« Sharing your library | Main | Now you can talk with Google ... sort of »
August 24, 2005
Broken promises. Broken record.
Suddenly, the music industry loves technology. Releasing a new e-label distribution mechanism that will rely on digital downloads instead of compact discs, chairman and CEO of Warner Bros Music, Edgar Bronfman appealed to the technology industry to set aside its differences with the entertainment industry and work together to ensure its hardware and software protects copyright.
Why would anyone else want to work with an industry that recognises nobody's interests but its own? An industry, furthermore, that conceals the benefits it has gained from technology, inflates any losses, and lies about its tactics.
Bronfman had the sheer gall to claim, for instance, that he didn't support government interference in "what should be normal fair-market mechanisms". Pardon? The music industry and the movie industry lobbied the US Government to bundle TRIPS into the World Trade Organisation, utterly poisoning fair-market mechanisms.
The industry abhors fair-market mechanisms. What it seeks, at every turn - and is prepared to pay to get, is protection. It's actually succeeded in obtaining massive public funding for a private tax on consumers.
As Bronfman puts it: "We like government levies when they benefit us. I would like none of the legislators in France, for instance, to say they should no longer pay us a levy for all the blank CDs that are being sold, (though) it doesn't make up for the revenue that we're losing. If the government mandated filtering technologies, we'd be delighted." Fair market? Phshaw!
This is the situation. It isn't only France that imposes levies on blank cassettes and CDs. The industry gets similar payments from other European countries, and from Canada. Even Bleeding Edge originally thought this might be a good idea, until we realised that the industry pockets this money ... and gives absolutely nothing in return.
It's still bleating about the cost of CD copying, using figures that, as we've said in the past, are clearly fictitious.
We need the technology industry to stand up to these robber barons. And we need governments to do the same thing.
Posted by cw at August 24, 2005 10:38 AM