Can anybody remember the last time they bought a mainstream artist's CD? "Why, when you can just download it for free" has become the mentality of the millions of users who download pirated music on a daily basis. Online music piracy (not to mention piracy across other media genres as well) has, quite frankly, become the norm. Still many steps behind, how will legislative actions realistically ever keep up with the rapidly developing technology. By the time one peer to peer network is deemed illegal, many others have been created before the legislation outlawing the first could even be passed.
Let's face it. Technology moves faster than legislation. Will there ever be a way to stop music piracy? Probably not, and limiting it has become quite the task, especially from country to country where laws regarding the matter highly fluctuate in leniency. I don't believe there will ever be a way to curtail the current downloading frenzy, and the true solution lies not in how to curtail music piracy, but in ways for these media and music giants to shift profits and goals and adjust them to the current pace and track of technology. They must look to other profitable forms and rely no longer primarily on record sales.
The music industry must start learning to think ahead of the present, as opposed to legislation which will always be several steps behind. Instead of playing the bad cop, the only real successful way to curtail the pace of technology is to move with it. Similar to what itunes did, if people are going to download music, find a way to make money in them doing so. The music industry has irreversably changed, and legislation must not seek to impossibly reverse the changes, but to work with them and move with them, thus adapting their profit making techniques to the current pace of tech users. Shakira, for example, usually provides her new single for a free download within the first several days of its release, a strategy which can be read about here http://www.theinsider.com/news/2498061_Download_Shakira_s_Beastly_New_Single_For_Free.
The music industry is going to have to prove indefinitely flexible in order to survive the future.
I agree with your point that the government will never be able to keep up with technology. Record firms will have to stop going to the government for protection and learn to deal with problems on their own, similar to college students who move out of the house. iTunes is indeed a shining example of the best way to make lemonade out of lemons.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that the government will never keep up with technology. In addition to this the government has shut down LimeWire, one of the biggest file sharing programs out there. Yes the government has shut down one out many, but this is not enough to stop online piracy. Take a look at My Blog. Where I talk about a program that is running since 1995.
ReplyDeleteShould it be a consideration that this is the future of the entertainment industry? There seems no acceptable alternative to free file sharing of video or audio files. To this both industries have neither accepted the potential of file sharing nor fully prepared to use it. I fear it we may be witnessing the end of the Blockbuster and even the Netflix. After all, not much is better than free.
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