Reply #22: They are sabotaging their own irrational position with this settlement. [View All]

[Merlin]

By settlements like this, they are confirming that the value of the downloaded songs is roughtly $1 each. It's further confirmed by their deal along these lines with Apple, even though that requires special hardware.

At that rate, it doesn't come close to paying their legal fees to go after the average downloader, let alone this poor kid who evidently downloads more than most.

If the industry would have enough vision to provide a mechanism for people to be able to download songs legally and pay $1 each, most people would be happy to do so.

Why don't they? Because they don't want to cut out the retailers, true. But mostly it's because they want to keep forcing people to buy the whole album when all they want is a single cut.

The industry is so blind on this it's ridiculous. It has no idea what an explosion in music buying would be generated if it permitted the deal it has made--grudgingly--with Apple to be available generally on the web. In particular, people would love downloading older songs that are generally unavailable in stores, thus generating a whole new source of revenues for the industry.

But these guys in this biz are dinosaurs.