The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
The Reminder would like to welcome our new weekly columnist, Clarence Fisher. Clarence teaches grade 8 in Snow Lake. He has a master's degree focusing on technology and education and he has been recognized both provincially and nationally for innovation in education. Clarence has worked on a number of projects with the provincial department of education, Industry Canada, and international schools. He is currently involved in a project with the United Nations investigating the effects of virtual learning communities. His work will be highlighted in the upcoming book, "Pioneers of New Literacy." He is very interested in technology, and the effect it has is having on our society. Industries change By Clarence Fisher Universal Music has finally conceded that CD sales have been dropping for the last two to three years because of the huge numbers of songs being downloaded using peer-to-peer software on the Internet. Peer-to-peer (P2P) software, such as Napster, Limewire, or Kazzaa has once more been in the news as the RIAA, (Recording Industry Association of America) filed hundreds of lawsuits last week across the U.S. against people who they say have been illegally downloading copyrighted music. But this action has received a lot of bad press. One of the lawsuits was filed against a 71 year-old man in Texas who said he doesn't even know how to use his computer, he just bought it for his granddaughters to use. Another suit was filed against a 12 year old girl who lives in one of New York City's poorest housing projects. Filing these lawsuits was actually the second choice of the options considered by the RIAA as they were not able to convince the U.S. government that they should have the right to remotely destroy the hard drives of people trading songs. Another problem is that it is dangerously hypocritical for the RIAA to file these suits, as many of its members work with a company called BigChampagne to track music downloads and use this information for their own purposes. Big Champagne tracks files to see where they are being downloaded to, so that the recording companies know where to focus their marketing efforts. A new artist with massive downloads in Atlanta? Roll out the marketing machine to focus in this location. If the recording industry is able to use this software for its own benefit, why shouldn't the average home computer user? The lawsuits are a new initiative to battle what has become for the music industry, a growing problem. While I'm not in favour of copyright theft, I do think the recording companies need to take a long hard look at the way technology has moved their business out from under their feet. Commercials by artists asking people not to download music have not worked, taxing the sale of blank CD's hasn't helped, and I doubt whether lowering the prices of CD's or taking people to court will either. Music has been easy to digitally share because the files are relatively small in size and they are a common item on people's computers. Sharing files using P2P technology has only begun. If you have any of these programs you know that you can get entire editions of software, whole movies, and video games on the networks as well. The only thing holding them back is Internet speed; and as high-speed connections become increasingly common, and increasingly fast, many industries are going to be facing a challenge similar to what the music industry is now. I hope they know what their industries are going to look like in the future before others decide for them.
