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Digital Music Downloads Too Expensive?
threeofnine writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has an article written by a copyright and technology lawyer asking if we are paying too much for digital downloads. From the article: 'Parallel imports are unavailable in the Australian digital market, however. Australian consumers cannot purchase downloads from iTunes or Wal-Mart in the US, which are often cheaper than downloads available here, without a US-issued credit card. And restrictive licensing conditions imposed by copyright owners also limit the sale of digital downloads across international borders. For both reasons Australian consumers miss out. And retailers cannot buy downloads from overseas and resell them here, even if it is worthwhile for them to do so. In a recent analysis, the prices of Australian-made CDs of artists such as Bon Jovi, REM and Robbie Williams were compared to those of legal parallel imports. It was found that the local product was as much as 300 per cent more expensive.'"
Interesting key (and somewhat conflicting) points from the article:
and:So, in addition to lobbying in the United States to encumber music and entertainment beyond any previous restrictions (to the point of unusability if they get their way), the music industry tries to layer artificial geographical artifacts over the internet to further increase their (already obscene) profits. I find it interesting the entertainment wonks get away with this under the "protection of artists and intellectual property" canards juxtaposed next to the argument that many people lose their jobs to outsourcing as a result of the "global economy" and the breaking down of these alleged geographic boundaries.
Seems like those in power define by expedience.
(As an aside, another tasty tidbit in the article:
I find this an interesting question -- maybe when Americans are also charged a fair price for music (they aren't today). Sigh.... AllOfMp3.com?
I find Allofmp3 to be quite reasonable! About 10 cents per song with no DRM. You can't beat that.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
There are websites like allofmp3.com that sell mp3's in bulk with a set amount per meg.. seems pretty cheap to me, set the bitrate, if you want higher quality music than you can get on limewire or soulseek..
.. but, there are alternatives.
iTunes is too expensive
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
Did anyone notice the article summary has no connection with the title whatsoever...?
To The United States Congress: We are the customers and former customers of the member labels of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). We love music and will gladly pay a fair price for it, but we are outraged by the RIAA's tactics in suing ordinary Americans for filesharing....
Let's slashdot the Senate and House Commerce!
Why do CDs cost as much as vinyl LP albums did? The production costs for (digital) CDs are several of orders of magnitude less than they were for (analog) LPs, yet the price-point never moved.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
AllOfMP3? Good call. So, instead of illegally downloading a song, you can illegally download it AND pay a fee that never gets anywhere near artists' hands.
While that is normally true, music is not a free market. The music industry has both a macro and micro monopolies over music. By that I mean only a few music companies control the vast majority of music and set prices accordingly. And then each individual music company has exclusive monopolies over particular artists. So if you want to buy Rage Against the Machine, you have to buy it from Sony.
If you want evidence that the music industry ignores supply and demand, look no further than CD prices. Despite the enormous drop in CD sales the prices have not dropped. In fact, the music industry has raised prices over the same time period.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The difference between digital media and other goods is that, for the latter, the price is determined by the cost of production and distribution plus extra which is kept as a profit. Digital media however, has zero production and distribution cost (for each individual download i mean), hence the price is entirely determined by what the record companies think is the optimum price, cheap enough for people to buy, expensive as possible to earn as much money. This means that in a third world country, the optimum price might be 10 times lower than the optimum price in a first world country. In order to make as much money as possible they have to price their downloads differently in different countries - selling it at first world prices everywhere would mean they lose out on profits in less well-off countries, selling it as third world prices mean they don't earn enough in first world countries. That's why they are so intent on limiting downloads accross digital borders. And hence, measures such as region encoding.
Actually, in the US it is not illegal. Actually, there is a little known loophole in US law that allows you to import music from outside the US without any copyright violation.
17 USC 602(a)(2) says that "importation, for the private use of the importer and not for distribution, by any person with respect to no more than one copy or phonorecord of any one work at any one time" is NOT infringement.
