4 Years Ago (2017)

I was writing about the recording industry trying to rebrand/sell itself as the “music” industry.

The Recording Industry is a section of the “music industry.”

But the Recording Industry likes to sell and market itself as the Music Industry.

The Music Industry is everything.

There is the recording industry who are involved in getting artists to recording and releasing music. The release can be via vinyl, CD’s and mp3’s and streaming.

But there is also licensing, touring (and people involved with touring like drivers, road crew), merchandise, publishing, musical instruments (sellers, manufacturers and buyers), music hardware, music software, video production and many more.

And a lot of movement was happening within governments around internet privacy. So I was asking the question, where is the outrage from artists.

There is a lot of press about outraged artists due to streaming and piracy but when it came to their internet privacy being sold to a corporation, there was nothing. Not even a word.

Governments deny that climate change exists and people scream in protest. Governments take away more of our privacy and there is silence.

8 Years Ago (2013)

I wrote about how DRM in games was hindering the real paying customers and how it really doesn’t stop people from copying the game. But the game makers want stronger DRM and enforcement as they believe they are losing money due to pirated copies.

Circa 2011, the MPAA stated that piracy losses amounted to $58 billion.  

How did they quantify the amount?

They didn’t, but they used it over and over again when they spoke to politicians about getting new laws written up.

I remember seeing that Transformers 1 (T1) and (T2) where the most pirated movies over Bit Torrent. T1 made $710M and T2 made $840M. T3 wasn’t on any torrent list and it made $1.3 Billion.

Maybe because the people that downloaded a torrent of T1 and T2 became fans and paid to watch T3. Maybe those little kids that downloaded T1 and T2 became fans and are now old enough to go to the cinema on their own and watch it.

One thing is certain, piracy is designed by the lobby groups so that they can get stupid legislation passed that puts them back in control of the distribution.