Korgscrew
Group: Super Admins
Posts: 3511
Joined: Dec. 1999 |
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Posted: May 08 2004, 18:31 |
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Yes, there was, and they said that home copying was killing music. I used to know people who had huge collections of home copied cassettes.
However, they do have reasons to be more worried about the newer methods:
CDR allows a pretty much perfect copy to be made (there'll most likely always be a few minor errors, but they'll be so small as to be insignificant) - cassette never managed that, although a really well recorded cassette could be fairly listenable (and likely good enough for most people - mp3 isn't perfect either, especially at the lower rates usually used for sharing music, but it's still hugely popular).
File sharing is I think far more widespread, because it allows someone to download just about any song they want and get it fairly much instantly. With cassettes, you'd have to know someone who had the album, who'd then have to take the time to make a copy in real time onto cassette (unlike CDs which can be ripped to hard disc in just a fraction of the time it would take to play the song), so it wasn't quite as easy. Also, it only needs one person in the world to buy a CD and file share its contents, and everyone else in the world on the file sharing network can get it - with cassette copying, there was a limit to the number of copies that could realistically be distributed from one album (especially with an LP which would wear out if it was played too often! , as it relied on someone physically making and handing over each copy (and unlike with CDR, making a copy from those copies would see a fairly large drop in quality).
How much are they losing to digital piracy? Perhaps not as much as they claim - I read a very interesting analysis of figures from the RIAA which showed that the real figure was something like $200 million - rather less than the $4 billion they claimed, though still a lot. I'll see if I can find it again.
My personal feeling is that it's the record industry that's killing music...
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