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RIAA vs The Economy
thumbtack writes "Boycott-RIAA.com is running an analysis
of the RIAA sales vs a number of other large corporations. It was compiled by
Justin
Moore at Duke University. It is really quite interesting, showing the the
RIAA sales are pretty much consistent with the rest of the economy. From the analysis:
I would assert, however that it does make the case in cold, hard numbers that
the RIAA's claim of digital piracy ravaging their sales must be taken with a rather
large grain of salt. The CEOs of Eastman-Kodak are in a nearly identical economic
situation as the RIAA, yet do not have the luxury of blaming digital piracy."
I would assert, however that it does make the case in cold, hard numbers that the RIAA's claim of digital piracy ravaging their sales must be taken with a rather large grain of salt.
You don't understand, the economy went down so quickly, it was like the equivalent of going out of business 5-6 times.
So you're telling us the RIAA is using the crappy economy to strengthen their monopoly?
Since when is this news?
Go to the Boycott-the-RIAA website? Sounds like a lot of work and reading and such. Can't I just pull a few gigs of mp3's and that'll count as my part to fight them?
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Yeah, Eastman-Kodak blames Digital Photography instead.
The CEOs of Eastman-Kodak are in a nearly identical economic situation as the RIAA, yet do not have the luxury of blaming digital piracy.
Obviously, they need to add a license agreement to their film products. Just forbid the stuff you don't like to happen, and then you can use every crooked law in the book to sue folks who switch to digital.
Compared to some companies (VA LINUX, I'm looking at you!), The RIAA's numbers are stellar.
Does this mean that the RIAA might be exaggerating other things? I mean, I know that every CD-ROM sale is used to pirate music, and that nobody uses them to back up documents/data/desktops/send information that's too big for a floppy or email.
Or that people are downloading 1,000,000 songs a week illegally over their T3 Internet connections and getting the full version of the albums after connecting for 60 hours a week and not going to job/school.
I mean, if you can't trust the RIAA, then who can you trust?
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
It looks more like the RIAA is targeting the 1% of people who actually pirate mp3s to account for their slowing sales due to a poor economy. Atleast Kodak has a valid reason why people don't want their film products.
EMI sales down 11 percent,.
The loss is largem but it is driven by ClearCrap, not by piracy...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
I don't know if Eastman-Kodak's financial situation is a good marker for economic trends. I think a great portion of their market has faced the invasion of digital photography which is certainly cuts their consumer film sales down significantly. Their economic situation may be due partially because of the economy, but also partially to an emerging technology that they is taking away some of their marketshare.
Nothing from nowhere I'm no one at all
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1999556.stm
of course this has nothing to do with the fact that the public is tired of being ripped off and taken for idiots and now is not interested in their products.
so instead of creating products that people actually want or investing in talent instead of boy bands and the like, they blame their outdated buisness model on piracy, sounds like sense to me.
are you smiling yet ?
I wonder what the historical relationship between the economy and low-end entertainment (movies, CDs, similar) is? Is the entertainment industry recession-resistant? I know during the 1929 depression it wasn't, but since then?
I'm no fan of stealing, but hard times is certainly an excuse people use (should I say justification?).
I keep hoping that some well-run online song-for-song "rights buying" project comes up, maybe subscribing to a whole catalog? Verification is a problem, but I personally would pay a moderate amount for downloadable music, especially on a song-by-song basis.
I recognize both the interests of the artists and the argument that the industry rips off both the artist and the customer.
I suppose this is going to be another long, drawn-out social drama, especially with politicians involved.
This particular analysis does not tell us exactly how accurate the rest of the model is, and several other professional statistician shortcomings. Remember, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics; this is just another statistic.
In other words, they are saying their numbers are also probably wrong. At least they admit it.
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
I am hated.
I am one of "those" dot commers responsible for screwing up the economy.
This is the attitude I get from a lot of people. Since the crash all the non-tech people I know have taken every oppertunity to take a cheap shot at me, "Ya told you it wouldn't last forever" or my personal favorite, "It's never coming back"
"Bullshit" I say to myself as I try to keep my temper from flaring up.
This type of thinking perme-ates (sp?) our society simply because nobody likes being replaced by younger newer models. This is the way it's been since the dawn of time. Someone makes technology (Castles) and someone else makes a technology that makes the former irrelevent (gunpowder) With both the RIAA and Kodak, it's the same problem. Someone came up with technology that quickly made the foundation of these organizations obselete.
In the case of the RIAA, the combination of internet with Mp3 compression made the old models of music distribution obselete. I worked for a local music magazine for a few years, and often I would hear rockers cry about how Mp3's are sending them all to the poorhouse crying because they can't sell CD's anymore. No matter how many times I would try and tell them website+thawte+oscommerce=mp3 online store they just wouldn't listen because they were all brought up to believe that the RIAA method was the only way. Now apple sells songs 99cents apiece and is making a fortune. With all the money and power the RIAA has, it's a shame they didn't adapt the way apple did and just give their customers what they want.
A good sign of how well CD distribution is dying is the ill fated "Wherehouse" music stores. To my knowledge here in san jose, they are all gone. CD sales just slipped into the toilet and all their stores have just vanished.
Kodak isn't much different. For years they depended on film technology as the cornerstone of their business. By the time they entered digital photography other players had already developed cheaper and more mass producable camera's with higher quality than kodak. I suppose kodak never thought that digital technology would catch up with film, they should have paid closer attention to moores law.
