2008-02-01 10:01:00
The RIAA should be careful what they ask for...because they just might get it.
The RIAA's entire case and frame-of-reference is that they are providing better
entertainment product that anyone else and that all copying of their product is
stealing material goods from them. They are then attacking people who download
and 'consume' RIAA product. These attacks, they believe, will stop the
downloading for free and return to the purchase of individual units of RIAA
product on disk media.
This is not true. The distribution of free entertainment product is an
established fact now. It's not going to go away. Nor will the RIAA/MPAA ever be
able to charge for downloaded product what they charge for the product on disk.
The market has changed.
By persecuting people who consume downloaded RIAA/MPAA product, they will not
bring these people back to overpriced entertainment product, they will create a
secondary market of non-RIAA product that is available through low or no-cost
download.
The RIAA is destroying the market for their own product.
They assume that because the RIAA product is better entertainment quality now
that it will always be better entertainment product that non-RIAA material. But
non-RIAA entertainment will get better over time given the large audience.
The RIAA should refocus on what they do best. They should be taking all the
dork music and videos on YouTube and the alt-RIAA music sites and giving
recommendations for improvement. Then they should offer contracts to marginal
bands for low cost distribution of music and videos. They need to learn to
function inside the 'long tail'. If they don't then someone else will and they
will lose the opportunity to enter and profit in this new market.
Most likely, the RIAA will split the music business into two basic parts; a
mass-media world of a few stars and an 'underground' of no stars, but groups
with clusters of devoted fans. This exists today, but what the RIAA will create
in the coming years is a market where the people in the musical underground
will have no interest in the rock/pop star world . A market situation will
arise where large sections of the population will have a 'magnetic like-pole'
adversion to RIAA mass pop product. This would be bad for the RIAA (I know,
they're just a front company, but I mean all the companies that fund the RIAA)
because it will cause them to permanently lose 1/3 to 1/2 of their current
market.
If that happens, then it won't matter if they lower their product prices, or
remove the DRM. Because a large segment of the musical market will have a
fundamental aversion to their product, and won't consume it under any market
conditions.
This is the true danger to the RIAA in their current actions.