Hi everyone!
With all the fuss regarding Napster and MP3; why are the record companies so
worried about copyright? In a sense, it is all about control of where the
music is heard!
MP3, Napster, Internet radio and related Internet-based technologies allow a
piece of music to be distributed anywhere in the world for the cost of an
Internet connection. This means that a recording which is not officially
released in a particular country can be heard in other countries; which is
against record publishers wishes. These Internet-based technologies also
work hand-in-glove with Internet-based music stores like CDNow where anyone
can buy a copy of a CD that is not available in their own country.
A similar debacle had occurred in Australia when in 1998, our government
relaxed restrictions over parallel-importing of books and music. Since 1989,
the "grey-import" practice came under the spotlight because music retailers,
especially speciality outlets like Central Station Records who specialise in
dance music, imported music, especially hard-to-find recordings, without
going through the official distributors.
The record companies were recruiting Metallica and Dr. Ore who are under
contract to give "sob stories" against Napster mainly because Napster and
its underlying technologies are stripping the record companies of their
control over the artists' music.
Now we have quite a lot of direct imports available from the "specialists"
as well as JB HiFi who sells music at prices that are cheaper than the
"official" price. The only stores who stick to what the record companies
offer are the mainstream outlets like Delta / Sanity; In2Music; Blockbuster
Music and HMV (which I suspect is owned by EMI because they own the HMV (His
Master's Voice) name and "dog listening to gramophone" logo in the UK and
Australia).
Some of the direct imports include material that is not released officially
in Australia and material that has been released previously but was deleted
by the official distributors.
With regards,
Simon Mackay
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