When Did Courtney Love Become The Voice Of Reason On Copyright?

This morning, a link to this fantastic article about copyright by Courtney Love popped up in my Facebook feed. It was published back in 2000, at a time before iTunes, when Metallica was fighting to destroy Napster, and yet it appears to be one of the most sobering, informative and logical contributions to the argument about copyright.

Love breaks down the process of earning money as a musician, before rallying against the RIAA and hoping for a better solution for artists to both sell and communicate with their fans. Remember, this was written in 2000, before the world had a simple, legitimate way of buying music on the internet.

“It’s not piracy when kids swap music over the Internet using Napster or Gnutella or Freenet or iMesh or beaming their CDs into a My.MP3.com or MyPlay.com music locker. It’s piracy when those guys that run those companies make side deals with the cartel lawyers and label heads so that they can be “the labels’ friend,” and not the artists’.”

But the real question here is why, over a decade later, the issue of copyright for music is still being driven by representatives from the music industry lobbying US government officials to make even more draconian copyright laws?

With things like SOPA and PIPA becoming public issues, it would be nice for the world to maybe listen to what Courtney Love had to say.

And that’s not something I ever thought I’d write…

[Salon]

Image: Wikipedia