“Industries of Middlemen”

Derek Powazek:

Another audience member said she worked at a small film studio, doing clearances for copyrighted works to appear in movies (simply having a movie on in the background of another movie requires a release, at least according to the MPAA) and most of the time the artists involved all said it was fine – it was the studio lawyers who stood in the way.

And that’s really the problem, isn’t it? There are these industries of middlemen – RIAA, MPAA – that claim to “protect artists” but what they’re really protecting is themselves. Artists (and I include myself in that word) need to rise up and tell these people to go get stuffed. We can decide when a mashup is perfectly fine with us. We can decide to embrace file traders to build awareness of our work. We don’t need you anymore. You’re just holding us back.