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Tim O'Reilly Says Piracy is Progressive Taxation
Idmat writes "In Tim's latest opus, he reflects on the lessons of his experience as a publisher: (1) Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy, (2) Piracy is progressive taxation; (3) Customers want to do the right thing, if they can; (4)Shoplifting is a bigger threat than piracy; (5) File sharing networks don't threaten book, music, or film publishing. They threaten existing publishers; (6)"Free" is eventually replaced by a higher-quality paid service; and finally, courtesy of Larry Wall, (7)There's more than one way to do it. "
I used to believe that piracy at the personal level did no harm at all - spread the word, people still spent just as much money etc
But I met up with a friend I hadn't seen for a while the other weekend and he told me he now *only* get his music off the net and doesn't pay for any of it.
And this is someone who would previously have been a heavy spender in this area.
I think that this attitude - which seems prevalent particularly amongst my work colleagues is a Bad Thing - I don't care if we change the method of distribution or if the record companies go bust but it is important that the artists receive payment for their work.
Pretty much right on the money. To sumerize for those who do not want to click and read (it is fairly long).
People for the most part are honest and will pay a resonable price for a product. When he says that P2P is a progressive taxation, he means that more music books and movies get exposure, which means that people will spend their money on more different things than just the Top 40 stuff they have access to. (Same thing most people have been saying since Napster).
On the other hand, actual selling of bootlegs is harmful because it dilutes the market for legitimate sales. However existing laws are enough to cover this. Finally, it ends in some options where possibly the media giants could come to some sort of agreement with ISPs to offer sort of like premium cable. Pay 60 a month for broadband and all the movies or music or whatever you can use off a local server.
Not a bad idea.
This is correct and should be modded up.
For a great and comprehensive look at the payola problem, check out Eric Boehlert's articles on Salon. The complete opus can be found here.
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
WRT Microsoft, go find Bill Gates's "An Open Letter to Hobbyists", sent to the "Altair Users' Newsletter" about how people were stealing copies of his BASIC interpreter.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Actually they have always asked fans to only trade their LIVE recordings, and NOT copy or trade their studio recordings. This is very very common, however this has nothing to do with p2p networks as a vast majority of the files found there are studio recordings copied directly from CD.
I'll just add my 2 cents in here. Basically the people who love certain bands buy the music. That has been said all along. I had a friend who was insanely into Counting Crows. He would goto concerts, tape them on mini disc and listen to them in his free time. He had tons of bootleg tapes and things on that nature that he traded for with people at concerts. He naturally had every CD available as well as anything that had Counting Crows on it.
With the advent of MP3, I am sure he is a happier man. More Counting Crows stuff that he couldn't get his hands on. Just because he has a bootleg of some concert thats on tour does it mean he isn't going to go? Hell no, he'll be the first one in line. When the new CD comes out, guess who is sleeping at the music store overnight to grab one.
File sharing makes big fans into bigger fans. I may use file sharing to grab some mp3s of recent stuff on the radio once in a while, and those are CDs I would never buy, but if I wanted something really good I'd buy it.
This is going to be repeated millions of times over but yes, the RIAA is a bunch of dumb idiots that are living in their dinosaur land with a bunch of yes men that won't second guess them. Yeah you can bitch about it here, or anywhere else online, but they pay the politicians and the politicians make the rules. I wonder how many geeks there are out there that could actually make a difference in voting schemes? ahhh well enuf!