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Don't Stop File-Sharing, Says Former Pink Floyd Manager
Barence writes "The former manager of Pink Floyd has labelled attempts to clamp down on music file-sharing as a 'waste of time.' 'Not only are they a waste of time, they make the law offensive. They are comparable to prohibition in the US in the 1920s,' said Peter Jenner, who's now the emeritus president of the International Music Managers' Forum. 'It's absurd to expect ordinary members of the public to think about what they're allowed to do [with CDs, digital downloads, etc]... and then ask themselves whether it's legal or not.' The comments come as Britain's biggest ISP, BT, said it was confident that Britain's Digital Economy Act — which could result in file-sharers losing their internet connection — would be overturned in the courts, because it doesn't comply with European laws on privacy."
They are comparable to prohibition in the US in the 1920s
I wish a bittorrent network was anything like a speakeasy.
Filesharing may be free as in beer, but it does not deliver you free beer.
RIAA, Leave Them Kids Alone!
He is just upset that when the RIAA cracks down, some users will not have gotten a complete Floyd album.
"His name was James Damore."
... another brick in the firewall.
The recording industry can go burn for all i really care, though i'd rather artists just release their stuff in the public domain rather then the public making it their domain. I can completely support hurting the recording industry, but I'd rather do it in a way that respects artist's wishes, even if those wishes be that i should not have their material without paying an overpriced fee to a record company I as a consumer do not support. Though that is just my view on the matter, truly i believe that the ends justify the means when it comes to putting the recording industry out. Beyond that, consumer rights should be protected, and that does include the right to fair use of a purchased product.
The Somali pirates. These are the ones extorting millions out of companies and threatening to kill people.
If you read TFA while watching an old Judy Garland flick on groovy couches with a bunch of your friends from college, you'll see that the naive interpretation of Jenner's sentiment given in the summary is way off.
Get it right next time, man.
If - like me - you asked yourself who exactly he is: Jenner has managed Pink Floyd, T Rex, Ian Dury, Roy Harper, The Clash, The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, Robyn Hitchcock, Baaba Maal and Eddi Reader (Fairground Attraction). And Billy Bragg! Jenner and his wife Sumi set up Sincere Management which managed a range of artists. (from wikipedia)
In Canada we have on the extremely rare occasion had Referendums dealing with important legislation. I believe the last national one we held was in 1992? And there are provincial ones every decade or so. We had one upon the subject of Prohibition in the 20's, which I think actually ended up passing, but was repealed shortly thereafter because of its unenforceable nature. Exactly what Mr Pink up there is saying.
But I disagree when he says
It's absurd to expect ordinary members of the public to think about what they're allowed to do [with CDs, digital downloads, etc]... and then ask themselves whether it's legal or not
No, I don't think it's absurd at all - in Canada we may have still ended up voting in favour of it (51.2 for and 48.8 against) - but at least its not a crazy idea to, you know, ASK the general public.
If music, movies, software and books are freely distributed they pretty much have zero value. There will be some very talented folks that are also independently wealthy (or have gotten rich from when their music had value) that can afford to work for nothing. The rest of the world is going to do something that pays the rent and the grocery bill.
This will certainly leave the field open to whomever wants to distribute their stuff because they know thiers has value. Most of this will be like Darwin Reedy that can't imagine the world being without her talent.
Fine, if that is where we really want to go.
Probably the biggest single problem is that we have nearly 100 years of highly-compensated, highly-valued works that without copyright protection and enforcement will be grabbed up by the mega-distribution companies. Sure, you want a complete collection of Henry Fonda's movies - $5. The problem is that it cost the distribution company $0 to do this and the only ones making any money from it are the likes of Walmart and Sony. They can afford to out-distribute anyone else on the planet - no matter how many hits your warez/torrent site gets.
Another side effect here is that without copyright protection and enforcement anything that is passed around for free will also get grabbed up by the mega-distributors if is any good. So they get to make money off the artists anyway. Still. Without any hope of compensation. Quite possibly without any attribution unless it helps sales.
