Legal File Swapping Software and a little rant
The BBC Technical artciles (RSS) is running a story on US Courts stating that file swapping software creators are not responsible for the content being swapped by their software. The US Movie industry was suing two file swapping software companies since people were swapping movies via their software. The Courts indicated that it was up to Congress to change the copyright laws to deal with this, not them. I guess now we’ll see the Hollywood going after the file swappers just like the record industry is gong after downloaders. Let’s hope they have better luck and not as bad press.
I will not make comment on the downloading of movies and music; however, I will make a comment about the record industry. They scream that downloading music and file swappers are killing their industry. They give numbers of about how badly their CD sales have fallen off in the last few years. If you look carefully at some of the numbers you’ll see a lot of them stemming from the early 90s. You know, when CDs were just becoming the thing to get rather than tape? When everyone was buying the CD version of the cassettes they owned. Perhaps this drop off had to do with people completing those collections? It might take a while since the CDs were $20-$30 back then.
Now, take that in conjunction with the fact that most people see that it costs $15-$20 for a music CD. Most people understand that there are thousands of CDs printed for each album release. They understand the massive amounts of money that the record industry takes in. They also notice that it costs themselves only .03 cents for a CD and about ten minutes of time to make one themselves. They think, surely, if they can make a CD for 0.03 cents the record industry can do it as cheap or cheaper. I mean after all, aren’t they doing it in volume? Of course, most people don’t think about how much it costs to buy all the high end equipment to record the music, how much it costs to print up all those CD album covers, how much it costs to have the facilities to create those thousands of CDs, cases, and such, how much it costs to “woo” a good talent, how much a new Lexus for the recording industry presidents costs, etc., etc., etc. But, please not that I’m not defending the record industry here, just making my opinion known. I think most people don’t think about those costs.
But, the record companies say we are taking money away from the artists. Unless the artist is someone who has been around a while and is a real money maker for the record company, they get close to nothing per CD sold. We might as well spend the 0.3 cents to make our own and then send another 0.3 cents to the artist. Some of them may actually make more money that way. If the record company wants my compassion they need to stop saying we are hurting the artist and fess up that we are hurting their bottom line.
I think services that allow you to download music and burn a CD of any combination of that music you want is great. I’d pay for that. What, $1.50 or so a song? Sure…by the time you have picked up a CD worth of songs you’ve spent the same as it would have cost for a CD, but you have only the songs you like and not all the filler you get when you buy a CD from an artist that you like 2 songs out of the 12 on the album. Plus you can put that song on a CD, your laptop, iPod, MP3 Player, whatever and take it with you anywhere. Share it with friends….maybe they like it and buy it too.
Oh well. another post I can chalk up to a rant.