From today's Seattle Times. This pretty well sums up my feelings about the future of the recording industry as we presently know it.
Monday, July 31, 2000, 12:00 a.m. Pacific
Editorial
Music on the Internet
The preliminary legal victory over the Napster Web site, which enables sharing of music without payment to anyone, will not halt the inevitable demise of the record industry's business model.
The industry's battle with Napster, which was founded less than a year ago by a college dropout, symbolizes the conflict between intellectual property rights and the Internet's tradition of free exchange of information.
For musicians, the Internet is a tantalizing new way to reach fans directly, bypassing high-cost distribution systems, record companies, retailers and others that take as much as 90 percent of sales revenue. This perspective, though, understates the value created by companies in nurturing new talent and producing, distributing and marketing records.
Some musicians welcomed Napster, assuming that a free copy will ultimately induce a fan to purchase a CD. Metallica and other groups, however, have argued that Napster was simply enabling theft of copyrighted material, a point accepted by a federal judge in San Francisco.
The judge ordered Napster to shut down a service used by more than 20 million. Similar operations already exist using decentralized file-sharing systems such as Gnutella and Freenet. Those operations may also violate copyright, but it will be difficult for the industry to find anyone to sue.
The Internet's challenge to the record industry is similar to what it presents to Hollywood, book publishing or any business in which content can be digitized. The Internet is a highly efficient distribution system, but provides no protection for a creative talent's right to compensation. Some suggest that new methods of compensation will evolve. No one's sure where this is going. The record industry has the law on its side, but it is trying to protect a position doomed by technology |
