The RIAA are fools.
Much attention has been paid in the past few years to the subject of intellectual property, particularly the ease at which such property can be propagated throughout the world using the internet. I find however that much of this dialogue is based on fundamental ideas that are not only deliberately misleading, they are self-defeating to the very industry which propagandizes them.
Why are there libraries? Because an educated public must have books made available to it in order to become--and remain--educated and cultured. I don’t routinely use the library myself, but I understand why books are important things. Knowledge and literature are vital to a society’s prosperity. Now imagine the outrage that would ensue if a conglomerate of publishing houses (“PIAA” if you will) sued to close all public libraries around the nation, because those reading the books made available there, for free, were infringing on their copyrights.
Sound ridiculous? What is the substantive difference between written creative work and musical creative work? Musicians have cooler toys to play with. Writers just have their keyboards and screens, and their product comes directly out of their minds onto the page. And copyright applies just as clearly to written works as it does to music. But what most people don’t seem to realize is that copyright law was originally meant to limit the ownership of the artist/writer, not empower it. Copyrights are meant to expire, at which time the rights to use and benefit from the artistic piece default to the general public. That’s why there are libraries.
While much of popular music today can hardly be compared to anything literary, one could argue that the same benefits to society are lost when a culture’s music is not offered to and shared with the general public. Some would claim that music is not inherently instructive--I beg to differ, I think it carries plenty of wrong-headed messages--but libraries aren’t uniformly instructive either, else they’d consist only of non-fiction books.
It is the very consumerism long exploited by the record companies that has created their own nightmare. By pushing people to buy-buy-buy and with retail outlets promising cheaper-cheaper-cheaper, the net result is the devaluing of the product--or more accurately, the true value of the product has been forced to surface by an increasingly savvy and technologically-abled public who doesn’t have to surrender to prices they know are unfair.
While it’s long been known that CDs were overpriced to pad pockets, the audience for popular music had no way to express their disapproval of this in any meaningful way. Those days are forever gone; the music industry has lost their ironclad grip on production and distribution of music. They now must pay attention to things like what their consumers think is fair to pay for their music, rather than the maximum they’re willing to accept.
Am I arguing in favor of stealing music? Well, let’s see. For something to be stolen, it would mean that something was taken--not duplicated--from its original owner, without their permission. Downloading music from peer-to-peer (or p2p) networks can only be done from willing participants, that is, people who are choosing to share their music. “Theft,” “stealing” and “piracy” are emotionally-loaded misnomers the RIAA circulates to keep public opinion going in the direction it wants, but they’re all deliberate distortions. The “crime” committed when one copies a song from another is copyright violation, which doesn’t quite carry the same-sized stinger. Stealing music is when someone takes a CD from a music store without paying for it. (I’m not at all in favor of that.) Music sharing is what happens when two willing parties exchange music without giving the RIAA the cut it feels it deserves.
This exchange necessarily means the original artist is denied a cut as well. But not when a CD purchase is made as a result of the sharing. Besides, the original artist is denied a cut when the CD is bought secondhand, but no one calls this “piracy” or “stealing music”.
This would be a legitimate argument, if the recording industry was really losing money due to p2p sharing, as they insist. This is bogus and misleading. They’re still raking in money hand over fist, at ever increasing rates. Research at Harvard and UNC--and most people’s common sense--indicates that sharing music actually leads to more CD purchases rather than fewer. Harvard’s most recent study claims, quote: “.. for the most popular albums - the top 25 percent that had more than 600,000 sales - file sharing actually boosts sales. For every 150 songs downloaded, the study showed, sales jumped by one CD.” Note: that’s one CD that wouldn’t have been sold without any sharing of music. But these findings seem to contradict the RIAA’s arguments that p2p is “chipping away at” music sales, and further make them look like fools for fighting it instead of embracing it, so don’t expect them to acknowledge Harvard’s research at RIAA.com.
The fact is, the rise of Napster back in the late 90s panicked an entire industry. Its message was very clear, and it still is: We don’t need you. Music listeners worldwide are forever breaking the shackles of the RIAA’s extortionist policies and asserting their independence. A similar revolution is happening with movies, to a smaller scale, but just as important--and necessary. A free market economy can only work when the consumer has power that must be respected.
