Parasitism: Who’s Leeching Whom?
Well, the MPAA is now going after BitTorrent and eDonkey, trying to shut them down like the RIAA tried to do with KaZaA, and Napster before that. While the RIAA got Napster, KaZaA is still out there, just as Gnutella is still going strong. Considering the worldwide structure of the filesharing networks, it is doubtful that they will make much of a dent.
Then there is the question of whether or not sales are affected. Despite online downloads of movies, DVD sales remain spectacular, so much so that they actually outstrip box office sales–DVDs now represent 60% of the film industry’s revenue, and films are beginning to sell more in DVD form than at the theater. So how is it that BitTorrent downloads are killing the industry?
This is the same lame argument made by the RIAA, which studies (such as this or this, PDF files) have continually dismissed. Sales did not decline until after Napster shut down, and losses generally match major economic trends–not to mention the fact that music sales took a downturn just the the music industry drastically cut the number of new releases they generated–hmmm, they put less music on sale and music sales fall, what could possibly be the correlation?
My favorite quote from these stories, however, is this:
John Malcolm, the MPAA’s director of worldwide antipiracy operations, said: “These people are parasites, leeching off the creative activity of others.”
Ah. The downloaders are leeches on the creative activity… not the labels and studios that consistently rip off and abuse the artists? Please. No big industrial media firm is ever going to get my sympathy by claiming their “creative activity” is being “leeched” when they’re doing what they’re doing. Take Forrest Gump, for example: the film cost $55 million to make, probably about as much to promote, and it grossed $660 million at the box office alone–add a few hundred million for DVD sales–and yet Paramount claimed that it didn’t make any profit, and refused to pay the author, Winston Groom, a single penny of the “net profit” they had promised him. This is hardly uncommon–Hollywood, just like the recording industry, makes it a standard practice to vastly underpay the artists and overcharge the consumers. They steal billions, then cry poverty, outrage and parasite at the filesharing phenomenon.
Hypocrites. I have no sympathy for them at all, only contempt.
I completely agree! I am a iPod aesthete, digital music convert with 250GB of high-quality, full catalogues. And i didn’t download a single ounce of it! Me and my music loving friends have paid full price for all of the disc we burned (okay…some are freebees from record companies and friends’ bands). Nor do we share it with anyone. But i am really getting sick and tired of the RIAA and organizations of that ilk whining and crying about lost profits. Lost profits? Give me a break–it’s criminal monolopy. And know with copy protection they wanna tell me just how i can use the product i paid full-chisel for.
Oh it makes me so angry. They don’t have an argumetn to stand in, IMHO.
The band Wilco was worried when they were dropped from their label and found that a copy of their disc “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” was already streaming on the internet prior to release. So they decided to just go with it. When it was released they found that they actually sold MORE albums than predicted, as well as more merch and more tickets to shows. Now its standard procedure for them. Kudos to great band, battling the machine, and earning a living.
that’s my 2 cents, anyway.