Bragg said that sites such as MySpace could help young musicians
rewrite the rules of the music industry, but only if their rights
are protected. He was speaking in today's edition of OUT-LAW Radio,
the weekly technology podcast.
Bragg has recently won battles with MySpace and Bebo over the
sites' terms and conditions, forcing the sites to make it clear
that they have no claim to material posted there.
"I was concerned about people coming into MySpace for the first
time, people coming into the new industry for the first time. I
don't want to find out in 25 years time that 20% of my earnings are
owned by Apple or whoever. I want the right to be able to exploit
my own back catalogue," he said. "If I choose to sign that away to
someone for life of copyright that's my choice but before that
happens I want kids to know what that means and what the
ramifications of that are."
Bragg had posted his music on the site but withdrew it when he
realised that the site appeared to claim rights over his music.
"Like the majority of people who posted stuff on MySpace we'd never
actually read right through the terms and conditions," he admitted.
MySpace is reported to be home to 2.2 million bands.
"The idea of giving someone that kind of licence – it's
phenomenal, huge coverage. I wouldn't give someone that kind of
licence if they were giving me an advance, never mind on a free
service. I said we wouldn't put anything up until this had been
changed or clarified."
Bragg has praised MySpace for its swift action in issuing new
terms and conditions explicitly saying that material belonged to
its creators, saying that the company acted "in the spirit of the
internet".
"The thing I'm most delighted about is that the principle of the
right of the producer of the material to ownership of the right to
exploit their own material seems to have been established on the
largest internet community site of them all, which is MySpace," he
said.
Previously, MySpace's rules said that a user would "hereby grant
to MySpace.com a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free,
worldwide license (with the right to sublicense through unlimited
levels of sublicensees) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate,
publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and
distribute such Content on and through the Services."
The new conditions read: "MySpace.com does not claim any
ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds,
musical works, works of authorship, or any other materials
(collectively, 'Content') that you post to the MySpace Services.
After posting your Content to the MySpace Services, you continue to
retain all ownership rights in such Content, and you continue to
have the right to use your Content in any way you choose."
