Quote:
Originally Posted by film_girl
EXACTLY!
And really, these Russian services are a much, much bigger threat to the MAFIAA because customers are actually PAYING to download music. A large part of the RIAA's position/argument against file sharing since the Napster era (and it continues erroneously now, despite the vast evolutions made to the technology, the customers and the industry since 2000) has revolved around the whole notion that customers are "stealing" intellectual property, when they should be paying for it. So the RIAA spent millions of dollars "educating" (I say, indoctrinating - but it's all semantics) customers about the evils of file sharing, the evils of downloading something that isn't paid for - blah blah blah. Well, these service negate and spit in the face of those arguments, because it proves that once again, it has never really been about price -- it has been about ACCESS.
These services are making thousands and thousands of dollars a day (it could be hundreds of thousands, I don't know - I guess it depends on their size) from customers who are WILLINGLY paying money for digitally encoded music. Customer's aren't against paying for music - but they don't want to buy music that restricts where it can be played or that is priced at a level that is incongruous with its perceived value. And as I've stated elsewhere, it is the RIAA's own fault that customer's now put a lower value on the cost of digital music -- if they had offered digital downloads six years ago (or had actually had the foresight to start looking at new technologies in the late 90s and staved off the Napsters and Kazaas of the world), they could still expect customers to pay $1 or $2 a track without complaint. However, because they buried their heads in the sand and responded with litigation rather than innovation (a tactic that has only made customers regard the industry, and by extension, the artists, with even less respect and made them that much less likely to legally purchase a CD or download something from a RIAA approved service), customers got used to getting music for free - or for a fraction of the price that the RIAA wants to charge. 50 + years of consumer buying trends/attitudes towards music has been reversed in less than a decade, and the RIAA has no one to blame but themselves.
And just like all the publicity about shutting down Napster just served to inform that many more people about the program's existence (and by extension, the program's that popped up to fill Napster's void), all the publicity in the press (which, smartly, to the RIAA's credit has been pretty well contained to online media or print media that is dedicated to technology) will do nothing more than point customer's to other alternatives, and if they aren't careful, inform uninitiated consumers about the existence of these services in the first place.
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film_girl.
Your posts express exactly my thoughts on these issues. Even if tried (HARD) I couldn't write it better. Thumbs up!!!
As I said before: I compile your posts and maybe we should send them to the music industry and let them think about what could have been
solaris