The full-page advertisement in Monday's Daily Pennsylvanian, brought to you by the Motion Picture Association of America, read, "If you think you can get away with illegally trafficking in movies, think again. Lawsuits begin this week."
And by the way, go see Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason! A plucky romantic comedy about a young girl and her bizarre yet loveable self-doubt.
The music and movie industries both behave as if it's a given that file sharing has brought them to their knees. I feel especially bad for the MPAA, still reeling from the controversial 1984 decision Sony v. Betamax. How right they were that the advent of home video technology would utterly destroy people's interest in seeing movies in theaters.
For what it's worth, the widespread threat of lawsuits has had its desired effect on me. I don't download (hear that, Recording Industry Association of America?). But just because I have been bludgeoned into obedience doesn't mean their actions are right, or even justified given current industry data.
A recent article in The Economist stated, "According to an internal study done by one of the [major record labels], between two-thirds and three-quarters of the drop in sales in America had nothing to do with [Internet] piracy. No one knows how much weight to assign to each of the other explanations: rising physical CD piracy, shrinking retail space, competition from other media, and the quality of the music itself. But creativity doubtless plays an important part."
Alain Levy, chairman of EMI Music, has admitted the same thing. He refers to the music industry's "disease," or its propensity for producing one-hit acts with zero staying power.
The article goes on to graph by year Rolling Stone's top 500 albums of all time. Needless to say, from the mid-'90s on is pretty much the rock bottom of great albums. So is it so radical to believe that people buy fewer CDs because CDs aren't as good as they used to be?
This is not to say that Rolling Stone's list is perfect -- far from it. Although any top-500 album list will be contested, at a certain level music is a matter of fact and not a matter of taste (and it is a fact that Tool's uber-album Lateralus, left off the list, is better under any criteria than Devo's 1978 offering Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!). Also left off the list altogether was Tupac (gee, I've heard of him), and DJ Shadow's seminal album Endtroducing ... in lieu of some rather questionable other choices (The White Stripes? Gag).
However, it is as good a compilation as is out there, and though the article takes pains to point out that it is difficult to quantify the quality of pop music currently being produced, it is not difficult to tell that the music being made today isn't as good as what came before it.
I fundamentally believe that if you produce a good product, most people will pay for it. There will always be those who will use any available means to get around that, but they aren't the average consumer. And the better your product is, the more people will want to pay for it. For example, I want to pay for Madden every year. I believe in the institution of Madden. If Electronic Arts came out with a free Madden one year, I would pay them anyway.
I haven't seen any evidence that indicates that since kids started downloading movies, the movie industry has suffered. Indeed, if a second-rate horror flick like The Grudge can gross $100 million (so far), it seems that the movie industry is doing fine. But the MPAA is certainly taking its cues from the music business as far as lawsuits go, and I'm not sure that's good for profit margins.
To date, the RIAA has sued over 6,000 of its own customers. It has spent millions of dollars trying to uninvent the wheel. It has not recognized that file-sharing technology isn't going anywhere. It has not recognized that suing 6,000 people doesn't make its albums any better. But the greatest point industry leaders are missing is that, even if file-sharing technology didn't exist, they still would have seen a decline in sales because that's what happens when you make a shitty product.
CD sales have gone from $13.2 billion in 2000 to $11.2 billion in 2003, according to the industry's figures. During that time, file sharing has become more mainstream. But that does not guarantee causation. In the last three years, I have eaten more cheesesteaks while the crime rate in Tulsa has steadily declined (OK, so I have no idea what the crime rate in Tulsa has done. But you get the idea).
Music gives us heroes. Previous decades have produced bands like Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix. The much-maligned '80s brought us thoughtful rock from U2 and innovators like Peter Gabriel. Even the early '90s had power: Nirvana, Pearl Jam and labels like Death Row and Bad Boy. What current equivalent do we have to look back on 10 years down the road? Petey Pablo? Britney Spears? Good Charlotte?
It's enough to make a guy want to move to Canada.
Eliot Sherman is a senior English major from Philadelphia and editorial page editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. Diary of a Madman normally appears on Thursdays.
