Shut-up, pay and listen

In a case brought by consumer defense organisation test-achats/test-aankoop against the music mafia the record companies and IFPI, the Brussels court of appeals ruled yesterday that making a private copy of a CD that you legally own is not a right, it’s a favour granted by the copyright owner (aka the record label).

A favour that can be removed at any time via the implementation of methods like copy-protection, even though you already pay tax on blank media in order to compensate said labels for extra copies.

Meanwhile, the labels sit there wondering why sales are down while simultaneously shooting themselves in the foot multiple times.

It would seem pretty obvious that copy-protection doesn’t harm professional pirates, they’ll mass-produce analog copies if needed. The only people being hurt by all these shenanigans are private users. As prices keep rising without reason and technology makes it increasingly difficult for people to enjoy recordings in their own space, average users will, by default, turn into “pirates” using any means possible to enjoy their music without the barriers of high cost or technological complexity.

Make music more affordable and deliver it in simple, open formats and I’m pretty certain the recording industry will enjoy much larger profits in the end. But the dinosaurs aren’t listening, plenty of people have expressed that opinion well before me.