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New MP3 Logo Confuses BPIby George Ziemann -- November 6, 2008 Britain's version of the RIAA, in support of a logo indicating generic mp3 files: "This logo will not only help give consumers confidence that the music files they are buying will play on a wide range of devices, but will also help them know that they are legal and that artists are getting paid." This quote is attributed to Geoff Taylor, the BPI's chief executive, who seems to have detached himself from reality. Let's look at the logo in question.  As we can see, this logo illustrates the obvious fact that mp3 files are universal and device independent. They are 100% compatible with everything that plays music in a digital format. Despite every effort by the recording industry in their long attempt to kill the mp3 format, it has become the standard.
I'll agree with that much, but I'm still not certain why the labels suddenly think this is a good thing after hating mp3 for a decade.
This is apparently written in some sort of invisible type or something and Taylor seems to be the only one that sees that part. He's the only one talking about anything other than mp3 files work everywhere. The idea that mp3 = "legal + artists get paid" seems like the exact opposite of what they've been telling us for 10 years, and still nowhere near the truth. Napster could have used that logo. Or LimeWire, Grokster, Kazaa. I could put it on my music page. All the songs are mp3. They're 100% compatible. That is all this logo says, the only thing the retailers who adopted it claim that it indicates. In my case, they're 100% legal, too. But no one is/was getting paid in any of those scenarios. At 15 cents a song, applied against recoupable expenses, the artists signed to major labels aren't getting paid, either. But the true mind-fuck comes when you consider that Taylor's views are determined by the same four record labels that determine Mitch Bainwol's opinion at the RIAA. In Britain, they're going to tell you that "mp3 -- 100% compatible" will "...help them know that they are legal and that artists are getting paid." So sharing them shouldn't be a problem. The files are legal and the artists are getting paid. This should clear up all the legal misunderstandings, eh? I can't wait to see the RIAA start trying to sell this idea at the same time they are still suing kids by the thousands. They can't push the notion that mp3s are legal and illegal at the same time. Or that your specific mp3 file, purported to be legal when you bought it, becomes illegal once you own it. The "education" campaign has been replaced by a logo acknowledging, at last, the complete and utter defeat of the record industry's misguided and short-sighted bastard child we know as DRM. DRM is now officially an epic example of FAIL. That's a good thing. "...they are legal... artists are getting paid." So downloading isn't theft anymore (of course, it never really was), mp3 is the new standard file format (the first time ever that the new standard is decidedly inferior to the old one), which is now legal instead of the scourge of humanity and destroyer of Metallica's soul. The cartel's new message cannot coexist with the old message. It is a paradox in that both cannot be true at the same time. On the other hand, neither message falls within the parameters of truth; both are a combination of carefully selected facts and compulsive lying based on extremely thin logic, in those few occasions that logic is even introduced at all. This is not one of those occasions. |
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