Making file sharing work
p2pnet.net News:- First-year iTunes online music store sales may be disappointing to Apple and its investors, but the iPod line is going gang-busters, apparently.
Given that, why not develop a system under which musicians and labels both get paid? And if you’re looking for a means, why not consider the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Voluntary Collective Licensing (VCL)?
That’s the effect of a new DownhillBattle site here, inspired by the iTunes birthday.
“For the sake of simplicity, we’ve assumed that every iTune ends up on an iPod, but that’s clearly not the case,” says the site. “Hundreds of thousands of people, at the very least, have purchased songs on iTunes but do not own iPods.
“On the other side, many people copy CDs they own onto their iPods, so it’s pretty clear that not all the non-iTunes music comes from filesharing. Then again, people share CDs in the real world too.”
DownhillBattle is talking about Apples. But there are plenty of oranges too and when you count in all the activity – uploading, downloading, sharing and so on – the numbers represented by corporate sites such as Jobs’ barely register.
At a conservative estimate, at any given moment, four million simultaneous users are logged on to p2p networks and as many as a BILLION (1,000,000,000) files are shared every month, says Eric Garland, ceo of Big Champagne.
Moreover, p2p file sharers have millions and millions of music files from cultures and artists all around the world to choose from, not just the same old, lame old tracks offered by the Big Music-backed online stores at a dollar a download.
As DHB points out, "Filesharing networks have created the largest music library ever."
With this in mind, the EFF concept makes an awful lot of sense.
April 29th, 2004 at 5:26 am
Voluntary Collective Licensing will not work. If the RIAA agrees to VCL and the amount is $5/month then the MPAA will demand at least that much. Then the software companies will demand that much. Then the porn industry will also demand at least that much. That’s $20/month just to use P2P networks.
No thanks. P2P is about sharing, not paying crooked record labels. I have no problem with artists getting paid and I will gladly pay $5-7 for a CD if the money goes straight to the artist. Artists should sell their music on their websites and ditch their crooked record labels.
May 2nd, 2004 at 5:10 am
I totally agree.
In this brave new world, with ease of distribution, there is very little need for the middlemen who leech off the creative people and their fans.
Prices therefore have to come down, and those who create good music need to get full recompense.