Piracy indeed!
It might be theft and it might not be legal and it most certainly is not a good thing, but a college student using a file-sharing system to listen to a song is not even up to the standards of the Pirates of Penzance, let alone the real thing, like Blackbeard or Calico Jack.
Real piracy was an endeavor of violence. It was robbery, the taking of money or property by force or fear. The music piracy that the Recording Industry Association of America is braying about the most isn't anything like that and the language that both sides use obscures the real issues at stake.
If you believe the RIAA, there has been steady decline in music CD sales caused by folks using file sharing systems. Those people, the association claims are costing the industry and its artists billions of dollars. They should be stopped, and soon. Sounds impressive.
Music CD sales have certainly declined from the peak year of 2000. RIAA figures show sales dropping by 10 percent in 2001 and again 6.8 percent in 2002.
The association uses those numbers over and over again as support for its actions. This month it filed 261 lawsuits against individuals who had committed what it called "egregious" copyright infringement. Possible penalties, under the law, could be up to $150,000 per song.
What the RIAA is doing now is pretty much what the Inquisition did to Galileo. They didn't torture him. They didn't even threaten him with torture. They just walked him down to the basement, showed him the instruments of torture and let his imagination do the rest.
This is pretty strong stuff. It might be justified if file-sharing was the cause of those declines in music CD sales. To judge that we have to look at other possibilities.
First, there is the economy. Through 2000 the economy seemed to be in pretty good shape. Then came the Dot-Com Debacle and the Great Decline in the Perception of Personal Wealth. Is it likely that a poor economy had some role in the decline in music CD sales which are, after all, a discretionary purchase?
CDs have not always been with us. Before they arrived on the music scene we had our music collections mostly on vinyl records. When CDs came along most of us began replacing our old records with shiny new CDs. CD sales in 2000 were almost quadruple the sales in 1990, in part because of this "rebuilding the library" phenomenon. Could it be that most replacement purchasing is done?
New music titles are a driver of music sales, especially among younger consumers. 1999 was a record year for new releases: 38,900. In 2001 the industry released 31,734 new releases, a drop of 20 percent. The 2001 figures are from SoundScan because the RIAA stopped releasing information on new titles after 1999. Could it be that offering less new material has resulted in a decline in sales?
The old Woody Guthrie tune, "Pretty Boy Floyd," includes the following. "As through this world I've rambled, I've met lots of funny men/Some rob you with a six-gun and some with a fountain pen." Historically, the really big thievery is done by the folks in the suits, not the ones with six-guns and cutlasses. What about music?
In just three years sales of illegally manufactured CDs have more than doubled according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). And who does that group blame for this? Organized crime, that's who. Could it be that big time illegal manufacturing has resulted in a decline in the sale of legitimate music CDs?
Frankly, it's easy to take shots at the RIAA. After all, they're the ones making statistical claims that can be analyzed and they're the ones suing twelve year old girls and grandmothers and calling them "pirates." But the file sharing folks, especially the young ones don't really come off much better in terms of claims.
Some of them claim that obtaining unlicensed copies of copyrighted music isn't illegal. It is. Some claim it isn't really theft. It is.
There are folks who claim they didn't know that downloading and listening to music they hadn't bought was illegal. That gets less and less easy to believe with each passing news story.
True there are some folks out there who use the file sharing services to preview music in order to decide whether to buy it. They claim they buy what they like. Many of them actually do that, but others do not.
The reality is that if you talk to young folks about getting free music off the Internet they lump it into the same class as underage drinking and smoking marijuana. Technically illegal but no big deal. And, until recently, they figured they wouldn't get caught at it.
Here are some more bits of reality. Most kids put up with the hassle of file sharing because they want to listen to lots of music, they don't have a lot of money, and getting the music is easy and relatively safe. Those aren't legal reasons, but they are understandable. The rhetoric about evil corporations and how file sharing is part of some giant social movement for justice is mostly a smoke screen.
There are a few things that will change the mess we're in. First, the young people with no money downloading free music will become older with more money. It's likely that their "piracy" will go the way of marijuana smoking. Some will continue it. Most will not.
They will choose another alternative. Ideally that alternative would involve downloading songs from a giant repository at a reasonable price. It would involve the ability to copy songs they've purchased or rented to other devices such as an MP3 player or CD.
Things would look brighter if the music industry would spend as much effort and zeal on finding ways to use new technology to create a service that most people would prefer to use as they currently spend on litigation and PR. If they do that, there's a chance that everybody can win.
Some folks in the music industry say they've been trying to do that, but they need to try harder. Their efforts so far are weak, incomplete and flawed. The industry has thrown its energy and resources into trying to stop the flood of new technology by jamming their fingers into the legal dikes.
Ultimately, the music industry is going to have to come to grips with the new world of technology. Ultimately the illegal downloaders will have to come to grips with concepts of intellectual property and copyright. It would be nice if that could happen without suing any more twelve-year-olds and with the rhetoric at a less dramatic setting.
