Human Right #27.
This blog entry features Chapter One of the Introduction of Twenty-Seven: The Human Right The Music Industry Forgot.
It is observably true in the course of human affairs, ever since 1766 in Orange Country, up in North Carolina, that no other country has ever been as alert to the needs of its citizens as America. Way back then, the Sandy Creek Association exercised their freedom of speech, back when no protection for it was yet in place. Americans issued a first-of-its-kind written retaliation against government officials who perpetrated duress against the citizens. Next, these American people signaled for a revolt across the countryside. Eventually, the revolt was won. Thereupon, the United States was born.
No other nation on Earth has ever been as willing to protect the persistent human rights of every citizen. Only in the United States do we ever see a system of government designed to afford evenly, to all the people, room to manage their lives without interference by governmental intrusions.
It’s this unusual necessity to let citizens own themselves fully, and to control their own affairs in any manner—so long as no other person nor their property is at risk—that gives street credit across every country in the world for the good ol’ U.S. of A.
Skip ahead to 1946 when 30 human rights were written down by the United Nations. The idea was to carry on the protection of personal liberty in a very straightforward manner—just like in the United States. The very first meeting for the United Nations was held in 1945, in San Francisco, at the conclusion of World War II. The document scribed by them was eventually entitled the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” and it is indeed included in its entirety here, right here within the introduction portion of this book. It’s supposed to champion human decency and bring peace to the world.
However, the Declaration’s 30 rights must be also protected within the framework of national law. Citizens who carefully work with legislators, state governors, and even, at times, the President of the United States, can make this happen.
Inside the workings and dealings of the music industry, the abuse of essential human rights of American Songwriters, in particular, has gone on for more than one hundred years—ever since companies used any practice they could think of to take everything away from the artist during business dealings with them. To undermine the scope of the artist’s control is found repeatedly as an objective. Times are much better for the internet now discloses the error. Still, many abuses have not yet been made right.
Almost too horrible to believe: for more than 100 years, legal talk at federal law-making meetings about copyright protection for American Songwriters, as well as for the artists and musicians and producers who create the world’s beloved musical recordings, has been almost entirely centered upon the corporate earnings. Major corporations pay and feed lobbyists who live inside Washington, D.C. As a result, the lives of songwriters who have many times suffered human rights abuses as well as the terrible consequence of any human rights abuse across their lives, are, at the very best, left shaken. What with the level of common decency required by the nation’s best artists to compose and perform music for the people, all the trouble and chaos in the music industry stems from permissive tactics against these people through business ordeals which they have no road to escape from. The calculated deception at a corporate level to steal or manipulate—and to, sometimes, downright bury—evidence of the artists’ natural control of their work, is terrifying, to say the least. Music-makers are in trouble, in this way, and are often discovered to be enshrouded in a carefully placed blanket of human rights violations.
In 2018, big companies gained a frightening hold with the Music Modernization Act. It affects the business side of music—an area artists often say is secondary to music itself. With the passing of this law, copyright holders of music recordings are last in line to corporate supremacy foisted across the industry by enabling streaming companies to take away any released musical recording—with or without the owner’s authorization—and then use it to generate income on their platforms.
Something must take place to change every bad condition in the music industry for the better, and to remind one and all about one of the 30 human rights that the music industry forgot:
ARTICLE 27:
Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement
and its benefits.
Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of
which he is the author.
The Article 27 Music Project began, in Oregon, with a goal to achieve a wiser impact, one where rightful respect within the law is placed upon the protection of the rights of songwriters, musicians and performers. The Project is the one organization in the United States determined to bring the 27th Human Right to play, for the first time ever, in the American music industry. The hope is for a new and higher business ethic to come into existence inside all music business dealings, even if it means cleaning out the bad actors first with the power of national law.
Steps we take towards common sense today in the American music industry can develop and ripple outward across the world.