No matter how hard you try, you aren't going to get rid of the distribution companies. They will "make" (as in manufacture) pop stars out of whole cloth as needed just to drive sales. They will have the tools (promotion and distribution) to do this. Sure, you can get rid of the RIAA, Warner Brothers, and EMI. But they will simply be replaced by Walmart, Sony and Amazon. With less favorable terms for the artists and less favorable terms for the purchasors.
Exactly what Mr Pink up there is saying.
By the way, which one's Pink?
It might just be more creative accounting on their part. They can apply the costs of looking for these "pirates" against the artists earnings, and apply any money collected to their own pockets. They get to screw both the artists and the pirates, while getting more wealth.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
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General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
...a momentary lapse of unreason.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
It's not hard to remember, but it's also unjust. We have fair use for a reason, including format-shifting and creating backups.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
The Internet, and therefore the issue of file sharing, wasn't around back then. Try again, please.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
Mod parent +1 Cigar
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
He said the industry could adopt the model of sites such as Rapidshare, which offers paying subscribers the opportunity to get faster downloads. "If we can get £1 a month from every person on this island [Great Britain] for music... this is getting very close to the current level of revenue for recorded music," Jenner claimed.
I've been saying for years that the music industry (and movie industry) should change their business model on the Internet to sell services rather than copies. Say, "For a low monthly fee, you can have free access to our super-fast servers that have all the newest releases and a huge back catalog (every piece of music ever recorded)." Divide up the profits from that service to pay royalties.
At least speaking for myself, I'm quite sure the music industry could make more money off of me during my lifetime by offering a $X/month service of providing all-you-can-eat drm-free music downloads than... well, any other business model I can think of. Give me a bundled deal including all movies and TV shows, and I'd pay a decent monthly fee.
You probably don't even need DRM. I know, you're thinking that people will just download the whole catalog in a month and then cancel their subscription, but that's really more trouble than it's worth. You have to go through all the trouble of downloading, storing, and backing up all that data. And then your computer crashes or a file gets corrupt, and you have to do it all over again. You quit again, but then a new song comes out that you want, so you'll have to resubscribe.
Most people will may for a service that makes their lives more convenient. Make a service that makes it easy to find and enjoy the media you want. Add a good recommendation engine on top of it. Price it competitively with cableTV+Rhapsody. Watch the money roll in.
Nope, they weren't run by the russian mob. Or at least in no more way than the USA Mob ran entertainment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Sinatra).
Odd you bring up RIAA accounting because AllOfMP3 had the monies owed to the artists available, but RIAA refused to take it.
Compare the rates paid to the 3c/song compulsory licensing that radio (which you can tape from for everyone in the US). The money was the same.
Yeah, it's Time to put a stop to all this Us and Them. These repeated lawsuits just sound like Echoes to me. It's A Great Day for Freedom.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
How about I copy anything I damn well please and you can shove your artificial scarcity into the nearest orifice? In fact, let me give you a simple choice. Continue this charade of an economy based on "scarcity", OR create an economic paradigm where cost+value = price.
Everyone, including the so called "artists" has a right to make money on their works. Those that provide good works for reasonable prices with high levels of value, will. Those that rely on lying, cheating, stealing and trickery, and control of distribution... won't. The real world has shown this, time and again. Music and media is the latest in a long line of battlefields fought for rational economics. Of course, money and power tend to win out of rational thought, at least for a time. The fight is costing us far more than the shift in paradigms will, and it's not even delaying the shift. Itunes is the number 1 music market in the world. That didn't take long. How much longer before Apple realizes they can cut the middle men out and just open their own publishing studio?
There are a lot of really talented people in the music industry. Almost none of them work with or for the RIAA anymore. Once the plaque of lawyers is done picking the bones, the RIAA, and most of the rest of the "professional recording" industry will collapse and reform, hopefully into something a little more intelligent and rational. (I know, call me an idealist).