Both companies are old hats, trying to milk every dime out of innovations that are already 100 years old. Let them die already so the new upshots can give us better, faster, cheaper.
I'm a frequent traveller to various countries in Asia for both business and personal trips, and I frequently encounter vendors of pirated movies, music, and software, and partook in buying their wares (warez?). Now, if one wanted to take a moral absolute, all of us should really be branded as hypocrites... But is piracy totally evil, without justification? Just like Communism, for example, a lot of people in the West seem to have a one-sided, black and white viewpoint of something which is a complicated issue.
As an example, look at many countries in East Asia -- piracy, for all its evils, helps build a base of demand for your products and fuels the sales of hardware, without which your stuff is useless anyhow.
What do I mean? There needs to be a established base of music listeners/movie viewers/software users and owners of hardware, like CD players, etc first. Without evil piracy, sales of PCs/CD/DVD players in Asia would have been much less than what it is now, and most people would not have heard of most Western software movies or music, if they had not been ubiquitously available.
So, in developing countries like China, piracy, by fueling a demand that would not have otherwise been there, and ensuring a base of owners with appropriate hardware, lays the foundation for a consumer base. Then, as economic conditions improve, companies move in there, leverage those customers and sell legit products while adding value (better manufacturing quality, etc.) at locally-affordable prices (this is a key point -- no one in any part of the world will pay the equivalent of a week's salary for a CD, for example). Look at places like Japan and Korea that are considered "developed" now. Of course, there's still some piracy in those places -- you can't eradicate it completely, but because you have these people now clamoring for music/movies/software, you now have a thriving music industry and market, both for local artists and for foreign corporations. As a country moves from developing to developed, so will piracy gradually decrease, if companies first build off the existing base of consumers which have been created by pirated material, and market to them (through the selling points of higher quality, etc.) rather than alienating or antagonizing them.
And of course, many times, piracy is the only option, if a company doesn't release their product there. One corollary and positive effect of it has been movie studios, for instance, releasing movies nearly simultaneously worldwide, whereas in the past, in Asia, one would often have to wait for months for a release, if it was to be released at all. In being a stimulus to create buzz and hype -- and ultimately, demand for more -- in countries where the American media juggernaut hasn't reached yet, piracy has been wonderfully successful in this regard.
Essentially, the blunt, hard, truth in much of the developing world is this: without piracy, you would not have had that base of potential consumers to begin with. It's a win/win situation, for the people, for the hardware makers, and ultimately (while it may take time) for the software and content makers as well. Sadly, the myopic vision of most of the corporations fail to grasp this fact.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Maybe the RIAA should sue the people who make shows like American Idol! People are at home watching people sing when they should be out buying records. What if people are using their evil VCR to record American Idol? HOW DARE THEY! That is piracy! They must burn.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
The economy dipped becuase of the the overwhelming piracy. That's how bad it gotten. Next will come pestilence, famine, floods and your chickens will stop laying. We must stop priacy now to save the world.
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Of course they do!! The RIAA KNOWS that the reason their sales are down is because the economy sucks....See, they're LYING...when they claim that p2p is hurting sales. p2p threatens their distribution model like nothing before and they'll do anything to kill it. They'll lie, cheat, steal, sue, bribe (mostly Congress) and do whatever else is necessary (whether ethical or not) to keep the mother lode they (now) exclusively mine. the things I've described above aren't new either...they've been doing every one of them for many years (back in the 70's and 80's the record company radio reps used to be known as SNOWMEN and I'm not talking about the weather here!).
In a move totally unrelated to the story above, the RIAA has filed a lawsuit against Duke University student Justin Moore, demanding $427 Billion USD, or 50 cents for every song he has shared on the underground hacker network known as 'Kazaa'.
RaGe
We're all just noise on the wires..
First, CD sales and concert attendance are both down. That's an indication of a problem other than CDs.
Second, rather than looking at music alone, look at overall retail sales of prerecorded entertainment media. This includes videos, music, and games, but not downloaded content. The same outlets that used to carry mostly music now sell DVDs and games, all of which now come on very similar disks. The same players often play all three types of content. There's no longer a big distinction between "videos", "music", and "games".
Third, it's worth looking at discretionary income of people in the RIAA's demographic. If that's down, one would expect their sales to decline.
Fourth, the consolidation of radio station ownership has resulted in major changes in the way music is promoted. That effect has been inadequately analyzed. Clear Channel is quite open about the fact their business is selling ads, not music.
Given that, the suprising thing is that CD sales are only down 8%. Car sales for 2002, for example, were about 13% below car sales in 2001.
It looks like to me that this report does not prove that the decline is due to the economy, it simply suggests that the decline is statistically consistant with it. It is possible however that both arguments are correct. The decline may be due to the econonmy and therefore (because of the economy) consumers are turning to piracy as a reasonable alternative. I really think the underlying problem is that the big media companies need to take a course in basic economics and lower their prices! Used CD's, gnutella (etc), and the economy all play a role in declining sales. They should lower their prices with the decline in the economy and revenues will increase!
-Sean
> Since when has stealing become acceptable?
.... you anti-capitalist thief!
Hundreds of millions of Napster/Kazaa/etc users seem to find it acceptable. Take into consideration how many people on this 6 billion person planet a) have a computer b) have internet, and then realize that MANY people find it accceptable.
