An editorial in the Washington Post by Don Henley, formerly of the Eagles, addressing issues of music piracy and the consolidation of the recording industry.

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I admit to a conflicted attitude about downloading copyrighted content off the Web. My impulse is always to support artists, because they produce the music I love to listen to, the books I read, the films I watch. In a society where value is placed on the formation of artistic content, those who create it expect renumeration, and to that they are entitled.

But.

But.

At what price? In simpleton economics the answer is "whatever the market will bear." Which market? The one where the recording industry promised us twenty years ago that CD prices would soon come down as mass production of releases kicked in. Lo and behold, once listeners across the globe had been weaned off vinyl and invested in the new digital format, CD prices went up, and did so year after year until retail pricing of $18.99 was commonplace. During the 1980's and into the 1990's I purchased easily 4,000 CDs or more, most of them from retail prices, though not all at full boat. I also began frequenting used CD stores for bargains, and also for out of print and hard to find stuff. The secondary market soon became my primary place of music purchases - the selection was quirky, but the prices were right.

The record industry tried to quash the secondary market by withholding advertising and promotional materials to any store that sold retail CDs and used CDs in the same store. Stand-up struggling artists like Garth Brooks backed this campaign. Further muscle was applied if used CD shops also dabbled in bootlegs. Raids were conducted and prosecutions mounted, putting a number of stores out of business and intimidating others. All probably very legal, but grotesque.

All told, I've easily spent better than $50,000 on music purchases, only to have confirmed what I've known all along - that the music distributors engaged in illegal price fixing and collusion to keep the retail price of CDs at an artificial level, long after the costs of production had plummeted. I felt I was due; owed something for the way I was taken.

But.

But.

The folks who actually make the music couldn't really be blamed for this, could they? How much power do they have over the way their music is marketed and sold? I have no answer to that question, and it is likely that the majority of musicians weren't getting that extra piece of the price pie cooked up by the record companies. They need that money to live, to feed their families, provide shelter and health care for them. Only a select few mega-selling artists are making out so well that downloading tunes will have a negligible effect on their earnings. I don't give a damn about them - they are the few who do have the power to influence industry pricing structures, and not one of them steeped up to do so during the hey-days of nearly $20 a pop for a CD.

The smaller selling folks, well, that is a tough nut.

Broadband has enabled multiple ways of spreading digital music files all over the globe, making them instantly available to millions of people. It has become basically idiot proof, encouraging the practice. Thus far the RIAA has engaged in intimidation of some select individuals, including a comic incident involving a twelve year old girl. Notable is the absence of lawsuits against Internet Service Providers, essentially the enablers of rampant downloading. I suspect the suits against individuals is intended not only to scare would-be file sharers but to set a precedent that can be exploited in court against an ISP. that action is inevitable, but it will be costly and may go against the record industry, which would close off one avenue.

The other avenue is mandating changes in the way computers actually function, essentially turning them into one way appliances. Various ways of rendering hardware incapable of copying anything are being explored, as are methods to gate keep systems to prevent them from playing improper content. The DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) technically prohibits what has been considered "fair use" copying of music and software for personal use in cars and other portables, not to mention back-ups in the event a CD is scratched and unable to play. Further proposed legislation would strengthen such prohibitions until the content can only be accessed in a manner dictated by the industry.

To take the longest way possible around this, I find myself mildly disturbed by the notion that some artists may not be getting their due, but I also understand why so many people are engaging in what is illegal activity. They feel screwed, and to some extent they have been. If the industry has its way in the near term, they'll continue to be screwed. Downloading is unstoppable unless some radical changes in the way music is delivered take place, and the hardware we use is largely disabled. The industry has been forced to move into offering online music downloads for a fee, but that fee adds up to the same prices as a store bought CD, but with crappier sound quality. That, in my mind is no solution at all. This is the wild west, and the sheriff is coming.

He just ain't here yet.