|
Monday, June 27, 2005You get the feeling AOL just doesn't get it. The new Supreme Court decisions are out and what are they highlighting? The 10 Commandments decision! You would think the Grokster case would be of more interest to their audience, but maybe not.Had the Supremes issued a truly earth-shattering ruling - 10 Commandments absolutely forbidden, or, maybe, required - one could understand the headlining. But the tinker at the margins decision is arguably of less moment than whether the producers of goods and services that may be used for unauthorized copying are liable for their customers' behavior. This is particularly ugly in that what we've got is an entertainment industry's efforts to boost profits by lawsuit since they're not selling their product at a price the market will bear. The other day, I was in Borders. They had a Jim Croce CD for $4. They had a selection of Bach keyboard works for $4. And they had some new CDs for $18-$22. They had DVDs for a couple old movies for $6 or $7. And the DVDs for new releases were in the $22-$35 range. What Croce, Bach and the old movies have in common is that the entertainment conglomerates don't have to pay anybody any rights or royalties. Comes the question, how much are they paying out for the rights? Does it compare to what they charge? Most entertainers say no. And given the way the market works, all Hollywood has to do is stop using the most expensive stars till their prices come down if they're really being bankrupted by the royalties and other such costs. The Supreme Court, of course, was not ruling on whether the movie and recording industry are filled with jerks who want to rip off their customers. That's self-evident. They were ruling on private property in the form of copyrighted material and how far one must go to protect Hollywood from illiberal pricing. It is true that big entertainment's wares shouldn't be stolen, which illegal downloading partially accomplishes. But it isn't true that Hollywood is losing billions. Were the copying technologies not there, most of us would find something else to do. My very first download on napster was a classical work. The publisher still held the copyright, of course. But the disc had been out of print for five years and three queries to the publisher (via Tower) about backstock copies were given the raspberry. Protecting artists' rights, etc my patootie. More like using copyright privileges to limit consumer choice to the most profitable options. Lately, there have been a few old television shows I've wanted on DVD. They don't make 'em. And you can download them. Is the entertainment industry looking at what's being downloaded to better understand what their customers want? Nah, they're just suing to make sure that if I want a new movie to watch, my choices will be The Aviator or National Monument at $25 each, without my desire to watch something decent distracting from their big promotional campaign. At least until the day when everybody involved is no longer eligible for royalties. Then it'll show up in the bargain bin. I know this is a goofy rant. And I know that it runs squarely against some of my more treasured notions about how sacrosanct property rights are. But let's face it, with enjoyment of the capitalist system's profit potential comes the responsibility to sustain that system. The entertainment conglomerates are not responding to the markets. They're not responding to customers. Hated and vilified by entertainers and audiences alike, they're suing left and right in order to claim profits on sales they never would have had when they could be doing themselves a world of good by meeting consumers halfway with better file-sharing, pricing more appropriate to what you actually get in a download, etc. If you make it easier to buy a clean copy from the entertainment company's servers at a reasonable price than to hunt around for a potentially corrupted or potentially incomplete but free copy, a lot of consumers are going to pull out the plastic for the pleasure of knowing they've got the complete, authorized version and there isn't going to be a hassle. But when your choices are to wait three weeks for Borders to tell you that you can't get what you're looking for, even for $20, but it's sitting there waiting to be downloaded for free - unless you'd rather pay top dollar for MGM's new release that you don't want but they've got fifty copies of... If we were smart, we'd take a real break from Hollywood. Skip the illegal downloads, so the entertainment industry had no cause to gripe. But skip the movies, too. Don't buy any DVDs for six months. Don't go to the movies for six months. Don't even download the latest movies for six months. I know the sixties and seventies weren't the greatest, but go on Grokster and see just how long you can get by before you feel the absolute need to purchase Hollywood's more recent offerings. When they start doing their surveys, fill in any questionairre you get. Tell 'em you'll pay $10 for a CD and $15 for a DVD and that their special feature interview with the 2nd hairdresser to the third man on the left in frame 6 doesn't justify calling it a special edition and charging $25 for "extra content." Ending the extended ramble, the Supreme Court ruling is wrong because the file sharing companies aren't doing anything wrong... We are. Not a few of us. A lot of us. The entertainment industry is wrong and stupid in its practices and deserves to lose money. But that doesn't give us a license to steal. The Supremes ruling should have set at odds the two parties truly at odds: the entertainment industry and the entertainment consumer. It should have forced the entertainment industry to have to go after the little guy with DSL and too much free time. Because our technology will be impeded, our freedom to disseminate materials will be overregulated and the whole problem of content ownership will go unresolved until the entertainment industry is forced to move from wailing in court to asking itself what happened to make it come to view its market as its enemy. 
posted by gbarto at 2:31 PM |
Archives
|
Day By Day© by Chris Muir.Old TurkeyBlog here.
