Evan Greer & Lia Holland - Rethinking Copyright, Fighting Creative Monopolies, and Putting an End to Enforcement Excesses

Walled Culture

Fight for the Future’s Director, Evan Greer, and Campaigns and Communications Director, Lia Holland, are both digital rights activists who have been active in the music industry. Based on their experience they talk about the need to rethink how artists can be fairly remunerated and the disconnect between the interest of big corporate entities, claiming to speak on behalf of artists, versus the actual needs of creators, especially those that have been marginalized by the music industry. They warn against the excesses from corporations and governments in trying to enforce copyright through massive and automated Internet censorship.
Key Takeaways:
0:00 Intro
2:20 Evan talks about their background as a traveling musician, and how a show in Prague brought them to where they are today with Fight For the Future
7:23 Lia goes into her life as a writer, and the struggle her family faced when the 2008 financial crisis and how she had to change her career mindset
14:09 Evan talks about Fight for the Future and the background of the organization and what exactly they fight for
17:41 Lia talks about some of the campaigns that Fight For the Future is currently working on and being recognized for
24:14 Lia describes content monopolies and the major companies and streaming services and the deep flaws they possess
26:51 Evan describes the changes in copyright over the years as we move into a more analog world rather than burning CD's and copying tapes
28:52 Evan talks about how artists truly aren't getting revenue from streaming, but instead the record labels
31:25 Lia describes how the focus in the industry is mostly all geared towards back catalogs now
38:01 Evan dives into the concept of centralization and how it's the main root of the harm in the industry
45:11 Lia goes more into current campaigns and what they are doing to truly fight back to save our future
49:15 Evan explains how people need to get behind this movement of fighting for the future of the internet as much as they do for other social causes
Resources Mentioned:
Spotify - Spotify is a Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is the world's largest music streaming service providers, with over 365 million monthly active users, including 165 million paying subscribers, as of June 2021.
Apple Music - Apple Music is a music and video streaming service developed by Apple Inc. Users select music to stream to their device on-demand, or they can listen to existing playlists.
Amazon Music - Amazon Music is a music streaming platform and online music store operated by Amazon. Launched in public beta on September 25, 2007, in January 2008 it became the first music store to sell music without digital rights management from the four major music labels, as well as many independents.
Myspace - Myspace is an American social networking service. From 2005 to early 2009, it was the largest social networking site in the world. Myspace was acquired by News Corporation in July 2005 for $580 million, and in June 2006 surpassed Yahoo! and Google to become the most visited website in the United States.
Napster - Napster is a set of three music-focused online services. It was founded in 1999 as a pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing Internet software that emphasized sharing digital audio files, typically audio songs, encoded in MP3 format.
RIAA - The Recording Industry Association of America is a trade organization that represents the recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors, which RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/or distribute approximately 85% of all legally sold recorded music in the United States"
Guests Social Media Links:
Website: fightforthefuture.org
Website: endcreativemonopolies.org
Evan Twitter: https://twitter.com/evan_greer
Lia Twitter: https://twitter.com/liaholland
FFTF Twitter: https://twitter.com/FightForTheFtr