30.7.2006
The myths of filesharing
Norbottens-Kuriren runs
a story on the myths of filesharing.
"The law against filesharing is a fact, the debate is in foll bloom, and everybody wants to have a solution. But what will eventually happen? How shall we consume music five years from now? On the other side is the industry, [justice minister] Bodström and the law enforcement. On the other side are the Pirates: both the Bureau and the Party. The pirates want to ditch the copyright law and legalize all filesharing. The industry is fighting with at any cost against free filesharing and refers to the legal download sites available. The situtation appears to be locked. But solutions have to be found - that is the only thing the two parties agree on."
With this introduction the newspaper the newspaper poses the question to Rogel Wallis, a professor from the Royal Technical University, who also happens to be the chairman in Skap, the organization of Swedish pop music composers, and a composer himself. How shall we average music consumers buy our music five years from now?
The question makes Wallis to take first a deep breath. "Five years is a long time. I don't think there is any possibility to stop filesharing." He compares the present situation to the moment in the beginning of the last century when public radio broadcasts started in the USA. At the time the music publishers wanted to prevent the playing of music in the radio. They argued that if music could flow freely and if people could hear what they wanted, their market of printed scores would collapse. The issue was solved with a license of a sort, and with it the American version of Stim (the Swedish royalty collection organization for musicians) got started.
"Now many are looking for a similar solution. A license fee targeting all broadband users, to compensate the copyright owners the losses from their
presumably reduced sales. But it is not at all certain that copyright owners, record and movie companies are suffering any major economical damage due to filesharing", says Roger Wallis. "The myth that every downloaded song or film equals a lost CD sale or an unsold movie ticket has no truth whatsoever. This much we know from research." Instead Wallis thinks that Internet works today much like radio worked earlier: through Internet people hear music that they end up liking, and then they go to buy either the song or the album.
As for the future options, the two alternative extremes are either to liberate it all or to keep pursuing filesharers. Neither of these is particularly attractive to Roger Wallis. He characterizes the present situation as 'moral panic'. "Moral panic tends always to overshoot, and is later replaced by more pragmatic business solutions. But this panic has been exceptionally powerful. On this particular case there has been an unforeseen amount of lobbying, and there is a huge amount of money in the background. This battle will continue for a long time."