It’s time to face the music

Posts: 541
From: Seattle, Washington, USA
Registered: Mar 2000

posted 03-02-2001 09:12 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Moses     Edit/Delete Message

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It’s time to face the music

Recording industry is likely to go the way of Edsel mechanics and manuscript illuminators — muting Napster won’t help

By Eben Moglen
THE NATION

March 2 — The recording industry has been celebrating the supposed defeat of Napster. The latest round of legal wrangling may well have the effect of closing the service down completely and ending the commercial existence of Napster’s parent (that is, unless the record companies agree to an implausible deal Napster has proposed).

AFTER A two-hour hearing Friday with testimony from lawyers representing Napster and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel said she would begin drafting an injunction that could halt the popular site from sharing songs.

But despite appearances, what has happened, far from being a victory, is the beginning of the recording industry’s end. Even for those who have no particular stake in the sharing of music on the web, there’s value in understanding why the “victory” over Napster is actually a profound and irreversible calamity for the record companies. What is now happening to music will soon be happening to many other forms of “content” in the information society. The Napster case has much to teach us about the collapse of publishers generally, and about the liberative possibilities of the decay of the cultural oligopolies that dominated the second half of the twentieth century.

The shuttering of Napster will not achieve the music industry’s goals because the technology of music-sharing no longer requires the centralized registry of music offered for sharing among the network’s listeners that Napster provided. Freely available software called OpenNap allows any computer in the world to perform the task of facilitating sharing; it is already widely used. Napster itself — as it kept pointing out to increasingly unsympathetic courts — maintained no inventory of music: It simply allowed listeners to find out what other listeners were offering to share. What is now happening to music will soon be happening to many other forms of “content” in the information society.

Almost all the various sharing programs in existence can switch from official Napster to other sharing facilitators with a single click. And when they move, the music moves with them. Now, in the publicity barrage surrounding the decision, 60 million Napster users will find out about OpenNap, which cannot be sued or prohibited because, as free software, no one controls its distribution and any lawsuits would have to be brought against all its users worldwide. Suddenly, instead of a problem posed by one commercial entity that can be closed down or acquired, the industry will be facing the same technical threat, with no one to sue but its own customers. No business can survive by suing or harassing its own market.

HARSH ECONOMIC TRUTHS
The music industry (by which we mean the five companies that supply about 90 percent of the world’s popular music) is dying not because of Napster but because of an underlying economic truth. In the world of digital products that can be copied and moved at no cost, traditional distribution structures, which depend on the ownership of the content or of the right to distribute, are fatally inefficient.

As John Guare’s famous play has drummed into all our minds, everyone in society is divided from everyone else by six degrees of separation. The most efficient distribution system in the world is to let everyone give music to whoever they know would like it. When music has passed through six hands under the current distribution system, it hasn’t even reached the store. When it has passed through six hands in a system that doesn’t require the distributor to buy the right to pass it along, it has already reached several million listeners.

This increase in efficiency means that composers, songwriters and performers have everything to gain from making use of the system of unowned or anarchistic distribution, provided that each listener at the end of the chain still knows how to pay the artist and feels under some obligation to do so, or will buy something else-a concert ticket, a T-shirt, a poster-as a result of having received the music for free. Hundreds of potential “business models” remain to be explored once the proprietary distributor has disappeared, no one of which will be perfect for all artistic producers but all of which will be the subject of experiment in decades to come, once the dinosaurs are gone. The music industry will look like manuscript illuminators, piano-roll manufacturers and letterpress printers — a quaint and diminutive relic of a passé economy.

No doubt there will be some immediate pain that will be felt by artists rather than the shareholders of music conglomerates. The greatest of celebrity musicians will do fine under any system, while those who are currently waiting on tables or driving a cab to support themselves have nothing to lose. For the signed recording artists just barely making it, on the other hand, the changes are of legitimate concern. But musicians as a whole stand to gain far more than they lose. Their wholesale defection from the existing distribution system is about to begin, leaving the music industry — like manuscript illuminators, piano-roll manufacturers and letterpress printers — a quaint and diminutive relic of a passé economy.

The industry’s giants won’t disappear overnight, or perhaps at all. But because their role as owner-distributors makes no economic sense, they will have to become suppliers of services in the production and promotion of music. Advertising agencies, production services consultants, packagers — they will be anything but owners of the music they market to the world.