Yes, its illegal. Hey, so is J-walking, but I'll bet you dont do that, right? And that, despite the fact that it'd be too easy to create a study showing how J-walking slows down traffic, which slows transportation, which slows commerce
I'm sure you're perfect. You *never* do anything against the law!
"Old man yells at systemd"
I have few close friends that buy CDs. They are mostly over 30 with well-paying jobs and extensive CD collections from the pre-Napster era, yet they do not buy CDs anymore. Instead they download (bootleg) all their tunes, including entire albums. Tell me you're surprised.
I recognise that the existing entertainment sales model is a dinosaur, but to suggest that music downloading hasn't affected the industry's bottom line is absurd. Granted, they may have made MORE by switching to a different model, but that says nothing about the source of their current state in this transition period. I don't believe the hype.
"The CEOs of Eastman-Kodak are in a nearly identical economic situation as the RIAA, yet do not have the luxury of blaming digital piracy."
Just Announced: Online Photo Sharing Prevalent, Photo Lab Revenue Down, Kodak Blames Kazaa!
Some people do not consider music to be property. I'm not saying I'm one of them but you have to admit that stealing and copyright violation are two completly different crimes. If I steal something from you you no longer have it, and have experienced a loss. If I copy something of yours we both have it, and you have lost nothing.
Finkployd
One thing I don't see mentioned very often is the very fact that music hasn't been illegal to copy for very long. Hell, in the grand scheme of things, recorded music hasn't been around for very long. The RIAA only exist because of what, historically, amounts to a "technological glitch." That is, the technology was available to make recordings of music available for sale, but copying of that music difficult. It wasn't until about the 1970s that music became illegal to copy, and recordings have only been around since the late 1880s. Music existed long before records, and it will exist long after records are gone.
So really, music existed for thousands of years. For a breif moment in time a technological inequality meant that recordings could be made, but not easily copied. Now, in a sense, technology is working itself out (removing the glitch) and music is back to the way it's been for thousands of years. Just because it's been this way since you were a kid doesn't mean it's been this way forever. The time for being able to charge for recordings is over.
I don't feel sorry for the RIAA--their time is up. The technological glitch is gone and music can get back to being music for music's sake. In the end people will look back at the time when people used to be able to charge for music and laugh. Paying money for nothing but a *recording* of music? What a silly concept.
Jason
other major factor affecting sales data of RIAA is that CDs are digital and it is the only digital product with no upgrade in 21 years! My 1985 CD is as good as new. So while in the past, people used to buy a new copy of the album to replace used one, it is no more necessary.
Also, many people who had vinyl, tape etc, replaced such things with CD. The replacement is largely complete. During the replacement period, people not only bought albums they didn't have, but also bought albums they had. Now, people only buy what they don't have.
To analyze the above points, the RIAA should publish data of sales of new CD albums only and see if there is any decline. My guess is that it is actually increasing. By means of new, I mean never published before.
The third major factor is legal copying. IANAL, but I think it is allowed by law to make duplicate copies of album for personal use. It was hard to make such copies for tape and impossible for vinyl, but this is trivial for CDs.
So, it is doubtful that piracy is the cause of declining RIAA sales.
That's because Digital Photographers aren't STEALING THEIR FILM AND CAMERAS.
HA HA good one. Maybe if you THINK for a minute you'll realize nobody is stealing the RIAA's master tapes either.
P2P is distributing the RIAA's member's works for free to anyone that requests them. You CANNOT compete with someone taking YOUR PRODUCT and giving it away for free.
Then why do people still by CDs? How come I can go to library any time yet I buy books? Why is the Apple store so successful? THINK man, a Capitalist is supposed to FIGURE OUT how to make money, not WHINE about how yesterday's market dried up. That's all the RIAA is doing, whining about the laws of physics. The Apple store is MILES ahead of any P2P system.. that means there was value to be added.. and Apple added it and charges for it.
It's not like Indie bands are giving their music away and thriving off of increased goodwill and concert attendance.
Do you know any indie bands?? If you release a CD on a small label, it takes maybe 2 years of constant sales before you see any royalties, but concerts pay off a lot sooner. That's why many indie bands tour so much. They work hard for their money.
People are taking the RIAA's property and giving it away for free without permission, there is no way around this fact, no matter HOW you try and justify it.
Exactly, as soon as the RIAA realizes this is a fact of life, a natural property of their product they CAN'T GET RID OF, they will figure out how to make more money.
UVa Computer Science
-jdm
Good points and an excellent clarification, but I have to take issue with this:
You CANNOT compete with someone taking YOUR PRODUCT and giving it away for free.
Yes, you can, at least in this example. You can provide faster, more reliable, higher quality, verified products in a convenient medium chock full of value added aspects (music suggestions, news, special features, artwork, video, etc.) at a reasonable price.
I'm not saying it was or is incumbent on the RIAA to do so, but it certainly would have behooved them to do so rather than try to kill the distribution channel altogether and maintain the status quo. Being legal, and having a huge head start on content, they could have swamped the P2P's into usenet-binaries-like obscurity instead of helping thrust them into the mainstream by failing to fill the huge, obvious vacuum that Napster trickled into before it was shut down and replaced by more slippery P2P's like Kazaalite. Now it's too late.
Opportunity only knocks once (if at all).
everything in moderation
Copywrite infringement is not stealing. Both are wrong, but let's at least get the terms correct before we start equating it theft on the high seas.
Finkployd
P2P is distributing the RIAA's member's works for free to anyone that requests them. You CANNOT compete with someone taking YOUR PRODUCT and giving it away for free.
