Australia's biggest musical acts are crying poor in a new documentary that seeks to discourage people from obtaining music illegally and change the public's perception that they live a high life of riches and glamour...
"The problem with downloading obviously is that it's ruining our industry in a way, because I mean you know artists just aren't making money, record companies aren't making money from it," Lisa Origliasso of the Veronicas says.
People aren't downloading music because they think the artists are living a "high life of riches and glamour". They think (entirely accurately) the recording industry executives are living that high life off the artists they exploit. Damn right artists aren't paid much - but they're not paid much whether you buy the album or not.
The best way to support an artist is to go to a concert, and even then you're being outrageously ripped off by the recording industry middle-men.
How cynically do they use the people they call "talent" - the people who actually create the works, the performances - to push their own agenda? They pay them a fraction of the money they take in, and then pretend that their crusade for ever more ridiculous copyright laws is at the behest of the people they exploit. And they get them to do their dirty work for them! Silverchair, Powderfinger, the Veronicas, Operator Please, Jimmy Barnes, Evermore, Gyroscope, Frenzal Rhomb, Grinspoon, Phrase, Human Nature, Mahalia Barnes, Damien Leith, Anthony Callea, Weapon X, Ken Hell and the Dawn Collective - you're being played for suckers.
Perhaps, instead of blaming music consumers for resorting to piracy, you might ask the companies which monopolise your work why they still haven't got around to creating a digital distribution channel which sells music at a reasonable price (taking into account the reduced packaging and other such costs) and doesn't cripple it with DRM controls.
And the rest of the story is flat-out despicable:
The documentary is not yet part of a structured anti-piracy program in schools, but Heindl said it was formatted to fit neatly into existing units, such as the "Music for Free?" English unit created this year by the Commonwealth Department of Education, which examines the ethics of file sharing.
It could also accompany the "All Right to Copy?" unit on copyright, developed this year by the Copyright Advisory Group of Australian Schools and TAFEs.
Comment was being sought from the NSW Department of Education and Training and the NSW Teachers Federation.
"Not yet" part of a school curriculum? Yeah, and Cadbury's "The Delicious Science of Schweppervescence" chemistry course is still waiting approval. When will Education departments finally realise that their job is to use their authority over young children to impart corporate propaganda?
Teacher: If i have 5 Pepsis and i drink 2, how much more refreshed am I?
Student: Pepsi?
Teacher: ...Partial credit!
I doubt very much much that the "Music for Free?" unit talks about the purpose of copyright, about the original thinking behind the limited terms, about the importance of creative works becoming part of the public domain to inspire further creative works. Funnily enough, it doesn't explain how copyright isn't really "property" in the general sense of the term - it's a temporary monopoly granted by the government. I doubt it looks into the way that corporate ownership of copyright broke the original design, because corporations live forever and want to retain ownership of this limited-time monopoly right until the end of time.
I doubt very much that a genuine look at copyright is a feature of that offensive waste of kids' valuable learning time.
As I was saying - Dear parasitic music industry middlemen: if your business model collapses and disappears, you will not be missed. Artists and the community as a whole will be thrilled to discover how completely unnecessary you were, and will resent the control you were able to impose on them due to the corrupting influence of the money you extorted from them over a century. In summary: we don't care how many indentured artists you get to shill for you - we're not buying. Hurry up and die already. Yours sincerely, the entire planet (except for the dupes you've successfully bought or brainwashed).
PS Why not just be grateful for the ridiculously over-the-top criminal penalties, out of whack with those for real crime (you know, assault, murder, fraud, that sort of thing), that your vast coffers have managed to press politicians around the world into enacting? That's the side of the war you can win - after all, you've got the money to get what you want from the lazy politicians representing apathetic citizens which we call "the democratic process".
But the public relations side? I don't think the resources exist to enable you to win that one. Too many people to buy off, and too much against their direct self-interest. No matter how many celebrity videos you produce. Sorry, you poor oppressed greedy bastards. It aint gonna work.
UPDATE: In the comments Ruth links to a revealing breakdown of just how the music industry screws over artists - the problem with music.
UPDATE: As some wise soul named "Jeremy" notes in the comments:
What's going to kill the recording studios isn't piracy - it's the ability technology gives bands to professionally record music and produce videos that will cut the parasites out of the loop. When you don't need to hire their twenty thousand dollar mixing desk because you can do it on your mac with a couple of hundred dollars' worth of microphones, and you can distribute the music yourself via the net, why would you need to give the crooks a 90%+ cut of anything you make?
Two other things to consider - the industry's failure to share money recovered through piracy actions with artists; and just how do they come up with those "billions of dollars lost" figures, anyway? They never present a breakdown of how they come up with those fictional numbers, but that doesn't stop lazy media "reporting" them as if they're fact.
UPDATE #2: What did I say about the musicians being dupes? The music industry even lied to them about why they were recording the video:
An artist featured in a new campaign pushed by the Australian music industry to discourage illegal file sharing and change the public's perception that musicians live like royalty says he was duped into joining an anti-piracy "witch hunt".
Frenzal Rhomb guitarist Lindsay McDougall, also a radio presenter at Triple J, told the Herald he was furious at being "lumped in with this witch hunt" and that he had been "completely taken out of context and defamed" by the Australian music industry, which funded the video.
He said he was told the 10-minute film, which is being distributed for free to all high schools in Australia, was about trying to survive as an Australian musician and no one mentioned the video would be used as part of an anti-piracy campaign.
P, as they say, wned.
