[advocacy] DRM in OGG - A Proposal

[Tim Ivorson]

> Would you care to estimate what percentage of music on p2p networks is by 
> unsigned artists? 5%? 1%?

Perhaps, but the point is that if p2p networks cease, ending some distribution of unpublished music, something has been tangibly lost (the availability of unpublished music). However, the amount by which the major labels claim to have lost out to people hearing music before they buy it (while small labels do fantastically well out of p2p) would not have been made in its entirety even if there had been no p2p networks. Perhaps even the major labels are no worse off at all due to the existence of the p2p networks.

I use p2p networks so that I can tell good music from bad music. Record labels pushing rubbish music don't like this. If I decide that it is not sufficiently good to buy, some people are angered because I have got something for nothing, but the record companies still make their money, and the artists had their oppotunities to make music (I assume that this is almost always enjoyable for artists). I do delete downloaded songs that I don't buy, *provided that I could have bought them*. This is the real important issue. The vast majority of my p2p use is downloading and uploading stuff that is not in the shops. This is music that contains work controlled by many rights holders, and so cannot easily be licensed for sale (e.g. DJ mixes), or is controlled by a single rights holder whose interests would not be served by releasing it. No one can honestly claim that I am stealing (even true 'piracy' is not stealing, because no owner of a legal copy is deprived of their copy), because I could not have paid the publish
er for a copy.

I believe that I have a right to hear all music and a duty to pay for it if the rights holder is willing to charge me a fee. I have no problem with not hearing music because it is expensive, but being told that music is not available at any price offends me. Until rights holders fulfill their duty to distribute the music that they control, p2p serves an important service.

Tim Ivorson
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