Buying a Criminal Record
Record labels seek piracy clampdown
The record industry has called on internet service providers and governments to take stronger action against digital piracy, after revealing that another year of strong digital growth had failed to compensate for the continued slump in CD sales.
According to the 2008 IFPI digital music report released today, global sales of digital music via the internet and mobile phones grew by 40% to an estimated $2.9bn (£1.48bn) last year.
Some of the ongoing structural problems of the music industry date back to its delayed and confused reaction to the emergence of file-sharing and digital distribution at the turn of the century.
Having seen groups of illegal immigrants selling a whole range of DVDs and CDs for as little as €2.50 each in the larger towns - I am shocked the the recording industry hasn't figured out what everybody else knows - the primary vectors for copyright theft on a grand scale are criminals - not music lovers.
If people are quite happy to pay out €2.50 for the music they want - even if it comes in a plastic envelope with a shoddy photocopy inside - is the slump in music sales really due to the Internet? Or is it that people are fed up with paying through the nose for music?
The people who download music are taking a single copy for their personal use, the people who rip their CD collections to their iPods are merely "device shifting" what they already own - but these criminals are stealing music for resale purposes and making a handsome profit from other people's work.
Who are the biggest criminals?
Meanwhile in Spain we will soon have no option but to subsidise the music and movie industry through a tax on CD's and DVD's called the "Digital Canon" - so everytime I make a backup of my system or distribute my own music on a CD I will be paying Big Media for the privilege of copying my own files
Now that is what I call criminal ...
Tags: piracy, copyright violation, theft, crime, digital canon