response to the new social, cultural, economic and technological developments (Cornish, 1997). It also emphasizes the significance of copyright protection as an incentive for artistic and literary creation. The treaty also maintains a balance between the rights of the larger public interest and the rights of authors. The rights of authors recognized under WCT include the rights of distribution, the right of rental and the right of communication to the public (Cohen, 1997). WIPO also has the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT) which protects the intellectual property right of performers and producers of phonograms or sound recordings. The rights of performers and producers recognized by WPPT include right of reproduction, right of distribution, right of rental, and right of making available (Oppenheim, 2001). The right of reproduction gives the copyright power exclusive right to authorize the direct or indirect reproduction of their performance fixed in phonograms. The right of distribution gives copyright owners exclusive right to distribute original and copies of performances in phonograms or phonograms via selling or transferring ownership. The right of rental gives copyright owners the right to commercially rent their works. Finally, the right of making available gives the copyright owners exclusive rights to authorize communication of the copyrighted works to the public (Samuelson, 1998). The WPPT emphasizes that the performers’ moral rights ought to stand independent of their economic rights. It also declares that the performer will have the right to claim to be identified as a performer of his performance and that the rights ought to be extended for a life time of the copyright owner (Stefik, 1997; Paul 2003). Under WPPT performers and producers have a right to a single equitable remuneration for direct or indirect use of phonograms published for commercial purposes, broadcasting or communication to the public the minimum term of protection of producers and performers under WPPT is fifty years. In spite comprehensive protection of copyright owners under WIPO, most artists such as musicians do not enjoy such rights. This is because most of them have no economic strengths to file for copyright ownership and promote their products. As a result they are left at the helm of record label companies that require them to relinquish their copyright ownership in exchange for royalties and promotion and marketing of the products (Richard, 2005; Paul & Edmund, 2004). Thus the copyright owners are record label companies who are protected by copyright law instead of protecting the real innovators who are musicians. This study aims to find out the benefits of copyright to both label companies and musicians and to analyze who is better protected by these laws. Significance of the study Copyright gives owners of the same exclusive right to their creative works in terms of copying, modification and distribution. In music industry, copyright owners are mainly the record label companies which are involved in copying, marketing, promotion, distribution and enforcement of the copyright law. The musicians are forced to enter into contract with record label companies to enjoy promotion, distribution and marketing of their works in exchange of royalties. They (musicians) also relinquish their copyright ownership. Research shows that returns from royalties are far too little in comparison to what the record labels receive from the copyright ownership. This study will help to shed light on whether the copyright law protects the interests of record labels companies (owners of copyright) at the expense of the artists (musicians). This is important since it will provide recommendation on whether the copyright laws ought to be reviewed in order to cover the interests of artists adequately. Objectives 1. To find out the benefits of copyright laws to record labels (copyright owners in music industry) 2. To find out the benefits of artists in music industry who often exchange their copyright ownership for royalties with record labels 3. To compare the benefits of copyright laws to record labels and artists in music industry Methodology Research design This is the structure of research. It holds all the elements of a research project together. It enables researchers to answer research questions using the evidence obtained unambiguously. In order to obtain evidence that is relevant one need to specify the type of evidence required for answering the research questions, to evaluate a program, to test a theory or to describe a phenomenon accurately. Thus when designing research one ought to know the type of evidence required for answering the question at hand. This research will use a survey to address the study objectives outlined above. Research strategy Various research strategies for the collection of data exist. Some of these methods are more suited to the deductive approach while others belong to the inductive approach. Various factors guide the choice of research strategy. The most significant ones are the research question and objectives of the research. The most common research strategies include survey, case study, experiment, grounded research and action research. The following strategy will be employed in addressing the research objectives for this research study. Survey Survey involves collection of large amounts of data from the population which is sizeable by use of questionnaires administered to the sample population. Surveys provide information which suggests possible reasons for particular relationships between variables and to produce models of these relationships. Survey strategy generates findings which are representative of the whole population at a lower cost as compared to collecting the data for the whole population. However, the data collected is unlikely to be as wide ranging as those collected using other research strategies. This is because there is a limitation in the number of questions a questionnaire can contain, and richness of the data to be collected is dependent on the goodwill of the respondents. In spite the shortcoming, this research will employ a survey strategy. Qualitative method The use of qualitative method occurs when researchers intent to gather the opinions of experts or participants. It is often subjective in nature and the data collected may include empirical evidence, meanings, values, and experiences. Qualitative research uses an inductive reasoning to generate ideas from data as opposed to the quantitative approach which employs deductive reasoning and needs to confirm a hypothesis. In this research qualitative methods will be employed to gather opinions of copyright holders in the music industry especially managers in record label companies. Semi structured interviews will be carried out to collect data from these managers. Quantitative Method This is a method used