Re: Clear Channel ends streaming broadcasts ... please explain

[Garrett Wollman <wollman@lcs.mit.edu>]

<<On Sat, 4 Jan 2003 12:06:54 -0800 (PST), Dan Billings <billingsdan@yahoo.com> said:

> CD sales dropped last year.  Sales have been flat or
> down for the last several years and the industry
> blames digital copying and internet distribution for
> the drop in sales.

To quote George Gilder:[1]

	If a hundred people steal your product, you have a
	law-enforcement problem.

	If a million people steal your product, you have a
	public-relations problem.

The copyright industry has spent much of the past ten years trying to
create legal and technological roadblocks to solve their PR problems.
The onerous webcasting fees are of a piece.  Since the whole business
case for webcasting is pretty marginal, the commercial broadcasters
really do not have an economic interest in pursuing the issue -- legal
costs would simply tip it over the edge.  Every further step the music
industry takes in this direction only worsens its already abysmal PR,
particularly among the audiences who are most likely to pirate music
in the first place.

The ultimate result of this is certainly a boon for CPB-member
non-commercial stations with music formats (e.g., WXPN, WNCW, WFPK,
and KCRW), and for music stations in foreign countries where the
recording industry has not yet been able to impose its will.  I
suspect that the trade association for religious stations either has
or will soon have come to a side agreement with the labels who publish
their sorts of music.

-GAWollman

[1] Who is ordinarily a fatuous boob, but for once he actually has a
valid point.