Editor’s note: This article was first published in December 2010; it was written right after the Spanish Congress voted down the Sinde law, and the battle it describes as unfinished was still under way. The prices it cites (CDs, cinema tickets) and its predictions about CDs, DVDs and DVD players date from 2010.
The Minister of Culture (Ángeles González-Sinde, after whom the law is informally named) has lost the first half of the match against link-sharing sites, file sharing and “pirate downloads“. Internet users have celebrated the news that Congress has rejected the law, although the battle isn’t lost yet.
This is another controversial subject, just like politics. If I say I’m against the Sinde law, 50% of people will brand me as pro-piracy, and if I say I’m in favour, the other 50% will hint that I’m against freedom of expression. So the best thing is to explain a few details of what’s going on here and why this law exists.
The music industry complains that record sales have fallen because of piracy and P2P sites, but… are we really screwing over the artist? The answer is no. Whatever some people say, artists are earning much more now than they did years ago. They don’t sell more records, but their records are better known and they play more concerts, so they end up earning more.
The people these sites are hurting are the industry’s middlemen, those “typical Spanish” types who make more money than the artist while doing nothing.
They’re the same people who, when a CD sold for €29.90 and customers complained about the price, said they couldn’t bring prices down. Today they sell the CD for €12, throw in a DVD of the concert and, with a bit of luck, a two-for-one deal, and they still make money, bearing in mind that the artist gets less than €1 per CD.
Another part of the Sinde law is driven by the claim that cinemas are closing, although in reality we see more and more multiplexes in our cities. So I conclude that those big multiplexes are causing other cinemas to close. And even if that weren’t the case, I think that paying €7.50 for a cinema ticket in the current economic situation makes going to the cinema a luxury.
The Sinde law also targets book piracy. No comment needed: a publisher pays a book’s author around 6%, while Amazon pays the author 70%.
What’s really happening here is that these people are trying to hold back the imminent advance of technology, which will arrive with or without the Sinde law. The physical DVD will disappear, just like the CD, DVD players, mini hi-fi systems and so on.
In time, nobody will carry their music on discs, and with 3.0 technology you certainly won’t need a DVD player. This is what people in this industry find so hard to see, and they aren’t looking for alternatives. If you run a business and don’t innovate as times change, you end up dying.
Singers won’t disappear, and neither will the film industry, but new technologies will make the middlemen disappear.
Today, anyone who dreams of singing can take their music to the whole world without depending on a record label. That means an ordinary person can compete with a professional, and I think that’s a great advantage.
That said, no business is being destroyed. What’s needed is simply to create alternatives for this business, so that link-sharing sites can coexist with it and generate income for the author, writer or musician.
I think there are more important laws that should be looked at before meddling with something they’re never going to stamp out. That’s my opinion.
Featured image: Fernando Losada Rodríguez, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
