The way we think about how we get music will change drastically in the near future. This was the takeaway from a panel discussion on February 24th entitled “Google, Technology and the Future of the Music Industry.” Presented by both the Art Law and Intellectual Property Law Societies, the panel included speakers Cardozo professor Frank Pasquale, and Jim Griffin, of OneHouse, LLC, and was moderated by Cardozo professor Felix Wu.

Pasquale and Griffin spoke about the challenges faced by the music industry and media companies as a result of the increasing ease of access to digital work over the last several years. Pasquale discussed the need for “infrastructure for supporting creativity.” He believes that we need a broader vision of support for all types of cultural activities. Along those lines, Griffin proposed that the solution to the problems of the digital age is for musicians to come together and protect themselves as a combine. “We do well when we collectivize our rights,” he added. Pasquale agreed, and lamented the fact that many people today are too suspicious of any type of collective action, as evidenced by frequent accusations that the government is moving towards socialism.

Griffin characterized the current trend towards digitization of all media as a loss of control for media companies. The response to this, he argued, is to move toward actuarial economics, that is, insuring against risk. “Copyright is copy-risk,” he explained. Because piracy is virtually unstoppable, producers of media should compensate for this by collecting money from sources other than the individual. In response to Prof. Wu’s question about how exactly that would work, Griffin gave the example of the President of Penn State University charging all students $2 to access the campus internet network. Rather than attempt to monitor students’ use of the network to prevent illegal downloading of music, the President allowed students to use the network freely and collected the money upfront.

In the old model of obtaining music, content was thought of as a product, and those purchasing content were consumers of the product. But in the digital world, Griffin says, we aren’t consumers. “When you download a song, there isn’t one less song. We aren’t actually consuming the song,” he clarified. Putting it quite bluntly, he described the word “consumer” as related to “consummate,” or “to fuck.” It used to be that media producers would sell a product to the consumer and be done with him. “It’s a very male-centric concept” which needs to change, he advised. He proposed what he called a more feminine approach: “In the future, it will be all about starting a relationship [with the purchaser] that never ends.”