Thursday, December 12, 2002

Copyrights, Piracy, & Peer-to-Peer Networks

File sharing networks don't threaten book, music, or film publishing. They threaten existing publishers.

Tim O’Reilly has wrote a great article entitled, “Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution”. The article discuss how the labeling of current acts of file-sharing as piracy is not a threat against authors and artist but against existing publishers, and his observation on how file sharing has increased music and book sales. It’s great to see a publisher discuss these issues, because my experience has been the same. I was an avid book and music collector before the internet explosion, but I find sites like the late Napster and thriving Amazon.com have only increased my spending habits. 

Footnotes

When Napster was in its hayday, my music budget increased by almost three times per month�I ended up with great stuff like collectables from Marlene Dietrich, Doris Day, and Patti Page, and with shameful pleasures like Britney Spears and N’Sync. Nothing against current or former Pop Stars, but without Napster hooking my on their catchy beats and bubble-gum flavors, these items would have never made my music collection. Napster drove my desire to actually own “Bye, Bye, Bye” as much as it has driven me to purchase artists I’ve rarely heard of before.

Take the song, “I Put A Spell On You”. Do you know how many artists have covered this song? I didn’t until, one day I downloaded what I assumed to be a Nina Simone song, and ended up with Sonique. After that, I started searching and searching. Now I have seven versions of “I Put A Spell On You”, and five of the albums they were captured from including Screaming Jay Hawkins and Nick Cave. So now, I own a slew of records, and sport a new hobby of collecting various versions of jazz greats (but lets not go there).

Anyway, Tim makes a lot of really good points. Obviously his opinion won’t be widely publicized by the RIAA, so give the article a read and spread the word. Read “Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution”.

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Permalink: http://www.wide-eyed.org/main/article/copyrights_piracy_peertopeer_networks/

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