The cost of Piracy

By Thomas Henwood · August 15, 2005 ·

Most of the people who commit acts of Piracy, think that it doesn’t matter, and the music will always be there for them to download, for free and enjoy at their leisure. But if piracy became legalised and no one bought any music, well, obviously their would be no more new music. This may sound very familiar, but in Germany, where copying CD’s “For family and Friends” is legal, it really is a problem.
I was on holiday in Germany 2 weeks ago, and I noticed a distinct lack of record stores. I only saw one in the whole time I was there, and that was primarily a “Vinyl Only” shop, though it did stock a very limited range of CD’s. Even in major cities, like Freiburg, I couldn’t find a record store, it was very disturbing.
Well, advocates of piracy might say, “But they can always get it off a P2P network”, like the Gnutella network, used by clients such as Limewire and Morpheus.” and failing that “if they must buy music, get it off iTunes or Amazon“. However, this is not quite the same, seeing as this way, all your favourite artists, don’t make any money, don’t release any more albums and then either starve to death, or become toilet cleaners (yes I know that’s what some of them deserve, but that’s not the point). So, piracy, really does take it’s tollon both the artists and record companies, but also on your eventual listening/ viewing pleasure. But, however much Carlton screen advertising say it funds terrorism, somehow I think it doesn’t, seeing as piracy only loses people money.

Further info on Germany’s music crisis