p2pnet.net News:- Thanks to combined powers of Music and the Net, anywhere between 8,000,000 and 9,500,000 people around the world are logged onto p2p file sharing networks at any given moment and at a conservative estimate, some one billion files are being swapped online between and among music lovers.

Big Music claims this is directly responsible for declining sales and the multi-billion dollar industry is being “devastated,” it states endlessly, blaming downloads and file sharing for its troubles.

In reality, the music industry is healthy (if bloat is healthy). It has never been able to show how a single download equals a lost sale. Furthermore, careful academic studies say file sharing has zero effect on music sales.

A while back p2pnet reported that Big Music has blacklisted StreamCast Networks, owner of the p2p file sharing application Morpheus.

Morpheus and Grokster are head-to-head with the movie studios and major record labels in what amounts to Hollywood -v- p2p and testifying at the senate committtee hearing into p2p technology, StreamCast ceo Mike Weiss quoted from a voicemail of Real Networks executive Richard ‘Ryc’ Brownrigg.

The, “labels have blacklisted you guys,” says Brownrigg in the message. “So that is the problem we’ve got.

“Basically, what they’re saying is you’ve got to denounce P2P, and/or resolve the lawsuit is what you have to do. And so, until they resolve the lawsuit, they’re going to keep you on the blacklist, which means I’m probably not going to get much latitude to do anything.”

Weiss is still waiting for some kind of response to his demand that the Federal Trade Commission and/or Department of Justice investigate the “apparently collusive, anti-competitive conduct in restraint of trade by the music industry”.

Not at all surprisingly, the scandal inspired only a few scant mainstream media responses.

Getting Real
Now the focus is on elements of the corporate entertainment industry itself, however, the print and electronic majors are starting to wake up.

“The recording industry has ‘blacklisted’ Internet file-sharing services and is preventing other companies like RealNetworks Inc. from doing business with them, according to music and technology industry officials,” states a Reuters story here, going on:

“The record labels’ attempts to isolate song swapping ‘peer to peer’ networks like Grokster and Morpheus have blocked deals that could have potentially brought in millions of dollars in revenues, the sources said, and might violate antitrust laws.

“Record labels say they are simply refusing to work with companies they regard as illegal.”

Reuters points out that millions of file sharers are online every day and says the recording industry says “such unfettered copying has cut into CD sales” resulting in lawsuits against file sharers.

It also says, “Even as the two sides are locked in litigation, several peer-to-peer firms have tried to open talks with the industry. So far, recording companies have shown little interest.”

But as with the blacklist story, this is nothing new. Commercial p2p operators and others have been trying to talk to the corporate entertainment industry since Day One. The latter just isn’t interested

“There is a big difference between exploring a new business model in a legitimate and open business manner … and going into business with the taxicab driver who just ran the red light and hit me,” EMI Group Plc executive vp John Rose told the p2p hearing, as Reuters points out.

Illegal or objectionable content
“We have the right and the sense not to do business with people who aim to profit or otherwise enable the theft of our artists’ music,” it quotes Larry Kenswil, president of Universal’s eLabs division, as saying, going on:

“Other label officials said privately that their contracts commonly are written to ensure that their material is not sold alongside illegal or objectionable content. “

This is particularly choice given that the labels are themselves the purveyors of some of the worst filth imaginable

Be that as it may, in the meanwhile, there’s an extremely simple solution.

Hollywood (the catch-all for the labels, studios and all the other entertainment industry components) should be working with the p2p file sharing community – operators and users both – instead of trying to victimize them.

But under Present Management, the possibility is listed as Lost Cause because if the Big Five record labels, the major studios and all the rest of them can’t wholly own and/or control something, they want to kill it.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 19th, 2004 at 7:16 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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