Slashdot Mirror

You mean something like lists of the most popular music, divided into genres? Even as specific as "Ambient Drum N' Bass" or "Hardcore Punk Music "? If only someone could do that...

(Seriously, maybe my music is random cruft on MP3.COM, but it's not too hard to find popular stuff. Also, many artist have "artist we like" links.)

You mean something like lists of the most popular music, divided into genres? Even as specific as "Ambient Drum N' Bass" or "Hardcore Punk Music "? If only someone could do that...

(Seriously, maybe my music is random cruft on MP3.COM, but it's not too hard to find popular stuff. Also, many artist have "artist we like" links.)

You mean something like lists of the most popular music, divided into genres? Even as specific as "Ambient Drum N' Bass" or "Hardcore Punk Music "? If only someone could do that...

(Seriously, maybe my music is random cruft on MP3.COM, but it's not too hard to find popular stuff. Also, many artist have "artist we like" links.)

You mean something like lists of the most popular music, divided into genres? Even as specific as "Ambient Drum N' Bass" or "Hardcore Punk Music "? If only someone could do that...

(Seriously, maybe my music is random cruft on MP3.COM, but it's not too hard to find popular stuff. Also, many artist have "artist we like" links.)

I used to live in stormy waters, just dying of fright,
but now I've found a special hobby
and I'm doin' all right

Line from the song Suction Cup 6.1 by Sofina on mp3.com. Great tune.

(Nope, I'm not in the band, but they're local to my area and they're pretty darn good).

--

There is no "Days Inn" system. Cendant properties choose between "Project Powerup" systems from three PMS vendors: HSS, Multi-Systems, or REZSolutions. These are three completely different PMS apps with Cendant interface modules. Two of these run on UNIX-type OSs, the latter runs on NT. Unfortunately, the hospitality industry is about two decades behind in software development, the *nix offerings all have abysmal user interfaces. With the average moronic front desk staffer in mind the GM is drooling over a Win GUI interface in hopes that his staff, who types one word per hour, might someday take less than a decade to check in a guest. The choice between the three systems (at least for Cendant brands) is indeed made at the property level and not higher.

As for your statement that most franchises write their own front-office, this is just wrong. There is only one chain that writes their own, I think it is Hilton. Most franchises don't care what package (if any) the individual properties use, that was the big whoop-de-do with Cendant's Project Powerup: unified software. Although I don't know exactly how unified equates to three different packages in their case.

The ire over Project Powerup had nothing to do with technical issues. Nobody wanted to install the system because it interfaced directly with Cendant. Hotels pay franchise fees based upon room revenues, with a direct connection to Cendant it would no longer be possible to fiddle with the figures in order to pay less franchise fees. There was also the fact that Cendant would be using your guest database for marketing. Big Brother at its finest! Oh yeah, and Cendant only footed the bill for a minimal installation. For my previous employer, they offered to replace our 15 terminals and custom software with 2 terminals. This, of course, would have made our Howard Johnsons front desk disparate from our other two hotels on the same property that were not Cendant brands, as well as leaving it unable to communicate with our accounting, inventory control, and 75 point of sale terminals at the 14 bars and restaurants located on the property (all running custom in-house software). The switch would've costed our company at least $100K annually in additional staff required to manually do accounting processes that were automated under the existing system. To this day, no Project Powerup system was ever brought to that property.

The hospitality industry's sister, the service industry, is dominated by unix. Micros is the major player there, and their unix offering is rock solid and can support 250+ terminals (cash registers) on one server. Their NT offering can't do above 25. Unix doesn't show its ass there like it does in the hospitality industry because the cash registers are all custom hardware with their own IO that only communicate with the server to send transaction information (over serial cables!). So the wait staff don't have to type ./burger.pl, they just press the picture.

maru
www.mp3.com/pixal

click here and listen to Senators Hatch, Leahy, Feinstein, Schumer and Cantwell at the latest Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and decide for yourself

There are frequent releases because the development team is using extreme programming, of course!

maru
www.mp3.com/pixal

but for some reason Napster supplies NO information on what to do if a song that you hold a valid copyright on is being blocked for no reason

If you hold the copyright on a sound recording, get your band listed in Napster's legal music registry. Or just sign up with MP3.com and name-drop your music in the chat rooms.

say I start a band, and I name the band "S@ndman"

First, you would change your name; it's too similar to an existing Electronic artist Sandman. After that, you would sign up with MP3.com. You keep the copyright and $5 of every $10 CD you sell. And because they run the server and listen to everything that goes on it to make sure that no unauthorized cover songs are posted, RIAA/ASCAP/BMI won't attack them.

