Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Sure, they make the occasional mistake, but I'm a big fan of the RIAA, overall. Knowing that you're liable to lose your house if you share files illegally is surely going to make people think twice about doing it, don't you think?
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No, I don't.
Let's consider just whose interests are being served.
We agree, I think, that the rights of the creators should be preserved, and the the artists should benefit from their work. We can further agree that piracy is wrong because it violates those rights.
Now, let's contrast two roughly equivalent situations.
Consider the author who sells a book to a publisher. The publisher makes a guess as to how well the book will sell, and offers the author an advance against the royalties the book will generate. If the book "earns out", and generates enough royalties to cover the advance, the author can expect additional payments. If the book doesn't earn out, the advance is all the author will see. Most books
don't earn out (and most agents try to negotiate a high enough advance that the book won't earn out.)
If the publisher guesses wrong, pays the author a big advance, and the book tanks, the author still has the money. The wrong guess is on the publisher.
When a band signs with a record label, they get a signing fee which is essentially an advance against royalties. Production costs to record and produce, manufacture, and distribute the album, marketing and promotional expenses, and tour support all get charged to the band. If the record company guesses wrong and the album tanks, the band will not only be dropped from contract, but might just find the record company trying to recover the signing fee from them.
(Can you imagine publishing if publishers tried to recover the advance from an author whose book didn't sell?)
I know a guy who worked his way through college playing bass in a metal band. His band was the house band for a local club, played the local club circuit, and served as an opening act when national bands came through on tour. They got paid in cash after each gig. He described opening for national bands touring in support of platinum albums who borrowed money from his band because they were broke! Is it possible to be a star act with a platinum album on the charts and be broke? It is if you sign with a major US label...
The record industry behaves a lot like the film industry - screw the creators and keep the revenue. Have you noticed how folks whose film contracts specify they get a cut of the net get nothing, because somehow, after the accountants are through, they
isn't any net, no matter
how large the grosses are?
The record industry is a lot like that with bands they sign. Bands sent out on tour may get just enough of a stipend to pay the bare expenses. The record company keeps the grosses.
And the record industry has forgotten how to develop and market acts. Once upon a time, they realized it took time for an act to build an audience, and expected low initial sales. Now, an act is likely to be dropped from the contract if the first album doesn't go double platinum out of the box, and what the record companies turn out is more of the same. If you aren't a hip-hop act, boy band, or Britney Spears clone, you might have problems getting a record company to pay attention...
When I buy albums, I buy them
from the band at a gig. That way, I know
they're getting the money. I
don't know that if I buy the CD in a store or from the record company's website, but I strongly suspect they don't.
The record companies cry the blues about how record sales are flat or down and blame it all on piracy. There's no question about whether they might simply be doing a poor job of choosing who to sign, or of marketing them when they do, or of having unrealistic expectations of how well an act will sell, or pricing the CDs out of the market. Oh, no, it couldn't
possibly be a failure on
their part -- it's all those dirty file sharing pirates.
And I know people who get MP3s through file sharing. You know what the usual result is? They decide they like the band, go to see them when they play gigs in the area, and
buy the albums. Does that sound like anything you might be familiar with, like, say, the Baen Free Library?
So what do the record companies do? They call upon the RIAA. Cstross is being
polite when he calls them scum, gangsters, and extortionists. In their attempts to stop piracy, all they are actually doing is making themselves laughingstocks, and giving the record companies an even worse image than they already (deservedly) have.
There's a reason why more and more acts are going the indie route and promoting themselves and selling directly over the internet, rather than taking the questionable benefits of signing with a major label. They are less likely to get screwed.
Whose interests are served by the actions of the RIAA? Certainly not the artists.
You can be a big fan of the RIAA if you like, but I'd suggest looking a bit more closely at just what you're being a fan of. Personally, I like to look at myself in the mirror and like what I see. If I supported the RIAA, I couldn't.
{Incidentally, regarding your desire to go after the uploader? Look at the specs for the bit torrent protocol widely used for this. Just which uploader did you have in mind?)
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Dennis