Geir Arne Brevik, May 30 2006:

What the music industry should do when in trouble

I find debating music downloading, file sharing, DRM (digital rights management) technologies and copyright laws incredibly difficult. Both because intellectual property law is hard to understand, and because I often find myself having double standards. But as the Norwegian record industry prepares a mass-lawsuit against file-sharers, I’ll try to sum up my views, both for myself and as a part of the very necessary debate.

What’s the big problem? Is there a problem at all?

I think the biggest challenge today, is the confusion itself. The copyright laws are a mess, and they doesn’t match people’s sense of justice.
At the same time, there’s little doubt that the music industry are losing money because of what is undoubtedly illegal files-sharing. Here in Norway, the legal music sales went down 13% last year, while digital music players are selling like something that sells very well (ringtones?).
And don’t tell me you haven’t tried a p2p network. I’ve met several near-illiterate computer users with both LimeWire, Azureus and BearShare and whatnot running hot. And they were not using it to exchange Creative Commons-lisenced music, mind you.

Many anti-copyright activists claim that files-sharing actually promotes music, and that the money the record companies claims to be losing never ends up in the artist’s pockets anyway. True or not, it’s simply not an argument for breaking the law (maybe I’m very Scandinavian here?).

The big goal

I don’t want to break the law when dealing with music, and I want to buy music based on _what I like, not the format of the medium or a particular business model._

Or, more precisely:

  1. Content creators (i.e. musicians) who want to be paid for their work, should be able to get paid for it, and have legal protection for that.
  2. Content creators who want to license their work out more or less for free (as in free speech and/or free beer), should be able to do it, and still have legal protection for that
  3. Consumers should be able to buy (as opposed to lease) content, and be able to do as much with a digital file as with a physical book or CD. That includes being able to lend it to a friend and make backups. Without being sued.
  4. Other kinds of fair use should not only be possible, but legally protected, for instance citations and academic use.
  5. It should be more easy and fun to buy music legally than to download it from a file-sharing network.

Unfortunately, the music industry is not doing much to get there, so I have some suggestions.

Make the ethics logical and understandable

You want an example of my confusion? For instance, if I have understood the new Norwegian law correctly, I break the law when I burn a CD of my legally purchased iTunes music, and re-import them for use on my legally bought PlayStation Portable. Only using legal software. Because I break the DRM. You know what? Doing that doesn’t make me feel like a criminal at all. It only makes me angry against Apple and the record industry.

The entertainment industry have tried to dumb down the message of copyright law into something like this: To up- or download a file without DRM to/from the internet is like stealing a purse from an old lady (this is not something I make up, it’s an actual TV campaign here in Europe). First, even if you break the copyright law, you’re not committing a crime even remotely comparable to blind violence. And secondly, you can download files from the net without breaking any laws.

Lying like that doesn’t make people trust you, even when you’re right. So they should really start to treat their customers with a little more fairness, and make the laws logical. The entertainment industry have proven their power to change the laws in the past, and should do it again.

Increase the real value of digital music

The best thing about buying music from iTunes is that you know what you get. You never have to wait for half an hour for crap sound quality and misspelled band names. At the same time, the worst thing about iTunes is that you only semi-own the music. Apple wants to control what I do with it after purchase (where I can play it, who I can send it to, how I can copy it), and in their license they claim the rights to change the license itself after you have bought it.
Some of the subscription-based music suppliers are even worse, where you lose the music when you stop paying.

So if you have two identical music files (same bit-rate, same compression format), one bought legally from a store, and one downloaded for free, which one is the inferior file? Correct, It’s the one you paid for. How is that supposed to be logical for the consumer?
This is exactly why many, otherwise kind people, choose to break the law. If you pay for it, you should own it. I’m not necessarily saying no DRM at all, but please don’t annoy me with it.

Increase the perceived value of digital music

Many of the same teenagers that download songs by Rihanna and Madonna illegally from the net, are feeding a multi-billion industry; mobile ringtones. For minimum 3 USD you can get a short excerpt of a hit song in bad sound quality. People are buying them like crazy, even though it’s not that hard to (legally!) make ringtones from your own music and upload them to your phone.

You can find tons of other examples as well, where the actual cost of making a product does not nearly match how much a customer is willing to pay. So, the record industry should work on this perceived value.

After fixing the inferiority of the legally bought music, they should start to add value to online purchases. That means, do things that the file sharing networks can’t do. Why they haven’t done this in a large scale is a big mystery to me. It’s neither hard or expensive. Here are some ideas:

This would actually make it fun to buy music online. It would make each release feel more exclusive.

Any hope?

No, not as far as I can see. Right now, the music industry’s strategy is to sue their opponents, and treat all paying customers as potential thieves. And at the same time, the file-sharing networks are doing better than ever.

When launching the iTunes Music Store, Steve Jobs said something about competing with the file sharing networks. Because of that strategy, the store is the market leader in downloadable music. But even though it’s best, it doesn’t mean it’s good enough.