Saving the world, one 12-year-old girl at a time
Kudos to the RIAA, for reprising the Spanish Inquisition, Digital Millennium-style.
You've all heard about those subpoenas the Record Industry has blackmailed -- er, subpoenaed -- 261 people for sharing songs on the Internet. This High and Mighty Crusade against the evil file swappers has been perceived largely as a Just Struggle against meaningless college students (the Commie bastards) and the like. Except that one of those nailed by the RIAA for egregious violations of monopolistic capitalism turns out to be a 12-year-old girl. Oops.
Great move, RIAA. Guilt trip some innocent girl into recanting, strongarm her mother into forking over two grand (instead of the potentially $150,000 a song they can legally extort) to keep you from suing a 12-year-old(!) and brainwash her into saying "I love music and don't want to hurt the artists I love." Not that I think there's anything wrong with not paying for Madonna and Paula Abdul tunes, as little Brianna LaHara did.
Let's recall why it is people steal music? Could it have anything to do with exorbitant CD prices? It's pretty sad that Universal Records is slashing album prices by up to one third (as low as $12.98), which is still, oh, three bucks an album more than it costs to download legally from the iTunes Music Store. So, for starters, we're looking at a really flawed and outdated distribution model that makes it not very cost effective to expect people to continue going to record stores and paying through the nose for albums. Not to mention that pay-per-download services allow users to pay only for the songs they want, which is great for the consumer, though horrible for the one-hit wonder.
In light of that, can you really fault anyone for just going on Kazaa or Napster or any of the multitude of peer-to-peer networks, finding the songs they want, getting them for a much lower (OK, free) price from the comfort of their own homes. Hmm, that sounds like a good deal.
And if it's illegal, it's hard to argue that downloading files is immoral. After all, file swappers, contrary to Miss LaHara's perception, doesn't hurt the artists we love that much. Most artists derive relatively little income from album sales. For every $13 or $15 or $18 CD you buy at your neighborhood record store, the artist takes home about a buck of it in royalties. That's right, a buck. Or, somewhere less than 10 percent. And if it's a three-, four- or five-person band, it gets split three, four or five ways. You aren't exactly getting rich off that as an artist. Even if you produce a platinum-selling (more than 1 million copies) album, the average band member's take is in the neighborhood of $20,000-25,000. Pathetic, no? There's a good reason bands tour extensively. That's where most of their income is derived. That and merchandise sales. So if you're really concerned about hurting your favorite artist by downloading their songs, just buy a ticket to see them when they come to town, and maybe pick up a $30 t-shirt when you're there. (Yeah, that's ridiculously overpriced as well, but at least it's going mostly to the artists.)
So really what we're looking at is a scenario where the people getting "hurt" by file swapping are the middlemen, the record companies who contribute little value and provide a service (namely distribution and promotion) that can now be done through new, high-tech means. And maybe it's immoral to just steal music, but that's why I'm really excited about services like the iTunes Music Store, that offer a much fairer, more reasonable method of placating both listener and artist.
Plus, you have to admit, there's a certain justice to it all, a bit of reckoning being done. After all, the music companies getting bitten by file swapping are the same ones responsible in large part for the deterioration of modern music. These are the folks who try to cram "artists" down our throats whose primary merits are the ability to wear no clothes and act sexy while lip synching someone else's songs on stage. I think it fitting to give Tom Petty the last word on this subject, with a verse from "Joe", off his band's outstanding album dealing with this theme, The Last DJ:
Or bring me a girl
They're always the best
You put 'em on stage
And you have 'em undress
Some angel whore
Who can learn a guitar lick
Hey, now that's what I call
Music
You've all heard about those subpoenas the Record Industry has blackmailed -- er, subpoenaed -- 261 people for sharing songs on the Internet. This High and Mighty Crusade against the evil file swappers has been perceived largely as a Just Struggle against meaningless college students (the Commie bastards) and the like. Except that one of those nailed by the RIAA for egregious violations of monopolistic capitalism turns out to be a 12-year-old girl. Oops.
Great move, RIAA. Guilt trip some innocent girl into recanting, strongarm her mother into forking over two grand (instead of the potentially $150,000 a song they can legally extort) to keep you from suing a 12-year-old(!) and brainwash her into saying "I love music and don't want to hurt the artists I love." Not that I think there's anything wrong with not paying for Madonna and Paula Abdul tunes, as little Brianna LaHara did.
Let's recall why it is people steal music? Could it have anything to do with exorbitant CD prices? It's pretty sad that Universal Records is slashing album prices by up to one third (as low as $12.98), which is still, oh, three bucks an album more than it costs to download legally from the iTunes Music Store. So, for starters, we're looking at a really flawed and outdated distribution model that makes it not very cost effective to expect people to continue going to record stores and paying through the nose for albums. Not to mention that pay-per-download services allow users to pay only for the songs they want, which is great for the consumer, though horrible for the one-hit wonder.
In light of that, can you really fault anyone for just going on Kazaa or Napster or any of the multitude of peer-to-peer networks, finding the songs they want, getting them for a much lower (OK, free) price from the comfort of their own homes. Hmm, that sounds like a good deal.
And if it's illegal, it's hard to argue that downloading files is immoral. After all, file swappers, contrary to Miss LaHara's perception, doesn't hurt the artists we love that much. Most artists derive relatively little income from album sales. For every $13 or $15 or $18 CD you buy at your neighborhood record store, the artist takes home about a buck of it in royalties. That's right, a buck. Or, somewhere less than 10 percent. And if it's a three-, four- or five-person band, it gets split three, four or five ways. You aren't exactly getting rich off that as an artist. Even if you produce a platinum-selling (more than 1 million copies) album, the average band member's take is in the neighborhood of $20,000-25,000. Pathetic, no? There's a good reason bands tour extensively. That's where most of their income is derived. That and merchandise sales. So if you're really concerned about hurting your favorite artist by downloading their songs, just buy a ticket to see them when they come to town, and maybe pick up a $30 t-shirt when you're there. (Yeah, that's ridiculously overpriced as well, but at least it's going mostly to the artists.)
So really what we're looking at is a scenario where the people getting "hurt" by file swapping are the middlemen, the record companies who contribute little value and provide a service (namely distribution and promotion) that can now be done through new, high-tech means. And maybe it's immoral to just steal music, but that's why I'm really excited about services like the iTunes Music Store, that offer a much fairer, more reasonable method of placating both listener and artist.
Plus, you have to admit, there's a certain justice to it all, a bit of reckoning being done. After all, the music companies getting bitten by file swapping are the same ones responsible in large part for the deterioration of modern music. These are the folks who try to cram "artists" down our throats whose primary merits are the ability to wear no clothes and act sexy while lip synching someone else's songs on stage. I think it fitting to give Tom Petty the last word on this subject, with a verse from "Joe", off his band's outstanding album dealing with this theme, The Last DJ:
Or bring me a girl
They're always the best
You put 'em on stage
And you have 'em undress
Some angel whore
Who can learn a guitar lick
Hey, now that's what I call
Music
posted by Alexander Dubcek | 23:02
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