SONG CONTEST BLOG

In a thought-provoking post on the MidemNet Blog, Peter Jenner, President of the UK’s International Music Managers Forum (IMMF), explores the personification of music piracy, underscoring key distinctions between ‘piracy’ and ‘theft’ that have largely been ignored or rejected by the music industry and, perhaps, even concealed to a pragmatic and moral music sharing public.

“If you steal my money I don’t have that money anymore.  If you copy my music I still have it, and so does everyone else who has it.  No one loses anything, the supply of copies just increases.”

Read the entire entry here.

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Whatever your position on file-sharing may be, it will most certainly be skewed when you learn that a mega-band such as Radiohead, who famously distributed their last record with a pay-what-you-like model, are taking the stand against the RIAA.

In the case of file-sharer Joel Tenenbaum, a Boston University student, versus the RIAA, Radiohead will testify against the RIAA as part of a protest against unnecessary preying on filesharers, according to Tenenbaum’s legal team which consists of Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson and student members of his class.

Radiohead has publically spoken out against the major labels’ agenda to profit from questionable sharing of music in the legal arena, and specifically the lobby groups that represent them such as the RIAA and IFPI.  In fact, Radiohead is one of several A-list artists that have embraced file-sharing culture in one way or another to propel their independent marketing of their music and, to a certain extent, have proven that the very labels that made them what they are today have been rendered obsolete.

All this comes to a head just after the founders of The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent search platform, were found guilty in a landmark file-sharing case spearheaded by Swedish anti-piracy lobbyists, preceded by the public crackdown of the popular music streaming service, SeeqPod, which was forced to close.

Linking the decline in music sales to illegal filesharing carries very little water in this day and age as there are so many other contributing factors to the manner in which music is consumed and the availability of media to the public in general.  The fact is that, for the major labels, going to court is profitable.  In the cases where it’s not, it sets a precedence for future cases that will turn over handsome settlements.  The attitude toward file-sharing, and the laws around it no less, will not change until the investment in the judicial system will no longer yield rewards for the copyright holders, the majority of which are represented by only four corporate institutions worldwide.

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