The Future of Music & Copyright

Ars Technica is and continues to be my favorite tech timesink. The music industry is wising up and talking real solutions. From the article, "Debating copyright reform: time for compulsory licenses?"

"Imagine a world where you could legally acquire and listen to as much music as you want for a flat fee. How you got the music—iTunes, Rhapsody, Usenet—and where you listened to it wouldn't matter. Your monthly license would give you carte blanche to snarf up as much music as you like. "

I would like this very much. If the system could be designed to keep track of every play and the audience and have proper royalty distribution with a market driven price, then I would be in heaven. something like last.fm meets soundscan :P

RIAA Petitions Judges to Lower Artist Royalties

There are times when yours truly loses it. When 'respectable' news organizations such as CNN and the New York Times lose their objectivity to bottom lines you wonder if the people will ever know the other side.

Here are the links to the story and its repostings
original: The Hollywood Reporter
IGN
Engadget
Tuaw.com
Tinimixtapes

...among many, many others...

On CNN for example, when you search for "file sharing, all you see is "File Sharing going to the Supreme Court", "Music Companies Take Crackdown to Campuses", always one sided in the interests of big business.

Here is the final broken straw in my quest to understand whether piracy affects media industry as much as we are told it does. This story's headline, you will never see it on a major news site.

The RIAA is so confident in their resources and models that they have the gall to play both sides (the consumer and musician) against each other for their own special interests, making more money for the owners of the Big Labels.

Before jumping to the conclusion that I'm just mad about people getting rich read this: look at how the music revenue is distributed, and then you will realize how much of a bureaucracy the arts have become. The RIAA is doing nothing to help the artist or the consumer. Online Piracy seems like human nature's way of leveling the playing field.

The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis

This study has been kept away from the mainstream for some time now. It is published in the Journal of Political Economy based in the University of Chicago, and has been shedding light on a topic conveniently assumed to be as simple as an evil vs. good battle.

The article has resurfaced on technology related sites including slashdot.org arstechnica.com, and tech.netscape.com among others.

The Federal Trade Comission used this study in their 2004 conferences titled "Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing Technology: Consumer Protection and Competition Issues." Check out some of the other presentations and make your own judgement in which direction the FTC is 'leaning' the research.

Abstract:

For industries ranging from software to pharmaceuticals and entertainment, there is an intense debate about the appropriate level of protection for intellectual property. The Internet provides a natural crucible to assess the implications of reduced protection because it drastically lowers the cost of copying information. In this paper, we analyze whether file sharing has reduced the legal sales of music. While this question is receiving considerable attention in academia, industry, and Congress, we are the first to study the phenomenon employing data on actual downloads of music files. We match an extensive sample of downloads to U.S. sales data for a large number of albums. To establish causality, we instrument for downloads using data on international school holidays. Downloads have an effect on sales that is statistically indistinguishable from zero. Our estimates are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the decline in music sales during our study period.

Quote:

"With no clear theoretical prediction, the effect of file sharing on sales is an empirical question. Most of what we know about the effects of file sharing is based on surveys. The evidence is mixed. File sharers generally acknowledge both sales displacement and learning effects, and it is unclear if either effect dominates."