A dying breed

The Record companies have made news again. They want ISP providers to start policing their servers and punishing their own customers if they download music illegally. In Australia, most are refusing, saying that it isn't their responsibility to police the net. They say that there are plenty of avenues available to the Record companies to file suits against people who are downloading their music illegally.

When this story first started to make news, i felt a bit bad for the Record companies. They were putting so much effort into getting and keeping their money without support. I have since decided I do not have any sympathy for them.

For every CD I buy, The record company gets a large portion of the profit and a few cents to the artist. But i do not own the CD i bought. I only own the right to play the CD on my CD player. If i convert the music to MP3 format and play it on my iPod, they can punish me for doing so. So in a since, if i want to listen to one song, i will have to buy it twice so i can listen to one two different formats THAT I OWN! We haven't even started talking about file sharing yet.

In essence, they punish their own customers. But it doesn't stop there.

If I buy a CD and love it, want to tell people about it and give copies of their album to my friends to hear, I get in trouble. Because even though this sort of publicity will bring more people to concerts (which make a lot more money for the Artists), the Record companies don't want the Artist to make money, they want to make money.

In November of last year, a Producers for the film The Man from Earth, thanked online Pirates for stealing his film. He said “The Man From Earth” has been overwhelmingly positive. People like our movie and are talking about it, all thanks to piracy on the net!”

“The Man From Earth” has been overwhelmingly positive. People like our movie and
are talking about it, all thanks to piracy on the net!”

Record companies are a dying breed. They are not needed any more. They have become so consumed with greed that they are not doing what is best for their artists or their customers. While they may work with countries and courts to keep their business, it is only a matter of time before the world realised that they are not needed to publicise artists, to sell albums, or to get people to concerts. They are a useless middleman.