tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5383512304639632735.post4490837777878436578..comments2024-01-23T07:34:52.253-08:00Comments on Copyrights & Campaigns: House Foreign Affairs gathers in Van Nuys to bash pirates, foreign governments (except France)Ben Sheffnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06477793715765992689noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5383512304639632735.post-43405190640924555192009-04-13T02:54:00.000-07:002009-04-13T02:54:00.000-07:00In case anyone is reading this, I highly recommend...In case anyone is reading this, I highly recommend an article in yesterday's Washington Post By Mike Gray, We Tried A War Like This Once Before, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/10/AR2009041001288.html, Sunday, April 12, 2009; Page B04Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5383512304639632735.post-958466748413534972009-04-07T05:47:00.000-07:002009-04-07T05:47:00.000-07:00I hate to say this, but this “hearing” smacks of t...I hate to say this, but this “hearing” smacks of the war on drugs. Let's see, the war was launched by President Nixon in 1969 and the results? The highest prison population per capita in the world, Columbia pitched into a decade long war with the FARC – only beginning to win by halting their war on drugs, our closer neighbor to the south having to put their army in the streets in a attempt to stem the incredible violence and corruption, no significant reduction in drug usage, police departments stopping southbound “money” vehicles not northbound drugs because they can keep the cash they seize, shall I go on? So once again Congress folk fall all over themselves bashing other nations for their “lax” copyright enforcement against “piracy.”*<BR/><BR/>Enforcement has worked well here – not. After some 30,000 lawsuits the RIAA has given up and the record labels enshrined itself at as the enemy for their target demographic. Horrible “poison pill” efforts such as the “root kit” scandal exposing untold numbers of innocent CD purchasers to hackers. So what’s the answer? More enforcement, more poison pills? Move those failed efforts to the video industry? I suggest each person that appeared before the Congressman from Hollywood read Steve Kopper’s book Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age before urging more of the same to “save” the music and video industries. The irony is that the Internet is allowing artists to flourish in ways never before possible. The issue is how to harness the market power of the Internet rather than to continue to use it as a scapegoat for an industry that has been engaged in self-destruction and alienating its consumers.<BR/><BR/>The market is messy (let me know when you come up with a better mechanism). While I’m recommending books, the next reading assignment should be Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, by Joseph A. Schumpeter (particularly Chapter VII, “The Process of Creative Destruction”) followed by Andy Grove’s Only the Paranoid Survive. Both books conclude: adapt to changing markets or die.<BR/><BR/>Yes, computers and the Internet are in the process (or may have already) destroyed the CD model. But not because of so-called consumer “piracy.” Rather because no longer do a few VPs of A&R decide “which boy bands or singing barbies to cram down the throats” of the 12-24 year olds (to quote a 13 year old). Instead a wider number of artists are being exposed to their audience and actually making a living. Oh yes, it isn’t the living of the 2.5% of the artists with a label contract that hit double platinum. And yes, the model isn’t completely established (to ultimately be destroyed by other creative ideas you and I can’t even imagine). But that’s the messy nature of capitalism. Not the Soviet-style record industry where only a very, very few control the largest share of the income. <BR/><BR/>But when your sales are down 23% in a year what do you tell your Board of Directors? It’s my fault? I didn’t anticipate a change in the market? No, my job as a record label executive is to keep my job. Therefore, it’s much safer to blame the “pirate” kids. So don’t fire me, I’m the Captain of the ship in the middle of the battle against these enemies. Piracy is a very convenient diversion for executives from the realities of a changing business model.<BR/><BR/>Do I support violating copyright, absolutely not. Nor do I condone the use of illegal drugs. That is not the issue. The question is do we treat the first as a market failure and the second as a health problem? Or do we continue to treat the first and second as criminal matters in what has been a failed policy for over a decade for the first and four decades for the second?<BR/><BR/>* I am not including commercial piracy – real piracy – in this discussion. While I am not opposed to fully sanctioning those who copy entertainment and sell it on the streets, we have been doing that for years without, apparently, little positive results. But de-focusing on what are clearly lost sales, to focus on consumer infringement doesn’t make sense. (We can debate the so-called studies on consumer piracy another time.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com