Recording Industry Bullshit

Wolf!

This week, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) is running a great ad in the Capitol Hill newspaper, Roll Call, reminding Congress that the entertainment oligopolies have cried wolf about new technologies many times before. The ad collects a century-worth of fear mongering by an industry focused on legislating to protect out-dated business models, rather than adjusting to changing market opportunities: "I forsee a marked deterioration in American music...and a host of other injuries to music in its artistic manifestations, by virtue—or rather by vice—of the multiplication of the various music-reproducing machines..." -John Philip Sousa on the Player Piano (1906) "The public will not buy songs that it can hear almost at will by a brief manipulation of the radio dials." -Record Label Executive on FM Radio (1925) "CEA Defends Home Recording"