Seriously, the next person who claims that it was illegal downloading that "killed" the music industry....

Argh.

You know what? You're entitled to your opinion. If your opinion is that the Music Industry as we knew it could have survived, had the onslaught of P2P sharing networks, such as Gnutella and Slsk not become ubiquitous, then so be it. I've made very clear in the past my advocacy of downloading media (illegally or otherwise), and how I honestly believe that it makes people more responsible and conscientious consumers. It allows us to make informed decisions about what we pay for.

Maybe I should have mentioned something though...

I'm a musician. My father's a musician. My roommate's a musician. Most of the people I was around, growing up as a kid, were musicians, both professional and otherwise. Some of these people work for small record companies as their day jobs. Now that they all have iPods, they all download music. Before the internet, they used to tape music, either off the radio, or from records borrowed from friends or the local library. We're musicians and we steal. Fuck you.

I mean, even if one were to blame Napster for the death of the music industry (looking at you Lars Ulrich), did we really want the music industry as we knew it to survive? Be completely honest with yourselves now.

Illegal downloads f**ked the music industry seriously, and while I'm all for sticking it to the "man," it all does end up negatively impacting the artists and their art -- ESPECIALLY SMALLER "NICHE" MUSICIANS!

I would say that music industry executives, and the framework of the industry is what really f**ked musicians and artists, long long long before the internet was around. Don't believe me? I know some dudes in Plainfield that worked as studio musicians on some historically important records and never saw a lick of the album profits. That's not because they were screwed over by anyone with any specific malice towards them. That's because working studio musicians only get paid a one-time fee. Even if you provide an improvised excerpt in a song (i.e. solo), which many musicians like to refer to as "spontaneous composition", you get a one time fee. No publishing rights, nothing. Why? Because that is the going contract for studio musicians. That is the way in which the Music Industry was designed at its very inception.

I mean, you want to talk artists' royalties, the situation is not much better. We're talking a couple cents per unit, and that's after the label has recovered expenses (i.e. shipping, packaging, production, any sort of advance, touring costs, etc.). A couple cents per unit. The average CD costs less than a dollar to manufacture. The cost of an individual album, including shipping, production, artwork, packaging, is somewhere between $3 - $4. It might be even less at this point. Meanwhile, music consumers are being charged anywhere between $11 - $18 on average. That's about $10 more than the CD cost to make. That's a $10 profit per unit, and the artist is getting paid a couple cents per unit. This was the case well before Napster, and last time I walked into a record store, it was the case several years after Napster.

The music industry does not respect you. The music industry does not respect it's "talent". All the music industry has done, since its inception, is convince you, the consumer, that there was a need for a middle-man.

Before The Music Dies is a fairly decent documentary which investigates this issue further, by interviewing music fans, studio technicians, professional songwriters, musicians, and former A&R reps. The nicest thing about this documentary is that they are selling both DVDs and DRM-free, downloadable digital copies of the movie (both at compressed and DVD quality) via their website. No middle-man. If your curious about this issue, and how it relates to music fans and musicians, check out the site.

Now, in relation to the BoingBoing.net post, I don't really think that the issue is whether or not illegal downloading is right or wrong. The real issue is that the RIAA does not want you downloading music, period, and that this is another piece of propaganda to add to the pile. It just so happens to feature a comic book character. That has always been BoingBoing's stance. Sure, pay the artists for their work, but don't let the record company tell you how to use your music (i.e. Digital Rights Management). Intellectual property is a very slippery slope of an issue, but property formal is less so. If you pay for a record, whether it be the physical record or a digital copy, the record company should not be able to prevent you from sharing it with your friends, burning multiple copies for whatever reason, or play these files on another machine.

