Slashdot Mirror
New Zealand Shows Music Piracy Boosts Sales
vik writes "According to This NZ news article it appears local music is being boosted by piracy. Strangely, their Associate Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage, Judith Tizard, supports this when she warns that "... while sales of local music are high, so are illegal copies of New Zealand albums." Unfortunately as always, government bodies don't seem to be able to make the connection even when it stares them in the face."
I think the boost in local NZ music by copying is not that surprising. There is a lot of very good New Zealand music, but a lot of it stays relatively unknown, even to the local market, as we tend to get swamped by the more affluent overseas marketing. A little exposure can take you a long way.
As to New Zealand copyright laws - that's an interesting one, as they are currently under review. I haven't checked recently (but made plenty of submissions while they were taking them) but I believe that while they aren't doing a DMCA (because enough people spoke up) they aren't doing the right thing either.
This article by the IT editor of one of the major NZ newspapers goes so far as to suggest that they ought to be trying to enshrine Copyleft and Creative Commons in the copyright laws, so there is a movement towards this at a reasonably public level - how much sway that actually has over politicians is hard to say.
All the New Zealanders reading this: Write in to your local MP and ask them for their stance on Copyright law, and explain the benefits of having Copyleft and Creative Commons as a firmly enshrined concept under law. The more they think people are paying attention, the better the chance thet something good will come in the copyright review.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
I wonder if Radio listening has been ont he increase at the same time sales are picking up? I'd take a guess and say yes. But it all comes back down to think like American Idol etc!
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
After all, how do you quantify someone like myself, who either:
A) Downloads a track or three by an unknown (to myself) artist to 'test the waters' and based on the tracks in question either buys their CD's/Merchandise, or immediately deletes their tracks of my HD.
B) Downloads live/unreleased/discontinued tracks by the truckload.
Both of those show as 'piracy' by RIAA's standards, one of them 'MAY' contribute to higher music sales, HOWEVER, in the case of 'A', even tho' I downloaded tracks to which I will NEVER purchase said album, it can not be considered a 'lost sale'.
Bascially, just goes to show, you can skew the numbers to show whatever you want them to show...
Also of note, I'm up to about $400 in sales to the iTMS. Quantify that...
Don't park drunk, accidents cause people.
in store stickering of major label cds:
"WARNING: this record label pays radio stations to keep independent music off the air"
Well, the problem is that neither direction has actually proven. There is, in fact, correlation (though not definitive proof of causation) between wide scale piracy and increased sales, though. I agree that companies will go after pirates because they believe that it means lost profit, but the shear volume of piracy that has been detected (something on the order of 20,000+ songs, of which maybe 1/10th are of a single year) would seem to indicate that companies believe that such companies believe most people have $1,500-$2,000 to spend just on songs (that's figuring 20 songs per CD and $15-20 per CD).
I don't think that's anywhere near the real value people are willing or even able to pay, so basing one's calculations on that is totally insane. Beyond that, if piracy were really stealing then the record labels would have to be reporting massive losses (30 million file shares * 20 label owned songs / 20 songs/CD * $15/CD == $450 million). The same issue shows up with the BSA and their rather insane piracy figures.
In any case, the fact is that the true loss to companies end up being nothing. They aren't losing anything, and they're not gaining anything. But, most countries operate under the idea of copyright with a created fictional worth (something like $150,000 for willful infringement). Now, inately I don't think this is a bad idea. In this, I think it's not a bad idea to overly punish people who violate some law.
The problem is, I don't see the current law as being allowable under the US constitution (it might be okay in NZ..I don't know their constitution well enough). I don't think, also, that the law is good or ethical. And that brings up me questioning how ethics is related to this.
It isn't ethical to let a musician starve or be left out in the cold. But, that's a very abstract point which shouldn't be taken to mean that every single company with employees should be propped up indefinitely. People that see the musician out on the street corner starving should be stepping up to help. That's it, really. There's nothing ethical about intellectual property itself. It's just a fabrication that attempts to promote arts and sciences. Not promoting the arts and sciences isn't unethical.
I do agree, very strongly, with your point about changing the law, though. I would love it if the copyright law in the US was written more sanely. I also don't believe strongly that any politician currently has any desire to fix copyright to be remotely sane.
My personal opinion is that copyright should hold for any work for a period of at most 20 years told (about a "generation"). The copyright owner would only have three rights: the right to sell copies, the right to sell performances/broadcasting, and the right to license broader access to an already owned work. The law would spell out clearly that a copyright owner has no right to control through legal or other means the use of a product or its resale. Finally, the law would make it clear that a copied work falls under common property law allowing for all members of a family to have simutaneous usage rights of a work. A company composed solely of family members would still have to buy multiple copies of a work because employees aren't family.
In essence, I believe that the US should adopt more personal usage laws with stricter enforcement of protecting the rights of people who buy a copyrighted work to do whatever they want with a work as part of usage.
same idea with software. consider MS in its infancy. because of piracy, more and more people had access to their programs. although i shudder to say this, their programs arent' that bad, and hence, adoption rate for MS products skyrocketed. now that they have critical mass, they are striking back at the very thing that made them the de facto standard for everything --- piracy!!!
Correlation is not causation.
...he toddles off to shower and sleep...
Gee, that's what we keep trying to tell all you RIAA "downloading causes poor sales" types.
Odd how *before* the economy crashed increased P2P swapping correlated with *increased* music sales. When the economy crashed, CD prices climbed, and the number of releases dropped, then music sales dropped. Though they still didn't get hit as badly as most other businesses. Maybe that's because of continued file-swapping!
Screw the **IA's and SCO --- three peas in a pod.
Happy Sunday,
Mal the Elder
Nicely said! I'm reminded (again) of Jack Valenti's warning, "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."
...
Or without the High Crimes and Misdemeanors metaphor:
"And 6 out of 10 films do not retrieve their total investment period. Now, what are you going to do right on top of that? There is going to be a VCR avalanche. Exports of VCR's from Japan totaled 2.57 million units in 1981. No. 2, the United States is the biggest market. No. 3, February 1982, which is the latest data, shows the imports to the United States are up 57 percent over 1981. This is more than a tidal wave. It is more than an avalanche. It is here.
Now, that is where the problem is. You take the high risk, which means we must go by the aftermarkets to recoup our investments. If those aftermarkets are decimated, shrunken, collapsed because of what I am going to be explaining to you in a minute, because of the fact that the VCR is stripping those things clean, those markets clean of our profit potential, you are going to have devastation in this marketplace"
Devastation here we come
This slashdot article has got to be the poorest analysis of a newspaper article I have seen. I though slashdot was reasonably intelligent. The government of New Zealand is obviously aware of the effects of piracy otherwise they wouldn't have mentioned it!!
I live in New Zealand, and a lot of people I know have a bit of an edict - they buy New Zealand music to support the local artists, and they pirate the foreign stuff. I personally only buy my music as I haven't bought a foreign album in months - the quality of New Zealand music is awesome.
I mean seriously... are the people that download 5000 mp3's to the HD really going to buy that much music? I think not.
For me, it reminds me of kids in High School in the 80's. Many of us would throw a tape in the radio at lunch, or late at night, to get certain tracks, then to mixed tapes, etc. These were tunes we were NOT going to buy. We didn't have the money, or didn't CARE to buy them.
The justification that people are somehow stealing music that is sent out via radio waves completely free anyway, and that CAN Be recorded off the radio via fair use, is just garbage.
Yes, MP3's are easier. Yes, you don't get commercials. But let's face the facts: most people who download music... if the tap was turned off today - would never buy music instead. They'd just stop listening to MP3's!!!!!