You’re wrong on that one Daphne, the entertainment industry has never been bigger than it is today.

The problem isn’t piracy, but the unwillingness of these companies to adapt to a change in the market. Take Steam as an example. They took the game piracy idea and sold games for a cheaper price with game synchronization over multiple machines. The result is more money for the game companies ,a much wider audience and an improved service for users. Win-Win.

Take movie studios. Avatar made a total of $2,782,275,172 at the box-office (Worldwide) in 2009 (when movie piracy was rampant) and if thats not enough profit for a shit movie about humanoid alien smurfs saying ‘I feel you’. They also made (and still make) money off premiers, dvds, collectors items, stupid dolls and etc.

The Music industry has never been bigger. The reason they’re producing shit music is because it sells. In any case: if an artist is producing purely for money’s sake then their music would be shit anyways. Don’t tell me Freddy Mercury sang, for the same reasons Flo Rida “sings”, and all he does is get an unpopular song add words like ‘543’, ‘caliente’ and some spanglish shit and is filthy rich for it. The internet also allows bands to get more coverage and earn more album sales. It also reduces costs in marketing unknown artists.

The problem with music is not piracy, but service. The only way to kill piracy is to improve the service and make it more affordable. Take Spotify, the Itunes store or Beatport.com, those are the companies that will make music profitable again and not some stupid law (which will be circumvented anyways).

I mean seriously Daphne, what is the point of ACTA, if all one needs to do is pop a Tape into a recorder and record off the radio (like most of the kids used to do in the 90s)? Or worse still pay some ‘chalie’ at the Sunday monti for black market albums?

ACTA is simply a LOSE-LOSE bill. Everyone looses, except ‘chalie’ at the Sunday monti.

@kev:

Actually I have a friend who has his offices exactly the opposite of the Pentagon and he is a witness of the impact. So stop with your rubbish.

Good that you mention patent laws and the missing internet. Read about “Software Patents” and why they are not allowed in Europe and how they will impact your blog when ACTA introduces them through the back door.

[Daphne – Don’t talk rot.]

@daphne

ACTA will transfer interest and the powers of the governments to private companies. And they will have some interests to retrieve royalties for your blog, etc. The danger of ACTA is that it implements non-democratic structures.

[Daphne – Hardly.]

@daphne:

Currently there is a lot of creativity. In future every creativity (like open source software) can be simply shut down because someone abroad will say it breaches some copyright. This someone abroad will not even need a court to decide if he is right. Me as the victim then has to fight in court to proof that I am right. But what if I do not have the energy or the money to proof that? I will simply be forced to stop being creative!

Even your blog will suffer because you constantly breach some copyrights. In future your blog can be simply shut down! YOU as a journalist should be very aware of the ACTA impacts. YOU should make your own research and not just repeating what some MEPs whisper in your ears!

[Daphne – You are quite wrong. And common sense should tell you that.]

@daphne:

Our business might be cut by more than 25% when ACTA becomes reality. ACTA will introduce software patents through the back door. As you might remember those have been rejected and forbidden by the EU parliament.

What would you think how our Maltese eBusiness will do when we have to pay royalties for every shopping basket, pay button, etc?

Did you ever consider the other impact of cross border trade inside the EU? Currently we have a free market. When ACTA is in place consumer can be stopped from purchasing via Internet in another country! ACTA re-introduces “customs”.

What about the seeds our farmers are using? In future they will be forced to use expensive and terminated seeds from Monsanto.

There are many more aspects of ACTA. I am wondering why the PN MEPs do not even mention them? Maybe because they simply do not know the details themselves?

Undoubtedly so. It is their choice how to share their property. My reaction was towards what Daphne said –

” One of the reasons that the music scene has become so impoverished (in terms of quality and innovation, that is) over the last few years is that there is decreasing will for investment in new people/ new music, precisely because nobody is going to invest in something and then have it ripped off.”

It isn’t impoverished. There is still investment, and there are still avenues that good artists take to become famous / get money / do-whatever-they-really-want.

The reason we get so much of the same thing churned at us on the waves is not because there isn’t anything better, but because companies don’t want to take risks, and this isn’t a new phenomenon. I could name countless generic bands, from every generation, that made it just because risk is not profitable.

And it’s not only in the music industry. The games industry, for example, has an iteration of Call of Duty every year, despite the games being horrendously boring. There are better games, that are selling really well too, but a guaranteed $50 profit is better than a potential $70 for any company.

PS: Gave Labirinto a listen through youtube. They’re quite good!

@ John H:

Yes, true, sharing does help new artists, so much so that many independent artists even offer whole albums for free legal download on their websites.

To give you an example, I recently found out about a Brazilian post-rock band called Labirinto. Their entire debut album is available for free download on their own website. I downloaded it, and liked it so much that I ordered their CD (for the better sound quality, the experience of having another album in my collection, and for the beautiful artwork on the digipak CD).

