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On Piracy
You see this is the genius a of free country and free market. The record companies tried to make it impossible to get content. Kept the price high (and unreasonably so). Piracy (a market force) pushed them to bring their content down to a reasonable price and piracy of music is less prevalent. The landscape has changed and now more artists have more control of what they produce and more potential to get attention and get paid. Also I know the music industry - I can tell you for a fact that the majority of artists barely saw a 1% return - if they even saw that. The industry had a stranglehold on content production and that was locked down via their distribution networks. Hence content producers rarely saw a dime.

Read this for an insiders look at the biz (warning - the language is extremely crude at times! But he actually does a breadown of a recording contract and how artists mostly get nothing)

http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

The whole media landscape is changing day by day. There is no “one size fits all” solution. Content providers - who used to have total control of distribution are finding their distribution model collapsing - this is excellent for freedom! Remember when we only had 3 networks to get content from - and they all pushed the progressive agenda? In fact it is an interesting point that there is a relation to our loss of freedom to that consolidation and control of news starting with radio networks at the beginning of the 20th century.

The dinosaur media is desperately making one last attempt to control content so they can shut down places like freerepublic if it doesn’t fit the government propaganda agenda. Leahy, Reid and sadly, Lamar Smith are paid for stooges in this game.

The free internet has helped break the shackles of centralized information, publishing conglomerates, etc.. Locking it all down again will be the progressives dream come true. I suggest we not be useful idiots for the progressive agenda.