File-sharing is illegal. Musicians know that, record labels know that and file-sharers are more than well aware of that. So the news today that industry body The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) is suing 28 file-sharers comes as no surprise.
While the rights and wrongs are pretty clear-cut in the law's eyes – it's illegal; if you do it, you're likely to get into trouble – the BPI's policy seems a little confused.
Unlike its US equivalent, the RIAA, the BPI has gone for suing uploaders rather than downloaders to "cut the problem off at its source". It leaves a huge swathe of downloaders operating in safety and the thought of 28 out of the whole uploading community being sued isn't exactly going to give many people sleepless nights.
At least the RIAA tried to hit big – most recently, they filed suits against more than 700 file-sharers in one go.
Illegal music uploading is dropping and not in small measures either – according to a BPI spokesman, by hundreds of millions. Is the campaign to get litigious getting results? Possibly. But it's certainly no coincidence that the as the amount of legal downloads has boomed, the number of illegal downloads has fallen significantly.
The BPI, like others before it, makes a decent case for legal action – along the lines of 'if we don't keep the record labels ticking over now, there's no incentive to for them to keep putting money into new bands.'
But when those same record labels are reportedly creaming off a huge proportion of the profits from legal online music and leaving song-shops with a paltry four per cent, it does look a little like shooting yourself in the foot and a lot like 'one rule for us, one rule for them'.
For music fans, legal downloading is a real boon – most don't fancy being on the wrong side of the law and with tracks at 29p and upwards, pocket-money prices are helping to knock the financial incentive that encourages piracy on the head.
But while the mainstream is amply catered for, a lot of smaller record labels and more niche styles are still by and large neglected in the digital realm, giving some downloaders what they see as little alternative but to turn to the song-swappers.
Perhaps the BPI would have better spent its lawyers' fees on nurturing the legal market instead of cracking down on the illegal one.
Comments
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1. anonymous
Perhaps more people in the UK would buy more CDs if the UK retailers converted dollar prices to pound prices rather than simply changing the $ symbol to a £ symbol.
2. anonymous
Maybe more people would use legal downloads if they were not such poor value for money. Why should we pay £10+ to download an album (thus saving the record company the cost of packaging and distribution)when you can buy the real thing from Amazon for £8.99? That's crazy.
3. Mark SPLINTER
silicon is out of tune here. Chastising other analysts for being out of touch with the "market" is ridiculous!
Music is no longer a "market", and people who think it is are getting old and dying.
Music is, and has always been, freely exchanged. Here in Lithuania "piracy" is the norm, and i can tell you the music here is much better, live music is vibrant, and half the population play the violin.
Why did we sign over music to an INDUSTRY? Music is not a car or some cheese.
If you support this latest ridiculous strongarm tactic from the music "industry" then first ask yourself if you ever lent anybody a book or a video without the publisher's written permission.
And remember the musicians make nothing from the industry, and most of the money the "industry" spends is wasted on rubbish, so i have no sympathy if they complain about the "amount of money it takes to develop artists". What they mean is it takes a lot of free alcohol and long unproductive relaxing "nothing" meetings with 8 full time staff who do not play an instrument.
The industry does not write the music, does not improve the music, does not know anything about the music.
Let's start using words properly:
The industry is an industry, manufacturing, promotion, stuff like that, NOT creation. Artists make art, and then sometimes sell it to the "industry" in order to get money to eat... the industry will normally then lose money because they are so inept and staffed by non-musicians.
Pirates are one-legged bandits on the high seas. Thieves take THINGS, not just copies of things. Speeding is illegal and might KILL someone, but everyone does it, so check out your glass house before you reach for the stones.
The american constitution was pretty good until they amended it to allow a copyright slippery slope and the right to bear arms. In a few years, all the beatles are belong to us, that is a GOOD thing not a threat to the lazy idiot industry.
The lawyers and the accountants made this nightmare, not the musicians or the "pirates".
Now i am taking a deep breath.