Why are there libraries? Because an educated public must have books made available to it in order to become--and remain--educated and cultured. I don’t routinely use the library myself, but I understand why books are important things. Knowledge and literature are vital to a society’s prosperity. Now imagine the outrage that would ensue if a conglomerate of publishing houses (“PIAA” if you will) sued to close all public libraries around the nation, because those reading the books made available there, for free, were infringing on their copyrights.
Sound ridiculous? What is the substantive difference between written creative work and musical creative work? Musicians have cooler toys to play with. Writers just have their keyboards and screens, and their product comes directly out of their minds onto the page. And copyright applies just as clearly to written works as it does to music. But what most people don’t seem to realize is that copyright law was originally meant to limit the ownership of the artist/writer, not empower it. Copyrights are meant to expire, at which time the rights to use and benefit from the artistic piece default to the general public. That’s why there are libraries.
While much of popular music today can hardly be compared to anything literary, one could argue that the same benefits to society are lost when a culture’s music is not offered to and shared with the general public. Some would claim that music is not inherently instructive--I beg to differ, I think it carries plenty of wrong-headed messages--but libraries aren’t uniformly instructive either, else they’d consist only of non-fiction books.
It is the very consumerism long exploited by the record companies that has created their own nightmare. By pushing people to buy-buy-buy and with retail outlets promising cheaper-cheaper-cheaper, the net result is the devaluing of the product--or more accurately, the true value of the product has been forced to surface by an increasingly savvy and technologically-abled public who doesn’t have to surrender to prices they know are unfair.
While it’s long been known that CDs were overpriced to pad pockets, the audience for popular music had no way to express their disapproval of this in any meaningful way. Those days are forever gone; the music industry has lost their ironclad grip on production and distribution of music. They now must pay attention to things like what their consumers think is fair to pay for their music, rather than the maximum they’re willing to accept.
Am I arguing in favor of stealing music? Well, let’s see. For something to be stolen, it would mean that something was taken--not duplicated--from its original owner, without their permission. Downloading music from peer-to-peer (or p2p) networks can only be done from willing participants, that is, people who are choosing to share their music. “Theft,” “stealing” and “piracy” are emotionally-loaded misnomers the RIAA circulates to keep public opinion going in the direction it wants, but they’re all deliberate distortions. The “crime” committed when one copies a song from another is copyright violation, which doesn’t quite carry the same-sized stinger. Stealing music is when someone takes a CD from a music store without paying for it. (I’m not at all in favor of that.) Music sharing is what happens when two willing parties exchange music without giving the RIAA the cut it feels it deserves.
This exchange necessarily means the original artist is denied a cut as well. But not when a CD purchase is made as a result of the sharing. Besides, the original artist is denied a cut when the CD is bought secondhand, but no one calls this “piracy” or “stealing music”.
This would be a legitimate argument, if the recording industry was really losing money due to p2p sharing, as they insist. This is bogus and misleading. They’re still raking in money hand over fist, at ever increasing rates. Research at Harvard and UNC--and most people’s common sense--indicates that sharing music actually leads to more CD purchases rather than fewer. Harvard’s most recent study claims, quote: “.. for the most popular albums - the top 25 percent that had more than 600,000 sales - file sharing actually boosts sales. For every 150 songs downloaded, the study showed, sales jumped by one CD.” Note: that’s one CD that wouldn’t have been sold without any sharing of music. But these findings seem to contradict the RIAA’s arguments that p2p is “chipping away at” music sales, and further make them look like fools for fighting it instead of embracing it, so don’t expect them to acknowledge Harvard’s research at RIAA.com.
The fact is, the rise of Napster back in the late 90s panicked an entire industry. Its message was very clear, and it still is: We don’t need you. Music listeners worldwide are forever breaking the shackles of the RIAA’s extortionist policies and asserting their independence. A similar revolution is happening with movies, to a smaller scale, but just as important--and necessary. A free market economy can only work when the consumer has power that must be respected.
posted by Craig J. at 3:33 PM
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