The moral quandrum that is filesharing/piracy

Megaupload from New Zealand was closed down last week amidst some uproar. I lost some images and patches there myself in an account I used in my work. But I got the originals so no harm has happened. But that also proves that not everything on Megauploads was illegal. Only 99 % of it or thereabout.

The replacement for Megauploads is going to be servers and services from Russia with connections to and protected by the Russian government and the mafia over there. They are allready up and running and most of you musicians reading this are probably victims of them already. The problem I can see is if those uploading dodgy, not to mention directly illegal stuff like porn etc etc may be subjects of the Russian spy organisations and some good old KGB/CIA/MI6 like black mailing. "You give us the intelligence and we will not tell your wife/community/police about these pictures". There are scientists stupid enough to do that.

With Megaupload and the Swiss Rapidfiles, that was not a problem though.

Anyway..........

When I worked in the music industry as a record label owner and distributor, I got a pretty good idea about the markups, production costs & all other costs, profits and losses. In my cases, I had more losses than profits so that was the end of that. But I still got the knowledge so I should know a thing or two about this subject.

Just when Napster arrived on the scene, a CD sold for £ 15 here in the UK. The big artists lived like kings and wasted massive amount of money on the lifestyles CD prices like that gave them. Michael Jackson being the most known of the kings with a kind of lifestyle most would brand obscene. It was obscene times and there was a heck of a lot of money in the system. Mainly because the general public paid far too much for the music. They had no choice because there were in effect no competition. No competition whatsoever.

Napster changed all that. Suddenly, the music industry got competition from illegal downloading. Lars Ulrich & Metallica got Napster closed down. But the geni was out of the bottle and the good old days, morally corrupt old days will never return. The music industry has got real competition this time. Competition means the prices of music has fallen down to a more realistic level. The recent recession has probably made the music too cheap. But it is my view the arrogance from the music industry got them into the situation they are in now. Watching Michael Jackson (R.I.P) and other artists living like kings did not really earn them or music industry any respect. The general public therefore downloaded because they reckoned the artists were already loaded. The music industry therefore also lost the moral argument too.

Not everyone is as well off as the debt ridden Michael Jackson was just before he sadly passed away. The majority of the artists knows the recipe of tomato soup and noodles better than the recipe of any Russian Caviar based dishes. If any doubts, I can give you five recipes for noodles based dinners. Dinners costing less than a pound/ one and a half dollars. But Michael Jackson's lifestyle really also killed the income of the 1000 albums selling bands too. Those living on tomato soups were now living on nothing because those who downloaded albums from the rich artists broke a mental barrier and thereby started to download albums from artists who could least afford the loss of incomes.

The threats of police raids at dawn against all who illegally downloaded music did not work at all. In particular when people without internet connections and those who had been dead for many years was taken to court for illegal downloads. A massive PR disaster followed. This because neither the music industry or their solicitors understood the not-so-black art of IPs and networks.

After these PR disasters, the signals sent out was that everything could be downloaded without punity. That's where we are today. Off in total 750 000 000 illegal downloaders, 16 persons has been sent to jail for it. Scared ?

There is no doubts that piracy is stealing someone's elses property. Those who produce the goods stolen by everyone will sooner or later stop producing the goods. The gigs scene is drying up due to the deep recession we will enter now. Paying for food, electricity and heating will be hard enough. Going to gigs an impossibility.

On this market; nothing will be offered and that's the end of it all.

I do not have any solutions at all. It is morally wrong to steal and it is also a criminal offense. God will punish you with having to live with Marilyn Monroe when you go to heaven. So don't illegally download any music. That's all I can say, really.