[Infowarrior] - Comments on the RIAA Leadership's Op-Ed on Piracy

[Richard Forno]

A few comments that need to be made, feel free to repost far and wide.   -rf


Explaining the Crackdown on Student Downloading
By Mitch Bainwol and Cary Sherman

http://insidehighered.com/views/2007/03/15/sherman

> Today, virtually no one, particularly technology savvy students, can claim not
> to know that the online ³sharing² of copyrighted music, movies, software and
> other works is illegal.

Memo to Mitch and Cary:  I have copyrighted all my articles to claim
ownership of them.  Yet I freely give permission to distribute them anywhere
as long as they're kept intact and credit is given to me -- so the "online
sharing of copyrighted materials" is most certainly NOT illegal in such a
clear-cut fashion that you claim.  You're conflating terms here to sow FUD
in the press. Again.

Sure, copying a Van Halen song and sending it to the world via P2P is wrong,
and I don't condone it.  But by going after people doing that through
invasive technological or legal restrictions, you preclude me from taking a
legitimately-purchased Van Halen song and using it how and when I want to
for my own personal enjoyment -- in the car, on my iPod, on my computer, or
burned onto a CD for the bedroom clock radio.  There's nothing illegal about
that, and it doesn't make me a pirate or potential pirate.   But greedy rats
that you are, you'd rather me purchase multiple incompatible devices or
services in order to play the same song in a different venue or format.

And yet you act surprised to find out that by treating your customers as
criminals, you're seeing fewer of the former and more of the latter.

> Yet this is about far more than the size of a particular slice of the pie.

No, it's about you trying to own multiple slices.  Heck, you want to own the
entire pie (digital music) and control the ingredients (music players,
software, the Internet, and natonal policy) used both to make the pie and
facilitate its enjoyment. (Although with some of the stuff you folks are
selling these days, I hope you're going to take charge of the subsequent
barfing, too.)

> This is about a generation of music fans. College students used to be the
> music industry¹s best customers. Now, finding a record store still in business
> anywhere near a campus is a difficult assignment at best. It¹s not just the
> loss of current sales that concerns us, but the habits formed in college that
> will stay with these students for a lifetime. This is a teachable moment ‹ an
> opportunity to educate these particular students about the importance of music
> in their lives and the importance of respecting and valuing music as
> intellectual property.

Memo to Mitch and Cary:  Record stores have been replaced by the Internet,
iTunes, and such. Folks want ala carte stuff and if they can get it from
their dorm room via iTunes, they'll do that instead of traipse to the record
store.  It's sad for the record store owners, but it's just the evolution of
your industry -- and business/society in general.  Tell me again why the
iTunes store is seeing dismal sales of legally-purchased music downloads?
Oh, right -- you can't.

You aging idiots forget that college kids have embraced the Internet as a
source for music, and if YOU had embraced this new medium instead of trying
to legislate or innovate against it, you'd be riding pretty in the profits
right now instead of being one of the most despised industries in the world.

By forcing onerous, counterproductive restrictions -- both technical and
legal -- on music and customers, and declaring war on future ones through
frivilous and sometimes erroneous lawsuits, you've pretty much turned off
this new generation to your product and industry.  You did this to
yourselves and can only blame yourselves for the result.

> Yet the vast majority of institutions still have not come to grips with the
> need to take appropriate action.

Just like how you've still not come to grips with realizing that your
Industrial Age business model is on life support and needs to adapt in order
to survive?  Unless you evolve with the times, the Internet Age will prove
exactly how irrelevant you folks and your industry machines really are.
Frankly, I think that's what terrifies you the most.  You stand on the brink
of irrelevance.

You reap what you sow.

- Rick
Infowarrior.org