Written By: Khadeeja CoonrodPhoto Credit: Michael Cogliantry
**Editor's Note: Before you read this article, read "Why Selling Records is Like Picking Up Women, and How The Big 4 Failed"
Illegal file sharing may turn out to be the next big sale. DigiRights Solutions (DRS) from Damstadt, Germany is passing around a presentation to future possible clients offering plans for how they might make more money by overtaking illegal file sharing instead of regular, legal sales. The interesting part about all of this is the fact that DigiRights Solutions is an anti-piracy body.
There's a mysterious number to the DRS strategy: one figure would ask for 25 per cent of people who get a letter, warning of legal action, if they prefer to pay the settlement fee without question. So that would be up to 150 times what a legal download brings in.
DRS says presently it can go after 5,000 illegal downloaders a month so their approach comes from the amount of legal sales compared to the amount of threatening letters DRS can send out for a client.
The plan is simple, DRS is going to force money out of lawbreakers by encouraging illegal music to be downloaded. The idea is simply genius.
If Shawn Fanning, the creator of Napster heard about this, I would be curious in what he had to say since Napster was one of the biggest popular peer-to-peer file distribution systems and was different from previous networks since it focused exclusively in music in the form of MP3 files. Napster also provided a wider selection of music that could be downloaded and copies of older songs, unreleased recordings, and bootleg recordings from concerts could be shared through Napster. After a few lawsuits which the first done by Metallica due to a leak of their demo and later the company had another lawsuite this time coming from Dr. Dre after he had sent a letter asking his works to be removed and then it not being done. Napster later shut itself down in July 2001 and declared itself bankrupt in 2002. It started June 1999 and paved the way for major filesharing companies such as Limewire and I-Tunes which are major names in filesharing providers along with Kazaa, Imeem, and Pandora; to name a few.
DRS is thinking forward and one's thing's for sure, it's paying close attention to what's happening in the technology industry and how to gain more money.
