A popular corporate music industry argument is: every time someone shares a song with someone else, it’s exactly the same as though the alleged ‘criminal’ had walked into a shop and stolen a CD off the shelf.
Think about it for more than five seconds and it becomes crystal clear the assertion is about as accurate as claims that Big Music gives a damn about the musicians who depend on them, or the fans who keep both groups alive and in business.
To the contrary, as the likes of Arctic Monkeys and others discovered, and are still discovering, the Net is the 21st digital century way to make your name not only online, but off.
“The Sheffield rock band the Arctic Monkeys release their first fully marketed single today but the group has already built a hugely devoted following by becoming one of the first to harness the power of the internet to reach young fans,” said the Guardian when the band first went mainstream.
It played to 2,000 fans at a sold-out London Astoria, “with touts asking up to £100 a ticket,” said the story, and, the speed with which they band developed a “large and committed fanbase” was attributed to the, “viral marketing effect of the internet, with fans swapping tracks with one another with the blessing of the group,” the story adds.
Net users are file sharers … plain and simple
It’s called viral marketing and as Paul Walker points out in Business Wealth Reviews, “There are probably ten million people online, looking for downloads at any given time.”
He goes on >>>
People like using file services to download music for two simple reasons, they’re free, and there is an incredible selection. The fact is Pandora’s Box has been opened. In Napster’s wake, other quasi-legal services quickly emerged … a lot of them. Even if they are closed, others will succeed them.
Major record companies would like to thing otherwise but they are never going to stop file sharing. Net users are file sharers … plain and simple. Long before the Internet came into being, people made cassette tapes of their favorite music for their friends … cd burners are so much easier and faster.
So how can you use this to help your viral marketing campaign along? Think about this. Once someone downloads your MP3 files and those files are available on that listener’s hard drive, viral marketing begins. After two users start sharing your files, suddenly, your music is on the hard drive of a second computer…then a third… and on and on. When users are searching and they find your music on a lot of different computers, they are more likely to download the files. It’s just a matter of time before you’ll find your files showing up in more and more places.
No matter what genre music you play … Rock and Roll, Country, Tejano, Mozart sonatas, Heavy Metal, of Brazilian Jazz, there is an audience for it somewhere.
In this new paradigm, you aren’t hawking a product, you are offering free music via a medium that lets you be directly connected with your audience.
Suing, not wooing
However, the central facet of the Big 4 2009 marketing plan isn’t woo customers. It’s sue them. And spearheading the attack against music lovers in America and, by defaut, against musicians, is the RIAA — the Recording Industry Association of America.
The name is particularly interesting given that only Warner Music, one of the four major labels which to all intents and purposes comprise the corporate music industry, is American. And even that has a Canadian at its head.
The other three are Vivendi Universal (France), Sony (Japan) and EMI (Britain).
Chris Parsons uses the cartoon on the right for his Three-Strike Copyright post on Technology, Thoughts, and Trinkets.
It’s by hartboy on Flickr with a caption which reads »»»
This is the argument the RIAA and similar groups make when explaining why downloading music is bad.
Except, when you steal a CD, you get a misdemeanor, pay a couple bucks in fines, and the store has one less CD to sell.
When you download a song, you get sued for up to $150,000 and no one has lost anything.
It’s like if you light your candle using someone else’s candle and they sue you for stealing their flame.
“In other words,” hartboy adds, “it makes perfect sense to consider copyright exactly the same as tangible property“.
Jon Newton
November 1st, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Under This just in, “People who illegally download music from the internet also spend more money on music than anyone else,” according to a new study quoted today in the Independent
It goes on: “The survey, published today, found that those who admit illegally downloading music spent an average of £77 a year on music — £33 more than those who claim that they never download music dishonestly.
“The findings suggest that plans by the Secretary of State for Business, Peter Mandelson, to crack down on illegal downloaders by threatening to cut their internet connections with a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ rule could harm the music industry by punishing its core customers.”
Definitely stay tuned.
Cheers!
November 1st, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Just a note; the image is used in my post ‘three-strike copyright’ (http://www.christopher-parsons.com/blog/technology/three-strike-copyright/#more-58) as opposed to my more recent thoughts on levies.
November 1st, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Yes, Chris, sorry about that. I’ve also fixed it on p2pnet, together with an apology.
Cheers!
November 1st, 2009 at 2:15 pm
No worries whatsoever! I have to admit that it would be curious to see how quickly law changed if we associate cd theft with copyright infingement. Imagine in the UK: charged on the basis of infringement AND if the person played the music in public over a boombox they get whacked with a fine for not having a public performance license. 15-20 pound CD stolen = 100s of thousands in fines. I bet the judiciary would, at some point, just say that enough was enough (or, at least I hope they would!)
