orr101
October 20th, 2003, 04:59 AM
Open letter to RIAA/MPAA (and their members)
----------------------------------------------
I actually agree that getting music, movies, and applications
and not paying for them is immoral. All P2P users know that the files they are getting is , at best, a file that a few users have paid for, and in many cases a "Crack" - that is not even the original source paid for it.
On the other hand, the prices asked, and the practices involved in the current sales model of music/movies etc. are such that you are creating stong incentives to use file sharing tools you would like to supress.
Prime examples are the high prices of CD's and DVD's (which we KNOW cost very little to produce in variable (per-copy) cost, and the practice of selling package-deals: to get an item we want, we have to buy a package containing stuff we do NOT want, and pay for the whole, making the price of the desired part relatively more expensive. Add to that that in some cases there simply IS no other way to get a desired item - if an item is desired that has too little demand to justify physically produce CD's/DVD's and physically have them on shelves, it is "out of print" and simply unavailable, other than finding a current source and getting a copy.
When the copywrited material was essentially locked into the physical mediumon which it was distributed, such tactics could be enforced, and (maybe) half-heartedly justified, but these days are over. Now the content is just data - it CAN be sold per item. It CAN be made available on an item-by-item basis. It CAN be offered for sale even if only one customer wants it in each city. This all CAN be done for a much smaller cost than ever before. Trying to ignore this reality is what got you (and us) into the current situation.
assuming your current cost structure justifies the prices you charge - we don't care. Change it.
Assuming You have a business model that calls for the "package-deal" situation - we don't care. Change it.
Asuming your business model calls for making less-demanded items unavailable - we don't care. Change it.
You claim you are losing billions to file-sharing. This is half-true: for one thing some of the sale-reduction is due to the general reduction in sales due to the depresed economics, for another, some of the traded files would NOT be otherwise bought from you, either because they
are unavaliable for sale, or because at their pricde level the person that gets them over the network would not buy them anyway. You can't force us to get you back to your desired revenue levels. We know you think you deserve it. We simply don't agree.
Trying to sue users will not help. Aside from the fact that it is a financially losing proposition (it is easy to see that the cost to put together the law-suits is easily more than you can hope to recover), it is a bad evolutionary move. Given the incentives to share files, we will develop ways to build eavesdropping-proof networks. Does anyone really believe that for a long time people who have built the current crop of P2P tools can not come up with a RIAA-proof P2P network? This has already started - see the FREENET effort. Even if you think the current generation of "anonymous sharing" is breakable, your efforts will simply help a more secure one evolve, and quickly.
So, my advice: Wake up and face reality. Instead of fighting a futile and losing rearguard action, see how you can make P2P into an opportunity. When the VCR was introduced, many at the MPAA thought it would kill movie-makers revenues. Today it is a major source of revenue, that did not exits before. I suggest the same thing can, and should, happen now.
Build sites where good-quality songs/movies are sold one-by-one for a reasonable price. Offer value-add features to people who get the content from your site, offer content long shelved. The iTUNES model proves there's money to be made this way - maybe less than you'd like, but still.
In short - adapt, or else you will go the way of the steam-train and buggy-whip makers.
To P2P Users - if you agree, forward this to wherever you think it will do any good. See also part 2.
----------------------------------------------
I actually agree that getting music, movies, and applications
and not paying for them is immoral. All P2P users know that the files they are getting is , at best, a file that a few users have paid for, and in many cases a "Crack" - that is not even the original source paid for it.
On the other hand, the prices asked, and the practices involved in the current sales model of music/movies etc. are such that you are creating stong incentives to use file sharing tools you would like to supress.
Prime examples are the high prices of CD's and DVD's (which we KNOW cost very little to produce in variable (per-copy) cost, and the practice of selling package-deals: to get an item we want, we have to buy a package containing stuff we do NOT want, and pay for the whole, making the price of the desired part relatively more expensive. Add to that that in some cases there simply IS no other way to get a desired item - if an item is desired that has too little demand to justify physically produce CD's/DVD's and physically have them on shelves, it is "out of print" and simply unavailable, other than finding a current source and getting a copy.
When the copywrited material was essentially locked into the physical mediumon which it was distributed, such tactics could be enforced, and (maybe) half-heartedly justified, but these days are over. Now the content is just data - it CAN be sold per item. It CAN be made available on an item-by-item basis. It CAN be offered for sale even if only one customer wants it in each city. This all CAN be done for a much smaller cost than ever before. Trying to ignore this reality is what got you (and us) into the current situation.
assuming your current cost structure justifies the prices you charge - we don't care. Change it.
Assuming You have a business model that calls for the "package-deal" situation - we don't care. Change it.
Asuming your business model calls for making less-demanded items unavailable - we don't care. Change it.
You claim you are losing billions to file-sharing. This is half-true: for one thing some of the sale-reduction is due to the general reduction in sales due to the depresed economics, for another, some of the traded files would NOT be otherwise bought from you, either because they
are unavaliable for sale, or because at their pricde level the person that gets them over the network would not buy them anyway. You can't force us to get you back to your desired revenue levels. We know you think you deserve it. We simply don't agree.
Trying to sue users will not help. Aside from the fact that it is a financially losing proposition (it is easy to see that the cost to put together the law-suits is easily more than you can hope to recover), it is a bad evolutionary move. Given the incentives to share files, we will develop ways to build eavesdropping-proof networks. Does anyone really believe that for a long time people who have built the current crop of P2P tools can not come up with a RIAA-proof P2P network? This has already started - see the FREENET effort. Even if you think the current generation of "anonymous sharing" is breakable, your efforts will simply help a more secure one evolve, and quickly.
So, my advice: Wake up and face reality. Instead of fighting a futile and losing rearguard action, see how you can make P2P into an opportunity. When the VCR was introduced, many at the MPAA thought it would kill movie-makers revenues. Today it is a major source of revenue, that did not exits before. I suggest the same thing can, and should, happen now.
Build sites where good-quality songs/movies are sold one-by-one for a reasonable price. Offer value-add features to people who get the content from your site, offer content long shelved. The iTUNES model proves there's money to be made this way - maybe less than you'd like, but still.
In short - adapt, or else you will go the way of the steam-train and buggy-whip makers.
To P2P Users - if you agree, forward this to wherever you think it will do any good. See also part 2.