Comment Re:Well.,.. (Score 3, Interesting) 1249
It seems to me that, as usual, both sides have good points here. Consumers demand the right to try before they buy with music and other entertainment products. The entertainment industry sees that as being a way to avoid buying at all because today's technology allows people to easily make copies of the product. One of the things industry needs to do is figure out how to track popularity via something other than album sales.
A big problem is that the artists are caught in the middle on this one. They want wide exposure, which can come through bootlegged copies of their works being available on the 'Net. However, they also want to be able to make money with their works, which doesn't happen anytime someone decides to grab an MP3 file and burn it onto a CD.
It seems to me that one way around this problem is to allow artists a larger percentage of the revenues accrued via their concert appearances. The problem with that is the recording industry is notorious for using accounting rules that allow charging almost all of an artist's expense against the gate receipts of that artist's concerts, leaving little or nothing for the artist to put in his/her pocket at the end of the tour.
Somehow we must devise incentives for organizations such as the RIAA to stop opposing the advance of technology. Also, accounting rules need to be changed so that artists see a larger proportion of the income from concert tours, etc. What the incentives are I don't know. We need to come up with something soon or Ernest Hollings and friends will force us to continue to live in the past via legislation that will also have the side-effect of outlawing Linux and the Open Source movement.
Just my $.02,
Ron
A big problem is that the artists are caught in the middle on this one. They want wide exposure, which can come through bootlegged copies of their works being available on the 'Net. However, they also want to be able to make money with their works, which doesn't happen anytime someone decides to grab an MP3 file and burn it onto a CD.
It seems to me that one way around this problem is to allow artists a larger percentage of the revenues accrued via their concert appearances. The problem with that is the recording industry is notorious for using accounting rules that allow charging almost all of an artist's expense against the gate receipts of that artist's concerts, leaving little or nothing for the artist to put in his/her pocket at the end of the tour.
Somehow we must devise incentives for organizations such as the RIAA to stop opposing the advance of technology. Also, accounting rules need to be changed so that artists see a larger proportion of the income from concert tours, etc. What the incentives are I don't know. We need to come up with something soon or Ernest Hollings and friends will force us to continue to live in the past via legislation that will also have the side-effect of outlawing Linux and the Open Source movement.
Just my $.02,
Ron
