p2pnet news view | P2P | Music:- Every time one of the Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music mouthmen mouths off, the lamescream media quote them as just as though they’re credible sources imparting reliable, and valuable, information.

The latest talking head to be given space is Geoff Taylor, the man in charge of their BPI (British Phornographic Industry). And providing the platform was, to its shame and disgrace, the BBC.

“I honestly only read the first few snippets of this guy’s bullshit (primarily because — having debated staunch defenders of IP such as ‘Sam I Am’, I’ve pretty much heard all of their arguments, and they’re total bullshit),” says frequent poster and p2pnet contributor Henry Emrich (right).

Understandable. Big 4 spokespersons are trained in the art of regurgitating the same nonsense in an infinite number of ways, and Geoff ‘Rosetta Stone’ Taylor is a master.

Henry goes on »»»

1. Nobody in their right mind is actually going to pay money to license a DRM-crippled file that could — and most likely, will — go dead at the whim of whatever RIAA corporate shit-fest they bought it from. We know that the RIAA/MPAA’s fondest wet-dream is to abolish the notion of selling content at all, and have everything licensed or semi-rented from them, and vast amounts of folks just aren’t going to play along with that scenario, even if — or especially if — it ends up killing an entire industr in the process.

The fact that companies have had to explicitly instruct their customers on how to BREAK the DRM (by transcoding or suchlike) indicates that DRM is just a horribly bad idea.

2. People aren’t particularly interested in paying middlemen — whether it’s retailers, or talentless, waitress-killing douchebags like Phil Spector. (Read the Wikipedia article on the guy — he was way ahead of his time, in that he was vehemently opposed to stereo releases because it supposedly took control away from the producer, in favor of the listener. Standard-issue RIAA douchebaggery.)

But I digress:

People are even LESS willing to pay middlemen (such as label guys) now that they know the REAL talent — musicians and songwriters — are getting shit on by the labels. They’re ESPECIALLY displeased by the incessant whimpering, lawsuits, and generalized monopoly-mongering involved in copyright term extension, or classifying signed artists’ output as works for hire owned by the label, or cookie-cutter fakes like Milli Vanilli passed of as real talent. In short, they’re really annoyed by everything the major-label industry as such — and for good reason.

3. EVEN IF the rise of p2p technology and the file-sharing scene DOES harm the industry by depriving them of billions upon billions, a significant number of folks would greet that with a resounding good, about goddamn time!

The RIAA/MPAA member companies have become the modern equivalent of the Tobacco industry — lying, unscrupulous corporate weasels anxious to collude with cronies in government, so as to keep screwing their own customer-base.

So it’s pretty doubtful that p2p represents lost sales, but even if it does, there’s a lot of folks who — justifiably — would figure that was pretty damn cool.

4. The REAL talent upon which the major-label music industry depends — artists — are defecting in droves. They understand that they’ll just get shit on if they sign, and recognize p2p piracy as a great alternative to corporate Payola bullshit, as a way to build the fan-base which any artist or group wants and needs.

The only ones bitching about the threat posed by p2p are big-label whores, and a few disgruntled quasi-Indie whackjobs like Indiana Gregg, who are probably doing it to drum up public visibility. (I mean, come on — was gr8pop or Indiana Gregg even on anybody’s radar before her TPB-related tantrum? I’d never heard of the woman, and it’s exceedingly unlikely that her stuff was actually available in your local record-store, anywhere — thanks, not coindicentally, to the very same RIAA corporate lobbyists she was so intent on sucking up to — or, one might say, sucking OFF.) 

What sticks out for me, in regard to Napster, is the fact that Metallica — prior to their status as RIAA trophy-bitches who helped destroy Napster — were actually a taper-friendly band: in particular, they explicitly encouraged people to MAKE COPIES of their stuff and give it to friends, so as to create a fanbase.
(Pretty similar to the Arctic Monkeys — bootleg-friendly, UNTIL their corporate pay-masters say otherwise.)

That’s also why nobody takes Metallica particularly seriously anymore — it is simply impossible to look anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian and badass, while sitting in Congress, explicitly acting as corporate shills.

The only new business model that stands any chance of actually working out is leveraging the Internet’s potential to connect with a potential fan-base: Susan Boyle became the biggest thing since sliced bread, NOT because she was on Brittain’s got talent, but because the clip (and her tracks from that charity CD back in the 1990s) spread all over the Net like a prairie-fire.

The RIAA’s business-model was never about finding, recruiting, recording and marketing talent.

It IS all about monopoly: being the ONLY way to make good recordings (hence their routine attempts to lobby government to prevent decent-quality consumer equipment — VCR = Boston Strangler, Home taping is killing music!.

It’s about having the ONLY distribution-channels (Payola, media-consolidation, their periodic attempts to close the first-sale loophole, so they have TOTAL control over prices.) Remember kids, first sale is your friend.

It’s about totally destroying fair use and similar legal exemptions, so the corporate shit-in-suits can monetize any and all uses of the content for which they own the rights.

Above all, it’s about destroying the Public Domain by a process of starvation, coupled with vigorous, unrelenting propaganda. They want to transform monopolies such as copyright and patents — which are, at the absolutely most charitable assessment, mere necessary evils — privileges granted for a limited time, and for a specific purpose — into the Sacred right of Property. (Judging by people Like Sam I Am, sometimes their bullshit-campaign works.)

Behind all of it, is standard Corporate malfeasance and psychothapology — the relentless lust for maximum profits, with issues like customer choice, a vibrant public domain, artistic freedom, technological innovation, and even whether artists actually get paid or not, treates as mere externalities — somebody else’s concern.

Quite simply, no matter WHAT concessions they manage to buy from sympathetic cronies in various governments, the major labels — and the misbegotten business-model upon which they depend — are irretrievably fucked: at this point, even if they caved in completely –stopped begging ever-longer copyright terms, maybe even settled for a reduction back to something more reasonable, started selling non-DRM’ed tracks at a reasonable price, AND paying the artists’ the sign better than your average Walmart greeter, they’d STILL be trapped in the same — unstoppable — downward spiral, because at this point, it’s simply impossible for them to ever live down the bullshit they’ve done up to this point. (This is also why Bush II is exceedingly unlikely to be remembered by history as anything but a barely-verbal sockpuppet for the military-industrial-petrochemical complex, but that’s another issue.) 

Honestly,” Henry adds, “I don’t think people don’t want to pay for music: it’s just that they don’t want to PAY THE RIAA or any of it’s pampered sockpuppets.”

Absolutely correct.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

providing the platform – BPI boss Geoff Taylor tells it like it isn’t, June 28, 2009

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 8:45 am and is filed under Music, P2P. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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