RIAA - on the wrong side of Copyright Law

Why are Audio CDs priced at an average of $1 a track? Is it because a buck is not a serious price to pay for the creative output of a musical genius? If that were the argument, I'd buy that. As you might be aware, that's not true. How much do the end artist make off each CD? Around 10 cents a track. What do you make of it? Let's take this example.

If 10,000 copies of an album are sold at $15 a piece, the artist gets $15000 and the recording label takes $135,000. Of course, the recording label has to pay for manufacturing the CDs, for marketing them and partially for losses on albums that don't sell as expected.

I hear ya... they need to pay lawyer fees to sue individuals for acting as pirates. Oh but hey, they squeeze a lot of money out of the accused (typically $750 per track shared - have you heard of Jammie Thomas?) and they end up making a fat profit out of it. We never know if court cases can be considered an expenditure or a new source of income, so let me not count that.

The copyright law upholds the property rights of an individual or company, and as such, is a basis for success in a capitalistic society. So, the society, as a rule, takes a tough stance against anyone breaking the copyright law. Well, as a person who appreciates capitalistic ideals, it does make sense to me. But a civilized society also provides rights to criminals (at least basic human rights). So, stripping a person of $750 for sharing a song is equivalent to the Arabian law of amputating a hand because the hand was instrumental in perpetrating a crime.

RIAA's tactics of intimidating file-sharers has been met with strong criticism. RIAA singles out individuals who could be caught easily, and make them pay for the mistake of a thousand others. So, how does that help in reducing piracy? Did that stop any Chinese or Canadian torrent site from sharing files? No it doesn't. They're just taking advantage of the law to make up for the "estimated" loss caused by piracy. But that's not law is meant for. A law is put in place to restrain future criminals. If a particular law fails to achieve this goal, the law should no longer be used.

RIAA has recently realized that there are more civilized ways of dealing with the crime. They're working with ISP's to identify and prevent file-sharing. They're now using technology to prevent crime and not to identify criminals and sentence them to death.

There are other ways too.

• Get into the digital music revolution. Save money by cutting down on CD manufacturing and distribute DRM-free music online. It would be of great help if you pay the artists for digital music sales.
  
• Make music cheaper to buy. If each track costs 20 cents to purchase (ensuring the actual artist still gets paid his 10 cents), This will not stop piracy totally, but more people will end up buying original music. They have done that in India and now many people buy original CDs. They haven't done that yet for DVDs, so the DVD piracy is still a major problem.
• Use technology to detect and identify individuals sharing copyright music in a big way. Send "cease and desist" notices to them. Then use the law to help the ISP withdraw broadband service to them, and ensure he doesn't get broadband access from any other ISP.
• Release music across the world at the same time, at an affordable price. Piracy of a particular album is at it's greatest in the first week the album hits the market. Many people Rwill not resort to piracy if the album is available in their store, and if they can afford it.

The Radiohead story stands as a testimonial to the bad practices of the recording industry. Radiohead offered their new album "In Rainbows" for free, and asked users to pay whatever they wanted to for their download. Why did the do that? Because they grew tired of the business model of the labels. Although there is no official report of how successful the new distribution was, the general agreement was that even though a third of the downloads were taken for free, Radiohead received on an average of £4 per download. That's more than what they'd eventually make if they had sold the rights of their album to a label. The album was eventually distributed in the traditional formats, and they have made more money out of it.

RIAA, thanks for waking up. Please stop intimidating people, and earn your reputation back with the musicians and customers. The musicians need your encouragement in releasing their music, and the customers need your help in getting the music they want at the right price. That's how you add value to the supply-chain. Make decent profit and enjoy our love.

Blackberry "Drizzle"

One of my friends was head-over-heals about the iPhone, but he just couldn't buy one because he is on Verizon, and is not interested in either breaking the contract with Verizon or in signing a new contract with AT&T.

Out comes the Blackberry Storm and this friend of mine is very excited. He said he finally can lay his hands on a new phone that can satisfy his iPhone cravings. Even though I didn't want to dash his excitement, I was rather sure RIM can't get anywhere near the kind of interface that Apple developed for the iPhone.

Now, we get to see video after video about Blackberry's slow-as-a-snail interface. The scrolling is painfully slow. Typing on that soft sure-type keyboard, or whatever they call it, is a pain. RIM recently sent an update to the phones which alleviated some of the problems, but it gets nowhere near the slickness of the iPhone's interface.

What triggered this post is RIM's claim that their "Storm" is Verizon's best-selling device. It truly is - because people hoped for an iPhone on the Verizon network, and grabbed anything that looked like it. And what did they do after they stormed Verizon stores and bought these babies? They returned back to the store, wished the salesman in there in a polite way and returned the phone. So, are the returns counted in these "sales"?

Come on Blackberry, HTC, Samsung et al. The iPhone's user-interface is backed by at least 4 years of research. You can't just grab the idea, grind it in your favourite blender and come up with a new UI in a year. Don't try to imitate Apple - concentrate on your own selling points. Offer Stereo bluetooth, offer MMS, offer video-recording, offer VOIP, offer high-speed tethering. Flaunt the stuff that iPhone doesn't have. Do whatever, just don't imitate the iPhone and make an ass of yourself.

By far, the iPhone has the best UI on any mobile device. Other than cut-and-paste, which just complicates the UI and a slight lag here and there, I found zero problems with the UI.

So, what other platform offers a good promise with the UI? Probably Android. It's currently being developed furiously and it's open source. But Google should come out of the clutches of the carriers and offer these phones unlocked. Only then will they be able to eat into the iPhone's market-share.

Coming to market-share, there's a report that says RIM has sold 6.9 million smart-phones in Q4 so far. That's almost as many iPhone 3Gs that Apple has sold in the same period. So, if Apple can beat RIM's 10 models with just one model, who's making more money here?