Digital piracy is really not like theft at all despite the industry's efforts to develop terms like copyright theft (which it isn't).
The whole system was based on the Music recording industry's production of vinyl records which enabled the sound produced by musicians to be heard by lots of people. Before then local bands played music they had little to with the writing of and just reproduced the Music they heard elsewhere suddenly there was lots of money to be made and an entirely new business model came into being.
The industry was a necessary medium between the performer and the audience because production costs were high and the limited exposure meant that promotion was important. The downside is that a lot of performers have been selected as stars because they look good and musicians with incredible talent never go anywhere because they don;t compose their own hits and nor are they attractive enough to perform someone else's. In addition the performer go very little money from recordings and had to make their money touring- the rolling stones still tour for that reason. For a band the contract was a means of generating publicity for their product -ie their show.
Nowadays we don't need the music producer. You can record your own product and upload it for free and then the band makes its money from people who come to their show and buy merchandise.
The book business has always been all about who you know and has lead to abominable books being published and excellent stuff never making it..now its changing again I am not sure how authors will directly make money but I suspect that they will make it from doing 'shows' as well lectures, after dinner speaking, TV appearances or they accept advertising into their product.
Then there is TV, Film and Videogames- they ,too are developing alternative ways to make money -product placement , merchandising being obvious examples.
I own an apartment in South London that overlooks the Oval Cricket ground and hilariously some years ago the Oval was trying to force the local council (who owned the apartments then) to make it impossible to look down into the ground so we wouldn't get free viewing. The council did nothing whether through deciding it was unfeasable or that they didn't care but as a result we started renting out our sitting room on matchdays so people could look our of the big windows straight down onto the match. Is that 'Stealing'?
The whole system was based on the Music recording industry's production of vinyl records which enabled the sound produced by musicians to be heard by lots of people. Before then local bands played music they had little to with the writing of and just reproduced the Music they heard elsewhere suddenly there was lots of money to be made and an entirely new business model came into being.
The industry was a necessary medium between the performer and the audience because production costs were high and the limited exposure meant that promotion was important. The downside is that a lot of performers have been selected as stars because they look good and musicians with incredible talent never go anywhere because they don;t compose their own hits and nor are they attractive enough to perform someone else's. In addition the performer go very little money from recordings and had to make their money touring- the rolling stones still tour for that reason. For a band the contract was a means of generating publicity for their product -ie their show.
Nowadays we don't need the music producer. You can record your own product and upload it for free and then the band makes its money from people who come to their show and buy merchandise.
The book business has always been all about who you know and has lead to abominable books being published and excellent stuff never making it..now its changing again I am not sure how authors will directly make money but I suspect that they will make it from doing 'shows' as well lectures, after dinner speaking, TV appearances or they accept advertising into their product.
Then there is TV, Film and Videogames- they ,too are developing alternative ways to make money -product placement , merchandising being obvious examples.
I own an apartment in South London that overlooks the Oval Cricket ground and hilariously some years ago the Oval was trying to force the local council (who owned the apartments then) to make it impossible to look down into the ground so we wouldn't get free viewing. The council did nothing whether through deciding it was unfeasable or that they didn't care but as a result we started renting out our sitting room on matchdays so people could look our of the big windows straight down onto the match. Is that 'Stealing'?
