The Horrors of IPR Invade Malawi

Here is a PRI story on the music business in Malawi, where the horrors of “Intellectual” “Property” “Rights”  (IPR) crush small artists trying to make a living.

Like many aspiring artists, they were unable to get a professional recording contract, in part because the recording industry in Malawi is small and has been hurt by piracy. So Frank and Miriam paid for studio time and produced two albums on their own. Frank soon began selling the CDs on the street.

Prove "piracy" hurts.  As Patry has pointed out, there is zero evidence in the history of mankind that ”copyright piracy’ hurts anyone.  Further, the term “piracy” applied to people who sell copies of existing works is an outrageous distortion of the circumstances.  To equate rape and murder with selling copies of works is fomenting moral panic where there is none.

IPR is just another rent-seeking scam, and an anagram for PRI.

And Anders Kelto, ace reporter, brings up the topic in an article in which selling copies is not even an issue.  But it is important for regime writers to work every article they are subsidized to write in a way that supports the regime.  (And the article is in essence a rehash of a VOA article from six months earlier.  Funny that a regime writer promoting corporate cronyism and decrying "piracy" is rather unoriginal, to say the least.  But he who pays the piper calls the tune, and what better way to meet PRIs editorial standards than rehash VOA stories.)

So what happens in Malawi when you create your own work, record your own work, and then offer it for sale?

“One day, the police came and said, ‘No, you should leave this place, or else we will confiscate your music,’” Kuseni said.The problem was that his CDs didn’t have a silver hologram — the official insignia that proves they aren’t counterfeit. Kuseni was taken aback. “I said [to the police,] ‘I am the musician, I produced it, why should I have a hologram?’”But the police officers insisted that he stop selling on the street. So he complied.

Western capitalism destroys you.  A hologram proves nothing, since knocking off holograms is no trouble at all.  The problem is some Malawian graduate of Harvard Business School has a sinecure making 15 cents a pop on every hologram required.  In this way USA extends the horrors of capitalism to the farthest reaches of the world.

One of the benefits to being in the 3rd world was IPR fascists did not bother extending their "rights" into such countries, so as is always the case, IPR-free regimes could enjoy free market economic development.  Not any more.  Time to run down every penny possible, no matter who gets crushed.

You can see why Pol Pot resorted to killing all Western trained Cambodians.  I don’t agree with the tactic, but one can understand how such extreme pressure from the West provokes such extreme responses.

Kamanga said he has great sympathy for struggling artists like the Kusenis.“To sell his own music, there’s nothing wrong with that,” Kamanga said. “But to sell it without the hologram — the law says it’s illegal.”

As they say, if the law says that, then the law is an ass.

To understand why, Kamanga said, look at it from a law enforcement standpoint. How do the police know that the person selling music on the street is actually the artist?

Pity the poor law enforcement officers.  The fascist paramount concern is what is best for law enforcement.  Never mind what works for the artist.  As the USGovt said in Vietnam, we must destroy the village to save it.

There are just too many ways to cheat artists out of profits, Kamanga said. So the solution is for everyone who sells music to register and pay for the hologram.

Well Kamaga would say that, wouldn't he?  The solution is he gets paid! It is a huge mistake to believe your own PR.  There is no possible way to cheat artists out of profits, except by violating terms in a contract.  No contracts, no cheating.  Listen to artists in Malawi who have contracts with hologram-compliant peddlers.  They are being cheated.  Even the VOA article claims piracy is the problem in spite of the fact the problem is with the hologram peddlers:

Fingers have long been pointed at music distributors - middle men who sell the music on behalf of the artists. The musicians accuse the distributors of making copies for personal gain, an allegation distributors have persistently denied.

Frank Zappa talks about this in his autobiography, getting cheated by the record companies.  The things your best and brightest learn when taxpayers send them from Malawi to Harvard Business School!  The solution to artists being ripped off by the hologram scam is to enforce the hologram scam.  

So if you do not want to be cheated, and just sell for yourself, no, not allowed.

So Frank and his wife decided on another strategy. Every Sunday, they perform gospel music at one of the many churches in Lilongwe. After the service, they sell their CDs — without the hologram.Frank said sales have been good. And, so far, the authorities haven’t confronted them. “The city officials don’t go [on church grounds] to chase us,” he said. “I think that those places are out of bounds.”

Until freedom begins to hurt the fascists. As usual, productive members of society are obliged to work around the parastical rent-seekers.  All over the world people are pushing back.  As things break down in Greece and the Ukraine and Wenzhou and Nevada, they'll break down all at once.  We need to know what freedom is like so we can install that, and not what is worse than we have now.

http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-03-18/malawis-campaign-against-music-piracy-trapping-its-own-musicians

Law-breaking Gospel Artists. Malawi - where to sell your own recordings you have to comply with rules from USA, or you are criminal.

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