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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tracy Boyington [mailto:tracy_boyington -at- okcareertech -dot- org]
> Sent: Monday, June 25, 2001 1:42 PM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: Re: FW: Supremes rule for freelancers
>
>
> >>> "Glenn Maxey" <glenn -dot- maxey -at- voyanttech -dot- com> 06/25/01 02:04PM >>>
>
> << Napster wasn't shutdown because of the thin argument that
> it ignored an
> artist's rights; it was shutdown because it left greedy copyright
> holders -- not necessarily the artist -- out of the payment loop. >>
>
> I think "greedy" is an awfully strong word to use. People who
> own something (i.e., the right to reproduce and distribute a
> work, whether it's an article or a song) shouldn't be
> expected to give it away simply because technology makes it possible.
You are correct about inappropriate expectations to give things away.
I'm sure that most people have a sense of fair play and fair pay.
Alas, I think that "greedy" does apply when it comes to the killers of
Napster. They were the copyright holders -- not the artists -- trying
plug a leak in their precious damn in ignorance of the fact that the
leak points them to where they should build the turbines to generate
even more earnings. It gives them another high-profit outlet for what
they've been acquiring and storing.
As has been proven again and again with technology, new media and
distribution channels actually increase the demand for the intellectual
products even in older formats. (Did reel-to-reel, 8-track, cassette,
DAT, or CD-ROM recordings hurt music sales when people discovered they
could record their own, right off of the airways even? No, just the
opposite. Did video rental hurt movie attendance or lessen the demand
for movies? No, just the opposite.)
Too much "circle the wagons" and "protect our turf" mentalities and too
little visionary "if you build it, they will come".
Take Sony/Time-Warner/AOL/and-whoever-else-might-merge. They could
practically print their own money if they just made their libraries of
movies, music, and text accessible online to paid subscribers.
My annoyance comes from what I don't see and hear. Napster came about
for a reason. The need was for access to music that the "greedy" music
industry doesn't promote because of a comparatively weak business case.
People will make the micro-payments, yet the industry sees "micro" as
being too-close-to-zero.
As a result, you can travel from one side of our country to the other
and hear pretty much the same dribble in the genre of your choice. You
go into a music store and the same music is pushed.
(AM stations and Spanish excepted) you don't hear music in other
languages; you don't hear music from other era's unless the era is 60s,
70s, 80s; even then, it is the same overplayed top-40 that you were
sick-and-tired of when it was still relatively young. You don't hear
B-sides. You don't hear variety.
Worse, you can't purchase what they don't promote through their standard
channels of distribution.
Rather than squashing Napster, the music industry and their consumers
world-wide would have been better served if they would have worked to
make it happen through paid subscriptions and micro-payments. (The same
applies to written works.)
It is not about "giving things away" without compensation. It is about
making the popular and not-so-popular accessible and reasonably priced.
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