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The benefits to storing your music collection online are so great that many people must already be doing it, including the intersection of rich and record collector. Karl Lagerfeld must get tired of lugging his Louis Vuitton trunk-ful of iPods around, I'm sure Elton John is back to acquiring vinyl, I doubt Music Man Murray is going to delete the MP3s of his 300,000 records.

I don't see what's illegal in storing your legally-purchased music in your own online storage. I don't think the record companies can force you to keep the username and password of your online music folder private, any more than your car company can force you to lock your car up. The reason people don't share a read-only password is they'd have to pay their ISP big bandwidth fees when huge crowds come to freeload. But the rich can afford it. When will some celebrity, Russian oligarch or Chinese billionaire, mad at the record companies and eager for infamy, go anarchist value-destroying Robin Hood for us and let slip that the username:password for http ://RomanAbramovich.ru/AllMyMusic is boris:Chelsea ?

The way the Fox News folks get their "public sector workers make more" number...

What has Fox News got to do with anything? I never mentioned Fox. I don't get my facts from Fox. Or MSNBC. Or from CNN. ABC, CBS, or NBC.

Here are a couple articles discussing the problem. The problem being, at it's root, that there is no compelling reason for government to restrain public sector union wages & compensation. Just the opposite, in fact. Politically, it builds an "unholy alliance" between politicians and public sector unions.

USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2009-04-09-compensation_N.htm

The pay gap between government workers and lower-compensated private employees is growing as public employees enjoy sizable benefit growth even in a distressed economy, federal figures show.

Public employees earned benefits worth an average of $13.38 an hour in December 2008, the latest available data, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) says. Private-sector workers got $7.98 an hour.

Overall, total compensation for state and local workers was $39.25 an hour â" $11.90 more than in private business. In 2007, the gap in wages and benefits was $11.31.

The gap has been expanding because of the increasing value of public employee benefits. Last year, government benefits rose three times more than those in the private sector: up 69 cents an hour for civil servants, 23 cents for private workers.

Labor costs account for about half of state and local spending, according to BLS and Census data. Benefits consume a growing share of that, now 34%.

LA Business Journal: http://www.labusinessjournal.com/news/2010/dec/20/unions-push-public-pay-out-scale/

There is little question that the compensation, benefits and pensions of public sector employees exceed those of many private sector workers. Whatever the standard, compensation that is commonplace for hundreds of thousands of public sector workers in California is almost unheard of in the private sector.

Consider, for example, the city of Los Angeles. Its memoranda of understanding with public employee bargaining units are posted on the cityâ(TM)s website. There are more than 80 types of clerical positions. The pay range for these is, on average, $43,600 to $53,200 per year. In general, after five years employment, a secretary will earn $53,200, well above what the private sector generally pays.

The salaries of clerical workers are commensurate with those of other city workers. Child care associates, golf starters and salaried recreation workers all typically receive more than $40,000 a year to start and all other full-time, salaried city recreation positions receive more than $50,000 a year to start.

You were saying?

Strat

Live Nation Inc.'s Chief Executive Michael Rapino said that by ending a long-term contract with Ticketmaster, the company will gain additional control over the distribution of tickets to its shows, confirming speculation that the company was moving to form its own ticket selling business.

You might be seeing a housing bubble if

it's significantly cheaper to rent than buy,

if people are saying that you can't possibly lose money,

if the cost of ordinary housing is beyond the reach of ordinary folks, even with two wage earners.

I think that California qualifies on those last two counts, at least. How is the rental situation? Is rent cheaper than mortgage payments for a comparable accomodation? If so, this might be a great time to sell your house and rent something comparable.

The median price in Santa Clara County (... where regular folks live) is $615k.

Most Californians can't afford to buy a house. At 5% interest, each $100k of mortgage means $536 of monthly payments on a thirty year mortgage. If you have a 20% downpayment, you're going to have a monthly mortgage payment of $2641, plus taxes, plus a bit extra for points. That's more than $31k a year just for a mortgage! The median household would be spending more than 60% of their household income on their mortgage payment, if they could find a fool who would give them a loan that was that much beyond their means.

Housing prices are notoriously sticky downward, because homeowners will resist selling when they're upside down on their mortgage. However, if those homeowners start missing mortgage payments or going bankrupt, the banks wind up having a firesale.

If interest rates rise noticably, enough people will be priced out of the market that demand will fall, and there will be a glut of $600k houses. No one will be willing to sell them for a $100k loss, so many Californians will be living in houses with for sale signs in the yard, hoping that they can unload and move to some place they'd rather be. The folks who have to move will lose an arm and a leg.

It could get a lot worse than that. I'd guess that if there is another significant dip in California's economy, there will be a lot of recent home buyers who just can't make those mortgage payments, and a shortage of ``bigger fools'' on whom they can unload those houses. Then prices won't be sticky downward anymore! Banks will be repossessing and selling at auction, and we'd see Santa Clara houses going for Houston prices.

Quote:

The recording industry already has blamed illicit music file swapping for keeping as much as $5 billion from its coffers since 1999.

But it gets much worse. With the number of households installing high-speed Internet access - the key component in moving large data files - projected to nearly triple within four years, the music business faces the prospect of mammoth losses and little assurance that its counterattacks to piracy will have much effect.

For the entire article, try this

Quote:

The recording industry already has blamed illicit music file swapping for keeping as much as $5 billion from its coffers since 1999.

But it gets much worse. With the number of households installing high-speed Internet access - the key component in moving large data files - projected to nearly triple within four years, the music business faces the prospect of mammoth losses and little assurance that its counterattacks to piracy will have much effect.

For the entire article, try this