Copyright Wars the New Drug Wars?
The out of touch, not quite all there House Of Representatives today passed legislation making it a crime to "knowingly" distribute files online. This does not yet mean it is law, but offers some serious problems to intellectual creativity and probably threatens small and independent music artists, and does nothing to put money in the pockets of the Recording Industry.
Laws prohibiting online distribution networks ultimately may reduce intellectual creativity because people will not develop that technology further. P2P networks have many uses beyond illegal file sharing, an unintended consequence of the abilities of the internet. Essentially though, strong digital rights management will destroy the qualities of the internet that make the internet a revolution rather than just another marketing ploy.
Also, independent artists are sure to be hurt even more. Many have credited P2P networks with generating the hype and following that major record labels simply buy. But even if these artists willingly allowed downloaders to to share their songs, making it a jail time crime to download songs from major labels may reduce the number of people sharing songs overall, and there for restrict the exposure of non-label artists to the public.
Record labels are probably also concerned tha the internet's inexpensive marketing, new emerging recording technologies, and the reduction of the cost of printing CD's, artwork, and distributing these things, may eliminate them entirely. But the solution to solve this is to shut down P2P. Without P2P, the only way to promote an album is by buying airtime on radios, television commercials, expensive music videos, and mass marketing that costs money, which the studios control.
Oh Canada.
Canadians are actually legally allowed to distribute Mp3's for free over the internet. They are simply taxes a little more (who'd notice in Canada anyway?) for things like blank CD's, and in turn this money offsets "losses" that record companies have through shared music. But there really isn't anything illegal about canadians uploading to songs that Americans are downloading.
Laws prohibiting online distribution networks ultimately may reduce intellectual creativity because people will not develop that technology further. P2P networks have many uses beyond illegal file sharing, an unintended consequence of the abilities of the internet. Essentially though, strong digital rights management will destroy the qualities of the internet that make the internet a revolution rather than just another marketing ploy.
Also, independent artists are sure to be hurt even more. Many have credited P2P networks with generating the hype and following that major record labels simply buy. But even if these artists willingly allowed downloaders to to share their songs, making it a jail time crime to download songs from major labels may reduce the number of people sharing songs overall, and there for restrict the exposure of non-label artists to the public.
Record labels are probably also concerned tha the internet's inexpensive marketing, new emerging recording technologies, and the reduction of the cost of printing CD's, artwork, and distributing these things, may eliminate them entirely. But the solution to solve this is to shut down P2P. Without P2P, the only way to promote an album is by buying airtime on radios, television commercials, expensive music videos, and mass marketing that costs money, which the studios control.
Oh Canada.
Canadians are actually legally allowed to distribute Mp3's for free over the internet. They are simply taxes a little more (who'd notice in Canada anyway?) for things like blank CD's, and in turn this money offsets "losses" that record companies have through shared music. But there really isn't anything illegal about canadians uploading to songs that Americans are downloading.
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