Luther Blissett
Active Member
From today's Guardian:
Why piracy isn't such a bad thing for music
Victor Keegan
The Guardian
Thursday March 27 2008
As an international recession looms, it is reassuring to read some good business news. Britain's film industry is enjoying a boom. Visits to cinemas rose 3.7% to 162.4 million in 2007, much faster than growth of the whole economy, and box office takings rose 7.7% to £904.9m. But hang on: isn't this an industry, even more than music, in global meltdown because of an epidemic of illegal file sharing? How come it is expanding? Could they be making films people want to see on a wide screen, maybe even spurred by a download? Whisper it quietly, but the music industry - which has been so concerned about free downloads that it has been suing customers - appears to be in a mini-revival itself, thanks to higher pre-Christmas sales and the hype surrounding the Brit awards.
That's remarkable. People are still buying despite an estimated 7m bands on MySpace alone offering cheap or free legal music, and the ability to sample 30 seconds or so of any track on iTunes or Last.fm or internet radio for nothing - if you haven't already got it as a giveaway from a journal, that is.
The industry claims there are 20 illegal downloads for every legal one, yet it is clearly not affecting the real world on that scale. If a teenager downloads 20,000 tracks, what does he or she do with them? Sell them to others, who could download them for free anyway, or play them sequentially or randomly? Better to listen to the radio which repeatedly pumps out all the current hits. The point is that it may be wrong to download, but it is not affecting sales proportionately; and for sales lost, there are others gained from people like me who have hugely increased their purchases because there is now an easy, affordable way to do it through the likes of iTunes and mobile phones (but beware of unlimited data charges).
If the industry had spent more time devising a payments solution for the digital age instead of suing customers, it could have cleaned up. The younger generation supposedly nurtured in a culture of non-payment is the same one that pays £3.50 a shot for ringtones. Why? Phones had an easy payment system.
The latest - global - gambit of the industry is to persuade governments to make internet service providers (ISPs) do their dirty work for them by disconnecting repeat offenders. This must be resisted, even though it is bound to have some effect: an Entertainment Media Research survey found seven out of 10 people would cease illegal downloads if they received a warning. That's not the point. To force unwilling ISPs to take powers to cut off internet connections (a priceless tool for education) without even a judge involved would not only not do the job (there would be an upsurge in ISPs based abroad) but would be a precedent for ISPs to police any other activity that happens in their conduit (cue in MI5).
One good thing about the industry's misbegotten attitude is that it has spawned a discussion about the nature of copyright. For the first time, the interests of consumers are being listened to along with those of corporate lobbyists (who have succeeded in extending copyright in the US to a ludicrous 70 years after the death of the creator - something being described as "capitalising on the work of the long-dead").
Objective studies of the economic consequences have found the period that balances the rights of owners against the economic benefits of allowing other creative artists to rework existing copyrights is 14 to 15 years. Patents now have a limit of 20 years. This gives corporations, including pharmaceutical companies, time to make a decent return while enabling them to prepare to exploit the patents of their rivals when they expire - to the benefit of consumers. But an option like this for copyright isn't even remotely on the agenda. And it won't be until the government stops doing what the music industry tells it to do.
Why piracy isn't such a bad thing for music
Victor Keegan
The Guardian
Thursday March 27 2008
As an international recession looms, it is reassuring to read some good business news. Britain's film industry is enjoying a boom. Visits to cinemas rose 3.7% to 162.4 million in 2007, much faster than growth of the whole economy, and box office takings rose 7.7% to £904.9m. But hang on: isn't this an industry, even more than music, in global meltdown because of an epidemic of illegal file sharing? How come it is expanding? Could they be making films people want to see on a wide screen, maybe even spurred by a download? Whisper it quietly, but the music industry - which has been so concerned about free downloads that it has been suing customers - appears to be in a mini-revival itself, thanks to higher pre-Christmas sales and the hype surrounding the Brit awards.
That's remarkable. People are still buying despite an estimated 7m bands on MySpace alone offering cheap or free legal music, and the ability to sample 30 seconds or so of any track on iTunes or Last.fm or internet radio for nothing - if you haven't already got it as a giveaway from a journal, that is.
The industry claims there are 20 illegal downloads for every legal one, yet it is clearly not affecting the real world on that scale. If a teenager downloads 20,000 tracks, what does he or she do with them? Sell them to others, who could download them for free anyway, or play them sequentially or randomly? Better to listen to the radio which repeatedly pumps out all the current hits. The point is that it may be wrong to download, but it is not affecting sales proportionately; and for sales lost, there are others gained from people like me who have hugely increased their purchases because there is now an easy, affordable way to do it through the likes of iTunes and mobile phones (but beware of unlimited data charges).
If the industry had spent more time devising a payments solution for the digital age instead of suing customers, it could have cleaned up. The younger generation supposedly nurtured in a culture of non-payment is the same one that pays £3.50 a shot for ringtones. Why? Phones had an easy payment system.
The latest - global - gambit of the industry is to persuade governments to make internet service providers (ISPs) do their dirty work for them by disconnecting repeat offenders. This must be resisted, even though it is bound to have some effect: an Entertainment Media Research survey found seven out of 10 people would cease illegal downloads if they received a warning. That's not the point. To force unwilling ISPs to take powers to cut off internet connections (a priceless tool for education) without even a judge involved would not only not do the job (there would be an upsurge in ISPs based abroad) but would be a precedent for ISPs to police any other activity that happens in their conduit (cue in MI5).
One good thing about the industry's misbegotten attitude is that it has spawned a discussion about the nature of copyright. For the first time, the interests of consumers are being listened to along with those of corporate lobbyists (who have succeeded in extending copyright in the US to a ludicrous 70 years after the death of the creator - something being described as "capitalising on the work of the long-dead").
Objective studies of the economic consequences have found the period that balances the rights of owners against the economic benefits of allowing other creative artists to rework existing copyrights is 14 to 15 years. Patents now have a limit of 20 years. This gives corporations, including pharmaceutical companies, time to make a decent return while enabling them to prepare to exploit the patents of their rivals when they expire - to the benefit of consumers. But an option like this for copyright isn't even remotely on the agenda. And it won't be until the government stops doing what the music industry tells it to do.
