Better Late Than Never

It appears that the recording industry is now ending their campaign of intimidation that had a sound legal basis but was always very questionable from an ethical and business perspective.  As seems to be proven time and again, if you don't have a good product, hire good lawyers.  Suing grandmothers and ten year olds is rarely an endearing quality.  While the RIAA president insists the lawsuits were necessary, common sense and economics might say otherwise.  The reality is that the business model was going to change regardless.  We all need to accept the fact that some people will go out of business as a result.  Intellectual property is extremely fungible.  Its value is determined by how much someone is willing to pay for it.  IP lawyers need to understand that every infringement should not be litigated.  What's fair and what's profitable are two different things. 

So much of what is produced today is intellectual property.  It's not just the traditional movies, music, magazines, and books.  This blog posting is intellectual property.  However, I'd be thrilled if you stole this posting and posted it on your web site as long as you listed me as the author (although I will gladly accept royalty checks :-) ).  The reason is that my reason for writing this post are not just to be paid for it.  I want people to be convinced of my position.  I want to advance my career and my "brand."  And eventually I'd like to create enough interest in what I write so that people will pay me to advertise their products and services along with what I write.  Do I ever expect someone to pay to read this post?  Absolutely not.  The costs have changed and so should the monetization model.  I don't have to pay for the printing and distribution of what I write.  Google is perfectly happy to give me this venue for free in exchange for advertising.  And they'll even give me a cut if I bring in enough eyeballs to the site.  Ultimately I could make a whole lot more money for doing a lot less work that I would have if I wanted people to pay per click.  Most recording artists make little or nothing on their album sales, but more than make up for it on concert revenue.  Recording companies produce value in their marketing and distribution engines.  The distribution part is all but gone now and viral marketing campaigns that cost virtually nothing but rely on giving away a fair amount of intellectual property have done wonders for some artists.  Now if the radio stations would just stand up to the recording industry, we could just circumvent it all and leave the RIAA with nothing to litigate, artists doing what they love and getting paid for it, and music lovers getting a wealth of choices at reasonable prices.