PEOPLE who illegally download music would have their telephone and internet services cut off under a radical new plan proposed by the music industry.
Fed up with falling sales the industry, which claims Australians download more than one billion songs illegally each year, has been discussing tough new guidelines with internet service providers. According to confidential figures obtained by the Sunday Mail, the value of CDs sold in Australia between January and March this year fell more than 20 per cent ndash; from $100 million to $80 million ndash; compared with the first three months of 2006.
Sabiene Heindl, general manager of the music industry's piracy unit MIPI, said record labels could trace people who illegally download music. We can tell the ISPs the time and date people were engaging in this conduct, and what song was being downloaded, she said.
Australia's largest ISP, Telstra BigPond, is against the plan, saying while it does not condone illegal file sharing, it is not willing to become judge, jury and executioner .
Cry me a river. CD s have always been too expensive. Remember when the recording industry campaigned against parallel imports, saying it would be the death of Australian music?
Prices went down and more CD s were sold. Music is way overpriced for what it competes with: DVD s and games. Maybe if the recording industry got off its butt and embraced downloads then people wouldn t be bothered to search out music on the internet and then engage in copyright infringement.
Lower the price to 99c a track or less and get rid of Digital Restrictions Management so I can copy the downloads around to all my computers and music players and I ll start buying. The recording industry must wake up and realise though that it is becoming obsolete, or more accurately, that it was a mere 20th century abberation in music. With a few thousand dollars of software and equipment anyone can churn out over-produced pop music in their bedroom and distribute it to millions of people across the internet.
The future of music lies in people paying to see their favourite bands and singers perform at concerts, which is how they made their living before recording and how most bands and singers make the majority of their money today. That s not to say that recording will ever go away, just that recorded music will increasingly be relegated to the roles of promotional vehicle for concert ticket sales and concert souveniers.
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