[visualops]

The pigopolists continue to bite the hands that feed them.
If it wasn't for the fact that they also hold the production and distribution monopolies they'd be dead already.

[Question_Assumptions]

Of course Linkin Park and others are refusing to sell anything but full albums on Apple's iTunes store or they are avoiding putting their music on the service at all. Apple has a model for legal music sales and the artists are making themselves part of the problem by avoiding a good solution.

[vikzilla]

I would love to buy dozens and dozens of new CD's. At 5$ a piece that could be done. At 17$ a piece it won't be done. The industry needs to realize that if they give the public what they want at the right price, the stealing will stop. It just easier to buy new. Just not at those prices.

[Nick Danger]

How do you spend your life in Hollywood, around the music business, without learning the lesson of Reefer Madness?

It is a basic principle of the Universe that adolescents and near-adolescents view all threats and warnings from adults as an opportunity to display independence from adult authority. The more you wag your finger at them, the more they wonder what secret pleasure you're trying to keep them from this time.

Tell 'em it will drive them insane. They laugh. Tell them the police will arrest them and throw them in jail. They call the police 'pigs,' and keep right on smokin' the stuff.

Have these RIAA nitwits never been teenagers? This is Reefer Madness all over again. "Booga Booga! It's wrong! It's illegal! We'll come and get you!" This has stopped adolescent sex and drug use how well?

Free rock & roll... might as well be sex or drugs as far as teenagers are concerned. On Monday they get the adults telling them not to screw, on Tuesday they get the adults telling them that weed will rot their brains, and here come these guys to tell them not to download songs from the Internet. Teenagers interpret this as meaning "screwing, smoking dope, and downloading music are forbidden pleasures. Let's go do 'em!"

If the RIAA's target market wasn't so young, you could see them doing this. But as a strategy for changing adolescent behavior, they have hit on the one thing that is guaranteed to create more of what they don't want. Challenging teenagers to be rebellious is like daring a snake to bite you.

[zeugma]

Back when napster was big, I used to share out my own rather massive collection of CD/ripped albums on the days when news articles would come out with Rosen or one of those other bozos making stupid comments about how it was destroying their business.

The RIAA is destroying themselves.

I have more than 19GB of now of my CDs and albums that I've ripped. I really enjoy starting XMMS, and putting it on random play. It is a heck of a lot more convienient for me than it would be to try to do something similar with my collection. I even bought an FM transmitter so I can tune it in on my home stereo.

The recording industry is today's version of the buggy whip manufacturers of the early 1900s. They need to look at what the public wants and provide it, or tehy will get completely run over.

One of the things I thought was interesting about napster was watching what people would download. I have very little 'pop' music, because I don't really like that kind of stuff. Most of it is 'classic rock', big band, classical, blues, bluegrass and early country (pre-60s). I'd see people hit my box when searching for something obscure, then start looking really closely at what I had, and download stuff that was even more obscure, or even just random picks. It didn't seem to fit the profile of what the media was reporting as being the typical napster user.

I've looked into itunes, and think it is closer to the model that will ultimately win out, but at $1/tune, they are still buying into the RIAA arguments too much IMO. 25¢ is probably a better long-term price point, but the problem with that is, the RIAA members won't be making $17/album at that price.

[strela]

"Forget about it, dude -- even genocidal litigation can't stop file sharers," said Wayne Rosso, president of Grokster, one of several systems that allow users to upload and download files -- many of which are unauthorized MP3 copies of songs published by the RIAA's member companies.

Keep whistling past the graveyard, friend. And hide your assets well, because you might very well be living in a refrigerator box under a bridge somewhere when RIAA gets through with you.

RIAA has the perfect right to protect their member's intellectual property. Good for them and bad for those thieves out there who think they have some sort of Constitutional "right" to listen to and trade free music without paying for it.

[two23]

Every public library that offers books to readers for free is "book sharing"....every time I read a book and pass it on to a friend, I'm book sharing..same thing. I don't hear the authors and publishers of the nation going to and fro looking for people to devour with law suits.

[cowtowney]

FURIAA

[gitmo]

Weiss said the recording industry should lobby for special taxes on CD burners and Internet access as a way to recoup losses incurred from file sharing, an idea that Grokster's Rosso also supports. Rosso was in Washington recently to talk to lobbyists about forming a coalition of file-sharing firms.

This is the assumption of guilt without the chance to prove innocence. These idiots are so arrogant they think every CD purchased is to copy their precious music.

I use a lot of CDs, and it's not for recording music. Why do they think they have the right to take my money to enrich themselves? Dam* liberals are trying to suck the life out of this country.

[Jhoffa_]

Starting June 26, RIAA President Cary Sherman said in a news conference, the group would collect evidence against consumers illegally trading files of copyrighted music, with lawsuits to follow in a couple of months.

Good!

[Sofa King]

I think people are ignoring the biggest difference between swapping cassette tapes and digital music. Take cassette tape with something on it. Copy it. Now make a copy of the copy. Now make a copy of that copy. Notice anything? Now take a CD. Rip an MP3 off of it. Now copy the MP3. Now copy that copy. Repeat about a dozen times. Guess what? It still sounds the same. There is almost no degredation from the song being converted into an MP3, and once that's done the copies are identical.

This lack of a limiting factor on how much it gets reproduced is part of the problem.

Also, "because they can't stop us" is a very poor defense for behavior.