larry borsato

The IFPI (Europe’s RIAA), having failed to stop music downloading through every other avenue, is now pushing the problem on to ISPs, saying that ”Copyright theft has been allowed to run rampant on their networks under the guise of technological advancement".

The IFPI claims that P2P is a huge problem, choking the bandwidth of ISPs using the ridiculous argument that the infrastructure is collapsing, and they want those ISPs to filter that content.

They note that legal digital downloads grew 53% last year and album downloads grew by over 40%, for a total of $2.9 billion in sales, an increase of 40% year over year. But I guess that isn’t enough for them.

Strangely, if they got their wish and every single download was legal, that would choke the bandwidth even more. I suppose it isn’t a problem them as long as the cash is flowing in.

Digital downloads have near zero cost – there are no manufacturing, shipping, or inventory costs and the artists are paid a fraction of what they are for a physical CD – yet the record companies still charge 99 cents for a download. So the only motive can be greed.

If I were them I would just shut up about the whole thing and be happy that any money is still rolling in because pretty soon artists are going to realize that they don’t need a record company anymore.