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Studios, RIAA Warn CEOs On File Trading
pcosta writes "Record companies and movie studios are turning an anti-piracy spotlight on corporate America, sending a letter to top CEOs this week warning of illegal file trading going on at 'a surprising number of companies.' Full story on C|Net." Earlier this month, they also warned schools as well.
They are going to loose this one - everyone in the tech community knows it. It's a matter of when. Songs will be encrypted and transmitted, hey, we could even imbed songs in those jpeg's like from that previous slashdot article where encrypted data is contained in pictures.
Everyone in the tech community knows that? Funny, but there were mavens such as yourself proclaiming the end of commercial software 17 years ago, yet it's still a thriving, successful business (indeed, piracy has plummeted in recent years). Not all of us are anarchists. Not all of us disrespect the idea of intellectual property. The average guy on the street isn't going to bother with encryption just to get an $11 CD.
So many on here can be so obtuse about intellectual property and software/media. If you started robbing old people going to bank machines, should they then "change their business model"? When they complain to your parents will you express outrage because they don't cower in their homes at night while you're out on a rampage? How absurd. No, the police will move in and crack your knees a couple of times and incarcerate you for several years. That's what we as a society dictate -- You have no right over the property of others just because you have the ability to procur it.
If the RIAA quit spending their money trying to shoot down file sharing networks, buying senators, and getting the attention of schools, corporate America, etc and instead channelled their resources into building a new business model, they might just come out on top
And what, pray tell, will this "new business model" be? So they spend millions cultivating an encouraging the arts at a low level, taking a loss on the vast majority of bands that they underwrite, but they should just suck it up so that you have a right to steal somes on Gnutella? Uh huh. What business are you in? I'd like to make some comments about how theft and illegal acts can deprive you of your ability to make a living, and how you should just change your business model.
It seems to me they they are betting the farm on being able to prevent the evolution of the market. If they lose this bet, they will be obsolete and bankrupt.
Let's imagine for a second that all of the major studios and music companies went out of business tomorrow. What would happen? Would the, as many dreamers imagine, "good music" suddenly flourish as the combined masses of society realize that they really want to hear Jimmy and Garage Monkeys? Will we enter a new golden age of high quality music (usually rated inversely with its popularity by attention seekers. You know: The type that stops liking a band once others start liking it, as it diminishes the "Quality" in their alternate universe)? No, the channels of the P2P networks will be DEAD, because as it is right now an OVERWHELMING majority of songs and movies being traded are the works of...tada...the RIAA/MIAA.
The RIAA and the MPAA continue polices in hope of stopping per to per sharing altogether, but have made virtually no effort to incorporate internet sharing technology into their business model. Had the spent their energy here, they may have had a solution already.
But they have attempted to incorporate modern distribution into their repertoire, including, but not limited to, the upcoming Paladium architecture. Everytime the music industry attempts some new method of distribution to allow us to easily buy and download songs, the same people who are raving about them being antiquated are crying about how hopeless it all is, and encouraging the creation of cracks and exploits. Big music was attempting to use the internet in their business many years back.
What people are really saying in all of this basically seems to be "Bring on Paladium and similar systems". It seems that that wish will come true.
BTW: Defeating music piracy is brutally simple -- active enforcement of the law. If the police went on Gnutella and started kicking in doors and arresting, fining, and imprisoning large traders, I absolutely guarantee you that P2P would dissolve into the ether from which it came virtually instantly. Sure there'd still be the hardcore, but there wouldn't be mom and pop who figure that it's okay just because everyone else is doing it.