For years the industry persecuted kids for downloading music before it even attempted to adapt its business model to the realities of a busted monopoly (iTunes, Yahoo Music, etc. although rumor has it the industry is trying to force iTunes to raise prices).
Now, in the ultimate insanity, the industry is going to try have people prosecuted for posting music lyrics. That's right, music lyrics.
That might have made sense about 100 years ago before radio got widespread, when the music industry actually made money through the writing and selling of sheet music. Even then one would have expected that the actual issue would be the music part of the sheet, not the lyrics.
You know, these ridiculous acts by the music industry, MPAA, &cetera don't stop anything. All they do is make sure all the interesting sites open in Russia (i.e. the $10 a year music sites) or Sweden (Pirate Bay et al.)(sorry folks, not going to link - you're going to have to travel into legal gray areas on your own - although I recommend you read Pirate Bay's answers to legal threats page - it's hilarious).
4 comments:
What's most frustrating about this is that with lyrics sites, it really is unquestionable that they only help make the record companies money. I can't count the number of times I heard a song on the radio and found out who the artist was by googling for a small blurb from the lyrics.
Meanwhile, nobody's making millions selling lyrics.
There is no legal gray area about linking to thepiratebay.org's legal letters page. A link to legal content at http://thepiratebay.org/legal.php is never a gray area for people willing to accept what the 1st Amendment means. That a corrupt industry disagrees with everyone 'threatening' them (from artists demanding the money their contracts entitle them to, to customers defrauded through predatory pricing, to Sony's leap into illegal software and blatant copyright infringement) is not that surprising - after all, that is the point that the letters page makes.
Self-censorship is by far the most effective variety. On the other hand, if you do have a reasonable and sincere interest in keeping to what you consider right, then not linking is at least honest. But calling it a legal gray area seems to imply fear of consequences, which is what censors use to try to reach their aim.
Sure, there's no real problem linking to the legal page (link) at Pirate Bay. Actually, there's not really a problem linking to the front page (link). If I were truly afraid I wouldn't have specifically named the site and allowed anyone with 5 seconds and Google to find it.
Humor, folks. Always assume that I'm trying to inject some humor into a subject. I know it falls flat at times (as it seems to have here), but I try.
And, no I'm still not going to link to a $10 a year Russian music site. A little of that's because I'm not really sure anyone should be giving them their credit card number, but mostly it's because I'm too lazy to Google one up right now.
I wrote a post a couple months ago when I confronted MPAA Dan Glickman in a Q/A session at my school.
One of the things I brought up is that people generally think that piracy is wrong, but they justify it in all kinds of ways. In particular, groups like the MPAA and RIAA seem so iron-fisted that it's easy to take actions that hurt them without feeling any kind of remorse or responsibility. Actions like suing over the posting of lyrics makes the RIAA easy to hate, and that makes the music easy to steal. Simple as that.
What I asked Glickman is basically this: even if anti-piracy lawsuits and advertising create some short-term benefits, don't you think they will ultimately create more damage in the longterm? And wouldn't your resources be better spent trying to outpace piracy rather than fighting to maintain an obsolete status quo?
He didn't really agree, of course. :)
You can read the whole thing here:
http://krhunt.blogspot.com/2005/09/confronting-mpaa-on-media-piracy.html
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