Talking of copyright, Downhill Battle is an interesting site about the Recording Industry Association of America and the relationship between CD sales and actually paying the artists who provide the music.

I'm posting this not because I particularly agree with using file sharing networks to avoid paying for music but because I think that the RIAA's approach to file sharing is entirely arse backward, and because I don't buy music anymore.

My belief that the RIAA is going about dealing with file sharers all wrong is that there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that people who downloaded music from the original Napster went on to buy more CDs rather than less. In other words, giving away music acted as a promotional tool rather than hurting CD sales.

I don't buy music not particularly because I wish to boycott the RIAA, but because I don't know what to buy and the cost is too high to risk much experimentation: there are few radio stations around which play anything except the RIAA-promoted play lists, and nothing I hear makes me want to buy. I occasionally buy the latest CD from a favourite band (eg Blur, New Order) but that's based on exactly the same artist loyalty that makes me buy books by Banks and Pratchett.

Still, there you go. I'm going to go and listen to some more of the music I bought five years ago when I was still buying CDs.

Posted by Dunx at December 10, 2003 02:59 PM