OpEd: The music debate...
Mike is a 12 yr. old middle school student who excels in math, plays baseball and videogames with friends, and is currently being charged criminally [currently a misdemeanor] for exchanging music through a peer-to-peer file sharing program. If his story sounds a bit ridiculous, you might want to pay closer attention. His story is not uncommon – it might even sound familiar to those of us who used to make audio cassette recordings of our favorite musicians.
In a chat room on AOL our unfortunate youth made a friend – the modern day equivalent of a Pen pal – who happens to live in Switzerland. His friend turned him on to a German band called Ramstein, whose music he was assured to enjoy. Not a “thief” by nature, our youth went to his local music store to buy the cd and was informed that since the music was an import he would have to pay 30% more money and wait 4-6 weeks. Irritated, Mike accepted the situation. One week after his order, Mike received a call from the music store telling him that the cd was backordered and would now take 6-8 weeks for delivery. Aghast, Mike cancelled the order, went online and downloaded 70% of the cd within one hour. He is currently facing charges under the Copyright law for file sharing of copyrighted music.
While the Recording Industry Association of America [RIAA] would like to make their case for tougher Copyright laws about the artists getting paid for their music, that argument rings hollow when one considers how much the artists actually get paid – if the music sells less than half-a-million copies [$17.99 x 500,000 = 8,995,000.00] the artist does not even break even – in comparison the new head of the RIAA recently signed a contract for a one million dollar-a-year salary.
If you feel like you’ve missed something, you have. The RIAA's [and other similar industry bodies] reactions are frenzied and outlandish because they can see the beginning of their end. Historically the relationship between musicians and the music publishers was a mutual dependency. The artists were needed to create the music, the publishers to distribute and market it. Both were necessary to move enough “product” to make the process profitable. The advent of the net, CD burners, MP3's etc. is that the publisher is no longer necessary to distribute the music.
Half the RIAA justification for being in the loop has effectively disappeared. Considering that they take the lion’s share of the sale price of a CD to cover costs and profits, there is plenty of incentive for artists and music lovers to come up with an alternative solution to the marketing of music. If such a solution occurs the RIAA's last justification for being in the loop disappears. When that happens, even given their size and control over the market, their disappearance is a foregone conclusion.
Not surprisingly the industry is using everything they can lay their hands on to scare the average consumer away from it. Everything except offering the consumer what he wants: immediately available music at a reasonable price. Unfortunately, like the old world monopolist organizations that they are (e.g. the beast) their chief weapon is government intervention because they no longer have anything substantial to offer. Imagine what would happen to any other industry where the producers threatened their consumers?
The copyright thing is a smokescreen, piracy is a negligible threat. They're fighting to maintain control, and for their survival.