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Boy, I'm sure glad you straightened me out on that one. I was under the mistaken impression that the music industry was still deeply involved in payola, only now using "independ agents" to pass the money to the stations in an end-run against the FCC rules that forbid it. I was under the mistaken imperssion that the payola problem was so bad now that rather than a few bucks under the table, it's openly tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars and has the direct effect of keeping independent artists releases from being played, only the songs of the major recording companys being able to afford air time. Thanks for setting me straight, I was confused about this just like most of the news industry including ABC News and Salon, as well as the 1600+ other hits you get when you type clear channel and payola into google.

I'm glad to know that if a man is a public speaker and a golfer and has produced offspring then he must be an honest and good person, too. I didn't know that. I can now eat any price the industry demands, even if the stores would want to charge less but are stopped by the RIAA'a Minimum Advertised Price , and not be concerned that it's just a form of illegal price fixing . Some might think the whole industry is run by a bunch of crooks, but an Anonymous Coward telling us that the ringleader has white hair certainly dispells that thought.

When you steal property, you deprive someone of it.

When you steal something you otherwise would have paid for, you deprive someone of the revenue they would get from the sale.

When you make a copy of some digital bits that you only are willing to copy precisely because it costs you next to nothing, and honestly (there's the rub) would rather do without if it cost you more, you do not deprive anyone of anything.

You cannot steal revenue that would never be realized in the first place.

Let's say you like this one song, but not so much that you would ever pay $15 for a CD or even $5 for a single, even if that were the only way to get it...instead you'd just call up the radio, request it, wait for it, and enjoy it while it lasts...or otherwise just do without.

If you found yourself in this situation, downloading this song to listen to on your computer is not (do I actually need to add an IMHO?) stealing.

Copyright infringement, maybe. But stealing, no.

That being said, if the music industry offered product these "pirates" were interested in at *realistic* prices (as opposed to artificially maintained fixed prices) they might find a large contingent of "pirates" buying their product instead of "stealing" (wink, wink) it.

RE: Unauthorized Distribution of Copyrighted Motion Pictures
Site/URL: gnutella://xxx.xx.xxx.xxx:6346/ [with IP address: 209.61.184.228]
Reference#: xxxxxx
Date of Infringement: 7/22/2002 4:24:46 AM GMT

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) represents the following motion picture production and distribution companies:

Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.
Disney Enterprises, Inc.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
Paramount Pictures Corporation
TriStar Pictures, Inc.
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
United Artists Pictures, Inc.
United Artists Corporation
Universal City Studios, Inc.
Warner Bros., a Division of Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P.

We have received information that an individual has utilized the above referenced IP address at the noted date and time to offer downloads of copyrighted motion picture(s) through a "peer-to-peer" service, including such title(s) as:

American Pie 2
Ice Age
Monsters, Inc. (movie)
Scary Movie II
Star Wars: Episode II
Thirteen Ghosts

The distribution of unauthorized copies of copyrighted motion pictures constitutes copyright infringement under the Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 106(3). This conduct may also violate the laws of other countries, international law, and/or treaty obligations.

Since you own this IP address, we request that you immediately do the following:

1. Disable access to the individual who has engaged in the conduct described above, and;
2. Take appropriate action against the account holder under your Abuse Policy/Terms of Service Agreement.

On behalf of the respective owners of the exclusive rights to the copyrighted material at issue in this notice, we hereby state, pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 512, that we have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owners, their respective agents, or the law.

Also pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we hereby state, under penalty of perjury, under the laws of the State of California and under the laws of the United States, that the information in this notification is accurate and that we are authorized to act on behalf of the owners of the exclusive rights being infringed as set forth in this notification.

Please contact us at the above listed address or by replying to this email should you have any questions. Kindly include the above noted Reference # in the subject line of all email correspondence.

We thank you for your cooperation in this matter. Your prompt response is requested.

Respectfully,

Ken Jacobsen
Senior Vice President and Director
Worldwide Anti-Piracy

I wish I had the link to a recent online news story I read which talked with the industry reps who discussed their decision to abandon Singles as they felt it was cutting into their album sales.

As it happens, our good friend George "Big Content" Scriban (source of the sales vs. price link in the original story) has also posted some information on the decline in availability of singles. George provides links to a variety of sources for the story.

Since when is any industry guaranteed a constant increase in sales? Looking at the chart at Scriban it's quite obvious that sales have increased in every year (with 1997 being the exception). Sure record sales dropped last year, but they still had their third biggest year (at least as far back as 1992 which is where the chart ends).

So sales peaked, so what? One year's drop does not indicate a long-term trend. The RIAA acts as though they are entitled to constantly growing sales every year no matter what they do. And they're all too eager to blame others (file-sharing in particular) for any drop while praising themselves for any increase.

According to the article, the 10% decrease in music sales in 2001 was caused mostly by Internet file swapping.

Interesting...just yesterday, my friend George Scriban posted a piece on his (for lack of a better phrase) obsessively Big Content focused blog that, among other things, charts CD unit sales against average per-unit price. His data indicates that CD sales slow during periods when per-unit price increases...periods such as the year 2001, when the average price of a CD increased by about 62 cents.

He doesn't indicate the specific source for his data (I don't think he does, anyway), and I haven't gotten around to asking him yet. If he sees his server load getting out of hand, he may check to see what's going on, find this reference, and post some more information on the topic... =)

For your daily dose of irony, note also that George correlates the most dramatic increase in volume of CD sales to "cut-throat price competition" involving discount retailers such as Best Buy.