I like that the Salon article presents a different view of this case, but I believe this is more 'wound-licking' on the side of free speech. If there is an industry that has more than enough resources to avoid the simple formality of appearing "anti-academic", it is the entertainment industry.

More likely than not, the RIAA (if even presented with this at all) will trumpet the unpublished paper as a victory for the DMCA. The DMCA in this case has been used to protect corporate interest/intellectual property. So a professor got bullied, who cares if entertainment is so vital to the economy? Such rhetoric is what really matters in these situations. Money will always win over free speech.

As a disclaimer, I am a musician that gives away all of my merchandise freely. That includings CDs, tapes, clothing, and anything else we do. We record, manage, and distribute our work and performances. Interested? mp3.com/leftunsaid and freespeech.org/leftunsaid.

I would like nothing more than the collapse of huge industry trade groups, but we must realize that nothing short of convincing the masses that the system they are used to is wrong will fix things. Etertainment existed centuries before people charged for it, but its strange to think that in this day and age. Thanks.

One would hope that the recording company would figure out that allowing a few songs to get out like that after an artist becomes popular would be a godd thing since it got them that far.

As far as releasing a few songs to drum up interest as a major label strategy, that's happening already.

While this is all nice and good, I'm not sure how much of an impact it'll have. I mean, for many, many of the mp3.com, besonic.com, et al groups, their music was always 'available free of charge, so long as credit is given' .. and in the situations where our music is ripped, the people who rip them arn't going to care much that your music is under (O). Since there will be no money, there's no big powerful (0) licesing watchdog to protect the interests of people under it. The problem with the industry right now is that business takes the 'all or none' approch, and the courts side with this. Either everyone pays fees for copywritten music (including Girl Scouts), or no one does. Far more useful would be to pursue better fair rights definitions, which define fair use as any situation where people listening to music are not customers of the broadcaster (like the Girl Scouts.) and where the group it is being boadcast to fits a certain minimum of ears per day (so, lets say places like funeral homes would be fine, but radio stations and malls would have to pay.) I mean, it really just comes down to some common sense that seems to have been abandoned in favour of law and precedence; should huge, rich, successful corperations get to charge you for cell phone ring tones? So long as we are not blocking these corperations' traditional path of making money (CD sales, radio broadcast), they should be made to accept that some forms of distribution without copyright payments are acceptable, and that being super-mega-rich instead of stupendously-stupidly-mega-rich will have to do.

While this is all nice and good, I'm not sure how much of an impact it'll have. I mean, for many, many of the mp3.com, besonic.com, et al groups, their music was always 'available free of charge, so long as credit is given' .. and in the situations where our music is ripped, the people who rip them arn't going to care much that your music is under (O). Since there will be no money, there's no big powerful (0) licesing watchdog to protect the interests of people under it. The problem with the industry right now is that business takes the 'all or none' approch, and the courts side with this. Either everyone pays fees for copywritten music (including Girl Scouts), or no one does. Far more useful would be to pursue better fair rights definitions, which define fair use as any situation where people listening to music are not customers of the broadcaster (like the Girl Scouts.) and where the group it is being boadcast to fits a certain minimum of ears per day (so, lets say places like funeral homes would be fine, but radio stations and malls would have to pay.) I mean, it really just comes down to some common sense that seems to have been abandoned in favour of law and precedence; should huge, rich, successful corperations get to charge you for cell phone ring tones? So long as we are not blocking these corperations' traditional path of making money (CD sales, radio broadcast), they should be made to accept that some forms of distribution without copyright payments are acceptable, and that being super-mega-rich instead of stupendously-stupidly-mega-rich will have to do.

Ideas like this always have good intentions, but rarely are they taken advantage of. Major artists will not let their music succumb to something as "low" as an open-source music industry. Smaller artists might like the free publicity, but they can hardly afford to give their music away for free. And then there are artists trying to get signed, doing self-recordings, etc.. nobody will want to listen to them! We already have many outlets such as mp3.com and farmclub.com, not to mention Napster and its relatives. What makes anyone think that the world will listen to us now? Kudos to a great idea though.