Hmmm... The RIAA seemed to do pretty good with cassettes that let you copy their product and give it to some one else.
CD burners have been available longer than P2P and don't seem to have hurt them much.
Oh, and the movie industry seems to do allright with video tapes.
The PC game industry seems to have done pretty good against people copying games and giving them away.
People are taking the RIAA's property and giving it away for free without permission, there is no way around this fact, no matter HOW you try and justify it.
Correct. But, as the cases above show it is possible to compete with very inexpensive. Oh, and just like the other cases of this same thing it is not free. Just very inexpensive. The cases mentioned above you still payed for media. With P2P you pay for your internet connection.
There is no justification for stealing, the problem is that a disruptive technology has entered the marketplace, and rather than embrace it as the opportunity it presents RIAA members have decided to try to put the genie back in the bottle. There attempts at embracing the technology have been feeble due to infighting (two subscription services that couldn't share catalogs). Not presenting a product that the consumer wants (subscription services only allow you to play music on your computer). Pricing that was unacceptable $10 a month whether you download music or not.
In the end, it appears Apple may save the music industry from itself by providing the product that people want, at a reasonable price, legally.
Ummm. due to ASCAP/BMI, even the "downloaders" still pay royalty. You buy anything advertised on radio, or admission to a club or even a meal at a goddamn restaurant and RIAA gets a slice.
When will you RIAA supporters get it thru your thick skulls that it is OVER. For the longest time you got money from us every which way. We paid three four, five times for the same piece of music. Now that the REALITY of the world has changed, you can't stand the fact that you can only get us one or two ways.
And even that is better than the rest of us, who have to work a day to get a day's pay. You and your artists think it should be work one single day and get paid for the rest of your life, and your descendants after you, too. Fuck you and your abuse of the royalty system.
And I don't want to hear a peep about how the music will die. Somehow still, I don't think you will have any trouble signing acts who will only earn 1.8 million a year instead of 18 million. Most acts are in it for the pussy anyway. But it is you who is locked into the cashflow, because how are you going to get pussy with your ugly face and no Ferrari?
Wouldn't really be surprised if RIAA eventually sports this argument. :)
Some people do not consider music to be property. I'm not saying I'm one of them but you have to admit that stealing and copyright violation are two completly different crimes. If I steal something from you you no longer have it, and have experienced a loss. If I copy something of yours we both have it, and you have lost nothing.
Where this position fall short is that information has value only when it is scarce. Patents and other IP violations are only copyright violations, but once scarity is removed (i.e. easily available for free), the value to the legitimite owner is destroyed. The owner consumed resources to develop the IP, and it is reasonable for that owner to expect to extract value from that investment.
I have yet to see a credible argument that only tangible property has value. Using IP without the owner's premission is theft. The thief can justify it however he or she wants, but the IP has less value after he or she takes it without permission.
You CANNOT compete with someone taking YOUR PRODUCT and giving it away for free.
These guys think they can make a good living by giving away THEIR OWN PRODUCT for free, AND by allowing people to give it to others as well. As it turns out, they're doing very well at it, too.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Stealing a physical item and copyright infringment are not the same (no matter how much the RIAA would like you to believe).
I think the problem is that the RIAA only know one business model. That business model is out dated and consumers don't seem to be buying into it. Consumers are saying quite loudly that they want to pick and choose music (even by the track) and they want it cheap. People will pay for it (see the Apple music store for proof) if it is packaged attractively. Capitalism doesn't make any promises that your business model will work, nor does it promise that it will continue to work later even if it works today. If the only way to get someone to buy a car was to deliver it your house full of fine-ass women and cases of Heineken, then you damn well better believe that car dealerships would be doing just that. And right now, the RIAA has the equivalent of a large segment of their consumers wanting their cars deliever, with women and beer.
For christ's sake can anyone get this analogy right? To take something with a grain of salt means to take something as significant as a grain of salt -- which is very tiny (read: insignificant).
Bull.
There are two theories about the etymology of the phrase "taken with a grain of salt." One theory traces it back to the Latin phrase "cum grano salis", which was found -- among other places -- in the works of Pliny in the first century as a description of an additive to make an antidote effective. A second, more believed theory traces the phrase to the kitchen table, where salt can make any dubious dish a little better.
In either case, the meaning of the phrase is not to treat something as insignificant, but rather to subject it to a healthy dose of skepticism.
The
1. Many buyers and sellers
2. Low barriers to entry and exit
3. All buyers and sellers are price takers(unable to affect price)
4. Homogenous product/service
And most relevant here:
5. Perfect information
Before people were unable to properly sample a music product before purchasing it, and therefore made their purchasing decision based on incomplete and often misleading information - often by factors that had nothing to do with the quality of the music (hype, etc). File sharing has created near perfect information for consumers, and the results suggest that with this information consumers have decided that they were not getting their money's worth in value. Also, and this has been proven in court, the small number of large recording companys have effectively created a cartel - and have and continue to collude to inflate prices. This behavior is expected in a market with such conditions. How else can one explain the inflated price of music despite obvious and significant efficiencies and cost reductions in the production, distribution, and manufacture of recordings?
This article is merely stating the obvious. It's a sad state where you have to explicitly state the obvious in order to debunk the utterly twisted view of any organization.