But the point still remains: It’s up to the artist or his record label to decide whether they want to distribute any of their music for free.

Just a side note out of curiosity – is this the same Niall Ferguson?

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/11/harvard-historian-niall-ferguson-threatens-lawsuit-over-bad-review.html

If it is, this is obviously pre-ACTA – imagine what he would do had he the powers that ACTA grants.

“Daphne – Dan, Niall Ferguson has written many books and they are all bestsellers. At that level, you don’t need to promote your work for free in that manner to get your books to sell. He’s promoted enough already through his paid writing work for newspapers, speeches, lectures and television appearances.”

Exactly so what does he lose from someone who, out of respect of his work, republishing some of his work. Were it abusive the avenues already exist, so do enforcement methods. You don’t need ACTA.

“Daphne – […] The sort of people who don’t know who Niall Ferguson is just because he doesn’t give his work away for free on the interest are not going to be interested in buying his book in the first place. If you were interested in the kind of thing he writes about, then you would know who he is already, in exactly the same way I do.”

Yes I get that free publishing cheapens one’s work in certain circumstances, but still, Niall Ferguson’s academic credentials is what made him of interest in the first place – so far copyright hasn’t entered into it. And a bestseller author is not going to be hurt by niallfergusonscolumns.com, maybe Newsweek would. Still again, avenues exist. Niall doesn’t need ACTA to protect his work, neither do Newsweek or his book publishers. They already go after perpetrators through existing legal channels and successfully – take Wikileaks as an example.

“There is a very clear line, and I know about this kind of thing because it’s my line of work, between advertising your work in a controlled fashion and letting other people run away with it. Beyond a certain point, the more you give away, the less you sell, because you have devalued your own product.”

Give me an example of when people ran away with it? I can’t picture it, short of giving you no credit for a piece of writing, which then, yes, is criminal to an extent, or making money off plagarising your work – as a columnist i doubt it, as editor, maybe… but as far as I know unless it’s the recipe for Coca Cola (and even that is worthless without the brand), people copying recipes has been done millennia before the internet.

“[Daphne – OH MY GOD, THIS IS THE FRIGGING LIMIT! THEY OWN THAT WORK, YOU EFFING MORON! I apologise for losing my temper, but honestly. They haven’t produced new songs in 40 (not 30, because Lennon has been dead for more than that alone) years ergo they lose their rights to the first songs they wrote? How’s that for logic or respect for property rights? Copyright expires at law after a certain period of time in any case, but it never expires during the original owner’s lifetime and often not even in the lifetime of his or her heirs. What you are doing here is arguing against copyright law, not arguing against ACTA. ACTA seeks to make it easier to uphold copyright law. It is not INVENTING copyright. The law is there. ACTA provisions just make for easier enforcement.]”

Yes I am an effing moron, in caps. And the backspace key is always more effective than any apology, but anyway, yes why the hell should we guard intellectual property in music for so long so tightly? Even the vast majority of patents expire 20 years including medical ones (and this in the US, protector of big industry), let alone after 40 years and over, artists sitting on their hands for so long is ridiculous.

And the mechanism for enforcing copyright exists already. And you probably seem to know this since you write about this much, making it easier to enforce things isn’t necessarily the best idea. Whereas there is no conspiracy behind it, you definitely know that individuals or businesses wouldn’t hesitate to abuse the ease of enforcement had they the chance. That’s why, for example, antitrust laws are good.

And the record labels that bemoan the loss in revenue? Well they were selling us CDs, overpriced ugly discs, with pitiful artwork, easily scratched and really a waste of space. DRM music? Of course not, you like a band, you want send your friend the mp3 in the same manner you made cassette compilations two decades ago. Stop people from doing that and they’ll rather have DRM-free pirated mp3s – obviously.

Once they started reissuing vinyl and DRM-free legal mp3s people started paying up willingly. Again, demand.

Enforcing copyright on the whole is good when it’s reasonable, ACTA verges on the unreasonable – just because McCartney doesn’t like you putting a Beatles track to your latest holiday slideshow on youtube (actually it wouldn’t be McCartney – i think it stopped at the Jackson estate), he can make it possible for your internet connection to be stopped. Maybe it wouldn’t be the Beatles, maybe it wouldn’t be your holiday slideshow, but it’s policing something that has grown healthily and freely and has been so positive without interference for something in reality so ineffectual – some lazy old songwriter already rich from his hit single released 40 years ago deciding he wants more pennies for it. Organise a comeback tour, and leave common mortals alone.

Borderless treaties like ACTA (enacted not in the most democratic of ways it must be said) allow a large crime against creativity with the excuse of fighting a small crime against creativity in comparison. Prosecutors might not use the full powers it grants them, but why grant them if they don’t really need them?

Again, I repeat, it’s trying to prop up and patch a dead and obsolete business model.