Current mood:	angry
Current music:	Imperative Reaction - Dissolve
Entry tags:	geek, rant

Bwahahahaha
UserFriendly.org is very much +1 Insightful this morning. I already wanted to post about media distribution, so here goes:

Why do people blindly believe the unsubstantiated claims that piracy copyright infringement is solely responsible for the decline in music/film sales? Especially the claim that it costs them millions, and similar waffle, repeated as a mantra by an industry with its head in the sand? One cannot simply take an estimate of illegal downloads, multiply it by the price or profit on a CD, wring ones hands in despair and claim to be losing a lot of money on the basis that clearly all those people would have bought CDs. They've been doing just that for years, though. Journalists and, worse, some powerful politicians seem to believe them.

They don't even have the excuse that they're doing it for the benefit of the artists:

The RIAA is asking the Copyright Royalty Board to lower songwriter royalties on song file downloads, from the present rate of 9 cents per song — about 13% of the wholesale price — down to 8% of wholesale. Meanwhile, the big digital music companies, such as Apple, want the royalty rate lowered even more, to something like 4% of wholesale. So any representations by any of these companies that they are concerned for the 'creators' of the music must henceforth be taken with a boxcar-load of salt. (via)

Oh, woe is me, won't somebody please think of the starving record executives. Going back to UF: they are obsolete. Artists can sell and advertise to the world without their assistance now; some have been brave enough to do so. This gives them more income and a lower selling price: everybody wins. I think, economically, there is no reason for these organisations to exist anymore; I just wish people (especially artists) would notice this a bit faster, so we can get rid of them before they do any more damage.