The problem here is that even if you had, say, only MP3's of CDs they already actually owned (I know its unlikely but entirely possible), those police raiding the place are not going to give a shit, they're going to arrest you anyway. It is highly unlikely that you're going to be able to convince them by saying "but look, these MP3's here, they're from the CDs sitting on my shelf there". Their policy would probably be more along the lines of "arrest first, ask questions later". I doubt they'd even bother to try check if what you were saying was true. This might seem relatively benign in the context of mp3's, given that the majority of mp3's are probably illegal, but the underlying principle that you're "forgiving" here is an incredibly dangerous concept - the idea that you can be arrested and held simply for having an mp3 on your computer, whether it is a legal mp3 or not. Checking if an MP3 is legal is not necessarily easy, since there are a variety of cases where an MP3 might be legal. It could be a recording of a friend of yours who has a band. It could be material that is no longer copyrighted, or never was. It could be music that can be downloaded for free from a musician's website (http://www.holemusic.com/audio/index.html) or from sites like http://www.mp3.com/. It might not be music, it may be comedy MP3's. How thorough do you expect the authorities will be in checking? If we begin to give this sort of power to the authorities, we're all going to be in deep shit. Go see "in the name of the father" for a good true story on what happens when you start giving authorities too much power.

There is nothing wrong, as you say, with merely trying to prevent theft. Thats not the problem here though. Sure, the authorities should have some means of preventing this sort of theft - but indiscriminate raids backed by a witch-hunt mentality and combined with media propaganda is not it. How much faith do you have in the technical abilities and knowledge of your local police?

Doh. Rick You wouldn't dare...

God, I hope 'they' aren't reading this, but... What they never seem to do is check exactly WHAT is being parodied. Is the MasterCard ad the target, or the shooting at Columbine? Quite honestly, I'd have to argue the latter. The courts never seem to care, as long as someone finds it funny, parody it is. But, MC is a huge corporation worthy of my distrust, especially since I owe them $10k! (Disclaimer: the above statement doesn't imply that MasterCard Inc. is an evil sinister corporation... its parody. Keep your letters to yourselves, thankyousomuch). Rick MP3s for your mind!

i'm feeling a hint of sarcasm there. this is free expression...art at its finest. i *wish* i could do this
*refrains from flaming...just this once because he's in a good mood* ...oh ..pfa are they making money on zelda any more?...i mean i'm sure a few people are buying the old NES consoles still but nothing compared to the majority. and even if your nations laws "did" at one time realize that such anthing was right or wrong...technology has changed the reality and definition of right and wrong. look around. we arent in the 19th century any more. "moderate me. you know you want to"
-
themusicgod1

Napster is in fact pretty lame for new musicians. How do you find them unless you know the title of their songs or the name of their bands? You can't. Napster doesn't allow browsing by genre.

Much better for the new artist is mp3.com - the artist gets paid for downloads, can sell CDs via it, they retain the copyright on their music. The user can download new music for free, and find out what the new artist's music is like. You can browse mp3.com by genre, so I can just poke around until I find something I like.

To get your music downloaded on Napster, you essentially have to be famous already. On MP3.com, people can actually find you, even if you're unknown simply by browsing.

As far as the first point goes (increased bandwidth due to users downloading the song left and right), I think you misunderstood my proposal. The web instance of the song would exist only to get authenticated via Napster. (Unless the person running the website chose to publish that address separately, possibly with the help of Napster -- in short, it'd be almost like your "real" email address entry for Slashdot; other users know it exists, but can't get to it.) So regular user downloads would take place via the traditional P2P mechanisms. However, when a Napster user's client goes to try and share the song, it'd send up an md5 hash (which, admittedly, would open the system to spoofing -- however, one could argue this is more robust than the current name-based system; as an added bonus, it could auto-name mp3s based on what the authenticator provided). That md5 hash gets checked by the Napster server to make sure it's in the database. If it gets a match, the song is considered okay for sharing (possibly with an extra info link for people to find out about the authenticator and his/her other authenticated songs -- this might be useful for someone who's authenticating, say, a large collection of copyright-expired music in a genre you're interested in).

The second point (the "I was hacked" defense) is one that I really don't have a good answer to. The best I can do is point out that someone could do the same thing with a web or FTP server that was acting as a direct-access illegal mp3 drop, and then do some handwaving, mumble a bit, hope it doesn't happen, and move on to the next point.

