Salon.com Technology | Embrace file-sharing, or die
This is a fantastic article at Salon.com by John and Ben Snyder. John is president of Artist House Records, on the board of the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences, and a 32-time Grammy nominee.
Although long stretches of the article consist of quotes from other people, he chooses great quotes from excellent articles by John Perry Barlow and Tim O’Reilly that many people at NARAS may not have read. These quotes provide powerful backup to his already compelling argument – the RIAA is inflicting significant harm on the entire music industry.
On that note, I’ll include my favorite quotes from Snyder:
“In five years, record labels will be software companies and I don’t think they know that yet.”
“Music companies are more egregious in their abuse of consumers than the movie companies. Consumers don’t hate movie companies, but they do hate record companies.”
“The RIAA reached its conclusions, then looked for supporting arguments, all the while ignoring reality, opportunity and fact. They overstate their position, misinterpret their own data, and make dubious claims for artists’ rights when the biggest abusers of artists’ rights are their benefactors, the record companies themselves.”
I don’t use KaZaA, because I don’t want their spyware on my computer. I don’t trust KaZaA Lite, either. If you do a little research on just what KaZaA and a few of the other P2P networks install on your machine, I think you might come to the same conclusion. The record companies should be appealing to me with the argument that for a reasonable sum of money, they will provide me with a convenient, safe way to download music. Instead of positioning KaZaA as being risky, they position KaZaA as the tool that enables me to commit crimes.
I can’t think of any other industry that mistreats its customers as badly as the record industry. Okay, maybe the airline industry, but look at what is happening to most of the airline carriers.