It does, however, give an excellent opportunity to viciously needle every iphone user in my acquaintance.

While I understand that respecting consumers' rights may seem to make fighting piracy more difficult, this is an illusion. Restrictions on the use of DVD and Blu-Ray have merely made legal content less appealing as opposed to the more useful “unlocked” pirated content. I have no easy answers for you regarding the prosperity of those who choose to dedicate their lives to selling art of various kinds; I wish them the best, but the industry is in great turmoil and will continue to be. There is no way to turn the clock back now, but I believe that in the long run these disrupting technologies will be beneficial for most artists. Revenue may be lower when working on your own, but not having your work used to sue single mothers for millions of dollars by the corporation that really owns it is invaluable.

Thanks for joining the discussion!

I agree that education is important, but I don't think it will be as successful as your website seems to indicate you believe it will be. The RIAA has been trying to educate the public about copyright laws since at least 2006. Based on the RIAA's numbers piracy has increased rather than decreased during that time. Personally I believe that education is not a perfect answer for two reasons: First education is not 100 percent affective. To get a driver's license in the U.S. high school students must take driver's education classes. Despite the fact that these classes emphasize the importance of not speeding, thousands (if not millions) of speeding tickets are issued in the U.S. every year. Second, Copyright law is extremely complicated. For example Microsoft, Yahoo, and Real were just sued two days ago for failing to acquire all of the proper licenses to stream music.

Thus I believe that music piracy will forever be a part of the music industry. However this does not mean that the music industry cannot be successful. With both education and a rhetoric change I believe that piracy will be mostly committed by people unwilling/unable to pay for music. Thus this piracy will result in minimal lost sales (if they weren't pirating they still wouldn't be paying). Given this scenario music need not necessarily add value to sell. However music has been free to consumers for a long time. While advertisers paid radio stations licenses, consumers were under no obligation to purchases advertisers products. A number of companies are trying to transition this model to the internet (e.g. a company I work for http://www.trueanthem.com).

There are a number of exciting and interesting models to sell music being tested right now. One of the things they tend to have in common is an appeal to consumers to legally buy music (or legally purchase for free) instead of downloading illegally. I suggest you look into some of them for releasing your upcoming album. I hope you find one that fits you. Music is meant to be shared, and I doubt the government will or could affect the sort of changes in copyright law that your website suggests you are waiting for.

Furthermore, people accustomed to getting everything for free do not necessarily need to have “added value” — they need to understand that IT NEVER WAS FREE. They paid for the “free' music on the radio by buying the sponsors' sproducts (not free!) and that nothing the public beieves to be “free” really is, in the long run.

Fortunately, a number of people are working to change things. At the close of my Open Letter on my website http://www.leighharrison.com (on the page “Upcoming CD”) I add information at the bottom of my Letter about some of the ways things are changing. I will be adding a link to this site as soon as possible, and I also suggest that those who are concerned about this contact The Bats (releasethebats) in the UK, which is a group very concerned with this issue as well, in addition to ASCAP and The Copyright Alliance, who are all working strenuously to change things for the better for all of us who live by our music or art.

Leigh Harrison

I found the article you linked to quite interesting. It outlines the necessary paths by which the RIAA could regain control over lawbreaking, but I see it as implicitly acknowledging that the RIAA will not and cannot succeed. The very strategies it details are good for copyright law, good for the public, and good for artists – but they would destroy the firms manipulating copyright law to their own advantage.

I think that many recording industry folks think they can sneak out of this by upping the ante just a little bit with sweet talk and a slightly nicer deal for consumers. However, the proverbial blood has been spilled and the sharks can smell it. Sure, a good story and added value would be enough IF the guys who made music got all (or most) of the money. We know they won't, because it would falls into conflict with a business model which relies on Warner/Universal/BMG/EMI taking ninety percent of the revenue for themselves.

I don't think that the current industry has the will or the capability to succeed in today's economy. Today's labels are burdened by heavy expenses which require massive revenue just to stay in the black, let alone turn a profit. I do not see how they can survive without drastically cutting general business costs and slashing any expenditures on distribution, marketing, etc. until they can get music out to the public with the same overhead as the Pirate Bay has. In other words, any labels which thrive in this environment will look absolutely nothing like what we expect from a recording company.

Thanks for your comment. I am no more of a supporter of the RIAA then I am of music piracy. In fact, I wrote a lengthy post about how I believe the RIAA should not have filed individualized lawsuits (http://www.runwiththelaw.com/2009/06/email-to-a...).

I believe piracy well never be completely eliminated. Instead I think the music industry must focus on adding value to music to entice purchase. As the original article points out people are accustomed to getting music for free. To compete against free the music industry must add value besides the music itself to entice people to purchase. I believe an example of this is cable television. Before cable television people were used to receiving all tv for free. Cable television added value by providing a strong signal to areas which only got poor coverage. As cable expanded it continued to add value by providing content that was not available on network television. Now most of the United States subscribes to cable or satellite television.

I believe that for the music industry to succeed it must find ways to add value. A number of artist and labels are trying different approaches which will be featured in my next blog post.

If you've decided that it doesn't matter “whether the narrative is true or not” (is that copyright infringement? with the strangling of fair use, it's becoming hard to tell) I am guessing your stories will become even more imaginative. What will you come up with next?

I am also interested in seeing how you would respond if piracy were completely eliminated, and you had to compete vs social networks, video games, and free media for time and money. What excuse would you use then? Maybe you would lobby for yet more changes in the law, like the newspapers?

Screw that. I'd rather donate money to Google than buy your products and support your industry of extortion.