Critical Review - Anthony McCann's "All That Is Not Given Is Lost: Irish Traditional Music, Copyright, and Common Property"

Anthony McCann opens his article by stating that Irish traditional music finds itself in "the best of times and the worst of times". In many ways, the music is more popular globally than it's ever been and interest is at an all time high. On the other hand, the streamlining of a music that was once a "traditional" cultural practice has commodified the music in ways that are problematic. McCann argues that transmission of Irish traditional music depends/has depended on the music being a "gift" (a "system of sharing" that is "as-yet-unarticulated") as opposed to a commodity (89). Groups like the Irish Music Rights Organization (IMRO) work to protect Irish traditional music as a commodity, that is to say, removing some pieces of music from the "public domain" so as to assign ownership of the song (who has written it/who has the right to use it). After this point, McCann reiterates that "the noncommodity aspect of Irish musical practice... [is] the "cultural glue" that holds the whole system together (91)." He brings up the Irish seisiun as the major platform on which the Irish musical "gift economy" takes place: the seisiun is culturally important not because it's a "colonial relic" but rather because it is a "response" to current economic circumstances: it allows for the free exchange of music in a society which values and supports artistic "ownership" of music (92). McCann makes the case for Irish traditional music as being a Common Property Resource (CPR) due to its "non-excludability" and its tendency to develop "rivalrous consumption", or a situation where "each user [of the music] is capable of subtracting from the welfare of other users" based on the context in which a given person uses the music (whether in a consumer market or a gift economy) (94-5). There is a constant struggle between those who want to perform the music outside of the commercial spehere and those who wish to "cordon of those aspects of the [musical] environment that seem 'useful'" and make music a "product" and musicians "producers" (95). "Tragedy" can strike with common property when "self-interest and social interest diverge". Irish traditional music is, by and large, open to being used by anyone who wants to use it. Yet, McCann argues, the social and cultural significance of Irish traditional music relies on its transmission and presentation as being a gift, not a product. When those acting in self-interest attempt to turn a profit on the music, they work against the very nature of the music that makes it special in the first place (96). Commodification "dimishes to humanizing domain of the gift" (97). The "negative reciprocity" of capitalism, the turning of "one man's gift to another man's capital", promotes "individualism and clannishness" at the expense of communal social practice (98). Ultimately, McCann makes a plea for a legal system which "recognizes the wealth, the breadth, and, most importantly, the social nature of traditional musics and [their] transmission".

Question: if what's traditional is a "contemporary response to contemporary conditions", the meaning of what is traditional in Irish music must be dynamic. Not to argue for commodification of music, I wonder: do sales and the copyrighting of music that is played in the "traditional" Irish style diminish the one's enjoyment of the music? Can commodified music bring just as much pleasure as music that is transmitted as "gift" if such a system is socially desirable? Essentially, is there a certain "sanctity" that capitalism defiles?