Three technologies have combined to throw the entire music industry into a panic:
1. Compact Discs: For whatever reason, the music industry never thought anyone would be able to read (let alone write!) directly from a CD and make perfect copies.
2. MP3 Compression: A “lossy” compression technique which relies on the way humans hear to make certain compromises in the way music data is encoded, thereby achieving 10:1 compression.
3. Internet: Connects you to other unscrupulous people who are willing to trade their copyrighted music for yours.
The music industry should have been able to see it coming and if they couldn’t, they should have listened to the many warnings they received from the people who could see it. They could have made the new technologies work for them but instead clung to their previously tried and true methods of music marketing and now find themselves in a bad situation. The file traders are giving away for free the music they paid to have recorded and that the artists worked so hard to create.
I think the problem is much worse than this. As the computer technologies mature, what now mostly affects only music trading will extend to motion pictures and computer software. It’s already started.
So much has already been said, instead of recapping, I’ll just point you to some of my favorite sites on the subject:
http://www.janisian.com/articles.html. Look up the article titled “The Internet Debacle – An Alternative View.” Janis Ian had a couple of hits back in the 60’s and has a unique perspective on the issue. You must read this essay, it's truly great. A good look at how recording artists are abused.
http://www.pressplay.com/. It was almost too little too late but PressPlay and similar music subscription sites are legitimate music sites. That is to say, the artist and industry can still benefit. The deal Pressplay offers is, for $10 a month, you can download anything from their library as often as you want. But you can’t listen to it unless you have an active subscription or have paid $1 for a heavily limited version you can burn to a CD in Windows WMA format. But their downloads are much faster and much more reliable than a peer to peer network download. The library of music they offer is limited but the quality is good.
http://www.riaa.com. Why not visit the den of the beast itself and check out the “anti-piracy” link? At least you can say you’ve considered both sides of the story.
http://www.outsideshore.com/cadenza/cd_costs.htm will give a pretty reasonable explanation of the costs involved in producing a CD. It jibes pretty well with what the RIAA claims.
Certain aspects of the relationship between the file trader and the content author are parasitic. The parasite can feed on a healthy host but too many parasites will weaken and even kill the host. That’s really the heart of the entire problem for the file trader, whether or not they realize it. If you take it to its extreme, where nearly all software, movies and music are available just for the downloading, there’ll be some very dramatic changes in each of these industries. Without any income from direct sales, musicians will need to tour constantly. Many very talented musicians will not be willing to do that though. I wonder what will happen to the movies? Will they go straight from the theater to TV? That’s they way it used to be. Software sales are what really worry me. The only other way software companies would have to make money is through support of their product. The temptation would be to write software that requires a lot of support and that’s the last thing we need. It’s no wonder that Microsoft wants to move to an increasingly subscription based model.
Everybody likes to get something for free but nobody wants to work for free. We all have bills to pay. If writing software, recording music or making movies won’t pay the bills and the bills must be paid, we’ll spend our time doing something else. Sorry, it’s just a fact of life. You can take either a moralistic or capitalistic approach but the conclusion is the same: we need to reward the people who make the media we all enjoy.
If everything the entire music industry has worked for is being given away for free, why haven’t they collapsed yet? Sure, file trading hurts, but the pain isn’t as bad as the howls from the RIAA might lead you to believe. There’s a number of limiting factors which I’ll briefly review:
Let's say over a year's time, everyone downloads about $250 million of music. Does that translate into $250 million dollars of lost sales? Not hardly. I don't mind downloading Sonny & Cher's original I Got You Babe, just for fun every now and then but there's no way I'd pay $16 for a CD containing it. The download is free from WinMX but I would consider paying something for it. It would significantly less than $16. Maybe 25 cents. When the music industry makes everything so expensive, they hurt themselves and limit their own sales. I have to really like someone before I put down that much money on a CD. If the CD's were much cheaper and if you could buy single songs, I'd buy a lot more. This would be good right?
For years, IBM and Apple made personal computers. IBM's marketing strategy was to make a lot of them, license them freely and flood the world. Their profit margins were low but they made it up in volume. Apple was the opposite, what they lacked in volume they made up in "margin". By margin I mean they made a lot more money on each computer sold. You know who took over the world.
Despite the polls that say most/many people think that file trading is okay, in their hearts they know it is not. They only need to consider the struggling artist, producer or composer who can’t afford to work for free if they need some moral clarity. So why do they do it?
A number of schemes are being devised by the music industry to protect their copyrights. In my opinion, they’re all useless. Every measure of security has to be tight enough to keep the bad guys out but flexible enough to let the good guys in. You can never protect against the good guys who turn bad. And no security measure can ever raise an impenetrable wall, the “good guys” will always need access. Security measures just make the theft a little harder but rarely deter the determined thief. That’s the major complaint I have about the recent attempts by Microsoft to protect their investment in Windows XP with their Windows Product Activation: it deters the occasional bootlegger from loading a second or third copy on his other computer but is useless at stopping the counterfeiting warehouses or rampant bootlegging in Russia and Asia.
Any security measure, no matter how clever or how well thought out, will eventually be defeated or de-fanged. If necessary, people will record and trade music from their sound cards. Or they will capture the analog signals from their CD players. So long as it’s worth somebody’s time and effort, they’ll be copying and trading music.
$0.17 Musicians' unions
$0.80 Packaging/manufacturing
$0.82 Publishing royalties
$0.80 Retail profit
$0.90 Distribution
$1.60 Artists' royalties
$1.70 Label profit
$2.40 Marketing/promotion
$2.91 Label overhead
$3.89 Retail overhead
The real way to defeat software and music and movie piracy: remove the incentive. The music industry doesn’t really offer anything different than what you can download and they charge what most people must be thinking is way too much. If a CD only cost $5, people would start to wonder if file trading is worth all that time and effort. DRM and other security measures likewise would deter some of the less determined and send them to the store or online buying sites. If only it was easier to buy music online, many file traders might go legitimate. But sites like PressPlay are still too expensive, too restricted in their fair usage policy and too limited in the artists they carry. The less accessible the music is, the more attractive Kazaa becomes.
I believe the motion picture industry has the balance between price and accessibility just about right. DVD’s are mostly under $20 which makes them very affordable. Most books cost about that. They have some encryption (even though it’s been broken), which serves as a deterrent to the casual copier. DVD’s usually carry extra goodies not found in the theatrical release and are of better quality than broadcast tv.
How about this: