Feds to audiophiles: You're all pirates now

Some really good posts in this thread!

These threads always seem to go down the same path - discussing the ethics, the laws, and the impact of file sharing. And while I agree that there is often a lot of "convenient" logic people use to justify their actions, I don't think that's the interesting part of the discussion.

The interesting part to me is the rapidly changing business model, and the way the music industry is responding to it, as Dusty discusses so well above. The whole tact of "my consumers are my enemy" is just so lazy - the business model of selling hard-copy CDs has just not evolved in 25 years, and as it erodes (for many, many reasons, piracy being just one of them) the reaction from the music industry just seems laughable. It's like they show up to work every day and go, "dang it, this file sharing thing hasn't gone away yet!"

The business model is changing, and fast, and the music industry can't be bothered to change. The industry wants to throw out all of these claims of lost revenue, but they have no way of knowing, and always want to attribute all lost revenue to piracy. We can argue ethics, and they can pursue lawsuits, for the rest of our collective lives and it isn't going to change the dynamics of what is happening.

Rewind a few decades. What is the view on Big Music "out positioning", to put it politely, countless musicians who later realized they didn't have the rights to the music they created, and then watched others get rich off of those rights? And continue to get rich off those rights today. I saw Chuck Berry in the airport the other day, heading off to Europe for a 20-gig tour - I should have thought to ask him his opinion.

I don't disagree that it's against the law to pirate music. I just don't think it's as big a story as the media wants to make it out to be, and I don't particularly feel sorry for the "victims" even if I don't choose to pirate "because I can".

Big Music has used their legal muscle for decades for their own profit. Unfortunately, they did not engage with technical visionaries, or they never would have produced their product in a format that propogates the way a CD does. They're falling back on the one strategy they've used forever, but even their lawyers can't get the genie back in the bottle. As Dusty says, it's a bull-headed and, ultimately, bad strategy. I don't have to condone rampant pirating to chastise the music industry for their backwardness.