An Open Letter to the RIAA and MPAA

There was a time when copyright was valuable.  It was the mechanism artists used to protect the massive investment they placed into the creation of intellectual works.  There was a time when copyright benefited the artist.

Those days are long past, and you, RIAA and MPAA, and the corrupt industries you represent, are directly to blame.  You have failed to adapt, to change with the landscape.  You whine and complain about piracy, about people stealing intellectual property.  Then, you have the temerity to claim that it “hurts the artists.”  Bull.  It hurts your bottom line, plain and simple. Be honest about it.  You know that it’s true.  Musicians make their money from concerts, not from albums.  Actors are guaranteed scale, at the very least(unless they do video game voiceovers; a posting for another day).

Television studios get it.  They’ve moved their content to the web for FREE!  They allow you to embed that content ANYWHERE!  Sure, you can’t download it, but who cares.  If I can watch whatever I want whenever I want, who cares if I have to watch it online.  The convenience overshadows the inconvenience, and that is, in fact, the magic formula.

But you just make things too inconvenient.  I buy a DVD, and you tell me it’s illegal to decrypt it and store it on my hard drive.  You tell me I can’t rip CD’s and store the songs in MP3 format for transport to my iPod.  You sell me digital music online with DRM so I can’t even change it into formats for multiple devices.

Yet all I have to do is turn on a bit torrent client, and if I wanted, I could find every one of your properties in an easily transportable format.  I can use it anywhere, and on any device.  Not only that:  I can get content you won’t release.  I can watch old TV episodes.  I can download old silent movies.  I can listen to unreleased tracks.

You don’t seem to get it.  The genie is out of the bottle.  You will never be able to cork that bottle again.  You can do what you like, but every measure you’ve taken has been countered.  You don’t understand the technology.  If you did, you would USE it rather than fight it. You claim bit torrent and other peer to peer mechanisms, are destroying your business.  I hate to tell you this, but it’s no secret that your business model has failed.  IT IS NO LONGER RELEVANT.  Peer to peer just demonstrates that, it didn’t cause it.  You see the internet as a disruptive technology.  It’s not.  It’s a revolutionary innovation.  It’s time you saw that.  Embrace that innovation, or die in the wake of its change.  Those are your only two choices.

I’m not advocating piracy.  Far from it.  I think people SHOULD pay for media.  I just think that the consumer should have some rights in the exchange.  They should have the right to convert that content to multiple formats so it can be used in a variety of devices.  They should be able to make a reasonable number of backup copies of all media they purchase (which is guaranteed by fair use, and has now become illegal due to the Digital Millennium Content Act).

Intellectual Property law is broken.  That became obvious the day Congress extended copyright length to protect Disney’s copyright of Mickey Mouse. So how do we fix this?  First, RIAA, you need to stop suing people for downloading content.  That’s just ludicrous.  Just because you can’t get at the real pirates doesn’t mean you should take out your frustration on Ma and Pa Kettle.  MPAA, you need to stop PURPOSELY ruining audio quality on movies just so you can track where they were recorded.  Don’t ruin my movie experience just because you’re paranoid about intellectual property theft.

See what the TV studios are doing?  It’s called adaptation.  You can do the same thing.  You can’t protect your current revenue stream.  It’s impossible.  You need a new one, an internet based revenue stream.  For the MPAA, that probably means commercials in your content, something you’re obviously not opposed to since you now place commercials at the start of movies that run in the theaters(and really, don’t get me started on that rant).  For the RIAA, it means selling all of your content DRM free.  ALL OF IT.  And no playing favorites with some stores.

Work our your foreign licensing.  Open up your content to the world.  Offer ALL of your content.  Make it more convenient for people and I guarantee you that they will flock back to you.  You just need to make it worth their while.  Why should they pay $20 for a movie they can only use on their DVD player when they can get legal content online (from places like Revision3, CNet, Mevio, etc, etc) for FREE and use it anywhere they want.

Oh, and a final word just for the MPAA:  Indiana Jones 4?  What the hell were you thinking.  STOP IT.  Just because a franchise made you some dough, doesn’t mean you need to resurrect it.  STOP making really good old movies into horrible new ones.  Here’s an idea:  Take really bad old movies and remake them into really good modern movies.  Now that would be worth paying for.  TV shows don’t make good movies.  You’ve demonstrated that again and again, so STOP DOING IT.  Stop thinking about the bottom line and start thinking about making great content.  Really, it works.  People would rather pay to watch a forward moving plot and interesting characters than pay to watch one liners and huge explosions.  Really, you underestimate our intelligence.  STOP THAT.

Okay, rant over.

~ by dogboi on June 4, 2008.