Yes, but we aren't selling Wellies are we? We are selling licenses to enjoy music at home and other licenses to perform our recordings in a commercial context. For some venues, we used to pay them to choose our license. Incredibly, they resist when now we say that we need to be paid from those venues because our factory workers, no, not the ones we laid off in the 90s who really were factory and warehouse workers, but our current stable of work-for-hire creators need more money otherwise they'll disappear and we will be stuck selling licenses to these 40-year-old Wellies — returning to our analogy — and thank goodness and lobbyists, we just got an extension to be sole source for our 50+ year old Wellies.
Meanwhile, unsold Wellies take up no storage space and have near zero cost of manufacture for the second and all later customers. On the other hand, lots of people seem satisfied with 30 year old "footwear" which never wears out, except through the cycles we call fashion and aging. From that supply and demand consequence, we would be hard pressed to figure out why this is a better business than in the old days when we had factory workers, warehousing that required real decisions regarding keeping things in print and stored, and our footwear wore out or was thrown out. Still, then, most people consumed through radio play, rarely an efficient converter of listens to sales, but the most cost-effective way there was. That's why the answer would be yes when the question was "Payola?"
In 1980, it was home taping that was destroying the music industry. It was more about a recession and competing modes of entertainment. But then, music videos, CDs, and Boomer hegemony revived the business. Mr. Orlowski continues in his mission of reducing the music industry's current problems to Google. I don't argue with his premises regarding copyright law and how it works. I just suggest that nearly all with a stake understand that the actual revenue to be realized is not worth the effort to collect. After all, the infringers are not Google, but people who put up unlicensed content and people like me who wants to check out an episode of The Young Ones, as I did the other day. Yes, the law recognizes contributory infringement, and why stop at Google? Quite a few parties collected fractions of pennies from me so I could watch that 35 year old episode.
Were Google the primary existential threat, the industry would be be tireless in pursuit. I have intellectual property. It is my responsibility to protect it or hire agents to protect it, not Google's, and I have little patience for the tears about those who are already more successful than I and who have the resources to pursue options of collection and litigation. Maybe the majors are practically disengaged because they already worked out a deal; there's efficiency in being an oligopoly and if DMCA inefficiency is the reality that lowers what they can get, so be it. 0.5% of something is still superior to 100% of nothing.
Call DMCA and safe harbor an imperfect attempt to balance overlapping interests and move on, Mr. Orlowski.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
