Am I in love with Minister Lacombe? I’m hallucinating… On Tuesday, we could read in the title of an article in Duty : “The works should circulate freely on the platforms, indicates Mathieu Lacombe”. Honestly, I never thought I would see this in my lifetime.
Having been among the first in Quebec to defend “free culture” in music, notably in the context of the marketing of Misteur Valaire in 2007, I had since then experienced the effects of a model based on free music. But all in all, it pays off in the end.
When we chose to make the albums Friday Night And Golden Bombay free to download, I was far from suspecting that they would benefit from 68,000 unique downloads from 58 different countries; in exchange for the names, emails and geolocations of all our fans. I was even further from understanding that we would set foot on the Metropolis in just five emails; to generate over $52,000 in revenue in a single evening for just $321.25 in Facebook advertising. I could never have imagined myself leading, five years later, an electro music group to generate half a million sales… And all this thanks to the use of a Creative Commons BY type license -NC-SA; well outside the traditional pipeline of copyright.
A culture that we pay for… twice!
In 2022, I published in The duty an opinion letter entitled “The American Vacuum Cleaner”. Faced with the fait accompli of the purchase of the Seville Films catalog by an American company, I made the observation “that our culture, the one we all pay for together, ultimately does not belong to us”. I denounced that we, the taxpayers, pay “90% for a cinematographic work which, at the end of the day, will fall 100% into the hands of an Inc company. “, and I added that it was “as if we were all paying for the construction of a section of highway which, at the time of its inauguration, was completely transferred to the private entrepreneur who built it (without taking risk). And even allowing it to install toll booths there.”
I would add today that the principle of cultural financing in Quebec simply boils down to nationalizing risks and privatizing profits; without any obligation to respect artists, promote, enhance our cultural products or make them accessible. All for one ; one for one.
A ministerial epiphany that we no longer expected…
Now, Minister Lacombe seems to have an unexpectedly lucid vision of what the future of our culture should be: now free; freed from copyright channeling it towards multinational platforms which only have the blockbusters Americans or their own productions as top priorities…
And let’s be honest: 95% of the revenue from a Quebec film occurs no later than the first seven years of the work’s life (if not in the first…). After which, crumbs trickle in over decades. Nothing to support artisans who have resale rights or copyrights…
Except that these shots, combined with thousands of other bits of revenue generated by the global exploitation of a catalog, collectively bring happiness to a handful of distributors who have been driving around in luxury cars for ages.
Flowers, after the pots
It’s rare that I overuse newspaper ink The duty to throw flowers at a minister. I admit that I rather made many comments about the five Ministers of Culture that we saw pass by, between Christine St-Pierre and Mathieu Lacombe.
But when two neurons connect in the head of a minister for the good of our community, I find myself under an unavoidable obligation to declare – and without any restraint – my deep love for this type of position.
Not only do I welcome this vision of Minister Lacombe, but, while we are at it, I would invite him to offer eternal digital life to “our” Master key national. Yes. The one with Marie Eykel.
Because this cult educational work, paid for in 1977 with millions by my parents and their generation, is today (and until 2047…) obscured by sclerotic legal and union molasses, flowing straight from another era ; it is also evacuated from the Web because of the (small) interests of a handful of individuals, some already dead, to the detriment of the (large) interests of a very living and unique community in the world.
Because, yes, our culture can be eternal.
It is simply a matter, for Minister Lacombe, of transforming with a magical ministerial decree a padlocked, unnecessarily mercantile “product” into a useful, free “work”, freed from (too long) copyright; a work that we can thus prescribe between us, from generation to generation, without friction, without embarrassment, without waiting another 23 years and, above all, without breaking the law. And this on the Web, directly, without hindrance, from person to person, and well beyond the power and goodwill of Netflix or other paternalistic American cultural cyber companies.