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Music Lane It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes. |
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Music Lane It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes. |
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In Reply to: A well-written essay posted by David Smith on June 18, 2012 at 17:36:45:
Economists since Adam Smith have understood that complaining about the ethics of the consumer (or the producer) in a free market economy is a fool's errand. Both consistently act in accordance with the basic laws of supply and demand, profit and loss, cost, efficiency, and utility. If governmental laws conflict with these economic laws, black markets spring up and are very hard to suppress.
A basic change occurred in the music industry a few years ago: Thanks to the internet, it suddenly became very cheap (i.e., low initial investment, overhead, and variable costs) and easy (i.e.. efficient) to replicate and distribute music recordings. This was bad news for the traditional record labels and associated music industry participants, since that had been their job, and neither the musicians nor the end consumers needed an industry for these replication and distribution functions any longer. Even the third traditional function of the record labels -- promotion -- is being rendered increasingly obsolete by the internet.
The technology to prevent online piracy has been there almost from the start. However, the real question is, what are consumers willing to pay for music recordings? With such low entry, fixed and variable costs, supply is immense, while demand is relatively stable, so prices are very low. So low, in fact, that most recorded music literally isn't worth selling.
In this climate, our increasingly stringent copyright laws only encourage black markets that become increasingly hard to suppress. And complaining about Emily's ethics isn't going to change things very much.
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Follow Ups
- Not so much, IMO. - rbolaw 11:44:00 06/19/12 (23)
- RE: Not so much, IMO. - David Smith 16:15:15 06/19/12 (20)
- If you're right, three things will likely happen -- none of which are Emily's fault. - rbolaw 18:01:38 06/19/12 (19)
- RE: If you're right, three things will likely happen -- none of which are Emily's fault. - David Smith 19:24:49 06/19/12 (18)
- Blaming the consumer - rbolaw 08:25:35 06/20/12 (17)
- No, blaming the thief. - David Smith 09:45:09 06/20/12 (16)
- Sorry I can't get my point across to you. - rbolaw 11:10:29 06/20/12 (15)
- I understand your point fine - David Smith 14:10:23 06/20/12 (14)
- Then you understand - rbolaw 19:32:09 06/20/12 (8)
- Nope - David Smith 19:53:42 06/20/12 (7)
- The technology is already there - rbolaw 06:33:43 06/21/12 (6)
- You still don't understand - David Smith 07:12:38 06/21/12 (5)
- I do understand. - rbolaw 08:43:49 06/21/12 (4)
- No encryption-beating necessary - David Smith 09:14:16 06/21/12 (3)
- RE: No encryption-beating necessary - rbolaw 11:34:27 06/21/12 (2)
- RE: No encryption-beating necessary - David Smith 12:14:19 06/21/12 (1)
- RE: No encryption-beating necessary - GEO 09:00:32 06/22/12 (0)
- This is why I pay for my music and don't give it away - GEO 19:14:07 06/20/12 (4)
- The thing is - David Smith 19:40:17 06/20/12 (3)
- Virtually every aspect of our society is corrupt and lacking what we'd call ethics. - Rick W 08:59:00 06/21/12 (1)
- I'm sure you're right about not eliminating it - David Smith 09:21:49 06/21/12 (0)
- RE: The thing is - GEO 05:25:17 06/21/12 (0)
- Consumers are rational SOME of the time. - Timbo in Oz 15:55:49 06/19/12 (1)
- RE: Consumers are rational SOME of the time. - rbolaw 13:28:28 06/20/12 (0)
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