T Bone Burnett: Outdated piracy law 'threatens to destroy' music

Music producer T Bone Burnett on Tuesday lambasted federal copyright laws governing music piracy, calling them insufficient and warning that the nation's "culture is at stake."

The renowned Nashville-based producer's remarks are part of comments to be submitted to the U.S. Copyright Office, which is conducting a review of the safe harbor provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA is the law requiring search engines like Google and video services like YouTube, which is owned by Google, to take down music that is posted online without the proper copyright approvals.

But Burnett says, in practice, the law is largely toothless.

"And for artists and creators, instead of amplifying our voices to lead the fight for change, (the internet) undermines and silences us," said Burnett. "The Internet — with all its promise and beauty — threatens to destroy what it was supposed to save,"

“It’s time for Congress to close the loopholes in section 512 of the DMCA.  Our culture is a stake.”

Google has argued that the current system is largely working and that it has exerted great effort to take down unlicensed music that is uploaded to YouTube or appears in a Google search.

But, Burnett said the company has the technology to root out unlicensed music online similar to how it blocks pornographic material from appearing on YouTube. Burnett, who has won 13 Grammy Awards, one Oscar and one Golden Globe Award, said the music industry is not resistant to technology. But he said some aspects of technology "must be enlisted to make the system work better, not roadblock progress in a pointless arms race of whack a mole deception."

The current system puts the onus on music publishers, record labels, artists and songwriters to identify and send notices for Google to take down pirated music. Burnett is hoping his comments spur the Copyright Office to recommend changes to the DMCA in advance of possible copyright reform legislation to be taken up by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee later this year.

"The problem here isn’t technology — creators welcome the digital revolution and its power to connect, amplify, and inspire," Burnett said. "A modern recording studio looks more like a cockpit than a honky tonk, and that’s just fine. The problem is business models — designed to scrape away value rather than fuel new creation, focused on taking rather than making.

"To restore technology’s place as the rightful partner of tomorrow’s creators, we need change. The safe harbors must be restored — so only responsible actors earn their protection, not those who actively profit from the abuse and exploitation of creators’ work."

In comments submitted to the Copyright Office last year, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which includes Google, said the takedown system is working as Congress intended. According to Google's transparency website, 2.15 billion sites have been removed over the last six years due to copyright claims.

"The compromise at the heart of the DMCA imposes upon service providers the costs of responding to large volumes of complaints, both justified and unjustified, in exchange for liability limitations," the organization argued in its comments last year. "It guarantees to rightsholders rapid, ex parte extrajudicial relief from specific acts of alleged infringement upon affirmatively reporting those acts."

Reach Nate Rau at 615-259-8094 and nrau@tennessean.com. Follow him on Twitter @tnnaterau.