/. fashion. :-)
That said, I'll state the obvious from my perspecitve, the consumer. I only have so much money I can spend on CD's. I love music, and I'm pretty sure I buy more music than the average person, roughly 5 albums a month. If I could, I would buy more, but after losing my job and taking up a new job that didn't quite pay as much as my old one, having car payments, rent, insurance, utility bills, and a spouse to feed, there's only so much left to spend on what is essentially a luxury item. I don't think this is much different than most average people.
That said, I normally don't pirate software, I don't steal from people, and I consider myself to be a good citizen and neighbor. HOWEVER, I do download mp3's. Is it legal? Hell no. But so are a lot of other things that otherwise good citizens do which really doesn't harm anyone.
My CD buying patterns are strongly influenced by my economic status, and have never been influenced by p2p file sharing. (I can't buy 10 $15 CD's when there's only $75 in my posession.) I don't feel like it's morally wrong to copy something "virtual" (digital data) that I otherwise wouldn't have purchased anyways. The only thing that has changed with the arrival of p2p file sharing is that I listen to a wider variety of music, and make better purchases. (I buy more of what I like, and have fewer CD's I regret purchasing.) In short, I'm what would otherwise be known as an "informed customer" which is usually viewed as a "better customer" in most other industries.
So the bottom line is, yes, people download mp3's. Yes, people still buy CD's, whether or not they think $15 is a rip-off or not. And finally, yes, there are a (probably small) handfull of people who have likely stopped purchasing music completely since they've been able to compulsively download all their favorite music. On the other hand, there are also people that walk into record shops and shoplift CD's, which probably does much more damage. Either way, the number of shoplifters and p2p thieves are likely little more than static noise in the overall sales figures. Think about it, even if record shops all of a sudden stopped "tagging" the CD's and removed all surveilance cameras and tag sensors at the door, most people would STILL pay for the CD rather than pocket it. (Admittedly, the same shoplifters would probably steal even more hard cold physical products such as CD's are, if these surveilance systems weren't in place, but that's a bit different than stealing the data.)
So, the RIAA's claim has little basis, I'm preaching to the choir, stating the obvious, posting AC, and otherwise enjoying another day of bashing the favorite enemy in genuine
I dunno...I like my digital camera. It's a Kodak DC3200 and it's been going strong for two years. It uses CF cards which are dirt cheap and have no DRM features. Sure, it's a megapixel camera in a time when multi-megapixel is the norm. And it eats batteries like the Cookie Monster eats cookies. But it works for me.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
"Good?"
I thought we were talking about property. What people refer to as "Intellectual Property" is neither physical property, nor a service rendered. Music is a service if it's a live performance. If you sneak into the venue, you're stealing the service. If you steal CDs, you're stealing plastic laminate discs.
If you're stealing cable, you're stealing a service. Ditto for internet access, cell phone time, etc. Those services are provided at a cost to the provider.
You cannot "steal" ideas. "Intellectual Property" is ideas.
Copyright is not property. It is a temporary legal monopoly on the particular expression of an idea. It isn't a turnip, goat, or plot of land.
You need to get out of the mindset that ideas can be property.
Easy there tiger. Re-read my comment, take a deep breath, and think for a second before you launch another poorly-aimed vitriolic diatribe. Exactly what part of my logic is flawed, again? Maybe you meant to reply to some other post?
I did not say that I (or anyone) was a freedom fighter. I did not say that the RIAA was unjust. You are so angry (why?) that you're completely missing my (valid) point.
To reiterate a key phrase:
I'm not saying it was or is incumbent on the RIAA to do so, but it certainly would have behooved them to do so . . . [arguments to support this position].
You do know what incumbent and behooved mean, don't you? Your post would seem to indicate otherwise. If necessary, please see dictionary.com or a similar reference for clarification. Understanding is key to effective argument.
See, I was trying to point out that the RIAA had an opportunity to nip this whole p2p debacle in the bud a long time ago. I didn't say they had a responsibility to do so (I even went out of my way to point that out). I didn't say that their failure to do so justifies anything. I do think they made a bad business decision (based on fear and ignorance, mostly) and are now flailing about while desperately clutching a failed business model (bitten asses or not), and seeking legislative support for their own bad decisions.
You don't have to agree with me but, if you diasagree, it would be more useful (for both of us), if you'd address my points rather than flaming. Your hateful nonsense is just as (or more) silly and ineffective as the p2p fanboy self-righteous justification that you so vehemently attack.
everything in moderation
Nobody ever made the comparison. The RIAA are wailing about P2P piracy affecting their music sales and using this to push for the implementation of draconian copyright control measures which trample all over consumer's rights.
Their declining music sales are supposed to be "proof" that digital piracy is affecting their business. However it's also possible that this is just part of a general economic trend, which is what this article is asserting.
For decades RIAA companies have made bucketloads of money of which artists only get a small fraction. Companies that should exist soley to promote and distribute the works of artists make more money than the artists themselves. See anything wrong here? The sort of things that are retrospecitvely taken out of artist royalties are unbelievable, food and alcohol at a promotional party for example.
The real reason the RIAA feels threatened by P2P is that if it was adopted as the medium of choice for music distribution, then the entry barrier into the industry would be lowered almost to the point where the artists could do it themselves. Their monopoly is threatened. So rather than embrace P2P as something which could potentially benefit the artists its member companies purportedly represent they are trying to legislate it out of existence. Using phony arguments like "P2P is eroding our profits".
:wq
What I'd like to see discussed is how the recording industry actually stands to make more from net-based services than they ever could have from the old way.
