- The latest mainstream media organ to put the frighteners on people on behalf of the Big Four record label cartel is Britain’s The Times.
In a headline screaming, Is your child an internet pirate? That'll be £4,000, it kicks off with:
“Has your child been downloading music illegally on the internet? Then, as our correspondent reveals for the first time, you could be facing a bill for thousands.”
Far from being 'revealed for the first time,' this message has been, and is still being, repeated ad nauseum by the Big four, EMI (Britain), Sony BGM (Japan, Germany), UMG (France) and WMG (US). They use the world’s print and electronic press to carry the message that p2p file sharing is causing them terrible financial losses, forcing them to cut back on artist development, and leaving support workers in dire straits.
In fact, with file sharing, nothing is stolen, no money changes hands, no profits are made or lost and it’s never, ever, been proved that file sharing has resulted in the loss of even a single sale.
Nor has it had any demonstrable effect on the multi-multi-billion-dollar music industry’s ever-increasing profits.
“According to an internal study done by one of the majors, between two-thirds and three-quarters of the drop in sales in America had nothing to do with internet piracy," says Britain’s The Economist. "No-one knows how much weight to assign to each of the other explanations: rising physical CD piracy, shrinking retail space, competition from other media, and the quality of the music itself."
“Rising physical CD piracy” is a key phrase.
The last century The prevalence of counterfeit product assuredly puts a dent in sales. Exactly how much of a dent is, of course, entirely subjective, although the entertainment cartels persist in issuing numbers which purport to accurately define losses due to fakes.
If the labels and movies studios used p2p technology instead of disingenuously claiming it’s “devastating” their businesses, it would reduce the availability of physical product which the criminal duplicators use as templates. It would also mean huge savings in legal, packaging, storage, marketing, printing and other costs.
Instead, the cartels, clinging to business models which date back to the 70s in the last century, insist on equating p2p file sharing with ‘piracy’ as they’ve labelled counterfeiting. And they say it's responsible for all of their problems.
They do this because they believe they must gain absolute control of the internet and how product is distributed on it. And this means crushing all forms of competition, real or merely perceived.
"Alain Levy, chairman and chief executive of EMI Music, told Billboard magazine this year that too many recent acts have been one-hit wonders and that the industry is not developing durable artists," says The Economist. "The days of watching a band develop slowly over time with live performances are over, says Tom Calderone, executive vice-president of music and talent for MTV, Viacom's music channel. Even Wall Street analysts are questioning quality.
"If CD sales have shrunk, one reason could be that people are less excited by the industry's product."
It could take no more "Gina Harkell was, putting the final touches to her third CD when the full weight of the music industry came crashing through her letter box,” continues the Times story.
“ ‘It was a legal document,’ she recalls. ‘There were all these huge names - 14 of them - Universal, Polydor, EMI, Capitol, Virgin, Mercury, Sony … versus, well, me, my partner, but principally my son.’
“A hundred miles away, at about the same time, Richard French, a respectable financial adviser, was calling his wife, Louise, with the news that he and his two young children had apparently been breaking the law for years, and they hadn’t even known it. If they wanted to keep out of the courts, he told her, they would have to pay £2,500.
“In fact, all over the country on that day in mid-April, the opening of dull white envelopes elicited gasps of astonishment and despair among parents as they found out that they - usually because of their children - had become the first in Britain to be hit by a clampdown on internet music piracy. After losing sales amounting to some £300 million because of music-sharing software, the industry had decided it could take no more; there was no option but to use the courts.”
The industry could "take no more". Really? And the article goes on and on in this vein, treating the £300 million claim as though it's based on reality and as though it comes from credible sources.
Behind this utterly groundless victimization of children and their parents – because that’s exactly what it is – is the BPI (British Phonographic Industry), owned by the members of the Big Four record label cartel.
Nor are these attacks confined to Britain. The same thing is happening in America and in other countries where the major corporate software makers, movies studios and music companies have been able to impose their wills on lawmakers, suborn police forces, and remotely control the mainstream media, most of which they either own outright or manage indirectly, often through adverting dollars.
The irony is: their efforts are all in vain, thanks to the Net. Thousands and thousands of people are opening accounts every minute of every day.
Ordinary people now routinely and regularly by-pass the print and electronic press outlets which used to be their sole means if acquiring knowledge and information.
The media reports correctly say thousands of people (mainly children) have been sued, although they never appear in court, a fact never mentioned by The Times or other mainstream media outlets.
But against that, hundreds upon hundreds of millions of people continue to share music, movies and all kinds of other digital media online, the efforts of the likes of the BPI and The Times notwithstanding.
People have stopped being ‘consumers’. They’re customers again, and the customer is always right, even in the digital 21st century.
A single, lossy, heavily compressed mp3 track The lawsuits and media rants are having zero effect on file sharing.
More than 11,000 people have around the world have received 'dull white envelopes' but against that, millions of people share with each other all day, every day. And their numbers are swelling continually. So the chances of a particular individual becoming a victim are so tiny that they can barely be measured.
People aren't crooks. They don't deliberately go out looking to cheat the labels and studios out of what's rightfully theirs.
If anything, it's the other way around.
File sharers would gladly pay any reasonable amount for their downloads. However, a dollar and more for a single, lossy, heavily compressed mp3 track converted from an already existing song is ridiculous, which is why the corporate sites are bereft of buyers.
And the labels want to increase even this amount.
In the meanwhile, p2p and file sharing are here to stay and all that remains is the question:
How long will shareholders allow the executives who run their businesses to continue alienating the very people upon whom their enterprises depend?
Jon Newton
See:- The Times - Is your child an internet pirate? That'll be £4,000, June 7, 2005 The Economist - Music's brighter future, October 28, 2004 never appear in court - File sharing, p2p criminals, p2pnet, March 12, 2005
