Philosophy

If you don’t already know, here’s a quick run down of what’s happening with the whole Taylor Swift/Apple/Indie Artists debacle: Last month, Apple released its streaming service and offered a three month trial period to users for free. During the trial period, they weren’t planning on paying the artists whose music was streamed by the service. Last week, Taylor Swift published an open letter to Apple in which she basically claimed that Apple was wronging artists by not paying them for three months. Two days ago, Jason Sheldon produced a contract that he had to sign to photograph one of Swift’s older tours, and because the contract allows for his work to be used indefinitely without compensating him for each use, he basically calls Swift a hypocrite. Swift’s spokesman said that Sheldon is misrepresenting the contract. A few hours ago, Joel Goodman, another freelance photographer, leaked a contract for the 1989 tour that contains even stricter rules. This debacle raises two philosophical questions: Is Swift a hypocrite? Have musicians like Swift or photographers like Sheldon even given a compelling argument for why they’ve been treated wrongly in the first place? I do think Swift is a hypocrite, but I don’t think that it really matters because neither Swift nor Sheldon has given us a good reason to think that artists are being wronged by companies like Apple and Firefly Entertainment. Let me try to convince you to see things my way. …