Big Music’s ‘inconvenient truths’
p2pnet.net news view:- ISPs facilitate the illegal swapping on copyrighted music on a grand scale according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). This is one of the 10 inconvenient truths about the music industry they published today. Most of the ‘truths’ are simply not true of course, they are nothing more than cheap propaganda.
On the IFPI web site we read:
“ISPs often advertise music as a benefit of signing up to their service, but facilitate the illegal swapping on copyright infringing music on a grand scale.”
It’s kind of a strange statement. What is copyright infringing music anyway?
As far as I know music in itself cannot infringe copyright. Apart from this (and other speling errors), their point just doesn’t make any sense. Sure, ISPs advertise their high speed connection with phrases like ‘download as much music as you want’, but they never say ‘download as much copyrighted music as you want’. I guess the IFPI doesn’t know that there are plenty of legal services available where you can download music for free, such as Jamendo.
To make it even more ridiculous, the IFPI also takes on The Pirate Bay by stating:
“Pirate Bay, one of the flagships of the anti-copyright movement, makes thousands of euros from advertising on its site, while maintaining its anti-establishment ‘free music’ rhetoric’.”
First of all, they probably mean advertisements, but even then their statement doesn’t make sense. Sure, The Pirate Bay generates revenue from the ads on their site, but most of it is used to pay the 20+ servers they need to keep the site up and running and the bandwidth bills.
And even if they were millionaires, that doesn’t make the music less free does it?.
Those aren’t the only ‘inconvenient truths’ that don’t make sense: there are a whole bunch of them.
The ‘truth’ that piracy doesn’t create jobs, tax revenues and economic growth for example: as far as I know it does. What about all the high speed internet connections pirates use? Those aren’t free. Or iPods, harddrives, CDs and DVDs pirates use to store all their pirated stuff? There are plenty examples I can come up with that show piracy is creating a lot of jobs, tax revenues, and even economic growth.
The only thing that’s inconvenient about the inconvenient truths summed up by the IFPI is the fact that they’re not true.
Torrent Freak – The Netherlands
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
