Last Night's Castle

I've watched the TV series Castle on Monday nights for a couple years now. It follows new episodes of either the Bachelor/ette or Dancing With The Stars (both of which are shows that the Queen watches). The series has its ups and downs, and at the moment, it is on a down. The episodes remain entertaining, but the cases are a bit weak. In addition, Castle's involvement in the cases have run very minimal the last couple of shows. He is there to give some key piece of insight, but what was clever about the show before was that he was the one to fully solve the case by thinking completely outside the box. The cases themselves remain fairly textbook for a crime show: the one who does it is the one you usually meet first and then forget about completely through the course of the show.

And then last night, they had this plot. It is a well known fact that screenwriters and/or producers (can't figure out which) are some of the most out of touch people on the planet. They put forth things that people will kind of accept, but if you have any knowledge at all about the topic, you're stuck shaking your head at the naivety. This is what happened last night. The big twist (and apologies if this spoils it) was that there are two rivals in the music industry: one older, one younger, just like the show, Nashville produced by the same network. The younger is coming into prominence while the older is dropping into the shadows. The older tries to sabotage the younger by (and I'm not making this up) stealing the master recording of the younger's next album, giving it to a "hacker friend" who was going to upload it to the "Internet" (you know the place, right?) at the same time the album comes out to undermine sales of the album.

Hm. Having the knowledge I have, and knowing the people I know, I have some reasons that real people (not the bloated record company statistics) have for downloading music from the all-powerful and mysterious "Internet" as well as how this process works. First of all, stealing the master files for the album and releasing it online at the same time the album comes out is one of the dumbest plans ever. Why? Because people rip and upload the album in its full quality to the mystical Internet within hours of the album's release anyway. In fact, they'll go one step further and buy it from Amazon or iTunes and just keep the files going right out to the online file storage.

And now, would this move actually undermine sales? I really doubt it. The record companies will tell you that piracy is a huge deal and they're losing billions. They're probably guessing that number based on how many downloads they can estimate are going out from sites that host them. The reality is that they're not losing as much as they claim. Here are reasons that various people I know download music along with the amount that the record companies lose in that process.

1. They already have the album and have misplaced it, but want to get ahold of the music while trying to locate the missing disc. Money lost: 0.
2. Would never have bought the album in a million years, but are curious enough to give it a listen, yet too lazy to check it out from the local library. Money lost: 0
3. The target album is out of print. Money lost: 0
4. Want to hear the music now, but intend to buy it anyway. Money (ultimately) lost: 0
5. Not sure if they would like the album, so listen to it now to evaluate it, and then buy it because they wish to support the artist if they feel the music was worth it (don't laugh; I know someone who does this). Without listening first, they would not purchase it. Money lost: 0
6. Is flat broke and cannot afford to buy anything, so wouldn't have bought it. Money lost: 0. When they do buy music, they generally get it at a second hand store anyway, so the music companies still made no money on them.

I would imagine the subset of people who want the album, can afford the album, and can equally choose between buying it or downloading it is actually quite small. In addition, despite being in the technological age, a lot of people have no idea where to go to actually download anything. They probably lose more when people shoplift the album than when people download it.

So the fictional person went to jail for murdering someone who caught them in the act of a pointless crime that would not have changed anything. It was another one of those plots that was more of a public service announcement than it was an actual crime drama.

I suppose I should also throw out that this is not a commentary on the validity or legality of downloading unpurchased music, but a notation on the ridiculous nature of the plot / crime in this episode of Castle.