RE: music industry/bootlegs

["Karen L. Newcombe" <kln@crl.com>]

The music industry has much bigger problems right now than some fellow in 
the outback making a couple hundred CDs of a badly recorded Kate concert 
from the 70s.  India and China, a clutch of South American countries, and 
nearly every SE Asian country are churning out MILLIONS (yes, I'm 
shouting) of bootleg CDs of official releases in blatant disregard for 
western copyright laws.

This is an enormous problem for record companies and they are spending 
more money than you and I will ever see in our lifetimes on negotiating 
intellectual property agreements with these governments.  Often the 
agreements have zero effect on the bootleg operations.

They also have an immense internal problem.  Remember the flap a few 
years ago about demos and cutouts being sold in record stores?  The big 
record companies insisted this was putting them out of business.  Well, 
if that is true, why do they press a half a million demos?  Why not the 2 
or 3 thousand that would cover the number of deejays they send them to?  
Why not increase accountability for their own distributors who are 
selling promotional items to dealers instead of giving them away?

Its all a show of money and bravado.  In all this wheeling and dealing 
the small-time bootlegger is a minor problem for record companies.  If 
they cared about these folks, they'd issue an official record of the same 
material and end the problem right there.

Karen  kln@crl.com