What is most important about this phenomenon is that it applies to everything that can be distributed as a stream of digital bits by the simple human mechanism of passing it along. The result will be more music, poetry, photography and journalism available to a far wider audience. Artists will see a whole new world of readers, listeners and viewers; though each audience member will be paying less, the artist won’t have to take the small end of a split determined by the distribution oligarchs who have cheated and swindled them ever since Edison. For those who worry about the cultural, economic and political power of the global media companies, the dreamed-of revolution is at hand. The industry may right now be making a joyful noise unto the Lord, but it is we, not they, who are about to enter the promised land.

Eben Moglen, professor of law and legal history at Columbia University Law School, serves without fee as general counsel of the Free Software Foundation.

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Posts: 1565
From: Bowling Green, KY, USA
Registered: Mar 2000

posted 03-03-2001 02:31 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for KennyLee        Edit/Delete Message

Would make a great discussion but unfortunately I ran the anti-Napster crowd off. Oh well.

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Posts: 373
From: Raleigh, NC USA
Registered: Mar 2000

posted 03-03-2001 09:41 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for TheBassDude        Edit/Delete Message

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In the world of digital products that can be copied and moved at no cost, traditional distribution structures, which depend on the ownership of the content or of the right to distribute, are fatally inefficient.

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This, of course, assumes that society (as a whole) will be technically proficient enough to capitalize on just such a direct-marketing approach... Harsh reality check: Over 90% of the population doesn't have sufficient understanding to make this a reality. Nor do they seem to want to. If you want to look at these facts up close, you need look no further than these boards...

Ask yourself this... How many readers of these Forums are not some form of geek... be honest... not many.

Far too many people are far too apathetic about how they get their music for such a Utopian scenario to fly.

Sad? Yes. True. Definitely.

It's a game of numbers. There will not be enough geeks in the world to support such a distribution chain.

Harsh reality 2: There will always be middle-men, because people are lazy by nature (thus the Napsterites... a lazy group of people who thought they had a way to buck the system) and don't want to have to spend time or energy downloading stuff... trust me... Sure it's easy enough for us geeks, but why are there so few non-geeks in these forums? I'd bet those non-geeks (who out-number us by a quantum factor) would reather spend their time at the mall (that last, great bastion of retail distribution).

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Would make a great discussion but unfortunately I ran the anti-Napster crowd off. Oh well.

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Don't flatter yourself, Kenny... Your arguments are nothing more than the regurgitation of pablum that the Napsterite-led media frenzy (God, the public will believe anything they're told on the news) and sound-bites have spread across the airwaves. Oh sure, you seem intelligent enough, but what has kept people from responding to you is your whiny insistance upon ignoring the reality of the situation...

Bottom line... Will the "Recording Industry" need to change to survive?

No

But they will change... as, indeed, they have been changing for some time... And the rich will get richer... and the struggling artists will continue to struggle... and the "Superstars" will continue to emerge, giving hope to the dreams of the strugglers that maybe one day they, too, could become rock-stars. That, my friend, is what the music industry is capitalizing on... Like it or not... It's the truth.

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Jonathan Lowry
My Personal Page @ ListenSmart.com
Dolo @ ListenSmart.com
Dolo @ Rolling Stone
Dolo @ MP3.COM
Dolo @ Besonic.com

[This message has been edited by TheBassDude (edited 03-03-2001).]

Posts: 227
From: wethersfield,CT, hartford
Registered: Jun 2000

posted 03-03-2001 01:01 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for dond        Edit/Delete Message

The real world is modem access at 28.8 and 56k. Most of them have never downloaded a piece of music! That should be our goal...reaching that audience with our music!

I'm currently working on an international music promotion with a worldwide organization, to try to get 3% of their members, with internet access, to download one song off Ampcast.com. If I can reach only 3% of their members, it will fully finance an entire college scholarship program for a year! That's at 6 cents a download. Anything beyond 3% goes to next year's scholarship. Any other downloads are a bonus too. Sell an additional CD, and, we're in heaven!

Right now, out of 1.2 million members, with internet access, less then 50,000 people have ever gone to an internet music site, and, only 20,000 individuals have had a successful, download experience. I think from my shock over their statistics, they truly represent the real world. We're a minority, because we've been there and done that...most people aren't here yet.

Napster is a threat to traditional music distribution, because it works! MP3.com loses potential new real world visitors with very limited bandwidth, because it runs so slow. Normal people click off, because it takes too long to hear music. Until they can provide a good experience for the 56k modem user, they can only keep the geeks like us!

