It may have taken 10 years for one executive to come up with this revelation, but the head of the British Phonographic Industry, or BPI, has recently admitted that the industry shouldn’t have fought Napster, but rather, engaged it. Who knows? At this rate, maybe another executive will think that the industry should consider a truce between it and file-sharers by the year 2019.
Geoff Taylor, the head of the BPI recently suggested that he also regrets the industry not moving faster to sell music albums on the internet.
Still, he maintains that the websites since then still damaging the industry. There’s also the comment that suggests that he still believes that one download means one lost sale; though he didn’t say that specifically, only to say that there’s less money for music because of unauthorized downloading. Of course, he makes no mention of an earlier finding that points out how games and movies are more likely to be blamed for less money if there is a monetary loss in the market. Naturally, there isn’t a mention of how the industry plans on competing against such competing markets as a consequence.
Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group praised the fact that Taylor has realized this, but points out that there’s still a heavy push to get users disconnected in Britain as well. So really, this copyright war between the industry and it’s consumers is far from over. Back in April, one British minister shot down the three-strikes proposals calling them too draconian.
Who knows though? Maybe eventually the top music industry labels will eventually figure out how to tackle the internet and how it’s had such an effect on music. It just might take a while at this rate though.
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The music industry declared all-out war against their customers.
They are not taking any prisoners in this, why should we?
All filesharers should die from the net, so should all media companies!
Problem solved.
“There’s also the comment that suggests that he still believes that one download means one lost sale; though he didn’t say that specifically, only to say that there’s less money for music because of unauthorized downloading.”
Saying that it costs the industry money does NOT mean he believes that “one download means one lost sale”. (I happen to think that piracy does cost the digital industry money, but not at a rate of 1 lost sale per download.) Don’t twist people’s words into strawman arguments.
Content producers have two main goals. (1) Promotion: they actually let the P2P guys do the promotion for them (2) Long tail: P2P type of promotion leads to further centralization so the top 20% artists get 80% volume even on Net.
The long tail happens because people are so excited about getting something for free that they forget about their own taste. Downloading crowds out the critical step of discovery.
Why can’t ISP’s just charge their clients and extra £10 or so on top of their monthly bill that gives the client legal ability to download anything they want. The extra £10 can be divided up and distributed among the various copyright holders, so that’s £10 x 1,000,000+ internet users that equals 10,000,000+ per month, isn’t that enough?
The main problem with that is that the legal system of compensation is based on compensation per copy or per play – and effectively, it means way less money for artists. That might not matter to Michael Jackson’s estate or Metallica, but lots of average guys, young and old, live off of mechanicals and royalties because playing gigs simply doesn’t make enough money to live on.
It just shows how archaic that system is.
If by archaic you mean “worked great for at and artists”, then I guess you are right.
No, I literally did mean old:
antediluvian: so extremely old as seeming to belong to an earlier period; “a ramshackle antediluvian tenement”; “antediluvian ideas”; “archaic laws”
Laws meant to protect the liberty of individuals. The individuals who create the information, not the end users.
The laws give industries higher priority than artists, let alone little regard to the artists. That would explain why “the legal system of compensation is based on compensation per copy or per play”.
Apologize and do what for us? We have paid a lot and suffered a lot when industry went after us too. Your company is dead, thanks to you.
Unfortunately for the industry after they sued Napster it just encouraged alot of users to hop off the Napster servers and onto other nodes still utilizing the napster client.. Napster lived on far longer then the industry would of liked thanks to applications like Napigator and the rest..
Had the recording industry decided to “work with” Napster and not take legal action, but instead put up a paywall and become a precursor to legitimate sites like iTunes and Amazon, would the freetards have begun to pay when 1) the culture of taking without paying had already gained a foothold and 2) other pirating sites would have sprung up anyway? I doubt it.
There will always be those who embrace the history (and theory) of commercial barter and there will be others who will always steal whatever merchandise they can get their hands on. Putting up a paywall around Napster back in 1999 would not have changed a single thing. Making the isp’s accountable to their traffic will.
In other words, you are like mal greenborg.
No, I shouldn’t say that; mal greenborg is way too retarded for you to compare to him.
I guess that should be “compare with”, not “compare to”.
it’s too late to apologize to Napster now !
but still have time to apologize to file sharers
even if someone could press a button and completely disable bittorrent and filesharing, it would still be to late.
there is a city i go to near where i live and on the main drag there are countless shops and small hangouts that make available all types of digital content and no one even knows about file sharing.
bittorrent and file sharing are only just one avenue of distribution ,, there are countless others
as a matter of fact, i’m just heading over to a friends place to swap a bit
Agree, the best way to make something better is to engage with the experts. The people behind napster could have come up with a solution cos they are the clever ones. Government hasn’t got the skills these guys had. Oh well, maybe one day folk will realise. We need a win/win situation sorting soon. Power to the people. keep rockin.