Piestar

Anyone who looks at this blog can probably tell I am not into entitlement, and ‘free at all costs’.  I firmly believe that in this capitalist culture you simply need to make a living off of what you do.

What being said, this question occurred to me: What would happen if nobody broke the law?

Although filesharing was happening on IRC before Napster, it was really Napster that brought it mainstream.  Even though it was largely pre-broadband – I think I had a 28.9kbps modem at the time – it was a revolution.  You could have any song you wanted.  You didn’t have to save up, go to town, buy a record, and take it home – often not even knowing if it was worth it.

If everyone had a 100% respect for intellectual property laws, Napster would not have happened.  Also, software that rips music to your HDD would also not exist and people would not do it anyway.  As a knock on effect, portable MP3 players would not have come into being – there was no legal music to put on them so what was the point?

Apple would not have created the iPod, as what’s the point of a HDD based MP3 player with no music to put on it?  iTunes would not have been created as Apple are a hardware company, and iTunes purpose is to drive sales of hardware.

The MP3 format would just be an off comment in a mailing list somewhere – no more.

MySpace would not exist – as with no mainstream support of MP3 in the form of players, plugins or even knowing what it is it would be just another unknown, unsupported format  (vrml, svg anyone?).

Existing, new and upcoming bands would not post samples on their websites, and radio and tv would largely be the only way to find out about the bands you liked, and discover new ones.  Sure, someone may tell you about a great new band, but you’d have to watch the charts, or listen to the radio and hope that something was played.

So without  ‘piracy’, ‘theft’ and people that deserve to be sued for £1,000,0000,000 for downloading a few MP3′s that the entertainment industry claims are actually ‘destroying music’ we would still be at a mid 90′s level of technology.

Piracy drives technological advances.  Without piracy technology would not advance due to the music industries monopoly situation.  I can only come to one conclusion:

Piracy is Capitalism in action.

Piracy is the only real force of competition the music industry has.  Without it they have no reason to be competitive as the formats and the prices are (or were) fixed by agreement.  The consumers want cheaper music, and more of it, more convenience, more flexibility and more choice.  Since this was not being provided they went to the competition who actually provide a better quality product.

As well as the obvious bonus of cheaper, piracy provides better quality recordings – often 320kbps to flac – more freedom – you can put mp3′s on anything, drm’ed downloads are very limited in terms of what you can actually do with them – and choice – rare, bizarre, live, old and not label limited.

The music industry is not against illegal file sharing because they lose profits, not primarily.  They are against it as it forces them to compete, to evolve.  They are a buggy cart manufacturer in a world of automobiles, trying to sue engine makers as their whole business model* has been made largely obsolete by the advances of technology.

People are not fundamentally dishonest.  People are perfectly happy to to pay for things, but you need to offer a superior product at a competitive price.  The industry is still hanging on to the old, expensive, pricing model established when distribution was actually expensive, they are still trying to impose DRM and limitations on where you can buy something and where you can use it.

When the music industry provides tangible benefits that makes their product at least as good as, if not better, than their competitors (piracy) then their business will continue to decline.  It’s called ‘competition’.

* What the new business model will be is irrelevant, and fundamentally not our problem.  It’s up to the industry to work it out, not us.