Let's put this in terms of another media industry. Let's say you bought the Civil War tradepaperback. Your buddy comes over, sees you have the book. He's interested in buying the X-men tie-in trade, because he's a big X-men fan who happens to be one of those wait-for-the-trade guys, but he hadn't read the main story yet. He's a bit of a tightwad when it comes to his cash. So you offer to lend it to him. Now imagine that the minute the book exchanges hands, Joe Quesada pops up out of nowhere, snatches up the book and says to your buddy, "You didn't pay for this! You don't get to read it!" That's DRM in a nut-shell.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but most comics pros are currently advocating that you lend out your comics. They're telling you that word of mouth is the most powerful marketing tool. It's the one thing that could get non-comic book readers to read comics again, and hopefully save the industry. I don't think that BoingBoing is anti-artist by any means. I don't even think they're anti-paying for your art. I'm pretty sure what they are against is rich white men telling you how, and under what circumstances you are allowed to enjoy the art which you have already over-paid for.

Again, there are lots of resources out there on this issue, and how it pertains to any number of mediums. Go read some of this stuff and decide for yourself. As for me, I've made very clear that I download illegally in order to be a more concientious and responsible consumer. I'm downloading in order to make an informed vote with my money. This way, I am doing my personal best to ensure that the material I want to see on the shelves every week will be there next month, and that the crap I have no interest in is not. I'm trying to personally ensure that the comics industry is putting out what I personally think are good, intelligently made comics, in a language that they actually listen to. Money.

Except when it comes to the music industry. I am clearly out to fuck them. Hard. Because every day they are trying to fuck my friends and family even harder, and that doesn't sit right with me.

UPDATE Wow. Just read those opening paragraphs. I'm a dick, aren't I?

In the comments section of Occasional Superheroine Ms. Superheroine talks about the comics industry adopting a download platform for authorized digital comics (e.g. iTunes store for comics). I agree, wholeheartedly. My only issue is that DC & Marvel will probably be strong advocates of using DRM to ensure that these comics are not shareable, and I've mentioned above my feelings on DRM, and how I think that that would contradict previous statements made by professionals. The only reason this concerns me, is because there's only a small handful of books coming out from those publishers that I want to pay money for, but they have enough clout to set the standard for all the other publishers.

Ms. Superheroine makes an excellent point (again in the comments section) when she points out what really killed the music industry was not so much the emergence of downloading technology, but rather going up against the downloading technology. She believes that working with emerging technologies might help keep the mainstream comics industry afloat. I think that the heads at the big 2, as well as publishers like Image and Dark Horse are pretty well aware of this, and are at least trying to work with the future instead of fighting it. Hell, Avatar is putting out that web-exclusive Warren Ellis project.

Does anyone but me remember Marvel's short-lived, Flash heavy Dot-Comics? They used to feature a lot of classic books (I can't tell you how many times I've read Amazing Fantasy #15 at this point in my life) as well as the two main Ultimate titles. It was pretty sweet, and it's sort of how I got back into super hero comics when I was in college. I thought that that was a format that worked well, because you had to actually read the comic on Marvel's website, but you could share the link with you pals or whatever. Sure it's not portable, and the initial load time could be slow, but it was well worth it for me. And I suspect it was worth it for Marvel, because I've been reading and buying Ultimate Spiderman as a direct result.

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So without any new solicitations to view, comic book piracy has become the new hot issue on the web right now.

That is not to say that this is not an issue worth discussing, and I'm really really glad to see everyone from comic creators to fans to unabashed comic pirates chiming in and explaining their positions in a seemingly civil manner.

I am a life long comic fan. I still go to the store every Wednesday and spend approximately $20 a week on brand new floppy comics. That amount does not include the price of trades, collections, or graphic novels. You may even say that I, like many of my fellow fans, am addicted to reading comics.

Unfortunately my budget is smaller than I would like it to be. My salary is paltry. My rent is high. The cost of living in New York City is consistently rising at astronomical rates.

Did I mention that my weekly comics budget 6 months ago was $30 a week? And that 6 months before that it was $40 a week? That was not always the average amount I spent per week, but it was my maximum price range.

