Commis Chef meets James aka ‘The Big Interview’ (Part 1 of 2)

As part of The Great Interview Experiment, I have had the great pleasure to play interviewer and interviewee over the past few days. Below is the first half of me playing interviewee (the second half can now be found here), the interviewer was the fabulous commis chef. Her words are in italics, mine are in normal font.

——————–

Out of your concern for the environment you’ve written posts about how working from home could potentially make a dent in our carbon footprint and proposed good and bad alternatives to the plastic bag. Your hatred for the plastic bag fills me with joy, as I too reserve a special place in my heart specifically for plastic bag loathing. In France, despite the ‘bag for life’ really taking hold, plastic bag use is still rife. People don’t seem to get the concept of putting things directly in the bag, insisting on putting each fruit or vegetable in its own bag first. If you were to witness completely unwarranted plastic bag usage, say for a sandwich and drink that were going to be immediately consumed, would you pipe up about it?

To be honest probably not, unless I worked for a company who were committing such crimes and I could have some direct influence. I am a big believer in the power of people voting with their feet for things like this. So when I see unnecessary packaging I refuse to buy that product. If a lot of other people do the same then the companies will have to wise up to providing consumers with what they want. I’ve learnt in business that the most effective language for change is the language of money. Consumers have complete power in choosing whom to give their money to.

I am not a big green save the earth kind of person. Like I don’t get washed twice a week in a bowl full of water to reduce my carbon footprint or anything. I think my green credentials are just more about common sense. For me the plastic bag is one such example, as is a lot of plastic packaging, and I think the consumers are more to blame than the companies who supply them.

You recently wrote a post entitled, ‘Cheer Up, We’re All Criminals,’ in which you discussed the fact that if you were to listen to songs in MP3 format, copied from your own CDs, you would either be breaking the law or in breach of copyright. What do you think about copyright and its implications for the rest of us?

I think in principle the idea that someone’s work needs to be protected by the law is perfectly reasonable. To encourage creativity and innovation the intellectual property of an idea or the resultant piece of work needs to be protected. I’ve made the decision not to get into the illegal downloading of music, software, films etc not because I don’t know how to, or it’s too much hassle but because I think it’s wrong. That’s not to say I don’t break the copyright laws, but for some reason copying your mates mp3 collection doesn’t seem quite so immoral.

One thing I’m currently really fascinated about is the way the music industry is changing. I think we are slap bang in the middle of a real sea change in that industry and I for one am quite excited to see how it develops. Sites like Last.fm, Pandora, Imeem, Indiestore, Qtrax & Deezer are all really leading the way and I think the record industry is panicking. You can now record, promote and release a record without the need for a record contract, and I love the idea of that. It will be the music industry first but industries such as the film industry should be getting nervous too.

I think you’re right that copying someone’s MP3 collection does seem less immoral than say downloading films from the Internet. Is it because a film’s expense and length somehow add value to the product, making it more of a large theft? Like holding up an entire shop instead of just slipping a chocolate bar in your pocket?

No not at all, it’s not about the size of the crime at all, and anyway an album worth of music can arguably take as much time to produce as a film (although the budgets are likely to be very different). I just think the sharing of media, whether it be music, films, books or magazines, is part of what culture is about. People will argue that file sharing is basically the same thing, which to some extent they are right. But in my opinion it is different as you don’t know the person you are acquiring the media from, in fact isn’t the way it works is that you get a little bit from a lot of people. I can’t imagine many artists; writers etc mind the sharing between family and friends it is the wider distribution they would object to. That’s my argument anyway, it’s not watertight but it demonstrates where I draw my boundaries.

Do you think that copyright plays a role in making us culturally poor? If there was no money involved, we could all go to the cinema whenever we wanted, we’d all have immense CD collections, songwriters, film makers and the like could reference contemporary culture using clips of other cultural texts (songs, film etc) without having to seek costly permission. Can a balance be struck between protecting a person’s ownership of their idea/product and making sure that culture is allowed to progress unhindered?

I think copyright is a necessary evil, and if anyone thinks that we would have a richer culture if copyright were removed, then they probably want their head testing. If you aren’t given the right to make money from your project then the whole thing falls apart. No one would be able to sustain a living from it, as no money would ever get back to the artist. I really don’t see money as much of a barrier to cultural activities to be honest, I think some time back I wrote about a research paper that debunked that idea.

Can a better balance be struck? Hmmm I don’t know I haven’t given it a lot of thought. I guess it’s like the drug companies who invent life saving drugs and then people start believing they should be given away at the price it costs to produce. What they don’t consider is the cost of the research it took to invent the drug and the 1,000’s of other projects that failed to even make it to a successful drug. The revenue they gain from these drugs that do work, fund the research for the future life saving drugs. To cut that revenue stream is a false economy.

But my point about the drug companies (before I got distracted) is that they have a given period of time where they are the sole supplier of the drug after that period everyone else is free to copy the drug and compete in supplying it. Maybe something similar could happen in the fields of films, music etc, whereby there is a set period under copyright (I know this does exist already in some format, but it’s a very large time scale right now) to enable a return on their investment. Or maybe it could be linked to revenue earned rather than time. All this is ‘in theory’ though, practically I say we stick with what we’ve got.

——————–

The final part of this interview can be found here.