Comment by bonch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bonch | Hacker News Reader

"Suing people who are giving you money...spending millions on propaganda deeming sharing an illegal act."

How is someone who is pirating music giving the RIAA money? Isn't sharing copyrighted materials in fact an illegal act?

I've long thought that a lot of the RIAA hatred stems from pirates looking for a scapegoat to portray as the "real" bad guy so as to negate their own guilty feelings. It's easier to rip artists off if you feel like you're ripping off some evil, faceless corporation instead. It's silly that anyone was upset with the RIAA over suing people who were pirating their copyrighted materials. They were well within their rights to do so, and it's their job to protect the rights of the content owners they represent.

Unfortunately, opinions like this one are often drowned out. Many people have grown so accustomed to the free ride that they don't want it taken away, and they don't want to be reminded that they are in fact ripping artists off. The artists must always be kept out of the equation.

> How is someone who is pirating music giving the RIAA money?

Because actual research shows that a lot (but certainly not all) of the people who pirate music are also big consumers of music, i.e. they both download illegaly and buy music. The divide between freeloaders and honest consumers that the RIAA portrays doesn't exist, it's a complex greyscale.

Other research has pretty much proven that piracy emerges when a large section of the consumers don't agree with the pricing of goods on a market, and a monopoly or other disruption causes the market not to self-correct. Now you can fight a piracy market either with legislation and law enforcement, or you can actually compete with it, provide better service and better pricing.

This is why iTunes is such an incredible hit, it corrected the market. DRM-free music for 99 cents a song is a much better product than a DRM-laden album for 15$, and for a lot of people this product is better than the pirated product which means they became honest consumers again.

This is why Spotify and Last.FM are such incredible hits. Unlimited music, and pay 15$ a month to remove the ads. This is an even better product than iTunes, and has won over another huge part of the pirate consumers.

Where I live, kids these days do not have mp3 collections. Few of them knows what an mp3 actually is, but almost all of them have iTunes or Spotify. They don't understand why you would want to keep a file library on your computer, they open a program, search for what they want to listen to, and get to do it instantly.

And this is what piracy proponents have been arguing the entire time: The way to beat piracy is to provide a better service, not to bludgeon people into accepting your monopoly price with lawsuits and propaganda.

Then look at Justin Bieber. He started out by posting videos of himself to YouTube, and now that he's rich and famous, he still gives away all of his music for free. Everything is there, for anyone to look at and listen to, no DRM bullshit, no cost, no "this video is not available in your area because of..."

But he's swimming in money, by selling "The Justin Bieber Experience", concerts, merchandise, acne ads, and now even a motion picture. And most of that money simply doesn't exist in that RIAA graph of the article, because it's not cd sales, it's simply not how he makes his money.

> The divide between freeloaders and honest consumers that the RIAA portrays doesn't exist, it's a complex greyscale.

I really like this way of describing things, thank you.

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