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Cursed Tongue: It’s Not Us, It’s Them

Posted by CursedTongue on October 20, 2007

In the current stormy waters of rampant capitalism, it’s difficult to find a company that is unwilling to blame its woes on the very customers they depend upon for precious, life giving money.

Earlier this week the RIAA won a lawsuit against Jammie Thomas, in the amount of $220,000 for sharing 24 songs on the Internet. Thomas, a single mother of two making $36,000 a year, claims that she never shared music on the Internet. She did not have enough money to put experts on the stand who could have provided evidence on how someone else opened the Kazaa account using her handle.

Corporate bullies suing single mothers for money they don’t have is one way to alienate your consumer base. And this is simply the first of a long line of cases of people who chose not to give a few thousand dollars to the “Poor Orphaned Sony-Warner-EMI-Universal Fund” to settle out of court.

Record companies have long blamed flagging sales on music pirates. It couldn’t be their audibly airbrushed until all of the life is sucked out music. Nor could it possibly be the $16 price tag for a CD that cost them $6.40 a piece to create. It also couldn’t be due to the fact that the there are many, many more things for people to buy, and record labels might have to be content sucking up smaller pieces of the market-share pie from what was once a pie eating contest at the Glutton County Fair.

In an attempt to curb music piracy, major recording labels insisted that Apple put digital rights management on music downloads in their iTunes store. The Big Four recording companies put the chokehold on buyers who wanted digital music, in what some might call collusion, with Apple.

The problem with iTunes is that Steve Jobs1 wouldn’t play nice and share his DRM software. Meaning that iTunes digital music can only be played on an Apple device. The same company that runs the digital media store with the most sales makes the bestselling media devices, iPods. Sounds kind of like that game with the railroads, Boardwalk and that little man with the monocle. Except that this game could cost a consumer $220,000 of real money.

The recording companies seemed unaware that the more they tighten their grip, the more consumers will slip through their fingers. The overboard peiratephobia2 of the record industry is probably directly responsible for the genesis of DRM-free downloads on Amazon.com.

Executives at EMI managed to come down far enough off their gold dust mixed with cocaine high to realize that maybe crippling their digital music with DRMs wasn’t such a great idea. Jeanne Meyer, one of the many vice presidents at EMI commented on the launch of Amazon’s MP3 store, “As a consumer, when you buy a slice of bread you want to know you could put it in any toaster.”

It’s talk like that, which makes me think maybe richer-than-god executives at major corporations are capable of empathy.

This isn’t to say that users will stop buying slick Apple toasters, or user-unfriendly Apple bread. But Apple has competition in the music download business, where there really wasn’t any before. Only a few record labels have walked the plank into the world wide waters of songs that can be copied and listened to on any device that plays MP3s for $.89.

Only time will tell if the Amazon.com model of allowing customers to enjoy fair use will be good for business. But when iTunes songs can be hacked, copied and distributed by pirates instead of CEOs3, I don’t see why it won’t work.

Even when consumers buy too much of a product, we’re to blame. The Wii has been out for over a year and demand has outstripped supply and by all forecasts will continue to do so through Christmas. Nintendo says there’s nothing wrong with their production model. The Wii shortage is simply due to high demand. Nevermind that my husband and I have already spent five man-hours trying to buy a Wii and still don’t have one. It’s not as though Nintendo can willy-nilly open another sweatshop in China, just like the ones grinding out iPods.

I know I’m happy to spend $249.99 on something produced by a factory full of woman in China toiling under prison camp conditions in exchange for about US$55 per month. Especially when I think about how Steve Jobs could fill a tub with $100 bills, if whim ever struck him to take a treasure bath.

I’m sure it’s somehow the consumer’s fault for not paying $549.99 for a mobile media device that will probably die on cue within five years. It’s just plain un-American to ask Jobs to give up his treasure baths so rural Chinese people slaving in iPod factories can make a living wage. I knew there was some reason I didn’t trust that guy.