Lies everywhere

Websites today point to an article about file sharing, citing 'ten inconvenient truths' and saying that although the agency involved in writing this, the IFPI, have a vested interest (£$£$£) in stopping file sharing, they explode some myths about the practice. Bollocks. Here's what they said:

1. Pirate Bay, one of the flagships of the anti-copyright movement, makes thousands of euros from advertising on its site, while maintaining its anti-establishment "free music" rhetoric.
2. AllOfMP3.com, the well-known Russian web site, has not been licensed by a single IFPI member, has been disowned by right holder groups worldwide and is facing criminal proceedings in Russia.
3. Organized criminal gangs and even terrorist groups use the sale of counterfeit CDs to raise revenue and launder money.
4. Illegal file-sharers don’t care whether the copyright-infringing work they distribute is from a major or independent label.
5. Reduced revenues for record companies mean less money available to take a risk on "underground" artists and more inclination to invest in "bankers" like American Idol stars.
6. ISPs often advertise music as a benefit of signing up to their service, but facilitate the illegal swapping on copyright infringing music on a grand scale.
7. The anti-copyright movement does not create jobs, exports, tax revenues and economic growth–it largely consists of people pontificating on a commercial world about which they know little.
8. Piracy is not caused by poverty. Professor Zhang of Nanjing University found the Chinese citizens who bought pirate products were mainly middle- or higher-income earners.
9. Most people know it is wrong to file-share copyright infringing material but won't stop till the law makes them, according to a recent study by the Australian anti-piracy group MIPI.
10. P2P networks are not hotbeds for discovering new music. It is popular music that is illegally file-shared most frequently.

Here's what I say...

1: Pirate Bay is the main target for the legal teams of the five multinational corporations (who have all the rights and none of the oligations of a private citizen and use the free market economy to get their product manufactured as cheaply as possible, then fix prices for each global region and sue anyone into oblivion who tries to sell anything across the same borders and pass the savings on to the CD buying public) and they could very well do with as much cash as possible to fight future legal cases. They operate massive, expensive, hidden and oft-relocated servers and have a staff who do this full time. Plus, it is the choice of the consumer to use their service to access copyrighted material. Their service does not necessarily invole such material.

2: Never met anyone online or in real life who didn't consider Allofmp3.com dodgy and they sold every email address they had to spammers, so copyright infringement is the least of their sins. Might as well rag on Stalin for having crap facial hair.

3: So? People who download their music from the internet don't buy copied CDs. Chavs buy those on Sunday markets because they are too stupid to use a computer properly. Also, the US government has funded terrorist organisations, so paying tax on a CD purchase can't be a good idea in the USA, by that rationale.

4: Yes they do. Tons of them do. I've bought records from a bunch of independent labels I'd never have heard of had I not pulled some of their content off the net first, on a whim. It's not like I'd have noticed those discs in a store or heard them on the radio.

5: Record companies stopped taking risks on underground artists way before the Napster kick-started the file sharing revolution. In the Nineties as an indie/alternative radio show presenter I watched the majors (the financial backers of the RIAA, IFPI, etc) place a chokehold on the A&R business. They made the CD buying, radio listening experience so sterile and soulless the customer went his own way. All comes from shareholder greed. Do we really want shareholders defining the boundaries and conventions of art? Have shareholders ever lobbied for a better deal for the employees who make the business in uestion tick (musicians in this case)? No-one wants to sign their contracts these days anyway. Not even George Michael did ten years ago, nor Prince. This one was shot down years ago.

6: Yes, like the council facilitate prostitution by laying pavements for the girls to walk at night.

7: Record companies and industry associations pontificate on an artistic world about which they've demonstrated at great length for a number of years that they know little about. The anti-copyright movement also boasts a roster of major label artists who've madfe millions from not only being signed to majors, but running their own indies. The Offspring, anyone?

8: Who said Piracy was caused by poverty? Major labels paying far eastern workers a fraction of what they would pay European ones to manufacture CDs might cause a bit of poverty though.

9: Fancy an anti piracy group paying for research which concludes that! Who funds the MIPI? Do they in turn have a legal obligation to pursue any legitimate means of making the maximum possible profit, ahead of any consumer/employee concerns they might legally ignore? Thought so.

10: Popular music might be shared most frequently, but look at figures the RIAA and so on churn out weekly about amounts of pirated music... if even 1% of those figures we see so often are independant music, new discoveries, etc... that's millions of tracks each year that'd never have reached the ears of fans.

These lot don't seem to know where to point their argument. Do they have issue with people helping themselves to free music, or people making a profit instead of them? The one common denominator in any of their argumets, other than setting up straw men to publicly beat to smithereens with their still huge marketing budgets, is that they are making less money when piracy in any form occurs.

There's your bottom line. Now have a cup of tea, and mull over whether you really give a toss.

There's plenty of things killing music today - venues operating 'pay to play', venues charging bands to sell their merch, independant record stores being ousted from town centres by landlords who sell out to shopping centre developers who don't want them hanging aroung taking money from new tenants like Virgin and HMV. If the multinationals cared at all, they'd address that. Even if piracy stopped tomorrow, all that extra cash they'd have couldn't be spent on sending A&R men to see new music in the provinces because new bands can't afford to pay the national pub chain who bought all the pubs in their town for permission to play a gig. So wat would happen to all that money? They'd pay some cock with a Hoxton quiff to click about on Myspace until something comes up, and they'd pay the artist a year's beer money for the eternal profits to their songs and the rest of the millions would go into shareholder dividends.

And then the shareholder's kids would download all the stuff they want from the internet anyway.

Infinity

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