Think of a central server, similar to what Apple has set up, but with the following features:
extensive back catalogs of all of the major labels, going back as far as recorded history can go. (MP3 downloads arent killing the Top 40 artists nearly as much as they're affecting catalog and "Best Of" compilation sales.)
$10 annual "membership fee". That fee gets you access to the system, and software that allows you to set up playlists, etc. that the RIAA can use the data from to aggrgeate stats on most popular tunes played and burned (with respect for individual privacy, of course). You also get powerful search software that can search by artist, song name, lyrics (so you can list every song that goes "...all of my love..."), year, and whatever other search types you can think of.
$0.75 per song, 128 kb MP3 downloads. All files have the proper artist & track name in the ID3 tag. Correcting misspelled, and incorrectly labelled p2p download file & track names is just such a pain in the $$hole. It sounds cheap - but your average 12 track LP would be $9.00 USD.
special "premium fan content" - if you're a fan of a particular artist, you might be more than happy to pay $2.00 or even more for a rare, out of circulation B-side tune, or an MPEG concert video, even tracks played on tour or even whole concerts can be recorded (as cheaply as possible) and sold track by track to the hardcore fans that want more. If the Grateful Dead could do it, why not every other band out there? We could follow our favourite artists across the country like the Deadheads from the comfort of our living rooms! If I want to have 15 different versions of "Satisfaction", why not just sell them to me and make some money! Get this stuff out in the public.
no restrictions on copying, burning to CD or DVD, or encoding in a different format. I'm sure many would scoff and say "if someone shares the stuff on P2P we'll be pirated". If you make the economics (time + low cost + low user base) work, P2P will die naturally. Yes, a few people will still pirate stuff, but at least it will be out of the mainstream.
powerful servers that allow fast downloading, and reconnect at no charge if the server went down in the middle of a transfer. This kind of raw power would leave Gnutella, Kazaa, etc. with few users who are willing to waste time searching through scads of crap files and downloading at 2KB/sec. Fewer users for P2P services = fewer available files, and more customers willing to pay.
since the product is somewhat inferior, you still want to recommend to your customers purchasing the actual CD's. Provide links to allow purchase, make it visible but not annoying to the individual who is content to download.
add to the premium content by selling liner notes, CD cover art (for those who are willing to print the CD cover) so that the total price of a 12 song CD is about $10.00. Add to that the cost of making, distributing and retailing the CD, and subtract the cost of the server infrastructure & staffing - the profit margin is roughly equal.
Now, granted, the record retailers and the people at K-Tel would suffer if this kind of a service were available, but the music industry as a whole would survive and grow under such a plan.
Hmmm... The RIAA seemed to do pretty good with cassettes that let you copy their product and give it to some one else.
There was a lot more effort that went into copying tapes than a file on a hard drive. First, there was the cost of the blank cassette. Sure it wasn't much, but given high enough distribution, it adds up to a lot. With p2p there are no real distribution costs (don't tell me your internet access costs money because that's not a marginal cost, and you'd be paying for your internet anyway). Second, the number of people you could distribute the cassette to was largely limited to the people you knew. Because of the cost of the blank cassette, you certainly weren't going to mass produce copies that you showered on everyone in your neighborhood. With p2p, you can get music from anyone in the world, 99.9999% of the time not knowing who they are. You can argue the 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon thing, but making a copy of a copy of a copy eventually results in terrible quality. You may think it's recording industry propaganda, but it ain't.
CD burners have been available longer than P2P and don't seem to have hurt them much.
Oh, and the movie industry seems to do allright with video tapes.
These are both analogous to the above. Video tapes suffer from analog copying especially badly, since a standard VHS tape is only half TV resolution to begin with, and who ever paid the money for Super VHS?
The PC game industry seems to have done pretty good against people copying games and giving them away.
Again, analogous to the above. But in this case, I think you're wrong. It's not as totally widespread as music swapping, but go onto any p2p service and you can probably find whatever game you're looking for. I know when I lived in the dorms in college there weren't more than a couple people on my floor that owned a game, but everyone had a copy. The game industry just doesn't publicize it as much as the RIAA or Microsoft. And even though everyone hates MS and the B$A, Windows piracy is really a huge problem. I used to work at a mom & pop computer store around the time of Win95 and Win98, and every time the computer show rolled around, someone would bring their system in for service and along with it came an (obviously) faked Win95 disc.
Here's a doozy.
I got these numbers from the Blockbuster website:
DVDANALYZE THAT / (SUB)
$21.99
VHS ANALYZE THAT / (P&S DOL)
$16.99
CD
ANALYZE THAT / Original Sound Track
$17.98
That's right. The SOUNDTRACK costs more than the VHS version (and only slightly cheaper than the DVD)
Now, let's not go into the fact that the DVD costs nealy as much and gives you more value... let's also go into the fact that people aren't *Nearly* as resentful about movie prices as they are about CDs.
Why?
You can RENT DVDs. If you just want to see the movie, you can fork over $4 and see it... no problem.
The RIAA could have had the benifits of File Sharing before File Sharing... Like only the one song on the radio? Not sure about the other 9? Rent the album for $2. If you don't like it, don't buy it.
Unfortunately, the RIAA isn't even keeping up with the business models of the late 1980s, let alone the business models of the 21st century.
So you advocate the artificial creation of scarcity? So the owner of an otherwise non-scarce product can artificially create scarcity so that something that wouldn't otherwise have value has value?
