“The 4.7 billion viewers who accessed television coverage of the Beijing Olympics officially translates into approximately 70 percent of the world’s population, or more than two in every three people globally.”

When you consider that each country’s coverage of the Olympics would have used different theme music (including the ubiquitous Chinese theme songs), the one musical consistency for the entire 4.7 billion people would have been the national anthems played ad nauseam throughout the entire 16 days.

This must be a contender for the most exposure ever for a body of musical work in a two week period. You can imagine why Peter Breiner, the man who arranged all 200 national anthems for the Athens Olympics in 2004, was pretty pissed off to find out his works were being used this time around as well without any approval, recognition or compensation. The Washington Post reports that while the Beijing Olympic Committee say all anthems were “orchestrated by Chinese musicians”, Breiner is “100 percent positive” the arrangements are his.

I’m fairly certain Breiner will not see a penny for this. He will just have to enjoy the outstanding anecdotal fodder that comes from being the victim of perhaps the most visible copyright infringement of all time.

© Ed Peto 2008

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“Sometimes I’m so very happy I live in India, so far away, physically and otherwise, from the tentacles of the RIAA (& MPAA & a whole lot of other entities) that all this crap over filesharing is usually just of academic interest, except when a good site or gets taken down (i.e, to come up again from somewhere else later). I take whatever I can find on the torrent sites (& sometimes limewire) and just queue them up without any thought whatsoever and with only my hard disk capacity to constrain me.

Music Piracy? The only software on my PC that AREN’T pirated are freeware and my antivirus. It’s been over 50GB’s worth of music downloaded since I discovered the flac format last year (yes, I nitpick over quality), and only reason it’s not a few times more than that is because music’s not the only thing I download. Do the record companies even think what they plan on doing about places beyond the West, or do they have at least enough brains to realise that that would be instant self-overkill? And no matter how much higher incomes are in developed countries, will people just quietly cough up the $ for songs when the same stuff can be had for free, with guys in Malaysia paying not even lip service to those dumb old fat cats? Maybe they really should try and sue everyone all over the globe, just so they can get bloody bankrupt enough to shut shop permanently and leave everyone in peace. Like the LP or cassette, the CD is now good only as a collector’s item for fans who like keeping them, like I do for Iron Maiden. At least, that’s how I see it.

Which brings me to a question. Over 90% of what I’ve downloaded is stuff that isn’t even heard of here in India, let alone be available even in the largest cities. There were about 30,000 people at Iron Maiden’s 1st India gig last year, with quite a few more outside the gates ’cause thay couldn’t get, or buy, the tickets (about $23 & $38). There wouldn’t have been much more than 300 if not for piracy and the grey market, especially since Maiden records weren’t properly available before the late 90s. Bangladesh, with millions of fans listening to western music has no official CD retail. So, is taking music to which I have no other access to within the nation’s borders really stealing?“

-Tashfin

The last point is particularly poignant. Living in these outside markets is a constant challenge to your morality. I do not think that anyone could begrudge a fan like this from having fake copies of the band that he loves when there is no legal alternative. So does that mean it is morally acceptable stealing?

The IFPI/RIAA/MPAA approach to this kind of copyright ‘theft’ is as black and white as George W Bush’s post 9-11 response: ‘You’re either with us, or against us’.

As a commentator mentioned at the time, ‘I’d like to think that our foreign policy is a bit more nuanced than that!‘. The same can be said here but it seems that copyright is an immutable truth. However, as the focus moves more towards the developing countries – where people have just as much passion for music but only a tiny fraction of the spending power – anyone who lives in them will tell you straight up that shades of grey will have to be added to the copyright spectrum.

© Ed Peto 2008

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