In Reply to: No, blaming the thief. posted by David Smith on June 20, 2012 at 09:45:09:
The funny thing is, I understand your point completely. Illegal downloads are unethical, whether Emily and the rest of her generation understands it or not. But they will continue until the music industry gets its act together, whether you understand that or not.
There's no point in continuing this endlessly, but I'll respond briefly.
You say, "No, the value added is when the recording is made in the first place." Not so, my friend. A recording is worthless unless and until you get it to the audience that wants to listen to it.
You say, "Tell me what is inefficient about iTunes." Well, iTunes may be a big step up in efficiency from LPs and CDs in a lot of ways, but the ease (i.e. relatively low cost) of pirating and illegal copying and downloading makes it inefficient. If iTunes is able to reduce its price for downloads to one-tenth of a cent each rather than 99 cents each and still make a healthy profit, the pirates might have a tougher time of it.
If not, and the pirates flourish, the industry will turn to a more efficient model, probably direct streaming. The consumer will no longer be able to buy and own a copy of the recording, rather, she will have to buy a limited right to listen, perhaps only for a limited time. As I said before, but you seemed not to notice, I agreed with you that Emily is used to paying high monthly fees for internet access on her Mac and cell phone access on her iPhone. This will be another such access fee, or will be folded into the ones she already pays.
If you don't see what this has to do with this thread, maybe it's because your focus is on the evil ways of the younger generation, something older generations always complain about, rather than on the effect of rapid changes in technology in the music industry, which to me is the root cause of all this illegal downloading. I have trouble seeing how time cannot prove me right in this debate -- the profit motive is simply too strong, as are the laws of supply and demand that I mentioned in my first post.
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Follow Ups
- 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)