The more and more I read of Free Culture the more I get frustrated with the extreme lack of common sense of so many parties involved. The beliefs of the warring sides are becoming so polarized and rigid (rather like some of our politicians right now) that they couldn’t care less about the immense collateral damage (the hindering of culture and creativity). There’s definitely many logical, reasonable solutions to many copyright problems, especially in regards to music downloading. It costs virtually nothing for record companies to post music online, yet on iTUNES and other servers it can cost as much as $1.99 to download. If the music companies would change the price to say, a quarter(ish), many more people would buy music legally instead of turning to illegal alternatives—I know I would be one of them. But instead, I think, companies keep boosting prices of online music when they think their profits are down due to filesharing, which then causes fewer people to buy their product, fileshare, and start the vicious cycle over and over again.
In regards to filesharing itself, I think the used bookstore rule should be applied to downloaded music—once it’s bought, you can do pretty much anything with it as long as it’s not reproduced and SOLD for money. Granted, every time you file share, some claim it’s a “copy,” but in reality it’s not much different than what most people do with their books and more importantly, you’re NOT making money off of it.
Also, I see this entire issue as a direct attack on technology. Years ago, people would loan each other records, or make mix tapes, or copy tapes and CDs and give them to their friends. Now, it is simply a more efficient and larger scale process, but the underlying concept has not changed since its original onset. When factories changed from using mostly people to produce their product to almost complete mechanization, there was certainly outrage at this new technology (oh,no! robots will take over the world—and that myriad people lost their jobs). Eventually, however, our society adapted to this new type of production and is the better and more advanced for it. The same can be said for music downloading. The government needs to stop intervening and allowing the RIAA’s frivolous lawsuits and allow technical evolution to occur.
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3 comments:
That's a really good though about lowering the price of downloading music. I definitely think you're right that more people would download legally if it was cheaper!
The used bookstore thing in kind of interesting. I guess art, in general, is interesting. You can sell used literature for ultra-cheap and no one cares. But music has a lot of muscle...it's a lot more mass media driven than a book.
Also, music's problem revolves around digital files. It's a lot harder to steal a text.
I think your idea about lowering the prices is actually really good. There seems to be a canyon between different aspects even within the same realm. We are always talking about copyright and authorship/autonomy, but between music, literature, art, fashion, architecture etc. there are these crevasses we can't traverse with law or regulation. It's interesting....
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