No One Steals 45s

In my post, titled 'How to stop music "stealing" ?', I received two comments:

1) "I don't consider paying for music as stealing"
2) "its legal according to Berne convention administered by the WIPO and WTO requirements."

These responses miss the point of my post. There are moral and legal reasons that obtaining music from Russian entrepreneurs shouldn't be considered stealing. I wasn't arguing whether downloading music from the Russian sites or file-sharing networks is good or bad or even against the law. (I had the word stealing in quotes.)

I was arguing that the music industry could compete more effectively with the Russian Music Sites and file sharing by improving their service. Instead of focusing on threatening the file-sharers with legal trouble, they should give the file-sharers a reason not to use other people’s services.

I wrote:
“1) Online music stores can attach almost everything they want to downloads. Album or song purchases should be attached to tour schedules, artist stories and biographies, videos, games, screensavers, drawings, desktop backgrounds, coupons, anything of interest.

2) Songs files can be made for more than listening. Fans like to interact with their music. What if you could download a song file, and then sing karaoke with it, play the guitar solo from it in Guitar Hero, dance to it in DDR, create your own music video for it, remix it and resell your reproductions. All of these abilities in a single interface.”

The record industry targets file-sharers and the Russian sites because they view them as a threat to their business. But I believe they are making a mistake in allowing their legal team to be their main tool against people swapping tunes. They can and should redefine what selling music means, and produce something that cannot be found elsewhere.

Currently, the record industry offers a worse experience than their Russians competitors. They continue to act as if the Internet is a threat, when it’s really an opportunity.