As for the third point (the "tax" of having a web site), I admit it's a problem. One solution might be to provide a number of alternatives for a copyright holder to provide authorization. There's also the possibility of using a service such as mp3.com as your hosting site -- if I'm not mistaken, it's free for non-premium users. While it wouldn't normally be in mp3.com's best interests to serve as an authorization drop-box for Napster songs, if we couple it with the earlier idea of having a link to the authorizing agent's site for each song, we suddenly have a means for mp3.com to help generate traffic back to their own site. Finally, the cost of a website would probably a lot cheaper than, say, the cost of officially registering your song on the RIAA opt-in list (and the latter wouldn't necessarily be open to people trading bootlegs of bands that don't object to recordings of their live shows).

On the fourth point (more bandwidth constraints and having the RIAA double-check authentication sites), you could greatly reduce bandwidth by having the song downloaded only once, with the HTTP ETag header being saved. From then on, it's just a simple HTTP HEAD request to verify the ETag (just like how browser caching works). No muss, no fuss, and bandwidth usage that (except for the initial retrieval) wouldn't even be noticeable.

As for your final "why bother with Napster, then?" comments, I do admit that it greatly reduces a lot of Napster's appeal. However, it does still provide two benefits: Bandwidth usage reduction (since people're still getting the songs via P2P) and shared interests/recommendations (where you see other songs you haven't heard before while browsing the shares of someone with similar interests).

Why do you see in that Michael Douglas character? Don't you want to be seen with a future hip-hop superstar? I can give you a baby (I hope)

I love you!! =steve

The more I see of the RIAA and how they're trying to control the music industry the more thankful I am that I'm somewhat removed from all of this. Thank God the punk bands I listen to are all on indie labels and don't have any part of this. Otherwise I'd have to make the choice of boycotting the RIAA and supporting the somewhat unknown/underground bands that I listen to, who, unlike Ms. Spears or the Backstreet Boys really do need every cent they can get from record sales.

All these people bitching about how Napster and MP3s are stealing from the artists need to step outside the pop world. I don't know how it is in other places, but down here in Louisiana we have almost no punk scene, no punk bands on the radio, and only a few decent local punk bands (if you're into punk checkout the New Orleans band The Picts). The only way I hear about bands is by word-of-mouth ("Hey man, have you heard the new Swingin Utters CD?"). The only way I can actually hear the bands is to get on Napster and download of their stuff. If I like it, I buy it to support the band. If I don't, the MP3 collects dust on my hard drive. For independent bands, Napster is a light at the end of the tunnel I can't even begin to count how many indie bands have benefited from my cash because I heard them on Napster. Why can't the RIAA see it the same way?

-antipop

Let's take a non-roseyeyed look at Napster. Forget what the Napster apologists have spun out since the RIAA began looking at them - Napster is only good for getting copies of MP3s of songs you don't want to pay for. I'll admit quite readily that I've downloaded copyrighted songs that I have no intention of ever buying. Sometimes, I'll get the song of a band I saw for 5 seconds on MTV, and just MAYBE it'll tempt me to buy the album.

If you take the copyrighted mp3s off, all you're going to be left with is a bunch of crap mp3s of people's bands, which you're never going to find anyway because you don't know what you're looking for. Also, just because a big record company isn't behind a band, doesn't mean that said unsigned band wants the world to get mp3s of its songs for nothing.

Napster is dead without its illegal aspect, for unsigned bands promoting their music, a far better option is mp3.com which at least has music grouped into categories, so you can find songs that bands want you to download, since I believe they get royalties based on advertising revenue.

Goodbye Napster, it was nice while it lasted

i think its agi not sci, but noteworthy nonetheless that a fan made a professional looking sequal of the same graphical quality (using the same engine no less!) purdy nifty, still have to play it a bit more.

A shame about sierra...ken williams can rot in hell.

oh yeah, the link: http://frostbytei.com/space/
and for those who like html click here and if your really bored click here.

apparently we have been stealing from the companies that charge 14.99 for a cd that costs them about 50 cents to package and market.

It costs more than that to market a CD. It costs to record the music, it costs to license the samples used on the CD, and it costs to produce promotional tools such as a website or music video.

Napster is going down for all the wrong reasons.

The "wrong reasons" you're referring to include the fact that recording artists who publish their work for a free download have a very hard time getting their work on mainstream radio thanks to under-the-table payola systems that the RIAA and NAB maintain.

