Opinion

On Jazz Music and intellectual property on the internet:

Recently, there has been a lot of debate about the availability of certain jazz albums on the net.

This is especially true with the advent of musical streaming service, which only gives a pittance to the jazz musicians, whose albums are streamed on it. And there is also the issue of music piracy, which is very widespread on the internet. This has caused a lot of problems for many jazz musicians and publications in general.

The different events related to the problem of Internet and intellectual property that have happened in recent days show the diversity of interests and points of view that feed him, as well as how far we are from solving it.

On the 18th there was a blackout of thousands of web pages in protest against the anti-piracy legislative proposals presented in the US Congress and Senate. As a result, the processing of these proposals has been frozen, a fact that seems to have lost significance after the raid against the Megaupload portal on the 19th.

On the 20th, shortly after being acquitted in the lawsuit due to the demand of the record companies, computer scientist Pablo Soto knew that he would receive a grant of 1.6 million from the Ministry of Industry for the development of a search engine applicable to P2P networks, reports elpais.com. This same ministry, curiously, is part of the controversial Second Commission established by the law, which has independent power of the judiciary to order the closure of web pages denounced by holders of intellectual property rights.

The digital revolution, like any revolution worth its salt, does not mean a mere change in the order of things; it becomes a living entity that acts outside its participants, without apparent rules. The thrones fall while the audacious rise, but they can also go to the guillotine at the most unexpected moment.

Everyone claims in favour of rights, of culture, of innovation, but it is impossible to determine where to go collectively, even among those who agree on the need to protect both intellectual property and the rights to information or privacy.

Until now, any proposed measure is answered by incurring one or another violation. Everything, of course, is reducible to a single factor, money. For some, there is a site that does not charge; for others, the one that does not release.

On this page, I advocated for the closure of websites that improperly hosted intellectual property, but events have shown that it was not a practical solution.

Perhaps it is something more to impose economic sanctions, a habitual method in any kind of infraction for which, in this case, the offender would pay the amount that he intends to conceal. But, with everything, I could extend talking about the counterparts of this measure or any other. The digital revolution has been provoked and is fed by a vertiginous technological progress alien to demographic or social patterns, and for that reason, it is incomprehensible and unpredictable and does not pursue a new situation of stability, although we do.