In the past two years we have seen the price tag of the average mainstream floppy rise from $2.50 to $2.99 per book. That bump may not seem significant, but as most fans will point out, we are essentially getting 22 pages of a 5 - 7 issue story. That's a minimum $15 minimum per story. That's approximately $15 for 110 pages of story.

Now, I'm not saying that the $2.99 price tag is not justified, and as grateful as I am for better coloring technology and better quality printing, $15 per story is still a lot, considering that the average Dean Koontz paperback, which is probably closer to around 200 pages of story, costs about $10, and it takes me about 30 - 40 minutes to digest the average trade paperback.

Maybe I should curb my habit (more than I already have). Maybe I should do that thing where I don't read floppies anymore and simply wait for the trade. Unfortunately, a lot of my favorite books are not guaranteed release in a collected format. They need to sell enough floppies in order to do that.

What downloading comics allows me to do is be a more conscientious comics consumer.

I was first introduced to Alan Moore's Promethea series via a collection of cbr files that my buddy past along to me. Now I own all of the trades, as well as several others in Moore's ABC line.

I shelled out a $100 as part of DC's special 52 subscription plan. I didn't get all of my issues, the ones I did get were all at least 2 weeks late (2 weeks, after the 1 week delay we were told about in advance), and some of them showed up in my mailbox fucked up. I wouldn't have minded if I had enjoyed the series more, but I didn't. It was a waste of $100. That's a $100 I could have spent on rent or bills or food.

I was a fan of Ultimate Spiderman in the very beginning of the series. For one reason or another I stopped reading it regularly. A few years back I got back into it. How? Reading the trades for free in THE LIBRARY. What story lines my local library didn't carry, I caught up with by downloading the torrents. I have been buying the floppies every month since then.

I have a friend who makes his living primarily as an artist. That means money is infrequent and irregular most of the time. He's also a huge comic fan. When he does come across money he immediately spends it on comics. When he doesn't have money (and I mean, doesn't even have enough for food or clothing) he downloads his books, and buys the hard copies when he gets paid. As an artist who makes his life selling his art, he surely recognizes the necessity of comic creators being paid fairly for their hard work. He simply can't afford to support artists on a regular basis on the terms of the current market.

This is not everyone. There are quite a few people who have no shame in downloading or uploading comics on a regular basis, with absolutely no intention of ever paying for one. But as a few people have rightly pointed out, that is not really taking money away from creators as much as never offering it. I suppose it is the difference between being mugged at gunpoint, and being pick-pocketed.

I have no qualms about downloading comics regularly, simply because I still do give my money to the books that I think need it or deserve it. I'm not willing to sacrifice my own lifestyle in order to ensure the lifestyle of everyone else in the comics industry, but I am willing to compromise my lifestyle a bit in order to ensure the lifestyle of a handful of creators and publishers that I think merit my support, in exchange for 22 pages of culture. If you personally enjoy reading Countdown or World War Hulk: Frontline, please buy it. Please support those books. But if you are not, don't. Please. That is worse than stealing it in my opinion, because that just means that books you don't enjoy will be stealing shelf-space and potential budgeting for books that you do or will enjoy. This is a scheme that the Big 2 are banking on, because it is easier to sell crappy stories with existing properties than it is to conceptualize new ones with good stories.

I would also like to point out that maybe 40% (that's a really rough guess) of the comic torrents making the rounds out there is material currently unavailable. Like the underground Wimmen's Comix collection or a lot of scantilated manga & BD (which does often make it's ways into the hands of US publishers). So, as a note to publishers, don't just look at torrent stats as a way of determining who is stealing money from you. Also look at it as a way of determining what sorts of stories, or what sorts of old material there is a demand for that is not being met by the current market.

The last thing I will say is that going to the store and paying $20 for a collected edition of any comic series is far more convenient than configuring your computer and your router to run some of the better, and therefore more popular, bittorrent clients. The fact that so many people are willing to take the more frustrating route says something.

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