BBC Commentary on P2P Music Distribution
You know how the BBC has "talking points" which allow the users of the website to add their point of view to an issue? You know how you read them and end up just desperate to answer them in your most sarcastic tone of voice? You know how I haven't the willpower to resist? This is in response to Should web music swapping be banned?
I have thousands of CDs that I have bought from record shops. I continue to buy 2 or 3 albums a week on CD. I am a music addict. But I also download songs. I do this because I like to hear a track or two from the albums before I buy them, to see whether I like them or not. If I had no opportunity to listen to them in this way first I wouldn't buy them. How am I hurting the music industry?
Nick, UK
Egocentricism at its best - it's not all about you, you upstanding paragon of commerical honesty, unless everyone else happens to feel exactly the same way. If all you do is listen to a couple of songs and then delete them or buy the CD, then good for you - most people don't do this, and you don't need peer-to-peer networks in order to do it, as many songs (especially the more popular ones) are played over and over on the radio, and you can get 30-90 second previews of most tracks without resorting to downloading a pirated copy from someone else. You can also walk into Tower Records (since you're there once a week at least anyway) and ask to listen to any CD they have in the store, they're usually very willing to do that.
I've just been to dotmusic.com to check out legal downloading of music. What a nightmare! It's unbelievably complicated, and the restrictions on what you can do with the music you download are draconian. Make it simple and easy to use, or no-one will use it. I can't believe they expect you to pay for a track, and then keep on paying over and over again for a licence to play what you've already bought! Now that ought to be illegal!
Brian, UK
It about what kind of license you want to buy. You want the music for much less, then you only get limited use of it. Since we've already shown the music companies that if they don't use DRM to protect the work, it gets shared with all and sundry, they're taking precautions. If you want full access to the song, and the ability to make 3rd generation copies of it, then you just pay the normal price for it. People are using filesharing as a lever to force prices down, based on their own (undoubtedly expert) view of the industry's finances. How much an industry makes isn't grounds for forcing them to reduce their price, because how much money they make should be based on how much people are willing to pay for something. That economic model breaks down when people get the option of obtaining it for free. If you want something, and it's worth $20, and someone is offering a perfectly good version of it for free, who's going to pay $20, even if that's what it's worth?
Assuming that we the people were allowed to force a company to reduce it's price because it was making outrageous profits on it's goods, then we'd be buying Coca Cola for $0.07 per can, McDonalds french fries for $0.03 per carton, and the latest Harry Potter book for less than a dollar. There would also be no wealthy success stories such as J.R.Simplot (inventor of the frozen french fry), J.K.Rowling (Harry Potter author) or Scott Adams (author of the Dilbert cartoons).
Most of the music on CDs is twaddle. I've spent hundreds on computer games, music and films in the last few years. Not any more. I realised how much I was being ripped off, and now I'm getting my money back. If you go by what the record companies say, soon you'll be sued for whistling a song without the proper licenses....
James M, Glasgow, Scotland
Oh good - is that a new rule, every time I get into a contract which, with hindsight, I'd rather not have signed, can I just get services for free from the company I signed it with (or anyone else in their industry) until such a point as I feel I've been fairly compensated? I don't like much of the music on my CDs, because I buy them for a few better tracks. I realise that artists can't consistently churn out songs that I will personally find brilliant, in the same way as I don't find every article in a magazine as well written as the last. You don't see me filching the next copy of the magazine off the newsstand to satisfy my desire to be compensated though, do you?
Suing your customers is only going to make them bitter against the companies and discourage them from buying their music - they will be digging their own graves!!
Triston Smith, UK
They're not buying the music. They're downloading it, and then making it available to millions of others to also download for free. Losing them as customers isn't going to cost nearly as much as having them continue as free distributors of pirated work.
Everyone against music swapping states how it's unfair on the artist. If all of the £12+ for an album goes to the artist then people might think differently. Fact of the matter is that the record industry that publishes the music wants more profit, and probably only pays the artist £2 of the final cut. Why should us consumers have to pay the fat cats when we can download for a fraction or none of the production costs?
Mike, UK
Ok, so by your estimation, ten pounds is sufficient to cover not only the printing costs of a CD, the jewel case, and the glossy brochure on semi-plastic paper inside, but also to cover for the recording studio time, the designers who put together the brand's image, the distribution costs of running music stores across all the continents of the world, the shipping costs, the agents who get the interviews in the magazines and the most expensive cost of all - marketing, without which the band would most likely remain an unheard bar tour in their local county. If the artists didn't want to compete in the big game, they wouldn't need the kind of money it takes, and would be content recording their music themselves as independents, and distributing it themselves. The fact is that they don't have the money, and no bank in its right mind is going to lend it to them because it's a very very risky proposition. Enter the recording studios that are actually willing to take that risk, and give you lots of support to help you succeed. Financially, you get rewarded on your investment based on the risk you take in that investment in the first place. If the risks were small, the margins would be too, but since the risks are big, the margins are huge - not because they're greedy, but because they somehow have to make up for all the times they pay for the development of a new artist and never get their money back.
Take that a step further, and you realize that ten pounds on a CD doesn't even come close to covering the launch costs for a new artist that doesn't sell a bucketload of albums, and that the established artists that sell millions end up subsidising the new artists that are trying the break through, and the music studios are the clearing house where all this is made possible. Sure they take their cut on the way through, but they don't make as much money as you think they do. They also manage and maintain a huge system that channels billions of royalty payments from radio stations, DJs, nightclubs, television shows, films and other media back to the artists who made the music in the first place - that royalty clearing system costs millions to run and maintain, and without it artists would never get their due, because there'd be no way of tracing who owes them money.
Does the RIAA have jurisdiction across the planet? Can they sue someone in Canada or Nigeria for sharing music? This now becomes an international legal matter. How will they enforce it all?
Zelko, Canada
This is so stupid I can barely muster the strength to phrase the reply. An international crime doesn't become Ok just because it crosses borders. The RIAA has no limit to it's jurisdiction, just because you break the law from canada doesn't mean they can't pursue you through the laws of your own country, I believe the concept of copyright exists there also?
The general tone of this discussion reflects an almost total lack of morality on the part of those who think taking that which does not belong to them is anything other than stealing. Justification for stealing based on the alleged evils of the true owner of that which is being stolen is nonsense.
Bill, USA
This pretty much sums it up, especially the second part. You can't justify stealing from someone based on a perception that "they deserve it because they rip us off". You don't like the price, don't buy the music - it's that simple. You don't have a God-given right to own anything you like, in the same way as if you create something and sell it at a price, I don't have the right to take it and pay you less than you're asking - even if what you created was digital rather than physical. The comments above show some pretty twisted moral compasses, and a complete disregard for the rules that have governed commercial transactions since the 1800s.
Posted by nlvp at July 21, 2003 02:50 PM