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Piracy

Entry 187, on 2005-06-28 at 13:12:34 (Rating 3, Computers)

The US Supreme Court has just ruled against a file sharing service in the US, Grokster. The recording industry, mainly through the group Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), have been waging a war against peer to peer file sharing for years now. They claim it is to prevent illegal file copying which is costing the industry vast amounts of money per year. In reality its to maintain their tight control over movie and music so they can continue to make huge profits out of exploiting performers and consumers. Less than $1 from a CD sale goes to the performer. Where does the rest go? Mainly to extravagant salaries and profits for the big recording companies.

There is no good evidence that file swapping has resulted in less music sales, in fact some research indicates it actually increases it. Swapping music gives people a chance to listen to new music and they often then buy the CD as a result.

I only use peer to peer software to download non-commercial files, such as podcasts, but I encourage anyone I know who does file swap music to buy the CDs of the material they download and like. If the CDs were more reasonably priced this would be easier, of course.

The Internet has always provided ways of bypassing the control traditional forces have had: file swapping bypasses the big recording companies, blogging provides a way to get news free of the bias of the big news corporations, web publishing allows information to be distributed quickly without the need for publishers.

If I was a music executive I would be worried. A carefully created monopoly is under threat and I would fight to save it. But they won't be able to. Technology always wins in the end and it will this time too. You can't beat the Internet. Its too global and innovative for any business of legal system to keep up with.

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