Embattled Music Industry Honors Itself Amid War with Its Own Customers
In one of the most link-rich articles seen lately on a major web site, Ken Layne points out the many problems that the recording industry faces as it gets ready to honor its greatest achievements of 2001 at tonight's Grammy Awards. The article points out that there were four concerts put on by major artists last night in Los Angeles in protest of the current policies of the recording industry.
These policies lock popular musicians into long term contracts that are illegal in the movie and television industries, while limiting the profits that artists can realize from their work to a very small percentage of gross sales. Meanwhile, this same industry is seeking to impose unprecedented restrictions on customers in an attempt to dramatically curtail the distribution of digitized music via the Internet.
There is something seriously wrong when industries as politically influential as the recording and film industries must lobby Congress to try to force electronics manufacturers to change the design of personal computers, VCRs, CD and DVD players, and Personal Video Recorders simultaneously. Especially since, in some cases, the electronics manufacturers are different divisions of the same companies that own the recording and film production companies.