Puck’s Blog

So the CRIA(Canadian Recording Industry Association) claimed that music piracy (aka: peer-to-peer file sharing) has cost the industry $2 billion in the last five years. Too bad it’s a number pulled totally from their asses.

Apparently they lied about it being $2 billion and also decided to say that the only reason they could possibly be selling less is due to piracy. This has been brilliantly debunked by a law Professor at the University of Ottawa.

The CRIA has routinely upped their loss estimates in order to gain headlines. Currently they argue that piracy is costing the industry Canadian $450 million a year, to the tune of nearly $2 billion for the years 1999 to 2004. However, if one looks at 1999 as a paradigm year, what you see is that since 1999, sales figures have decreased, but only $432 million cumulatively. If every year since 1999 had been as good as 1999, then $432 million would be the amount “lost” in decline up through 2004. The other $1.5 billion in “loses” is simply made up: you can’t document it because it is based on assumptions and politicking.

Where is this $432 million oss coming from? As far as the music industry is concerned, only “piracy” causes loses. But once again, an actual look at the numbers tells us otherwise. The decrease in CD prices alone accounts for $50 million of this reduction in a single year, as large retail outlets exert pricing pressure on the music industry. Those same retail giants, which sell more than half of all CDs, also don’t carry a large stock, focusing instead on new releases. And wouldn’t you know, there are fewer new releases today than in the past. The last nail in the coffin (were that it true) relates to the starving artist claims. The private copying levy, a kind of tax on blank media, generates millions in revenue each year, which is distributed to Canadian artists.

Of course, the CRIA knows this is all made-up or extremely exaggerated bullshit. Nobody is going to make them stop doing this simply by pointing out they’re wrong because the reason they hate peer-to-peer file sharing isn’t because it costs the industry money, but because it threatens to remove THEM from the equation. The Internet allows artists to directly market and distribute to consumers without needing to sign away their music and their lives to the recording industry itself.

Again, for more information check out DownhillBattle.org