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Musicians Oppose Anti-Piracy Measures In the UK
BluePeppers writes "The Guardian has a story, primarily about a deal that allows YouTube to broadcast music videos again, but also covering a coalition of artist unions that are opposing new legislation in the UK that would punish file sharers more severely. From the article: 'A coalition of bodies representing a range of stars including Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Elton John, and Damon Albarn attacks the proposals as expensive, illogical and "extraordinarily negative." The Featured Artists Coalition, the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, and the Music Producers Guild have joined forces to oppose the proposals to reintroduce the threat of disconnection for persistent file sharers, which was ruled out in the government's Digital Britain report in June.""
Aren't music videos supposed to be promotional material? Kind of like adverts for the albums/singles? Why would anyone NOT want people to see them?
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
So these artists are saying that now the stick is far larger than the carrot. What carrot? When have we ever been giving an incentive to pay for the music rather than download it, other than guilt?
I think at this point the stick is just getting larger and pointier and this carrot they may have used at one point has just rotted in the corner.
Forgive me but some of the richest artists are putting up token opposition just doesn't impress me. Fo rall I know behind closed doors they're patting the record execs on the back for pushing this legislation through. These are after all people who make their living as much by promoting themselves as celebrities as by making music. Forgive me if I am therefore skeptical.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Consider the idea of boycotting all of SONY - by which I mean SONY Corporation - because SONY BMG screwed up.
That Bravia TV? Don't buy it. .. and so forth and so on.
That PS3? Don't buy it.
That Blu-Ray player from, say, JVC? Don't buy it - JVC pays SONY
That CD - any artist, even if it's you? Don't buy it - every CD and CD-R made at this point nets SONY a tiny amount of dosh.
Spiderman movie? Don't buy it.
Tom & Jerry on TV? Don't watch it (Tom & Jerry = MGM+Turner. MGM = 20% owned by SONY. Your watching it makes it more attractive for advertisers to put their ads around the show for good sums of money, a slice of which goes to.. voila).
That laptop you're buying? Double-check it doesn't use a SONY panel.
That digital camera you're buying? Make sure it doesn't use a SONY sensor (e.g. Nikon has SONY sensors in many models).
Let's face it - unless you want to be bordering on paranoia whenever you buy something, there's absolutely no good way to boycott a megacorp like SONY even if the idea that long-term boycotting SONY for the short-term actions of a - all things considered - tiny part of the conglomerate wasn't preposterous to begin with. Let me restate that.. I'm not saying that a boycott should be easy - of course it shouldn't, if we could all be lazy in boycotts then a boycott wouldn't work either. What I am saying is, it is nigh-on impossible to boycott a megacorp 100%. Even if -you- decide to no longer buy any product that has a SONY logo on it - a boycott that -is- quite doable, they'll still be getting money from you through the multitude of other channels they have, and through their main channels from the people who don't go along with your boycott.
SONY's bottom line, and that of any other truly big company (let alone the likes of Unilever, Procter & Gamble and the like), is hardly ever hurt by a (call for a) boycott (see e.g. the Nestlé boycott, going on since the 70's, and check out the financial charts for Nestlé.. could they have made an even bigger profit if it weren't for the boycott? sure. Are they in dire straits because of the boycott? Don't be silly.) They're typically more hurt by their own ineptitude and/or loss of appeal for their products/business in general (e.g. Circuit City, sadly), and bad press in specific.
Perhaps this is just a pessimistic view, but it's based on what I see around me. A small baker had to close shop because people boycotted him for selling factory-created pastries - simply because his two children buggered off and he had no time to do that in addition to the fresh breads, cakes, pies, etc. So now people have to buy factory-created breads at the local supermarket as well. The same supermarket (Albert Heijn) that has been 'boycotted' time and again for a multitude of things.. but is still going strong and opening up new stores left and right.
These days, a 'public outcry' is far more efficient than a boycott; the public outcry and subsequent bad press over the SONY BMG rootkit, from people who were still actively buying SONY products -and- people who had no intention of buying SONY products anyway alike, was enough to have them remove any plans to add it to any new CDs, and even lead to them pulling the existing CDs in some areas, while no formal boycott ever materialized and people are still buying SONY products; just like people are still buying Volgswagens and drool over Bugatti Veyrons.