This isn’t in the script, as far as the record companies are concerned. Australian musician Lindsay McDougall (guitarist, Frenzal Rhomb) says he was in a film about surviving as a musician which was turned into an anti piracy crusade.
The Sydney Morning Herald:
He said he was told the 10-minute film, which is being distributed for free to all high schools in Australia, was about trying to survive as an Australian musician and no one mentioned the video would be used as part of an anti-piracy campaign.
Sabiene Heindl, general manager of the music industry's anti-piracy arm, Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), which partly coordinated the film and is pushing for it to be included in school units related to copyright and file sharing, said all of the feedback she had received so far from other artists and their managers had been positive.
She questioned whether McDougall had actually watched the film and said only 1-2 minutes of it discussed the issue of downloading and how it impacted musicians.
Which is interesting logic, because that’s either 10-20% of the film, and either 3-6 McDonald's commercials as 20 second spots, which they seem to think sell their products.
Exactly how you spend 10 minutes on intellectual property rights is another question.
McDougall doesn’t buy it.
McDougall said: "I have never come out against internet piracy and illegal downloading and I wouldn't do that - I would never put my name to something that is against downloading and is against piracy and stuff, it's something that I believe is a personal thing from artist to artist."
"I would never be part of this big record industry funded campaign to crush illegal downloads, I'm not like [Metallica drummer] Lars Ulrich. I think it's bullshit, I think it's record companies crying poor and I don't agree with it."
(Metallica was the first band to sue over illegal downloading.)
Frenzal Rhomb have been around for a while, and that sounds like the voice of experience. So does this:
"I'm from a punk rock band, it's all about getting your music out any way you can - you don't make money from the record, the record companies make the money from the record. If they can't make money these days because they haven't come onside with the way the world is going, it's their own problem."
The ridiculous part of this is that we’re at the start of a generation who may never even need to know what a hard copy of music is. They can also access music from anywhere on Earth, from anyone on Earth, and the idea of stopping it is laughable.
Bands can market direct, and have roughly as much chance of getting exposure on the net, or in some cases a lot more exposure, than the highly nepotistic music media outlets.
Radiohead proved that record companies are no longer necessary.
They’re as obsolete as their name. Nobody needs massive global corporations to sell music any more.
I doubt if there's a human being in broadcasting that wouldn't be glad to see the back of the record companies and their related legal sleazebags.
If you've never seen a letter from a record company lawyer, you don't know what Ethical Poverty is.
Now the record companies themselves are proving they’re a potential liability. This is unbelievably bad PR, even by the demanding standards of today, and it's getting worse. Pedaling propaganda in high schools is about as far down the scale as anyone could hope to go. As huge turnoffs go, this would be a record breaker. No wonder McDougall's not pleased, the whole idea's offensive.
And it's all for nothing. There’s no reason to believe that prosecuting 1, 100 or 1 million people will even make a dent in downloading. So money is being funneled into what’s essentially a futile legal exercise, not music.
Not that it would come as a surprise to any musician that record companies are pretty good at spending money on things unrelated to music.
Exactly who the industry thinks it’s kidding is open to debate.
Anyone can pirate recordings. So far it seems to be only end users, the music fans, getting prosecuted, not pirates.
So a person mass producing pirated recordings can make millions, and someone just swapping tracks gets hit with massive damages which they can’t pay.
One of the many reasons I'm glad in so many ways that I'm not part of that damn industry is that I don't have to be associated with this mindless greed, or those people.
The sooner the industry joins the dinosaurs in the museums, the better.