Thus, if you "import" one song from say, allofmp3.com, or from some other foreign server, for personal use, and do not distribute it to anyone else, the RIAA could not legally come after you.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
It seems that everybody wants everything, and think it should be free.
Are record companies greedy and evil? You betcha.
Are they gouging customers and musicians both? Right-o.
Has everyone's perception of value been altered by p2p downloads, cracked software and other Internet-rendered amenities?
Without a doubt.
-1 Flamebait.
do() || do_not();
i recently did a study...
- I pay too much for gas
- I pay too much for cheeseburger
- I pay too much for clothes
What's the news here?
I both buy albums, and download music (illegally), and to tell you the truth, from a moral standpoint I feel worse about paying for it.
By paying for music I am propping up an anachronistic distributing chain whose business practices I take issue with. Which, for me, is more of an issue than violating a business friendly law, or depriving the artist of the miniscule cut of the sale he'd be receiving.
For me something that is mutually beneficial would support both the artists and the consumer; paying for music ain't. I'd rather see no one pay for music and watch the record labels go down in flames (artists can still make money touring), so that when I do want to buy an album I can know that the artist is getting a reasonable cut of the sale.
Yes, I'm middle-aged & I tend to listen mainly to classic rock albums with a little blues & soul thrown in. Most of the stuff I listen to, I can get fairly cheaply either second-hand or on eBay/Amazon marketplace - generally, I'll pick up a brand new CD for around £6 ($10). For that money, I get a nice uncompressed shiny CD with some liner notes and a hard case that I can rip at whatever bit rates I want to (I do listen to a lot of MP3-based music when I'm travelling or in the gym).
I don't go near Virgin or HMV record stores in the UK because I simply cannot justify paying anything up to £17 ($28) for a new CD but the prices that I do get my CDs at seem to be as cheap as paying to download each track individually - plus I get something tangible in the process.
I know a lot of people don't want to buy "filler" tracks on CDs and prefer downloading the tracks they want but I still don't get it - I've a collection of about 800 CDs at home and I'd say at least half of those are recordings I consider as "classics" that I can happily listen to from start to finish as completely good albums.
I'm certainly not trying to provoke a "the music of today is rubbish compared to the music of yesterday" argument because I just don't listen to enough modern music to have a valid opinion of it - but I've more than enough great music in CD album format to last me a lifetime now & if the younger generation of today has difficulty finding modern albums that are themselves "classics" in their entirety, then doesn't the "pick and mix music tracks" attitude perhaps make more of a statement about the quality of modern music than music downloads as being "the modern way" of distributing music?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Very interesting. Thanks! I guess it's not "little known" anymore.
This point should be stressed: "There is no private right of action for violations of customs law." Thus, the RIAA still could not come after an Allofmp3 user directly.
The RIAA is going ballistic over allofmp3. But they are trying to handle it via the governments involved, not directly with the users. Considering that the RIAA has no problem suing customers, I find that very informative.
My guess is that the RIAA does not want to risk an unfavorable ruling regarding 17 U.S.C. 602(a)(2). Can you imagine if that occurred? Suddenly downloaded music from foreign servers, even on P2P, would not be infringement. The shit would really hit the fan.
Thus, the RIAA's first step is to get Russia to shut the site down but pressuring the US government. When and if that fails I'd guess that they'll have Congress amend 17 U.S.C. 602(a)(2) to specify that it does not apply to downloaded music. Heck, their probably already working on that! Once that is amended, then they'll start suing Allofmp3 users.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Again this crap is being modded up! AllOfMP3.com don't pay the appropriate royalties to their artists. I very much doubt whether music downloaded from their site is appropriately licenced if you are buying it from outside Russia.
Like Stew77 said, emusic is the way to go if you don't want to support the big 'evil' labels. Give your money to independant labels, not dubious "too good to be true" Russian imports!
Homme petit d'homme petit, s'attend, n'avale
Strange, all the ones I download are completely free... hang on I think I hear somebody knocking on my door...
nothing