Interesting...

Ok, since I've gotten my answer, and this thread has derailed anyhow, I'll take my stand on the soap box as well:

First of all, I'm 28 years old, and a fifth year student at a norwegian university where I'm studying electrical engineering and computer sciense.

For the past years I've been very interested in the development of various licensing schemes, both for software and for multimedia. I suppose it all started with Napster, and the music industry's reaction, and at the moment I'm actually working on new licensing solution for my "major".

Why am I telling you this? To try and convinse you that I'm not just any newbie shouting his oppinion on the subject ;)

From now on I will be takling about multimedia content licensing. Software licensing is quite a different ballgame. A much easier one btw.

So when did ever licensing of music become an issue that normal people had to deal with? With the Internet of course. Before the Internet people had to rely on radio stations and record shops to get access to music. Listening to the radio is all just fine, but people more dedicated to music wanna be able to play the music whenever they feel like it, and thus have to posess it, one way or the other. Before the internet you either had to buy a record (LP, tape, CD, whatever), or you had to record it from the radio or copy it from friends. All this was quite legal btw.

All this was fine and dandy, for some people, but then came the Internet, and people started to understand what they had been missing out on. And what was that? Some of you, I'm sure, are thinking "lots and lots of FREE, PIRATED music". Well, that's partly right. What I was thinking was -lots- of music they had never heard of before. Suddanly people could DL mp3s, and do it for free. And as shady as that task may be, the result was that a whole lot of people got to experience new music, music they would never even had heard of before - if it wasn't for the Internet. And before anyone knew it, the Internet became one of the biggest distributing systems for music in existance, and as I'm sure you all remember, Napster was leading the way. Leading the way into a new world where average people started to take interest in music, in artists, that by far outranged the narrow spectrum of music that was being played on the radio and marketed on the TV.

Then came the music industry'e first, and maybe biggest mistake. Instead of embracing Napster, and the technology and community around it, they tried to strangle it.

Now why did that happen? Well, I'm not exactly sure, because I recognized the misstake as soon as the music industry made it. I suppose they may have been afraid of change, or they didn't actually understand what was going on, or maybe they actually understood what was going on, but thought they could stop it, and make things go back to the way things were before.

As we all know, they somehow, somewhere, failed spectacularly.

I personaly think that what made things go so wrong, was that the music industry was cought totally off guard. Before they actually knew what was going on, there was this distributing system for music that they had absolutely no control over, and which gave them - the way they (wrongfully) saw it - no revenues. So they imidiately looked upon music distribution over the Internet as a threat. A threath wich had to be neutralized. And they of course did it the american way, with law suites.

And they got Napster. And they got a bunch of other systems. But for each and every one they went after, at least three new appeard on the scene. The one more cleverly designed to withstand attacks from the music industry than the other.

Now, I want to expand on something that I suppose may have raised an eyebrow or two amongst you, some of you being artists and all. I said that the music industry -wrongfully- believed that the free music distribution on the Internet didn't give them any revenues. That assumtion is acrually quite wrong, and even though the music industry are still trying to tell the world that it is the truth, it's a matter of well documented fact that the mass of people activly DLing music from the Internet, also -buy- more music! This has been verified througn several studies.

People that DL music aren't paying for -all- the music they DL, but is that really the point? If they actually leave more money at the counter at the record shop, isn't that what really matters?

I guess some of you, and most of the music industry will dissagree. But then you fail to see one of the secondary effects that all the DLing of music over the Internet. The -free- promotion! This may not work well for Ms Spears and her likes, who has their faces on our TV screens every single commercial break. But for smaller artists, and older (not in age, but in...period) artists this promotion is actually quite significant. New listeners are finding new artists every day. And from time to time, the listener appreciate the artists music so much that he or she wants to -pay- their tribute, quite litteraly.

The more music people listen to, the more music they will actually buy.

But the music industry's answer to this new situation has been law suits and the implementation of copy protection on CDs. And the ability to buy music online - at a rediciolusly high price, and with such restrictins that people just...don't.

I'll take the copy protection first, and now it's time to remember what someone said here before, about how the music industry's protection of their rights wasn't affecting the end user. Copy protection is ment to be a measure against piracy. That, of course, it isn't. Any "pirate" could copy -any- CD, at any given time. It's just a matter of will. What it actually does, is preventing end users that has legaly purchased a CD from playing it on their computer. And as the computer is starting to become the home entertainment center of many homes, this is actually quite bad. Also, it prevents people from playing their CDs on many car stereos, and even worse, from many regular stereos, or rather regular CD players. Why? Because many new stand alone CD players are actually based on CD ROMs, and CD ROMSs are the hardware targeted by most (if not all) copy protection schemes. So copy protection is just plain -bad- for the legal end user.

The "pirate" on the other hand, DLs the album, burns it, and will have no problem playing that CD anywhere.

Then we have the music industry's online music stores, where you can buy digitalized music on the Internet. That should have been great, right? That should have shut me up right there and then, right? But not so. And why not? Because of the way they try to control the music after I DL it. They use proprietary formats instead of mp3. They issue licenses to the files I DL, and tell me I can only play the files on certain players. Most oftenly MS Media Player. Now how is this -not- affecting the end user? If I BUY music, I want to be able to play it any way it suits me. I want to be able to burn it onto a CD-R, and play it in my car. I want to be able to burn a copy to my best friend, and tell him to listen to this great new band I have discovered! But if the music industry has it's way, that will not be possible.

Now I've been attacking the music industry at great length, but what is it I think they -should- have done? Well, I'm not quite sure, but something quite different at least. They should not have "killed" Napster. They should have embraced it. At the time, Napster was the biggest one, and was allmost alone! If the music industry had supported Napster, and they could have agreed on some arrangement, the music industry would have had the chance to play on the same team as what they now call the pirates. Which of course is exactly the same as their main target group for CD sales!

I just read a report made by three researchers on MS's payroll. They concluded that the copy protection strategy of the music industry was a total failure, and the only thing it did was taking the joy out of buying CDs. Well, that's too bad for the music industry, since the alternative to buying CDs, is to DL them free from the Internet.

If I could get access to a network of high quality mp3s, I'd gladly pay $10 a month. If every houshold did that, the music industry would have had revenues they before only could dream of.

But that ship has sailed. Now I look upon the music industry as the enemy, and the music industry looks upon me as theirs. And that's too bad.

I could actually have gone into deeper depths on this issue, since I have lots of strong oppinions on the subject. But I doubt any of you have even read all this :)

I suppose it't time to step down from the soap box now ;)

-P-