Last week ars technica highlighted a study done in France which showed that since the passing of a strict internet disconnection law, designed to curb piracy, piracy had actually risen.
It showed that even though the law won’t come into effect until later in the year, people had started moving to different technologies which the bill doesn’t cover.
The record industry’s response to this study via IFPI’s CEO John Kennedy went something like this:
It is nonsense to suggest that a study conducted before the [new] HADOPI authority has sent a letter to a single infringing user is somehow a definitive judgment on the success or otherwise of France’s digital piracy laws.
He’s got a point. And they are quite right technically in their arguments against the survey; basically that the samples used were not comprehensive enough.
But what he is missing, along with his friends who like to stick their heads in the sand as their industry implodes, is that the movement away from P2P and towards other forms of piracy not dealt with by the new law, like online streaming and one-click downloads, is exactly what is going to happen. And this survey is probably on the right track spotting that trend.
What these guys simply don’t get is that strong arming, threatening, and suing your customers (potential or existing), whilst working to infringe as many of their freedoms as possible is not how you win customers. It’s how you drive them away.
The same will happen in the UK, and anywhere else these knuckleheads cajole governments into passing these kinds of Orwellian laws.
The recording industry needs to sack some lawyers and hire a few marketing and creative types who can come up with new sales strategies. Not new protection rackets.