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Oh please, cry me a river

In case you hadn't noticed, the recording and movie industries seem to be doing very nicely of late.

There are still plenty of record and movie executives queuing up to buy the latest Ferraris and Porsches, the stars of our movies and music are still paid outrageous sums of money for a few weeks or months work, and I think you'd have to be a little deranged to consider that they were "doing it hard".

But, wouldn't you know, they're still whining.

Yes, despite the fact that online sales are making the recording industry bags of money and massive profits without the hassle of stamping CDs and carrying physical stock, they're pitching a tale of woe to politicians and demanding that copyright law be "fixed".

According to media reports, the recording industry claims that copyright law isn't working in the online world.

They are bemoaning the fact that, as a legislated right, they can't search all websites for illegal material and can't hold ISPs responsible for the actions of their customers.

Oh, the injustice of it all!

Imagine, only earning a one king's ransom instead of two -- all because people have a right to privacy and ISPs cant be expected to scrutinise every single bit that passes through their systems.

When will these people wake up and learn that, like the rest of us, they have to do a *fair* day's work for a *fair* days wages?

The era when they could simply decide how much they wanted to earn then set the prices accordingly has gone. Now they have to offer people value and deliver it through mechanisms that the customer demands.

If the recording industry can't adapt to this then I say: let evolution take its course and allow them to die (from greed).

Many musicians are already discovering that they don't need these expensive mainstream labels or record executive overheads. If their product is good they now have YouTube iTunes, their own websites and a plethora of other promotional and marketing tools available to them.

That the recording industry is throwing such a tanty seems to indicate to me that they've read the writing on the wall and are making one last-ditch effort to prevent the inevitable.

Let's face it, the fact that the legitimate sale of music is still very buoyant, even in the face of an economic recession and despite the fact we're labeled as "thieves" if we're found with P2P software on our PCs shows that copyright is working -- at least well enough.

As someone who makes a living from his copyrighted material I'm resigned to the fact that some people will take my material without paying me. While that hurts, it's just a fact of life. Odds are that many of those folks would never have actually paid for what I'm offering anyway so is it really a lost sale?

And if you look at my Aardvark and RCModelReviews sites you'll see that I adopt a reverse attitude to turning my efforts into the stuff that pays bills. I don't charge anything for the content I deliver but, if people find it worthwhile they're welcome to gift me money to show their appreciation.

Okay, so it doesn't pay the bills -- but I never expected that it would. However, the level of gifting keeps me intimately aware of the true value of the stuff I create.

Looking at the stats I notice that in with my RCModelReviews site, in 2009 I was getting a gift from about 0.5% of site-visitors over the period of a year. This year however, I've put a lot more work into the site and that has paid dividends. Not only are there a lot more visitors but the gift-rate has risen to almost 2%. Although it's still coffee-money, it provides me with a powerful metric by which to judge the quality of the content I'm producing and the value it represents to those who consume it.

But back to music and copyright..

In the USA, the RIAA is trying to go beyond the current copyright legislation and strike up arrangements with a variety of players in the online game. They want to recruit search engines, payment services and others to help them in their perceived fight against piracy.

They also seem to want legislators to give them a right that nobody else has -- to peer inside other companies' and other people's computers just to make sure they're not carrying illegal copies of there wares. They also seem hell-bent on having ISPs carry the onerous burden of pro-actively making sure that users aren't infringing copyright.

The really worrying thing is that, thanks to the massive profits they're making (despite all those tears) they're in a powerful position to lobby politicians into passing some of these laws. It's amazing what a few contributions to a politician's re-election campaign can do in some parts of the world.

But I have a message for the RIAA -- "just get over it". Get a haircut and get a real job!

Sit down, look at your options, re-invent yourself and create a business model that either factors in piracy as a cost of doing business or which involves new revenue streams which won't be affected (in fact may be enhanced) by piracy.

If these guys don't learn how to think outside the box they really will end up going the way of the dodo.

I'd be interested to hear from readers what they think might be alternative business models for the recording and movie markets. Also, what is your percentage of "purchased" versus "otherwise sourced" music these days? What's your ratio of CD versus legal download expenditure?

Does the RIAA really have the problem they say they have or are they just crying another river of crocodile tears?

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