The boomerang effect
Rick Munarriz at Motley Fool has a column on the record companies recent attacks on small-time file sharers:
Amidst enough mixed signals to freeze up a recording studio mixing board, we're down to a bloody battle that no one wanted. In filing suit against 261 citizens who have downloaded free music files from the Internet, the fortified music industry has essentially started shelling a galleon manned by 60 million pirates that look like you and me. As a result, the attackers have a daunting challenge on their hands. How do you sink the ship while saving the passengers? And, while we're at it, does anyone know how many olive branches it takes to craft a makeshift lifeboat?...
In a great thread within our Fool Community (subscription required) some of our members were debating whether or not the term "piracy" is an appropriate tag for MP3 swappers. You're welcome to share your thoughts if you'd like to, but I'm not much in the mood to pass judgment. Unlike the RIAA, I have no interest in cultivating 60 million enemies in an industry in which platinum success is measured a million fans at a time.
My point is that, regardless of what you brand it or where it falls within the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, does any of it matter if the collateral damage smells of hara-kiri? Alienation may have merit on an artistic level, but it's certainly not a welcome trait for an industry that is banking on the disposable income of the masses.
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Yes, traffic to the P2P file-trading networks fell over the summer as consumers learned to respect RIAA's long arm of the law. However, the decline in music CD sales actually accelerated during the same period. The industry killed the pirate, but in so doing ripped out the soul of the once-ardent music fan inside. While the notion of 60 million people ripping off the industry was painful, at least they valued music as something worth pilfering.
I'm reading a book right now on distruptive versus sustaining technologies and eventually I'll probably blog something here. mp3s and file sharing are disruptive certainly, and disruptive technologies have killed more than one established company (in fact, that's very often what kills well-run established companies), but it's hard to feel as much sympathy as one might when the record labels are so busy killing themselves off. And it's really hard to have much sympathy when they're mucking with long-running copyright laws and, particularly, with the critical balance between creators and consumers of creative works.