THE GREAT
P2P BOYCOTT
Way Too Little, Way Too Late, For All the Wrong Reasons
28 Mar. 2005 -- The peer-to-peer crowd has decided
to take drastic action against the music and movie industries.
The good news is that they are finally going to boycott the entertainment
industries. The bad news is that they're only going to do it
for a week.
And they can't even agree on
which week.
The people over at P2PUnite
offer this approach:
"The last week in April
2005 - 24th up until and including 30th - show them how much
money we are spending on their products by denying them our hard
earned income. Do not go to the movies; do not buy any entertainment
products during that week.
"This is not to be confused
as saying, 'go pirate everything you can find as the production
companies are common robbers.' Instead, this is a way to show
that we are indeed supporting them already, so stop fighting
your customers!
"Show them we mean business!"
Meanwhile, the UK
file sharers have picked a different week altogether, suggesting
April 1 to 7 as the time to avoid purchases.
"We know that sales directly
affect artists contracts with record labels which is why we suggest
only one week. We do not want artists dropped from lables and
ruining careers just because the industry wants to take the money
out of your pocket. We just want record labels to take less money
for themselves from a cd sale.
"We embrace the new online
music stores but a recent decision by several companys to raise
prices pushed us into feeling we needed to do this."
Reality Check
As much as I loathe the recording
industry, the p2p crowd doesn't appear to be much brighter, except
possibly technologically.
"Show them we mean
business!" --
For a week? I haven't bought a major label release since 2000.
I also do not download or share their music. You're going to
show them you mean business in a week? That's like thinking we
could have won World War II by bypassing bratwurst and sushi
for a week.
"...this is a way to
show that we are indeed supporting them already." -- "We embrace the new online
music stores" -- There is half of the problem right
there. They like the pap being produced by the majors. Originally,
I stopped buying music because there was nothing new I wanted
to hear. Now I do it out of principle. The new online music stores
have a minimalist selection (artificial scarcity) and are selling
you inferior compressed copies at a higher price than you paid
for them on a CD.
"We do not want artists
dropped from lables (sic) and ruining careers..." -- Why the hell not? They have been
calling you pirates for five years now. Mark
Knopfler, Brian Wilson, Stevie Wonder, Metallica, Don Henley,
Sheryl Crow, Elton John -- they've all sold millions and millions
of records by paying radio to get their songs played so you could
listen to them for free. Now they call you thieves for listening
to their music for free.
"...a recent decision
by several companys to raise prices..."
"We just want record
labels to take less money for themselves from a cd sale." -- These guys have missed the entire
story. Record company takes less money; artists get less money.
This is about so much more than the price of a CD.
The p2p community either doesn't
have a clue or simply doesn't want one.
Follow-up
7 May 2005 -- Let's see. How'd they do? Not very
damn well.
Movie attendance was
down. This was the 11th week in a row that box office receipts
have been down. Could be that the movies they put out lately
just suck. Could be because the MPAA started suing people and
all of us who already were boycotting the RIAA decided not the
give the movie extortionists any more cash, either. But that
started three months ago, not last week.
No mention of a big decline
in record sales. Bruce Springsteen sold 220,000 copies of his
new CD (which
will NOT be available at Starbucks). Overall retail sales
were up slightly last week.
I even called Eric Garland
over at BigChampagne,
which monitors peer-to-peer traffic. and he said, "P2P boycott?
Really?" He said he'd have his people look at last week's
numbers and let me know if he found anything significant. That
was three days ago, so I'm betting that they haven't found anything.
If people stopped using p2p in great numbers last week, you'd
think they would have easily spotted it. Then again, this wasn't
even in the original plan of action.
It was a non-event. Here's
a hint for next time: Tell them you're going to boycott until
[your complaint here] happens or stops happening, as the case
may be. Then you actually do it. If you start out knowing you'll
give up in a week regardless of the effect or lack of it (and
the "opposition" knows it, too), don't bother.
Theoretically, the 60 million
or so people who are using p2p have the power to change things.
The barrier to such a vision is the realization that, collectively,
they don't care about the music or the artists any more than
the RIAA does.
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