Prior to my non-profit project, and, access to their concrete data, I based stuff on my personal experience, and, that isn't normal. Normal, real world people fail downloading music 60% of the first time attempt! We have a lot of potential growth, and, a huge audience anxcious to hear our music.

Thanks for a great explanation of where we are, Bass dude!

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Posts: 1565
From: Bowling Green, KY, USA
Registered: Mar 2000

posted 03-03-2001 01:37 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for KennyLee        Edit/Delete Message

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Originally posted by TheBassDude:
Don't flatter yourself, Kenny... Your arguments are nothing more than the regurgitation of pablum that the Napsterite-led media frenzy (God, the public will believe anything they're told on the news) and sound-bites have spread across the airwaves. Oh sure, you seem intelligent enough, but what has kept people from responding to you is your whiny insistance upon ignoring the reality of the situation...

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First off, let me say, I love you, Bass Dude.

For being man enough to discuss your position.

The others degenerated quickly into name calling blathering hate posts. A sure sign that they have lost the discussion. Say what you will about me, but I have never called anyone a name or spewed hate in response. Because I have a position on the issue and I am ready to respond to anyone with a differing opinion.

I have no problem with opposing views. In fact, I welcome them. Everyone being in agreement is not a discussion to me. It furthers no better understanding of anything.

Having said that, you raise a good point. And I will even help you here. Here is something that DDess posted over at Paisley;s board.

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100 People in Our Village

If we could shrink the Earth's population to a village of precisely 100
people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would
look something like the following. There would be:

57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both North and South,
8 Africans

52 would be female
48 would be male

70 would be non-white
30 would be white

70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian

89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual

6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6
be from the United States.

80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death
1 would be near birth

1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education, would own a computer.

When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for
both acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent.

The following is also something to ponder. If you woke up this morning with more
health than illness... you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this
week. If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of
imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation...you are ahead of
500 million people in the world. If you can attend a church meeting without fear of
harassment, arrest, torture, or death... you are more blessed than three billion
people in the world. If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof
overhead and a place to sleep...you are richer than 75% of this world. If you have
money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace...you are
among the top 8% of the world's wealthy. If your parents are still alive and
married...you are very rare, even in the United States and Canada. If you hold up
your head with a smile on your face and are truly thankful...you are blessed because
the majority can, but most do not.

If you can read this message, you just received a double blessing in that someone
was thinking of you, and furthermore, you are more blessed than over two billion
people in the world that cannot read at all.

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Posts: 373
From: Raleigh, NC USA
Registered: Mar 2000

posted 03-03-2001 02:30 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for TheBassDude        Edit/Delete Message

Having said that, I think you have beaten this whole Napster thing to a pulp, and most folks around here would like you to make a point and move on... I'm sure they're as tired of reading my diatribe as they are of yours... I like sparring; it lets me vent... but not everyone is going to stick around and watch TheBassDude and KennyLee go over the same arguments over and over and over and over... ad nauseum.

You didn't scare them off with your wisdom... We both scared them off with our dead-horse.

dond - Thanks for taking the time to listen!

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Jonathan Lowry
My Personal Page @ ListenSmart.com
Dolo @ ListenSmart.com
Dolo @ Rolling Stone
Dolo @ MP3.COM
Dolo @ Besonic.com

Posts: 1565
From: Bowling Green, KY, USA
Registered: Mar 2000

posted 03-03-2001 04:18 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for KennyLee        Edit/Delete Message

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Originally posted by TheBassDude:
I think you have beaten this whole Napster thing to a pulp, and most folks around here would like you to make a point and move on...

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Well, making a point and moving on is one thing. But thats not what happened here. What happened here is "Kenny Lee is a poopyhead and I don't like him"

As far as the pulp beating, Napster is the issue of our times, plain and simple. No matter which side you are on. The outcome of the Napster issue will determine how creative arts are distributed from now on out. Napster threads are the longest ones on MP3.com and elsewhere. Consumers as well as creators have a stake in this outcome.

But, in and around the Napster issue, some people have their own personal agenda, regardless of the discussion. That is to say, they have little to say on the actual issue and are going through some personal issues. And so they call people names and move on. Fine. This is listenSMART.com. not shutupASSHOLE.com.

As far as the point you have raised? I see your point. And it ties in with what Jim Griffin is saying.

Music is now a "service". And a majority of the worlds population will need that "service". Maybe not me and you, the geeks. But the other 99%.

And that is where making money from music in the new economy will come from.

Thanks, BassDude. Seeking mutuality and all that shit.

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[This message has been edited by KennyLee (edited 03-03-2001).]

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