[A2k] The future of music piracy, as it relates to incomes of artists

[Georg C. F. Greve]

--
 || On Sat, 3 Jun 2006 13:42:30 -0400
 || James Love <james.love@cptech.org> wrote:

 jl> A business model of pushing DRM/TPM as far as it can go, cannot
 jl> be the only scenario that music artists consider, for the longer
 jl> run.  Getting artists to engage on issue of how much income they
 jl> want, and how it might be delivered, short of a police state in
 jl> all knowledge goods, would be pretty useful.

This seems to make the implicit assumption that DRM/TPM would mean
more income for music artists. I am very sure this is a mistaken
assumption.

The suppliers of DRM/TPM systems will be put in a gatekeeper position,
and I expect them to care more about their direct shareholder value
than some musician whose works they happen to distribute through their
channels.

Ultimately, I expect the artists to get as little out of the deal as
they get today, in fact their revenue might be decreasing, always
pointing at the "pirates" as scapegoat for the decrease. As long as
you have the intermediaries who act exclusively on the grounds of "I
will pay as little as I can get away with" the musicians will be on
the losing side. Whether those intermediaries do DRM or physical CD
distribution is irrelevant to this calculation.

If we want to prevent DRM/TPM we need to explain to the musicians and
other artists that DRM/TPM will not help them in any way -- that the
promises they receive by the rights-holding industry are extremely
unlikely to ever come true, and are doing more to distract from the
problems, than they do to solve them.

Regards,
Georg

--
Georg C. F. Greve                                 <greve@fsfeurope.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe	                 (http://fsfeurope.org)
Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom!     (http://www.fsfe.org)
--
[ Content of type application/pgp-signature deleted ]