Piracy on The Web….yeah, Right

From the moment music was capable of being recorded the exploitation of the musician plus gouging the pocket of the consumer created the most perfect example of rapacious capitalism.

Here was a pig who couldn’t sing a note or play chopsticks, who couldn’t run the machine which pressed the records that were sold in outlets, but was making millions upon millions of dollars off other people’s labour.

Jamaica had the most obvious exploiters in the world.  Portrayed in the movie The Harder They Come it was more fact that fiction.  But Jamaican big bellied men who ‘controlled’ the music industry were easily thwarted by a local artiste signing with a foreign company. 

The foreign companies were slightly better, but it was the same situation; those who performed got 1c those who owned record companies got 70c, and the rest of the money paid for the pressing of the record.

By the 1970s people would tape music they liked and record sales dropped somewhat.  By 2000 most people got their music off the ‘Net. 

The person who suffers is the Recording Company.  Good. 

Artistes had to perform to make money.  This is the way it should be.  It isn’t just the song it is the performance. Today that paradigm has returned.  People get to disconnect and go somewhere and see something in real time; they have an experience, a real experience.

The Law being pushed to ‘protect’ copyright in the United States benefits no one but the Recording Companies. To a lesser extent, publishers.

Wikipedia’s response of a black out on January 18th should be adopted by many other sites which should make it clear that if this law comes into effect, American users of the Net will be locked out of the World Wide Web.  

I am not for infringing copywrite; a person should benefit from their original creations, not someone else. But the way the law is worded will make many sites have to bar American users just in case there is a breach.

Linking to a site, for example, would be a breach.  Hence if one were to refer to a copywritten work, and give the link to it, that could be seen as a breach. 

People have to see through the push for this new law and find that it only benefits big bellied men who have had to adjust their belts.