Sometimes I feel ashamed (dont forget to scroll down on the target page to see why) for spending my time with copyright issues while in the world outside the wars in the middle east, escalating conflicts over energy supplies, the global ecological catastrophy we are heading to is happening, and instead of doing something for those issues I am in a comfortable, air conditioned room thinking about the rights of artists and users. Seems like entertaintment compared to what is happening out there right now.
But I am more worried when it comes to the assessment of the results of the G8 summit: pump more oil , ignore the ecologic consequences, turn a blind eye to the middle east and the developing nations and strenghten the IP protection – this is how the result of the meeting of the world’s strongest people can be summed up.
Anyway. The world leaders have issued the document”Combating IPR Piracy and Counterfeiting‘ in which they say: “We consider it necessary to give priority to promoting and upholding laws, regulations and/or procedures to strengthen intellectual property enforcement, raising awareness in civil society and in the business community of the legal ways to protect and enforce intellectual property rights and of the threats of piracy and counterfeiting, and also to providing technical assistance in that area to developing countries. Close cooperation between law enforcement agencies, including customs authorities, is also of great importance.” This means more FBI raids in Hungarian university campuses, and i guess more publicly financed police squads patrolling the interests of the entertainment industry (A police unit dedicated to combating movie piracy and those responsible for the manufacture and distribution of pirated films has launched in London. – BBC) Thank You, just what we need.
One of the first victims of this can be the russian AllOfMP3.com, which is a legal service selling music and paying royalties under russian copyright laws. So that is the problem with allofmp3?  “The labels demand, and get, between 60 and 85 cents wholesale for each music file. This means iTunes, for example, wants £9.79 (almost $18.20) for an album where an AllofMP3.comn typically pays only about £0.75 (about $1.40) for a download. ” (P2Pnet)
We are talking about information products here. The marginal cost of any song in mp3 format is very-very close to zero. So what is the reason behind charging 1 dollar/song, and puuting this on the agenda of G8? I tell you: GREED.