PC Magazine responds to music industry complaint letter

“How did we end up being the music industry's scapegoat, and what do we think about it?” This is the sentence that begins PC Magazine’s open response to the music industry’s scathing letter criticizing their coverage of P2P services to check out when Limewire was shut down.

The original letter to PC Magazine was signed by the RIAA, the group that spearheaded the shutdown of Limewire, as well as sixteen other music industry organizations who expressed their “deep disappointment” that the magazine would publish the article “LimeWire is Dead: What Are the Alternatives?”.

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In response to the industry’s allegations that PC Mag was promoting piracy with that article, PCMag Digital Network Editor in Chief and Senior VP Lance Ulanoff sent the following:

The story isn't encouraging or discouraging anything. That's not our role. PCMag's job is to cover all aspects of technology, which includes the products, services and activities that some groups and individuals might deem objectionable. We covered these Limewire alternatives because we knew they would be of interest to our readers. We understand that some might use them to illegally download content. We cannot encourage that action, but also cannot stop it. Reporting on the existence of these services does neither.

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We have, obviously, written about many online and offline services, including some that these groups might consider legitimate or "legal." However, the fact is that some users store and manage illegally gained content in music applications like iTunes. We would not stop covering these utilities simply because some users place illegal or even inappropriate content in them.

In his opinion piece, Ulanoff states that PCMag.com has no intention of retracting their article as was suggested in the music industry’s letter. He then adds, “It worries me that the music industry took this action, because it reeks of desperation… Clearly the music industry is still losing money to music piracy and even the recalibrated profit margins brought on by legal music sharing services.”

“It's time for these music execs to pull their collective heads out of the sand and fully acknowledge and accept all the ways their industry has changed,” Ulanoff proclaims. “They also have to understand that nothing will stop technology's inexorable march forward. Things will continue to change. Music downloads and sharing will never go away.”

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Kudos to Ulanoff and PC Mag CEO Vivek Shah for standing behind the original story and not letting the music industry bullies push them around. PC Magazine, MyCE, and other online technical publications have a duty to cover the content that our readers want, not what the industry talking heads say we should publish.

P2P file sharing is not an illegal act unto itself. Not all of the material present on P2P networks infringes on copyrights. Some Indy artists and producers rely on these networks to promote their music and films. To abolish these services would be doing a huge disservice to a large part of the creative community just to placate a few mainstream acts who are pitching a fit about all the profits they’ve supposedly lost because of piracy.

As Ulanoff says, it is time for the music industry to evolve and find ways to make the technology work for them instead of trying to halt the technology. The music industry’s misapplication of the “law” and promotion of censorship is irresponsible and dangerous. Let’s hope that other publications react in the same way that PC Magazine has. Let’s not enable the music industry to disable the spread of knowledge and information to suit their selfish needs.

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