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It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes.

Blaming the consumer

Alas, I guess we just won't see eye to eye on this. Music isn't drugs or prostitution, where a large amount of black market activity is inevitable because a legal market isn't available. Music is an industry where the value-adding function, and therefore the profit center, has shifted too quickly and too dramatically for companies to immediately adjust. But in time they will adjust.

If Emily doesn't see value in her music downloads, it's not because they aren't tangible physical products. Neither are her internet and cell phone services, and her Mac and iPhone would be worthless if she didn't pay big money for those services each month.

She doesn't see much value because she's right -- there is little value added in mere replication and distribution any more. The value added is now in internet, cell phone, cable and satellite communications. That is why those industries have begun to take over, and IMO will completely take over, music and video distribution. And when they've done that job properly, believe me, Emily will be happily paying for all of her music, whether directly or indirectly, explicitly or implicitly.

I'm not saying Emily is being ethical in using pirated downloads. I'm saying that were are in an odd transition period where a dying, increasingly obsolete industry is unsuccessfully trying to defend its old turf when inevitably, the game is already moving to the turf where today's profits are to be made. Blaming the consumer and trying to defend an old and now inefficient and obsolete mode of distribution only delays and increases the cost of transition.


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