Music piracy (still) isn't just an internet phenomenon...

It is a while since I have written a post such as this but a news article today put me in mind of it once again. It may not be quite the topic that it was but it certainly hasn't gone away. I first commented on it in these pages almost seven years ago - how time flies! - with this illustration from the 1980s.

The means have changed but perhaps not so much as we might have thought. It still isn't all individuals or organised crime file-sharing by any means.
There is a waiting list, and often then delays to the promised delivery, if you want your latest released pressed on vinyl for legal release. Several acts have told me about this based on their own experiences. That is a reflection of the vitality of music in physical format.

Police in Germany have revealed that, after a two-year investigation, they have busted a huge counterfeit operation involving physical music, both CD and vinyl. The article comes with a stock picture of a collection of vinyl and this is not it.

This one is home-based.

Why music really matters (Part 2).

If I had arranged the timing myself (I didn't, how surprising is that?) it could hardly have been better. Illegal file sharing is, just as the name suggests, illegal as things stand. That much is a given but what should be done about the parlous state of the (major label) music industry? The reasons that it has ended up this way are certainly not subject to any obvious consensus of opinion.
The UK government has suggested a scheme under which, after warnings, persistent illegal sharers would be forcibly cut-off by their ISP. You might think that would be supported by all sectors of the music industry; that is not so and some of them have now chosen to make public a very clear manifesto:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8247376.stm

To sum it up, rather crudely I admit, it states that things have changed and no amount of wishing, or legislation, will be ever be able to turn the clock back and it is a conclusion that is not new. It is also one with which I concur.

It has not been possible to un-invent nuclear weapons but where there is a will a way can be found to limit the consequences and, had that not been the case, the last thing we would be talking about now is the 'major label' music industry. If there were any of us to talk about or do anything at all in the 'nuclear winter' I rather suspect that whatever music we could make would be more important than ever.

Or, to put it in a much more recent perspective, where would we be now if administrations of all flavours world-wide had reacted to the financial catastrophe, that was September 2008, in the way that the 'major labels' did to the impact of the internet and, thus, inevitably, downloading (whether legal or otherwise)?

I hate to think...