John: Thank you for your VERY RELEVANT post. I have been following the MP3 issue for some time now. One issue that you did not address, but that I am sure you are aware, is the issue of piracy.
As you know, there is already widespread theft of music over the internet. As far as ethics are concerned, (should I pay, or should I just TAKE), you can bet that many kids are just going to go to a renegade site and download for free.
So how does this affect TSIG? Well, first of all, many parents are going to be the buyers of the cards. Are they going to be part of the crowd that searches for renegade MP3 sites and steals music? Probably not. Also, as you mentioned, bandwidth is the issue right now and time is temporarily on our side.
My understanding is that the music industry has pretty much accepted that the "old catalog" (all music which is "pre-MP3") is going to be pirated and that there is nothing they can do about that. Please correct me if I am wrong. However, music that is released in the future will be encoded and will attempt to thwart piracy. Thoughts on this?
I spoke to Paul Henry about the MP3 piracy issue recently. His opinion, which he did not further elaborate on (and I didn't press him), was that the record industry was going to win in the long run.
Tom
|
