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some local commentary about napster/gnutella

I thought this might be of interest to other list members since this
thread has come up on the list lately.  A local weekly paper reporter
started a thread on xmission's internal newsgroup about
napster/gnutella.
--
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/>	Legalize Adulthood!
    ``Ain't it funny that they all fire the pistol, 
      at the wrong end of the race?''--PDBT
      <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/who/>

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Eric Jacobsen wrote:
> 
> I agree with your points wholeheartedly, except that only through greater
> awareness of piracy and reasonable alternative be developed. It was either
> tremendous ignorance or pretending that the problem didn't exist that got
> the music companies into the mess they're in now.


	The music racket is in the mess it's in now because of it's very own
practices. 

	Ask any musician who's recorded more than one published album, the
record company robs them blind any way they can. 

	The way most music gets published, since the inception of recorded
media, is unethical at best. 

	It works like this. Musicians need money. They need money for things
like food, housing, instrument repair, the usual. 

	There's only so much money you can get from your local fans, and the
farther away you travel to find other fans to get money from the less
likely you are to find a fan. 

	That is, unless someone is distributing recordings of your music, and
convicing radio stations in distant markets to play your music. 

	So this is the deal. You sign away a little chunk of your immortal soul
and most of the profits on recorded media in return for distribution and
promotion. 

	The numbers are pretty harsh. You pay $12 to $16 for a new CD. That CD
cost around $1.80 to manufacture, including the disk, printing,
packaging, and insert. 

	The cost of shipping the CD from the factory is actually paid in it's
entirety and then some by the retailer. 

	It gets worse. The cost of manufacturing that CD comes out of the
artist's cut, after various processing fees are appended by the
publisher. 

	When it's all said and done, most recording artists make about 80 cents
per cd. 

	If you don't believe me, ask a published musician. 

	The rest of the profits, $4-$6, goes to the record company. For the
service of being the record company and doing what record companies do. 

	The record industry standard contract is pretty simply "Give us all the
money, or at least almost all the money, or nobody will know who you are
and nobody will come to your shows and nobody will buy your t-shirts."

	The RIAA is more or less a music mafia that makes sure nobody gets a
better deal than that. What kind of a not-for-profit organization pays
their CEO $340,000.00 per year, anyway? 

	Distribution contracts almost never hold up in court. They are,
however, phenominally expensive to fight. 

	What the internet provides is a distribution channel that the RIAA
can't controll. 

	If you start from the premise that the food, rent, health care, and
sundry bills are paid almost entirely by having a successful tour, the
most important thing for the artist is to get their music out where
people can hear and enjoy it. 

	Some artists make very little money on CD sales, some actually lose
money on CD sales. Except for a few artists that have their own record
companies, nearly all of them don't make as much off each CD as they
should. 

	It's hard to know where to stand. Personally, I feel like I'm putting
food in the mouths of satan's children when i line the pockets of a man
who makes his money by giving another man a raw deal. 

	On the other hand, digitally compressed music is still an unproven
distribution channel, and one that established recording artists are
contractually obligated not to use. 

	I can say I'd feel a lot worse about sharing MP3's with people if my
favorite bands were making the lion's share of the profits from CD
sales. But I'd also feel a lot better about it if any of them had
expressed their consent on the matter.

	Most of my favorite bands don't sell a lot of CDs and generally work
small venues and clubs on their tours and would literally be out in the
street or selling shoes if it weren't for thier loyal fans. 

	So, maybe they only make a few thousand dollars a year off a particular
CD, I'd feel bad if i cheated them out of it. On the other hand, I wish
i didn't have to feel bad about throwing a few MP3's at an interested
party who might end up buying several cds, a ticket to the next show,
and an armload of merchandise while they're experiencing the real thing
up close and personal. 

	Back to the topic. No, short of application-layer firewalling, which
would be horribly inconvenient for everyone and hugely intrusive,
gnutella can not be stopped. That's good for some reasons, and bad for
some other reasons. Be your own person and don't tell another man to
tell to govern you just because you feel like someone else should be
governed as well. 

 - Eric

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