IFPI: Ten “inconvenient truths” about file-swapping
IFPI: Ten “inconvenient truths” about file-swapping
1. If Pirate Bay, one of the flagships of the anti-copyright movement, makes thousands of euros from advertising on its site, while maintaining its anti-establishment “free music” rhetoric, why can’t the music industry?
2. AllOfMP3.com, the well-known Russian web site, has not been licensed by a single IFPI member, has been disowned by right holder groups worldwide and is facing criminal proceedings in Russia because the US government threatened with a black-listing at the WTO, regardless that AllOfMp3 offered several openings for licensing.
3. Organized criminal gangs and even terrorist groups use the sale of counterfeit CDs to raise revenue and launder money, although few file sharing pirates would understand why the hell anybody’d pay for a piece of plastic nowadays.
4. Illegal file-sharers don’t care whether the copyright-infringing work they distribute is from a major or independent label, as most independant labels worth while are stepping up and utilizing the current void major labels disinterest create in focusing on making money in a way they’ve decided is the only way.
5. Reduced revenues for record companies mean less money available to invest in “bankers” like American Idol stars, a concept set by them long before they perceived online file sharing a problem as at some point it became more important to make money rather than nurturing artists and music.
6. ISPs often advertise music as a benefit of signing up to their service, but facilitate the illegal swapping on copyright infringing music on a grand scale and ironically make a living.
7. The copyright movement does not create jobs, exports, tax revenues and economic growth–it largely consists of people pontificating a commercial world which they try to control.
8. Piracy is not caused by poverty. Professor Zhang of Nanjing University found the Chinese citizens who bought pirate products were mainly middle- or higher-income earners and should probably know better than to buy a piece of plastic in this digital age.
9. Most people know it is considered wrong to file-share copyright infringing material by control-hungry music industries but won’t stop even if the law makes them, according to common sensed pirates.
10. P2P networks are indeed hotbeds for discovering new music. It is popular music that is illegally file-shared most frequently but at least leaves room for “other” music as well to prosper.
Links
arstechnica.com | Piratpartiet | p2p unite.org