I can understand the artist's desire to make money, but things that are by nature NOT scarce should not and, in the long term, CANNOT be made scarce. Legally or illegally the market will make certain of that.
The owner consumed resources to develop the IP, and it is reasonable for that owner to expect to extract value from that investment.
Many people create IP and don't expect to extract money from it. Many others even invest time and money creating IP *expecting* an ROI and never get it. Just because something requires time to create doesn't automatically mean they are entitled to money. The market decides what any given product (or IP) is worth. If the market has decided that music in its digital form is free then the artists either adapt to that reality by taking advantage of free music distribution to promote themselves, their products, and hopefully score endorsements, or they can find something else to do for a living.
I have yet to see a credible argument that only tangible property has value.
It's not that IP doesn't have value, it's creating artificial scarcity that gets you (or the RIAA, rather) into trouble. Charging $20 for something that costs a buck and for which even $3 should create healthy profits is as much robbery as people getting some free tunes online. You overcharge like that and you're just ASKING for a black market to be formed (file sharing) or asking for someone else to redefine your market (Apple).
The thief can justify it however he or she wants, but the IP has less value after he or she takes it without permission.
Maybe, but if the owner had chosen a price nearer to its NATURAL PRICE the owner would find that fewer people would "pirate" it and, thus, fewer people would lower its value by taking it without permission. In fact, I'd say that piracy is bringing the overall price of music to its NATURAL PRICE. They charge $20 for CDs but lots of people get it for free. Perhaps if you did the math you'd find that averaging the total amount earned and the total amount pirated that the final amount earned was, say, $6 a CD. To me that means that that's the NATURAL PRICE.
Legally or not, all products in a free market WILL find their natural price. Free markets do that.
But in the end, yes, digital distribution will reduce the "value" of music. That's because most of the value has been concentrated in the DISTRIBUTION of music and that's now nearly cost-free. I'm not convinced any of this really affects the artist who generally earns more money from concerts and endorsements than from the sales of their CDs.
You can steal cable,
Signal, if you 'steal' cable you're connecting illegaly to an electric circuit that has a finite capacity to source current. You are 'stealing' their signal strength and if enough people steal it they will have to increase capacity to maintain that signal for their paying customers. You are in fact stealing a physical good.
internet access,
Bandwidth, if you steal internet access you're sucking up bandwidth that paying customers are being denied. The ISP will eventually have to lay out cash for hardware to compensate.
cell phone time,
Circuits, if you steal cell phone time you're filling circuits of which there is a limited supply. If you don't know the value of cell circuits as a physical good then you're out of the loop. Again, the cell companies will have to lay out cash and buy new hardware to increase capacity.
Their good is music.
If you're stealing CD's from a store, you are stealing music. They have to print more CD's to make up for the ones you steal. If enough are stolen, they will have to print more or risk not having CD's to sell to honest customers. If you're making a copy of the CD (And frankly, most of the music 'stolen' is not a perfect copy of a physical good but an imperfect copy of part of the good) you aren't denying the company producing the CD any inventory. You aren't doing anything that will force them to create more CD's.
Are you stealing art if you photograph the Statue of Liberty? Distributing copies of someone else's music without their permission may be wrong but it is not theft in the same way that the things you mentioned are theft.
This is a very interesting idea. In normal economics, you would just balance supply and demand. In economics like software, supply is negligable, and demand can be extremely high. I think what you are getting at is that these economic calculations don't even really apply.
:) Especially in the field of software/music where it doesn't require vast resources to make a decent product.
The best way I think there is to price software is with price discrimination, which is probably the next step in the chain it appears. For a better quality product, you'll have to pay more. I think that's were they are trying to head with the new media that will expire. I think they are just running into another dead end that would be theoretically the most profitable for them.
If they really wanted to make money they would cut their fat (their stupid legal/lobbeying) and start charging what the market will bare in the digital world instead of crying over spoiled milk. They aren't paying artists Jack at the moment, and that's going to come back at them if they don't change fast. I'm betting there will be some mom and pop record labels crop up on the internet with enough following to make it worth it for a band.
Just another point that you may want to use to strengthen your arguement for music anyhow: the song writing and distribution could be seen as an investment ammount of work that can lead to a real job like concerts. Most musicians are extremely wealthy for doing so little actual work, if you could actually call it work. I think most people that create software and music do so for their own pleasure, and would do it even if they weren't getting paid to.
The future of all IP industries seems very clear to me: service-oriented market. There are quite a few open source projects out there taking up this model of selling services so they can work more on something they want to. The end goal is a more effecient worker who hardly notices that they are working at all. Musicians are going to have to take a hit and live like us lowly software developers. Some will be wealthy, some will not. I doubt you will see many musicians as wealthy as they are today in the future. All this fuss is about a few people that think they actually worked harder than, or ar better than the man that takes their trash away at 4AM. One day I hope they'll wake up and realize that the empire is falling and once again they'll have to work for their money instead of strangling that trash man for more money for something to listen to while he works.
It'll get better after the large one's fall I'm sure
Karma Clown
In Russia, the major local game publishing companies like 1C, Buka, and Russobit sell their own games and foreign games licensed for localised release in jewel boxes at about 1.5 as much as what the pirates ask for the pirated CDs of the same titles. Just like the pirate releases, it's el cheapo jewel boxes with no manuals or whatever, only a cute label. They also release an expensive box version, which, unlike this cheap version (about $2.5 per disk usually) costs three or four times as much, and comes with manuals and the whole shebang, but it doesn't see just as much light.
