US Is Nothing Compared To The Rest Of The World On Music Sharing
from the not-getting-any-better dept
As the music industry continues their self-destructive program of suing the folks who should be their best customers, it's worth noting that the issue of file sharing and unauthorized CDs takes place on a much smaller scale here than in other parts of the world. In both Europe and Asia, it appears people have even less of an issue with the concept of listening to music they haven't paid for - or buying much cheaper copied CDs. And, while the industry may hope that an "educational" campaign will work in the US (though, it won't), the attitudes outside the US suggest it's an even longer shot there. What all this means is that, even if the RIAA really could sue everyone in the US who was found sharing songs, people would still be able to download songs from file sharers around the globe. So, basically (as has been said many times before) this sue everyone strategy will do nothing to stop file sharing, will upset many customers and does nothing to give people what they want. Sounds like a brilliant business strategy.
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funny thing about those "asian" countries....
In Japan, for instance, you will have a difficult time finding JPop material on any of the P2P networks. Same for Japanes movies. Interstingly, peercast seems to have taken off however. Maybe this is because CDs can be rented for 200yen for 3 days.
In china, indonesia and thailand (the poor asian countries), you will find massive piracy both at the retail and wholesale levels... and not just aimed at these respective markets. P2P hasn't taken off in these countries yet due to lack of infrastructure.
Korea and Taiwan are probably the closest to the US, with the exception that CD rental is leagal there too.
The fact of the matter is that CD rental mitigates the impact of P2P and lowers the effective cost of CDs. By using the DVD9 and DVD5 standards difference to prevent copying, the movie industry have effectivley fscked itself in these markets. VCDs rule the day... and when P2P networks become viable for large media, the backlash will be unstopable.
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