Recently, the Qualité Motel group admitted on its Facebook page to having been attacked by ADISQ for having infringed the image rights of their Félix, this trophy rewarding the Quebec world of music. The use of the Félix belonging to ADISQ had to be modified by the group. This is how the corrected (and rather twisted) version of the cover of the most recent album by Qualité Motel was born: “Here we are again with brand new trophies, the ADISQ does not like that we appropriate Félix then we had to collect our own trophies. »
However, well beyond the obvious intellectual property of ADISQ, culturally, it is our Félix that is in question. Don’t you believe?
Welcome to the world of “All rights reserved”! This legal saga between Qualité Motel (QM) and ADISQ lifts the veil on a protectionist culture well anchored at the very heart of our music industry. A world that is slow to evolve, when the time comes to consent to creative freedom.
Did ADISQ miss an important speech, supported by the National Film Board (ONF)?
Do you remember the movie RIP: A Remix Manifesto ? If you haven’t seen this film produced by the NFB released in 2008, know that its subject is still just as relevant, 14 years later. This film praising free culture presents these four commandments:
1. Culture is always based on the past
2. The past always tries to control the future
3. Our future is becoming less and less free
4. To build a free society, we must limit control of the past
I don’t know if the leaders of ADISQ have seen this important film. Otherwise, I invite them to do so. Because beyond being a commodity, our culture is also an essential social binder; a sense of belonging, through imitation; something metaphysical in which we participate, that we take and that we give back.
When we belong to a culture, this culture inevitably belongs to us.
Culture is always based on the past
According to this film, an “original” work is always inspired by the past. By analyzing all the songs of QM, one notices many quotations of famous harmonic paths from the years 1980-1990, including that of Pump Up the Jam. QM is thus based on our past to express itself in music. An expression that shapes our present and our musical future.
Moreover, through the visual artistic work that is the cover of their mini-album, the group sucks us into the world of “parody”. Where it is legally possible to use the works of others, just for fun. Without the exception in copyright for the benefit of parody, neither the bye Bye, neither Rock et Belles Oreilles, nor the Quebec Zoo could have existed as it is. By choosing the name of their album “Les plus grands duos francophones de l’année” and the visual citation of the trophy, QM is humorously inspired by all the kitsch and velvety cheesiness of the world of Quebec duos. Just to laugh about it. Because the second degree is coolit’s the fun and it’s funny.
If QM uses humor to name and “quote” our era, ADISQ does not seem to have the heart to laugh at it. And that is quite unfortunate. If real damage exists… here it is.
The past always tries to control the future
RIP: A Remix Manifesto skillfully criticizes the intimidating legal behavior of major labels. This film sheds light on these companies that relentlessly fiddle with our laws in order to always postpone the moment when our culture will end up in our public domain. However, to my great surprise, I note that ADISQ also seems to play legal and protectionist relentlessness in this film. But to protect what, by the way? Their brand image? Their image rights on “their” trophy?
It is important to seek to understand to whom this famous Felix should belong. And in what context. Of course, if a competing musical gala arrived tomorrow morning with a trophy-reward being also named “Félix”, or also having a shape like “36-24-36” (like Félix Leclerc, I presume…) , obviously there would be cause for questioning. Except that, in this story with QM, this is just a humorous and anecdotal quote. Of a creation. Nothing more.
Public money, public culture
Who paid the craftsman who created this trophy? ADISQ. Who gave the money to L’ADISQ to develop its Gala and its artefacts? Grants ; government collective promotion envelopes; own-source broadcasting revenues from Radio-Canada, our public broadcaster funded by… the public.
In short. Our Félix exists only through public money. Or almost, except for a few shots.
Although this Félix belongs on paper to an NPO with hypersensitive litigation, the fact remains that it is a question here of our collective money; a collective valuation of this artefact; the work (little or even unpaid) of artists and craftsmen which gives all the value to this trophy, to this symbol. The ADISQ is therefore wrong, in my opinion, to exercise such excessive control over this image… This even has the opposite effect; it gives them a controlling, manic image.
Because, in everyone’s hearts and for 43 years, this Félix “already” belongs to everyone. It has passed into our culture. And, rightly, shouldn’t cultural products financed with public money land more quickly in our public domain?
Our cultural future is becoming less and less free
RIP: A Remix Manifesto brilliantly denounces the commercial arrogance of certain companies that appropriate our culture in a disproportionate and unbalanced way. He also denounces the duration of copyright, which would be too long, from a social and cultural point of view. Proof: did you know that you weren’t allowed to sing in a public place? Happy Birthday to You (created in 1893), before 2016. You were all irreducible illegals for 123 years, at the restaurant!
By the way, when should a “cultural product” become a “cultural work”? Knowing that the first version of the copyright of 1710 lasted 14 years, the duration of its contemporary version is 70 years after the death of the author. It’s a long, long time. And it robs our public domain of our own culture.
To build a free society, we must limit control of the past.
This “intellectual property” issue is not linked only to culture. It is also linked to agriculture and the pharmaceutical industry. We see ad nauseam businesses that appropriate pre-existing elements from nature; who reap the fruit of open innovation, of university collaborative work and who lock it all up in private patents, all rights reserved, for the benefit of their shareholders and, often, to the detriment of all.
Let’s take care of the public domain
In conclusion, our politicians should seriously ask themselves how to react to this exaggerated copyright drift. How to intervene in the face of all these imbalances of rights. The rights of a minority that exploits OUR culture; those of a majority who find it difficult to retouch it, to quote it, to express it, to express themselves, in their creative way.
These are important questions that Pablo Rodriguez and Nathalie Roy will sooner or later have to ask themselves. Because all this legal drift deserves reflection. For the good of the public, creators and our culture.
However, the history of Qualité Motel, this group which “dares” to seize something which, philosophically, already belongs to our culture, is only the tip of the iceberg. Anecdotal, strictly speaking. But that underlies something much more serious: the loss of the common good, in favor of unrestrained privatization, to the advantage of an increasingly powerful minority.