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Posted by Bill Van Dyk on 11/14/05 15:26
Skip this if you don't want to be bored. But if you think the CD as the
medium of distribution for music might soon be obsolete...
Actually, your point is well taken. I have often thought and said that
I wish somedays that the copyright-holders get exactly what they wish
for. Because it would kill them off more quickly. What I believe is
happening is that copyright holders want it both ways. They want to
benefit from widespread exposure. Then they want to assert the right to
not expose their work.
I firmly believe that if the government had required Microsoft to put
effective copy protection on all of their products, we wouldn't have the
monopoly we have now. And I firmly believe Microsoft knew that, and
that is why, when Word Perfect, for example, removed copy protection
from their product, Microsoft almost immediately did the same. It is
therefore hypocritical of Microsoft to demand protection from
competition, by asserting their copyright. Compete! you .... And, in
fact, you can easily see that Microsoft has been very circumspect on
this issue. They know dimly what Google understands completely: there's
a lot of money to be made in giving away your product.
As for music, copyright holders want their music exposed, on radio and
tv, in promotional tie-ins, scandalous newspapers, etc., etc. If you
truly believe that Ashley Simpson gets her face on my local
entertainment section because even a Kitchener, Ontario newspaper
believes she is so talented she deserves it, God bless you, but I don't.
She is there because her corporate Svengalis want her "exposed". They
want you to see her face. They have established a very sophisticated
and effective system of promotion that ensures that her face will be on
magazine covers. They will also want you to hear her music-- why else
would you buy her CD? Most commercial radio stations only play music by
artists they believe will obtain wide exposure through tv and magazines.
One hand washing the other. They all profit by selling advertising,
not music.
Since I have no intention of spending one red cent on Ashley Simpson
products, I would have no problem with her corporate Svengalis being
absolutely, totally successful in preventing me from being exposed to
her music, her face, or her tantrums, without having paid for
permission. Go to it! Please-- be absolutely successful. Prevent her
music from ever being downloaded to my computer, or played on my radio
station, or her face from being on my tv, or in my local newspaper,
unless I actually offer you money for it.
I have absolutely no problem with finding my music by reading reviews or
hearing personal recommendations from people I know instead. I also
like to support local talent.
But that, of course, does not happen. And up until recently, this
system worked to the advantage of the big corporations, who could
control access to the actual product, the CD. Now the corporations have
lost control over the actual product, so the system is becoming
unbalanced. But only if you believe that for the rest of all time, we
must all consume music by purchasing a discrete material product, and
music companies must only profit through the sale of that physical product.
That model has been made obsolete by technology and the music industry
(and Hollywood and television) are crying the blues and they refuse to
accept it. They are the carriage-makers of our era. They deserve to go
out of business because they have failed to adjust to changing market
realities. In retrospect, does anybody doubt that if the music
companies had moved aggressively to make their entire catalogues
available as paid downloads in a high quality format that they would not
have made a killing? It took Apple to show them it could be done. But
it might well be too late. As with prohibition, individual
transgression has been replaced with a trangressive infrastructure that
will not be easily suppressed.
Google, iTunes, eBay, and Amazon, and even Microsoft, are the new
emblems of astute corporations that understand where the market is going
and what it wants. All this wailing and gnashing of teeth is misplaced.
The music industry should sit down together, face the fact that the
old model of business practise is now obsolete, and move on to something
new, or join the other dinosaurs in the museum.
Congress, dispicably, in exchange for ready election campaign cash, is
doing everything it can to keep an obsolete business model afloat-- this
from alleged believers in a "free market" ("free" for everyone else).
It's like requiring train companies to keep stokers employed. Or more
like when a city in Bolivia tried to make it illegal to save rain water
in order to help a private American company make a bigger profit with
it's monopoly on the water supply.
The museum if full of creatures that failed to adapt.
Finally, I absolutely believe that a very profitable music business
model can survive downloading. How does Google make money?
The difference is, the Recording industry will have to work hard and use
their brains. That might be asking too much....
bo peep wrote:
> <<you don't need the lost income anyway>>
>
> There is a fatal flaw in your logic...
>
> For any given combination of author and product and market at a point
> in time, there is some number of free accesses to that product that
> would eventually maximize the author's income from that work. However,
> *you* simply don't have the right to select, on behalf of the author,
> without his permission, the number of those free accesses to be
> allowed. The author is not obliged to derive maximum income from the
> product, nor is he even obliged to derive any income at all from the
> product. Even if we disregard the financial consequences, it is simply
> none of your business.
>
> John Cowart
>
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