There were some very interesting ideas and points made by this documentary. Personally, I am still on the fence of the copyright issue. As someone who hopes to producer in the entertainment industry, I understand the idea of maintaining “intellectual property” and feel entitled to compensation from anyone who views and enjoys my work. On the other hand a lot can be said about file sharing and bit-torrenting. The current generation of young people share digital music and films like they do food or anything else tangible. As the entertainment industry moves towards going 100% digital they are continuing to lose profits thanks to file sharing. As a consumer I am not likely to change my mind about this until the industry takes a new position. When consumer hear how the entertainment industry loses profits constantly, what idea are they to get other than the industry is full of greed? Musicians make their profits from live performances. From that, the facility gets a piece, the ticketing site gets a piece as does anyone else who finds a way. As a music fan, I find it absurd that these “2nd hand” players can get up to 45% of the ticket price in fees. Yes, someone needs to be paid to get you your tickets, but do they get $20 per hour? I REALLY doubt it.
I want to talk about iTunes now, first off don’t get me wrong, I am fan of Apple and their products, however I disagree with many of their pricing decisions and ideas. When iTunes first started each song was .99 cents great. I’m sure most of us would agree that’s reasonable. But with time, Apple discovered it practically owns the digital/portable music market. Today, if you look at the top 200 most popular songs on iTunes, about 10% will be at the original price of $.99 and the remaining will be at $1.29 Now .30 doesn’t seem to be much and you may think I am cheap for not wanting to shell out the difference, but in my opinion, they will continue to ask more of the consumers until those who actually pay for music stop doing so. (Just like the gas companies learned, the public is only willing to spend so much on a specific item). So in a way, I argue that iTunes will encourage more file sharing as they continue to raise the price of a song. Lets see the music industry file suit against them…