Re: <nettime> music file-sharing update

[Miles Nordin <carton@Ivy.NET>]

begin  John von Seggern quotation:
> Most of the independent research which has been done on this topic
> directly contradicts the industry's position, which blames file-sharing
> for an alleged 5% drop in recorded music sales last year. 
[...]
> I strongly encourage others to link to this report to help
> counter the RIAA propaganda campaign...

Propaganda campaign, ay?

...and from your paper:

> file-sharing can have both positive and negative effects on 
> consumer music spending.

The problem I have with your paper and the way you introduce it, is that 
you don't really counter what I consider their core propoganda 
campaign at all.  You reinforce the two most important elements of 
their propoganda:

 * The music distribution industry is morally entitled to protection 
   from anything that reduces music sales.  If music sales go down, 
   this is ``theft.''  If music sales go up or stay the same, there 
   is no ``theft.''  Violating copyright is ``theft,'' even though 
   copyright and property right are two different things.  And we can 
   measure the amount of theft through the change in music sales.

 * Consumer spending on music is ``positive,'' is something that, as 
   a free people, we value.  Consumer spending on broadband, Napster's 
   access fees, consumer electronics, and other tools of theft like 
   computing machinery and CDRs, is not worth discussing except as it 
   relates to the ``positive'' and ``negative'' of changed spending 
   habits on recorded music.

-- 
end

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