November 29, 2004

Record company greed continues

by brian_turner

EMI, Warner, Sony BMG and Universal, as well as a number of Australian record companies, have taken Kazaa to court again – this time in Australia.

Despite defeats in the USA (Grokster and Streamcast) and the Netherlands (Kazaa), the giants or music recording still insist on powering home one simple message – that they are big fat greedy bastards, intent on slamming little people.

Despites Kazaa apparently allowing 100 million users to swap 3 billion files a month, the UK record industry reported their best album sales for years.

Perhaps internet file-sharing is a more connected way than what we did in school, copying tapes for one another to share and expand our music tastes. But it remains the main system in which to introduce new consumers to new markets.

Maybe one day the larger record companies will wake up to the fact that recent sales losses have been due to massive inroads of computer game and DVD purchases, rather than file-sharing itself. Especially when the majority of files involved are often of poor quality, so consumers are forced by the clarity of digital playback to seek higher quality versions – such as original distributed legitimate copies.

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