November 1st, 2009 at 3:06 pm
One thing not mentioned.
The Arctic Monkeys were already signed to a major label before the viral campaign started. The labels, knowing full well the power of viral marketing faked out the fanbase, with the band pretending that they were ‘discovered’ and singed because of the internet, instead of the rality that they were already signed, and used the internet exactly how it should be.
Afterwards, the started bashing the fans calling filesharers thieves, forgetting that sharing was what made them. The same sort of deception brought Rhihanna BACK to the spotlight with ‘Umbrella’ She had many songs before that but pretended to be just a nobody on the net. The labels know the benefits, and use them. The criminalization campaign is meant to create laws, the end result of which would be that only those people signed by labels could afford to use the internet to create their own success.
Proof of how quickly the Arctic Moneys ( intentional slip ) changed THEIR tune.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article1594238.ece
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070402/210639.shtml
November 1st, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Also see http://www.analogartsensemble.net/2009/08/arctic-monkeys-dance-little-liar.html
Cheers!
November 2nd, 2009 at 4:30 am
While the Government are committed to treating infringement and theft identically in theory, they don’t actually practice what they preach. There are no plans to cut off the internet connection of people who buy physical counterfeit CDs or DVDs. The message to the public is clear: If you’re not sure a product is worth buying and want to try before you buy, then go buy a fake from a gang of organised criminals. Is this really what artists and ‘rights holders’ want?
November 2nd, 2009 at 5:19 am
examining the moral argument of the industry – special emphasis on a Muslim view – as well as addressing the “free market” question. Is it free?
http://www.counterpunch.org/glahn10222003.html
November 2nd, 2009 at 5:52 am
1985 US Spreme Court decision (Dowling V. Unted States)
“(copyright infringement) does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud… The infringer invades a statutorily defined province guaranteed to the copyright holder alone. But he does not assume physical control over copyright; nor does he wholly deprive its owner of its use.”
At the time, copyright infringement was a misdemeanor with far less severe a punishment than theft. The industry successfully prosecuted Dowling for interstate transport of stolen property (a felony). The Supreme Court overturned the felony conviction. We had a different Supreme Court at the time and no DMC Act.
November 2nd, 2009 at 9:06 pm
@bill:
(Re: “Agribusiness”)
This scam has been going on for years in many countries. It’s one of the primary ways the Corporates exploit the entire Third World for its land and resources, all the while having the whole thing spun as “providing aid”.
Absolute power does corrupt absolutely.
Corporations used to be temporary bodies that existed to benefit society, and then dissolve or reapply for license to continue (again, by presenting a plan that benefits society). They should never have been allowed to operate for themselves, for profit, forever, and without application.
Then, to make matters worse, the “trade group” envelope was then allowed to wrap around these corporations, and operate internationally, without the oversight of any governments.
Who’s better at illustrating why this is so wrong than the Labels and the MAFIAAs they’re in?
November 2nd, 2009 at 10:08 pm
After what DevilsAdvocate said, I thought it would be worth pointing out a principle of social psychology known as ‘diffusion of responsibility’. What this means is that when responsibility for something is divided among multiple people, each receiving an equal portion of the benefits and blame, moral pressure is also divided, so each person is less affected by their conscience. Get enough people sharing responsibility (e.g. a company board or shareholder meeting) and this can lead to seemingly moral people making unconscionable decisions without any guilt or pangs of conscience (decisions they would never think of making all by themselves).
This principle is widely applicable. It’s both the reason governing bodies or pure capitalism can lead to atrocities, as well as the reason communism doesn’t work in reality despite sounding good in theory (people simply aren’t willing to expend effort for the common good when everyone shares the same benefits and blame).
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:05 am
DevilsAdvocate on agribusiness “This scam has been going on for years in many countries. It’s one of the primary ways the Corporates exploit the entire Third World for its land and resources, all the while having the whole thing spun as “providing aid”.
Yes, I’m aware of that. I wrote that piece 6 years ago and it was going on a long time before that. I lived in a farming community for many years (although I am not a farmer) and my extreme distaste for IP goes much deeper than the limited scope of this site. It’s rooted in watching my neighbors lose their livelyhoods and their lives.
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:29 pm
@bill:
I hear ya!
It was just a matter of time before they spun their web big enough to snare American farmers.
To me as well, the music industry is only one piece of the Great IP Scam.