O Dia em que as Forças Estranhas copiaram os piratas... ou 2009: Ano da Dieta dos Dinossauros

Recebi do pessoal do Mundo em Posts (http://mundoemposts.blogspot.com/) um dos artigos mais interessantes dos últimos tempos, recentemente publicado no The New York Times. Transcrevo na íntegra todo o artigo logo abaixo. Reparem na reviravolta e tendência da coisa...

"Music Industry Imitates Digital Pirates to Turn a Profit

By Eric Pfaner -Published: January 18, 2009

CANNES, France — After years of futile efforts to stop digital pirates from copying its music, the music business has started to copy the pirates. An entrance on Sunday at the music industry’s conference in France, where Nokia said it was expanding Comes With Music.

Online and mobile services offering listeners unlimited “free” access to millions of songs are set to proliferate in the coming months, according to music industry executives.

Unlike illegal file-sharing services, which the music industry says are responsible for billions of dollars in lost sales, these new offerings are perfectly legal. The services are not really free, but payment is included in the cost of, say, a new cellphone or a broadband Internet access contract, so the cost to the consumer is disguised. And, unlike pirate sites, these services provide revenue to the music companies.

“Two thousand nine should be the year when the music industry stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb,” said Feargal Sharkey, a former punk rocker who now heads UK Music, a trade group for the British music industry.

Previously, the industry largely insisted that legal digital sites sell songs by the track, like Apple´s iTunes, or through subscriptions to services that do no let listeners truly own the music.

But over the last year, many people in the industry have become convinced that such offerings will never replace the revenue from plunging sales of CDs. Worldwide music sales fell about 7 percent last year, said John Kennedy, chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. Meanwhile, growth in downloads from iTunes, the biggest legitimate digital service, came to a halt.

Perhaps the most prominent service offering unlimited downloads has been Comes With Music, which was introduced in Britain last fall by Nokia, the world’s largest maker of cellphones. It lets users download as many songs as they want, from a catalog of more than five million tracks, when they buy certain Nokia phones.

Tero Ojanpera, who is in charge of developing entertainment services at Nokia, said at an industry conference here that Comes With Music would be expanded to Australia and Singapore during the first quarter of this year, and to other European countries later in 2009.

Other services offering unlimited downloads are being introduced by Internet service providers, which many people in the music industry say hold the key to curbing piracy because of their direct relationship with Web users. TDC, an Internet provider in Denmark, offers unrestricted downloads as part of its broadband subscriptions, and broadband providers elsewhere in Europe are rolling out similar services.

The government of the Isle of Man announced plans for a system under which consumers with broadband subscriptions would be required to pay a nominal monthly license fee. They could then legally download music from any source, even peer-to-peer services that are outlawed currently.

“At the end of the day, we are not going to stop piracy, so let’s embrace it,” said Ron Berry, the inward investment manager for the Isle of Man government. Music companies have balked at such arrangements in the past. But they are showing a newfound flexibility in licensing their material as their existence becomes increasingly threatened.

Internet service providers, which previously resisted calls for them to take an active role in stamping out piracy are looking to offer music in their broadband packages. Governments are also moving in to require more policing by Internet providers. France is poised to enact a law requiring providers to shut down the Internet connections of persistent copyright offenders. Britain, meanwhile, has threatened to introduce further legislation if voluntary measures to try to curb piracy are unsuccessful.

Music industry executives and Nicholas Lansman, secretary general of the Internet Service Providers Association of Britain, said they were confident that they could soon reach a licensing agreement to make unlimited music services available via Internet providers.

Cellphone manufacturers, meanwhile, are eager to add music services as the battle of the smartphones heats up among companies like Nokia, Apple and BlackBerry.

Mr. Ojanpera, of Nokia, declined to say how many of the Comes With Music phones had been sold in Britain."

Meu comentário sobre isso? Uau! Os dinossauros começaram a fazer dieta. Depois de longa e tenebrosa era glacial, em 2009 (pasmem!) as Forças Estranhas anunciam a saída em massa de seus túmulos piramidais para utilizar... tchan tchan tchan tchan... a Internet. Finalmente os senhores todos poderosos da indústria da mídia vão descer de seus pedestais, interromper suas eternas comas, suspender as ações contra o uso do P2P e... usar o P2P para fazer seus negócios darem lucro.

Sinceramente, depois dessa dá até para acreditar que a paz no Oriente Médio é possivel...

E LEIA ANTES aqui, ou voce nunca vai acreditar em milagres...alguem me belisca!

P.S. Slumdog Millionaire já disponível em P2P!