Today Francis Keeling at Universal Music stated that the music industry will probably never be rid of piracy completely. When considering this against the long, beautiful history of music, the image of a man growing old springs to mind.
Like the music industry, life started off perfectly, no problems, nothing playing on your mind, a care free existence you might say. But as time went by, the worry lines traced their way across your brow and now every time you look in the mirror you are haunted by the every expanding forest of nasal hair.
Like it or not, these hairs are the piracy we will never get rid of. You can snip away at the edges, push everything backwards or rip it out at the root but no matter measures you take it will always come back.
In this case, technology has been its own downfall. Gone are the days of vinyl records where the innocence of music took its last stand. From the advent of the tape recorder things changed forever. These days you don't have to sit there waiting for the tape to finish playing as the other tape in the dual deck recorded every precious piece of magnetic information, today you download, copy and paste or select and burn.
True the industry, in the future, may introduce copying protected hardware or digital rights will prevent you from modifying or transferring files, but when it comes down to the bare basics, anyone with a speaker output, a microphone input and a bit of audio cable can sit in their room making illegal duplicates to pass on to the Blackbeards of sound.
So no, we will probably never be rid of piracy, with all of its legal struggles and artist's loosing money, but is that the price the industry now has to pay for the advancement in technology it has so encouraged and utilized over the years?
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