to collect data impartially by using structured procedures and involves using large amounts of samples. This method has a disadvantage of beginning with a theoretical framework and has little diversion from this framework as a result. Quantitative research does not allow any new concepts to be discovered during the research. This research will adopt quantitative method for the analysis of data collected using structured interviews. Research Methods/ Choices Use of secondary data: documentary secondary data will be used in this research in addition to using primary data collection methods. Documentary data will include written materials, journal articles, books and other records relevant to this research. By using secondary data, enormous resources will be saved. The method is also less expensive than to collect the data yourself and it helps to contextualize findings within a more general context. However, secondary data has its disadvantages as the data is usually collected for a specific purpose that differs from the research objectives of this research. Furthermore, where data was collected for commercial reasons gaining access may be difficult and costly. The researcher has no control over the quality of the data when using secondary data. A self- completion survey method involving the use of structured questionnaires to collect data will also be used in this research. A structured questionnaire contains a predetermined set of questions designed to capture data from respondents. Self –administered questionnaires will be administered electronically to a cross-sectional of musicians in different music categories. These will range from pop, jazz, reggae, R&B, gospel and any other musician. This will allow easy administration, faster and cheaper data collection and analysis. However, the draw back is that it is limited to only computer users and cannot probe complex issues. Since most questions on questionnaire are simple and straightforward, they do not allow for searching of new issues. Questionnaire containing both closed and open questions will be developed from the literature review. Semi-structured interviews: these are used for collecting qualitative data through interviews. It allows respondents to talk about their perspectives on a particular subject. It uses open-ended questions prepared by the researcher or questions that may arise during the interview. This method is simple, efficient and practical way of getting data about things that cannot be easily observed, it has high validity as respondents are able to talk about things in detail and depth. However, use of Semi structured interview has some shortcomings since it depends on the skill and ability of the researcher to think of questions during the interview and articulacy of the respondent. In addition it is time consuming and expensive, is not reliable as respondents may be asked different questions and qualitative data collected may be difficult to analyze. Despite the shortcomings Semi- structured interviews will be conducted in this research with managers in record label companies which will be identified to have copyright ownership in music industry. Data analysis Data obtained will be analyzed in three stages. These will include data preparation, data description and testing hypotheses. During data preparation logging in the data, entering the data into the computer, data transformation and development and documentation of a database will be undertaken to integrate the various measures. Description of data will entail description of basic features of the data in the study. This will be used to provide summaries about the measures and samples. Testing of hypothesis will involve inferential statistics. Project time line Activity Time Proposal writing April, 2011 Questionnaire preparation May, 2011 Data collection June to July, 2011 Data analysis July, 2011 Report writing and publication of findings August, 2011 Summary Copyright refers to a set of exclusive rights which are granted to the author or creator of an original work. Copyright law is a global legal system which is involved in the regulation of the creation, ownership, control and use by the public of products which result from certain specific creative activities that are directed by the human brain (Lu, 1994). The resulting products are called expressions or works in the copyright legal terminology. Copyright gives owners of the same exclusive right to their creative works in terms of copying, modification and distribution. World Intellectual Property organization (WIPO) is a United Nations agency mandated to promote the protection of intellectual property worldwide by ensuring administrative cooperation among its member states and other international agencies (Cross et al., 2003 ). Under the WIPO copyright treaty (WCT), protection of the rights of authors in their literary and artistic works are developed and maintained. In spite comprehensive protection of copyright owners under WIPO, most artists such as musicians do not enjoy such rights. In music industry, copyright owners are mainly the record label companies which are involved in copying, marketing, promotion, distribution and enforcement of the copyright law. The musicians are forced to enter into contract with record label companies to enjoy promotion, distribution and marketing of their works in exchange of royalties. They (musicians) also relinquish their copyright ownership. Research shows that returns from royalties are far too little in comparison to what the record labels receive from the copyright ownership (Girnsbug, 1993). This study aims to find out the benefits of copyright to both label companies and musicians and to analyze who is better protected by these laws. This study will help to shed light on whether the copyright law protects the interests of record labels companies (owners of copyright) at the expense of the artists (musicians). This is important since it will provide recommendation on whether the copyright laws ought to be reviewed in order to cover the interests of artists adequately. Surveys involving structured questionnaires; secondary data and structured interviews will be used to collect data. The data analysis will involve three stages: data preparation, data description and testing hypotheses. References Boynton, R. Jan. 25, 2004 "The Tyranny of Copyright."  New York Times, sec. 6, p. 40. Cohen, E. 1997. Some Reflections on Copyright Management Systems and Laws Designed to Protect Them, Berkeley Technology Law Journal vol.12, no. 1, 161-188. Cornish, P., ed. 1997. Copyright: Interpreting the Law for Libraries, Archives and Information Services. 2nd ed. Oxford: Library Association Publishing. Crews, D. 2000. Copyright Essentials for Librarians and Educators. Chicago: American Library Association. Depoorter, B., and Parisi, F. 2002. 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