A Pong faq. Funny, sure.
An existential pong faq? Heeeee-larious.
Here
check out my band. Bratwurst Orange we play pong on an Odyssy^2.

The best is an mp3 cd player either the Rio Volt at $169 or the soon to be release April 1st the TDK MOJO at $179
For those wanting an EASY ...did I SAY easy..any dimwit idiot could install on an old Pentium and make an mp3 streamer server check out e-smith mp3 jukebox. You need P90 or above, 32MB, good size harddrive if your BIOS supports over 8GB go for it, and a network card. You don't need a mouse, and only need a monitor and keyboard when initially installing it. From there on it's webbased managed and to stream your mp3z it's webbased.

The best is an mp3 cd player either the Rio Volt at $169 or the soon to be release April 1st the TDK MOJO at $179
For those wanting an EASY ...did I SAY easy..any dimwit idiot could install on an old Pentium and make an mp3 streamer server check out e-smith mp3 jukebox. You need P90 or above, 32MB, good size harddrive if your BIOS supports over 8GB go for it, and a network card. You don't need a mouse, and only need a monitor and keyboard when initially installing it. From there on it's webbased managed and to stream your mp3z it's webbased.

The annoyance at someone writing in all caps is imho a diversion from the real issue, which is the fact that someone's copyrighted material is alledgedly being pirated and the owner of said material is royally pissed off. Who cares if he is writing in caps? not every is savvy about the so-called and largely self-imposed net ettiqutte. I happen to think he has a valid point, and if in fact he and his lawyer are able to prove that the accused have pirated his works, they should push to have them proscecuted to the extent of the law. If you want to get free reading material of the net goto the Gutenburg project. I also have very little sympathy for Napster users who are sharing copyrighted music; if you want to share music, share free (as in beer and sometimes in speech) music. The record companies should go after individuals and sue them instead of Napster.

Similarly, the Beatles' White Album. I bought that on vinyl, and later on cassette. Am I really required to buy it AGAIN to legally download MP3s that other licenseholders have made?

If Lucas does an Hubbard on this whole thing.... scientology with the force?! Actually, looking at the IMDB the word Jedi came from some zen/buddhist thing originally. Hmm. Has it all been a plan? Will there soon be malinourshed people at the skywalker ranch? then onto airports chanting "join us you will!"?!?!?
Bratwurst Orange the band that loves to sing to bacon.

RIAA v. Napster Is founded on some people can use it for piracy so it should be shut down. Since it is users trading music, all Napster's delivering is indexes.

Contributory copyright infringement. The primary use of this is to pirate music published by the Big Five labels. If you want to promote your band's music or discover independent music, there are better tools such as MP3.com. They'll even manufacture CDs for your band that contain Red Book audio plus a CD Extra track with MP3 files.

Just wanted to point out that legal downloads from musicians who WANT you to download can be found at:

IUMA
UBL (Artist Direct)
mp3.com
vitaminic
mp3.fr
rollingstone.com
Amazon.com has a free downloads section in the music department

And for money:

emusic.com

The term "micropayment" generally relates to the fact that a merchant cannot perform a credit card charge against any major credit card without incurring at least a ten cent charge (for most mechants its more like fifty cents). This is a serious inhibiting factor towards financial transactions of small amounts, such as the dollar amount that one might equate with the value of a song from www.mp3.com/pixal or similarly low-value content. This is where all of the interest in a micropayment system originates, it would be used for transactions of less than a dollar or two.

maru

Would it be a good idea to start a publishing house that works on the lines of sites ... where musicians can place their music for download or for sale as CDs.. ... users can select a list of songs and then pay to have these songs cut on CDs and sent to them.

The musicians can also provide premium services by selling CDs with bonus tracks, software, posters, stickers, t-shirts etc... perhaps autographed stuff and so on..

mp3.com has been doing this for years, and I'm sure there are at least several other sites like it. I don't know whether they sell posters, stickers, t-shirts, or autographed stuff, but I wouldn't be surprised if they do for some of their more successful bands. You can download tracks from any of thousands of artists that have put their music on mp3.com, and order reasonably priced CD-Rs that contain tracks in both CD audio and MP3 format. Exclusive songs are often featured on these CDs as extra incentive to buy. I think this is a good way for indie artists to gain exposure.

RIAA doesn't touch MyPlay.com, which allows ANY MP3 to be stored on its servers, without even checking if it's legit.

