official Covenant Forum

Today is election day in Sweden. Before I went to vote I was reading the forums of our latest addition to the political arena - The Pirate Party. In short the party is sort of a reaction to the fact that legislation seems to be a bit outdated, when a majority of the population feels that downloading music for personal use is ok.

Obviously this raises the question of mainly how artists, but also the music industry as a whole will survive and earn money if we change the laws. This is of course not an easy subject and I could discuss it for hours and hours. But in my mind it boils down to a few simple points.

First of all, people are downloading music and they think it's ok. There's no way of stopping filesharing and why should we, if the majority of the people says they want it? Let democracy work and change the framework, so that it fits our society.

This does however mean that the music industry as such may not survive. At least not in its current form. But there is no value in stopping evolution, just because there is an industry that are struggling to profit from a dying business model. If a label, publisher, manager or whoever adds some value that people are willing to pay for - then they will survive. Otherwise not. Simple.

This is of course just the short black and white version, but keeping the hard contrasts in mind helps a lot when discussing these things. And I'm sure all of you at one point or an other have had these discussions?

Phew... and I just wanted to say something short before posting a funny video about artist and getting payed for live performances

The video: Squirrel songs

Personally I'm a bit caught in the middle here, being in the industry that's threatened - but also with a solid internet consultant background. I sympathize with neither side actually...

I'm angry at the music industry for not getting all their efforts into restructuring and changing the business to adapt to our present digital reality. I'm equally angry at all people dl music and hurting mainly us that are in the small scale indie sector. Right now I'm willing to say we're in the strange position when it's justified to steal, but then please in the Robin Hood manner - if you have to. Steal from the majors and buy from the small indies.

The subject of changing the music business to adapt to the paradigm that Internet brings, have been on the table for over 10 years now. But close to nothing or at least embarrassingly little has happened! There are so many ideas and models that have been theorized, but none are bold enough to to try them out for real. Not before they are absolutely forced to, that's what the witch-hunt for filesharers is all about. The companies that are big enough to try out some models are stubbornly unwilling to take the step. Instead they want to exhaust every possibility to milk the last drops out of their soon totally obsolete business model. Why? There's two main points that I can see, those that can endure long enough may get the option to buy out others that are bleeding faster. Also the second mover advantage, doing everything right, is likely what's keeping the majors from launching their new systems. The heavy investments in distribution chains etc. are also making it very tough to decide when and how to actualize the changes.

Soon the indies are spread so thin that we're forced to go totally digital. So far the profit margin is actually less on digital downloads, but we soon can't afford to spend money on releasing physical products anyway. Some are fading away as we speak and can possibly not be hurt much more by piracy. This is where I start leaning towards supporting piracy and say dl the hell out of the majors, so that we finally get a change in both legislation and the business!

As a side note, it's not totally true to say that dl music is stealing. There are no licensing fees on for instance food, books or other products that you consume, the analogy halts a bit - but I think you get the point. What you do is not paying the fee for the service that's provided, which is totally understandable since there is no model for collecting that payment. Neither is it clear who's providing the service. Which in a nutshell is the problem. Solve it now, please!

Oh, I forgot to answer the PS... but we have to wait at least an other day for that - they are still counting the last votes. But at least they won't go to Stockholm, they got less than 4%.

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Originally posted by erichazann

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Originally posted by Niggels

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Original von Bugs
As a side note, it's not totally true to say that dl music is stealing. There are no licensing fees on for instance food, books or other products that you consume, the analogy halts a bit - but I think you get the point.

I'm afraid I don`t, I'm a little confused about what you want to point out here.

I understood it to mean that you aren't exactly taking it away from someone else, because it is not a consumable. You are using it w/o paying the license fee basically. You using it doesn't deprive someone else of it, so it doesn't "count" as stealing, per se.

I dont think that is really true tho.

Ok, I simply can't find the source. Since it wasn't really my argument to begin with I tried to find the lawyer who had written a long article in the subject. But no luck - so just from memory:

Filesharing copyrighted material without permission is a crime, no doubt about that. But you're not stealing per se, you're avoiding paying the "licence fees". There was a long section about legislation and punishment and laws surrounding the subject, that basically pointed out that it's at least in Sweden almost impossible to actually convict someone without first breaking a few more serious laws.
So there's a lot of confusion about how to attack the problem even from a strict legal standpoint, which in my opinion is wrong to begin with.

Even though the laws obviously are outdated on the subject, changing them or using them to attack filesharing is not the way to remedy the problem.

Hmm... not sure if that helped spread some light or not. I merely wanted to point out that even how you talk about the subject and label it is under scrutiny and is a source of confusion. I guess the confusion part is covered more than well now

For the record: I've used the word "stealing" myself, the word just has a bit more edge to it