A good post, John, and reflecting my thoughts as well. The content industry's words and deeds both indicate that they continue be on total denial of the p2p phenomenon. Their view on new technology and the social developments around it seems to be so distorted and fearful that they end up wasting most of their resources on the futile attempts to destroy p2p, and failing to do so, whatever adaptive measures they take fall inevitably into the category of 'way too little way too late'.
As you point out, many p2p users are perfectly willing to spend money on music and actually keep doing so despite their ongoing p2p activities. There is certainly a price level that would make both CDs and commercial online music services not only attractive but probably highly popular among file sharers, turning the 'threatening' new media into a zone of possibilities also for the record companies. But the industry refuses to see this. They still rather sell one CD for 20 dollars a piece than 10 CDs for 2 dollars a piece. They still insist on highly expensive and star-oriented promotion tactics that yield a five percent success rate with only 30 profitable new artists every year. This model is totally incompatible with the way p2p communities work. They should be busily experimenting with new p2p technologies and free peer promotion mechanisms that would yield higher success rates with much lower budgets and break-even points. But instead they isolate themselves from p2p communities and try to criminalize and harass them in a nazi fashion. They have already run out of sympathy and should there not be some drastic policy changes they will eventually also run out of money.
- tg