This policy has effectively killed off the piracy of locally published titles. Nobody does it anymore. People only duplicate games which are out of print. I can just go to the exact same CD retailer and buy the game I want from among the pile of the pirate releases of games they couldn't license.
tell me much. Stats are stats are stats. I did enjoy reading it, but feel the answer is elsewhere.
CD sales have dropped for me recently and this is why.
DVD movies now occupy that under $20 knee jerk purchase price point. Everyone knows a DVD is better than a CD in general, so how come the CD is still so expensive? I don't think twice about $16.99 for a DVD, that's a nice deal really. So what does that do for the same pricing on the CD? All I know is that $16.99 number on a CD is pretty unattractive in general these days. To pay as much for a CD as I do a movie, it had better be a damn good CD.
The current buttload of music being pimped via the usual Clear Channel right now is garbage plain and simple. Sure, there is plenty of good music, but it sure is hard to find, unless...
One can sample! Maybe that $16.99 is worth it. (It sometimes is.) I am willing to look and consider the purchase, but nobody is showing. Wonder why they don't sell product? Duh!
Currently I don't download anything. Thought I would make the change and see what happens with me and my family.
I must say that without P2P, I am missing out. All the radio stations here play the same (crap) music. There is little to get excited about. I know there is a lot of music that I would be interested in buying, but I can't find it easily!
P2P is costing the RIAA something in the young market though. If they (kids)have the money they will buy the CD, even if they have downloaded it. But if they have a (better) choice they won't. These days there are more good choices, so kids buy fewer CD's because they know they can get the music somehow later, but can't easily repeat a spur of the moment movie trip. So, the RIAA is losing sales here in my view. In a twisted sort of way, they might be right with the younger crowd. They can squeeze more out of their latest boy band if there is less P2P, but at what cost?
On second hand they might already be hosed. When I shut down the P2P, my kids ended up doing the same thing I did. They go to school, talk about the music, find out who has it and why, and copy it if it fits.
There are more CDRs laying around the house now than when P2P was running.
Now, I do get excited about movies and guess what? That is what I buy. The movie market appeals to everyone at some level. There are several layers to the whole thing that make it easy to sell to those looking to buy that music just does not have today.
The RIAA is currently trying like hell to milk everything they can from the kids. (Remember the point earlier about cost?) Problem is that those same kids also have DVD, subscription TV, cell phone plans and other new things to worry about. With all those new choices offering different values, is it any wonder CD sales are not as attractive given their low value proposition in comparison?
Your average teenage girl can get a cell plan for the cost of many CD's that will provide way more bang for the buck than that CD will...
I think the RIAA is getting squeezed right out of their prime market because of these things and their own ignorance.
Now here I am sitting with my disposable income looking for something to buy. Does it take much of a stretch to see that I am going to buy something from those people willing to entertain my business?
Whatever problems the the movie companies have with digital are not getting in the way of moving product. They are showing me lots of pricing options, good content and good value across the board. I can easily find blockbusters along with interesting smaller films.
What do I get on the music side of things?
Shit.
The majority of the content is aimed at people half my age. I cannot realistically sample using the radio because they are all but owned by the big boys, so they mostly play the same things. Going into the music store to sample is a joke really. All they do is put the same tracks on the in-store boxes that I just got d
Blogging because I can...
I'm not sure if you intended to make this kind of Valenti-esque slip in your reply, but you state that both CD copies and VHS tape copies are analogous to cassette tape copies. You then proceed to support your VHS claim (and I fully agree with that comparison) while (conveniently?) failing to demonstrate how CD copies are analogous to tape copies (where physical media cost is the only thing I find analogous between the two).
Of course, this entire discussion is rather academic given that the entertainment industry has repeatedly failed to prove their losses and history has repeatedly failed to bear out their dire predictions.
--K.
Sig: Bad people happen. Try to avoid being one of them.
Random links about the amount of pesticides and herbicides used, and don't forget that 85% of california's water is used for irrigating crops. Cotton is *not* an easy plant to grow. Compare with hemp (called weed for a reason) which grows 4x as fast as your typical pulp-producing trees with no pesticides and herbicides, and you have a pretty convincing product.
There are quite a few places growing hemp commercially in the UK, even with all the regulatory hoops they have to jump through (fencing requirements to keep "pot-heads" from getting ahold of something with no THC content).
Do a little research before trolling next time?
Where this position fall short is that information has value only when it is scarce. Patents and other IP violations are only copyright violations, but once scarity is removed (i.e. easily available for free), the value to the legitimite owner is destroyed. The owner consumed resources to develop the IP, and it is reasonable for that owner to expect to extract value from that investment.
Just because person or corporation has invested X amount of money into a certain business, product or business model does not mean that they are entitled to get anything out of it. This argument would mean that the state should pay the creditors of bankrupts and compensate them for however much they "invested" in their failed business.
Nor is there any reason to assume that just because something might have been profitable in the past it will continue to be profitable in the future.
No... they have digital photography to blame. If people are happily making their own photos with Sony digital cameras, working on them in "digital darkrooms" with Photoshop, PSP or the GIMP and printing them out on Epson printers using photo paper made by Epson, that means fewer people using Kodak products. Sure the current lineup of digital cameras isn't ready to compete with real film for someone who knows the difference, but for "Joe America" they are "just as good" is not better because of how much cheaper it is to take a digital photo.
Un-news
Mullets!!!
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