Rock legend Levon Helm has been posthumously dragged into an emotional dispute over digital piracy between a Reddit co-founder and a university professor who was once The Band's road manager.
levon_helmFORTUNE -- A feud that has flared up over the past several days between Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and Jonathan Taplin, head of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab, provides a microcosm of the copyright debate: it's zero-sum and full of drama.
Most of the drama has come from Taplin, who is a former road manager for The Band. The two debated copyright policy last Wednesday evening during Fast Company's "Innovation Uncensored" event. The previous day, it had come out that Levon Helm of The Band was about to die of cancer. Taplin opened his argument by saying: "Tonight, Levon Helm is dying, basically broke." He blamed piracy for the "basically broke" part. Helm, he said, had been making $150,000 to $200,000 a year in royalties. But "eight years ago, that stopped" when sales of The Band's back catalog dried up as file-sharing took hold. "That, to me, is not fair," he said.
Perhaps not. But The Band broke up in 1976. If Helm had been making at least $150,000 a year, that means he made a minimum of $4.2 million between the breakup of the band and the time his royalties, according to Taplin, vanished. Presumably, he was making a lot more while the group was still putting out records and touring the world during the eight years that comprised the group's heyday, not to mention whatever he made from solo work and later (far less lucrative) iterations of The Band. If he was broke, piracy was not the only reason. (Taplin made several other questionable statements, which Mike Masnick highlighted at TechDirt.)
levon_helmFORTUNE -- A feud that has flared up over the past several days between Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and Jonathan Taplin, head of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab, provides a microcosm of the copyright debate: it's zero-sum and full of drama.
Most of the drama has come from Taplin, who is a former road manager for The Band. The two debated copyright policy last Wednesday evening during Fast Company's "Innovation Uncensored" event. The previous day, it had come out that Levon Helm of The Band was about to die of cancer. Taplin opened his argument by saying: "Tonight, Levon Helm is dying, basically broke." He blamed piracy for the "basically broke" part. Helm, he said, had been making $150,000 to $200,000 a year in royalties. But "eight years ago, that stopped" when sales of The Band's back catalog dried up as file-sharing took hold. "That, to me, is not fair," he said.
Perhaps not. But The Band broke up in 1976. If Helm had been making at least $150,000 a year, that means he made a minimum of $4.2 million between the breakup of the band and the time his royalties, according to Taplin, vanished. Presumably, he was making a lot more while the group was still putting out records and touring the world during the eight years that comprised the group's heyday, not to mention whatever he made from solo work and later (far less lucrative) iterations of The Band. If he was broke, piracy was not the only reason. (Taplin made several other questionable statements, which Mike Masnick highlighted at TechDirt.)
Source: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/04/24/feud/
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