Universal Music Funds Yet Another 'Educational' Propaganda Campaign Against File Sharing

from the economics-matter dept

Back in January, we noted that Chris Morrison, the manager of Damon Albarn's bands, Blur and Gorillaz, stated at a conference that "piracy can be stopped," while also suggesting he wanted to personally beat up anyone who shared Albarn's music (oddly, this was right after he had admitted how much wonderful free publicity Albarn had gotten from a leak of the Gorillaz album). Now it looks like Morrison and a former partner of his are involved in a silly and amusing new propaganda campaign, funded by Universal Music, to try to equate file sharing to drunk driving in some cases and racism in other cases. Seriously.

Comparisons were made at the launch in London on Wednesday to anti-drink driving campaigns which have gradually changed attitudes....

Chris Morrison of CMO Management agreed that the problem is generational.

But he continued: ''You can educate that out of people ... Racial prejudice was rife when I was a child ... the public attitude towards it has changed radically.

''You educate, it's generational ... It may take five, 10 years, but you need to start in schools.''

Of course, we've been hearing the same thing for about ten years now, back when the recording industry kicked off their various "educational campaigns." It's already been more than those five, 10 years, and they did start in schools... and the school kids laughed at them. That's because school kids understand that these are business model issues, not inherent unfair or dangerous situations. With racism and drunk driving it's easy to see how those lead to inherently unfair outcomes. With the music industry, it doesn't take long for kids to recognize that the issue isn't that file sharing is inherently bad. They see lots of bands that are doing quite well by embracing it. So they quickly realize that it's just those dinosaurs who refuse to adapt who start pushing this kind of propaganda. What's amusing is how often these kinds of campaigns have been tried and failed, and yet the industry somehow magically thinks it will work this time. Isn't there a word for doing the same thing over and over and over again, but expecting different results?

Filed Under: copyright, education, file sharing, music, music matters, propaganda, uk
Companies: universal music