Grammy winning pop star Taylor Swift is one among 180 musical artists, performers, and songwriters who have signed on to support the campaign for reform of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The 27-year-old star famously stood against music streaming service Spotify in 2014, pulling her catalog and claiming that streaming services, file sharing, and piracy have made a huge dent in album sales, affecting both artists of her stature, and those yet unknowns.
"It’s my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album’s price point is," Swift wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in 2014. "I hope they don’t underestimate themselves or undervalue their art."
In a similar move, Swift, along with several well-known artists in the industry are now calling on Congress to take steps to reform the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which was implemented in 1998, a solid 18 years before today's YouTube and Spotify came into play. Rolling Stone reports that the artists believe the Act can no longer protect them from the quick evolving technology that makes music and content more shareable and accessible by anyone with a data connection.
According to Billboard, the Digital Millennium Copyright act protects YouTube and other streaming services from copyright infringement liability for materials uploaded by users, as long as they comply to notices of takedown from copyright owners. About 180 artists have supported the petition for digital copyright reform, which was organized by music manager Irving Azoff, and will be published in issues of "Politico," "The Hill," and other publications in Washington D.C. beginning today.
The artists are calling for a "sensible reform that balances the interests of creators with the interests of the companies who exploit music for their financial enrichment" because the outdated DMCA "has allowed major tech companies to grow and generate huge profits by creating ease of use for consumers to carry almost every recorded song in history in their pocket via a smartphone, while songwriters’ and artists’ earnings continue to diminish."
Artists who have signed the petition include Paul McCartney, U2, Kings of Leon, and Katy Perry, among many others.
