Question #4:
Several questions:
1:Studies have shown that there has not been a general decline in CD sales since the advent of P2P filesharing, in fact it's been sort of a wash hasn't it? I know that had I not downloaded some of the Nine Days tracks from "Maddening Crowd", I never would have bought the CD. So why are you trying so hard to fight this?
2:How are you actually going to overcome the "fair use" doctrine? It's already a fact that "archival" copies are allowed, so why is "space shifting" not archival and thus "fair use"?
3:You say that you are protecting artists rights, but after what AFTRA did to Sam Moore, shouldn't you be helping artists suffering from the indignities of piss-poor managments of their pension funds and royalties?
Interested to hear your answers....
Shawn
Cary Sherman:
1. I wish you were right that CD sales haven't been impacted by filesharing. (I hate that term, by the way. To me, "sharing" means we each get a little less. If I share my pie, I only get to eat half. If I share my car, I can't use it when the other person has it. "Filesharing" however means we each get the whole thing, and noboby gives up anything! That's not sharing, it's publishing!)
In 2001, sales were off by 10% in the US. That's a huge drop. Sales are down more than 10% so far this year (according to SoundScan). What's more, this is happening around the world, not just in the U.S. It's hard to think that people suddenly don't like the new music being offered in countries as diverse as the US, Japan, Germany, Sweden, the UK, etc. But what all these countries have in common is growing Internet access and increasing numbers of CD burners and burgeoning sales of blank CD-R discs. Get the idea?
Furthermore, we've been studying this for awhile (no surprise there). In a study we'll be releasing soon conducted by Peter Hart Research Associates for us, we learned that — by more than two to one - those who say they are downloading more say they are purchasing less. To be fair, some said they were purchasing more. But only 19% said they purchased more, while 41% said they purchased less. We've got lots more data that's consistent with these findings. The studies being bandied about to show that filesharing helps music sales don't really show that - they just show that there's a correlation between people who download music and people who buy CDs. Well that's no surprise. Music fans are going to buy CDs as well as download music for free. But if there's any promotional benefit from filesharing, it's more than outweighed by the damage it's doing to sales. In 2000, the top ten albums sold 60 million units in the U.S. In 2001, they sold 40 million units. Seven albums sold over 5 million copies in 2000; none did in 2001. People are copying the biggest hits, and those are the money-makers that record companies rely on to pay for investments in new artists and music. (I'm glad you bought the Maddening Crowd CD, by the way.)
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