Here's my math:

• numbers of total MP3 I have: 102
• number of MP3s I have on MP3.com: 26
• number of MP3s I have on MyPlay.com:76
• number of illegal songs I have on MP3.com: 0
• number of illegal songs I have on MyPlay.com: 76

Yep, RIAA is clueless.

Frankly, any site I hit with "aural" content gets bypassed immediately

Even MP3.com?

Isn't everyone always saying how napster can provide a legitimate service to swap non-commercial MP3's?

If you want people to hear your non-commercial MP3s, get hosted. I helped my brother's metal band get on MP3.com. The high-powered MP3.com servers and connection are much more reliable than the 56K modem of some Napster user in Zimbabwe.

Isn't everyone always saying how napster can provide a legitimate service to swap non-commercial MP3's?

If you want people to hear your non-commercial MP3s, get hosted. I helped my brother's metal band get on MP3.com. The high-powered MP3.com servers and connection are much more reliable than the 56K modem of some Napster user in Zimbabwe.

It exists and it is called www.mp3.com.

And Dischord is not your usual record label either.

Whether or not it IS fair use... it should be. As a musician myself, it's really about people hearing your music. It's nice to get something back but hte act is what should be rewarding in and of itself.

I have spent countless thousands of dollars over the years on instruments, equipment, rent, studio time, and most recently hardware and software. Playing regionally we might get gas money and expenses the night of the show covered. If we press a small (500 - 1500) run of CDs we hope to break even.

Most of my bands music is available on mp3.com (here) and our website.

This is only not FAIR when the artists and their labels no longer care about music.

Is it fair use when I buy mp3s from eMusic and burn those to CD? I bought an mp3 not a CD.

"NO artist has made several hundred thousand dollars from publishing their music on mp3.com."

Please take a look at this group under MP3.com earnings. $188,533.19

I disagree. I think that experience is helpful, but many "professional" producers are using extremely different equipment and tools than the "amateur" artists/producers. If you're sitting in front of 3 million knobs, dials, and sliders, it doesn't mean that your level of expertise is any greater than my expertise with a 16-channel sound board, a synth, a drum machine, a guitar, and CakeWalk.
Why don't you check out our band's music and tell me whether or not we know any tricks (using our equipment!) that can make our music sound just as good as "professionally" produced music?

I've been running a simular thought through my head. I want to start a music project, and run it the way a free software project would be run. Lots of musicians collaborating. Some a lot, some a little. Some providing samples. Some doing arrangements. Some folks doing artwork & promotion. Maybe distributing through mp3.com? I already have my music on mp3.com and it's a pretty fair deal, it seems.

I've been running a simular thought through my head. I want to start a music project, and run it the way a free software project would be run. Lots of musicians collaborating. Some a lot, some a little. Some providing samples. Some doing arrangements. Some folks doing artwork & promotion. Maybe distributing through mp3.com? I already have my music on mp3.com and it's a pretty fair deal, it seems.

But, as this article makes fairly clear, studio-quality productions are now within easy reach of anyone with a PC and a modicum of talent (some would say even the talent is optional). If you want cool new music from the best trackers or the best independent musicians make sure you keep those watching over your rights financially healthy.

Troll version: screw the RIAA/MPAA/Disney/Time Warner bunnies and join the EFF today!

Richard deCosta, Composer, Pilot

Okay - I can't just let some broad open-ended statements like these stand.

1. As others have mentioned, if you don't think that it's worth $20, don't buy it and don't listen to it. Stealing it (and that's what the law says you're doing regardless of how you feel about it morally) only serves to make that artist more popular which in the end stuffs the pockets of the RIAA even more.
2. Distribution methods outside the RIAA exist. Have you heard about this little web site called mp3.com? I've never seen an artist there charge more than $10 for an album. This has the added advantage of pissing off the RIAA even more than stealing their music.
3. Another alternative, if you've just got to have that CD, is buy it used. It's completely legal under the doctorine of first purchace (or whatever it's called exactly) and the money all goes to your local music vendor.
4. While the mass produced artists like Britney Spears or n'sync certainly fit the description that you've given here, most artists are actually very talented and hard working, but they just aren't hyped the same way these "teen heartthob" artists are, so their album sales are much lower. Here's why that's important: of that $20, artists see less than a dollar, and typically less than $.25. By that model, an artist needs to sell 4 billion albums before they can become a billionare like you claim. I have yet to hear of that happening. More importantly, many of these small name artists will spend months and hundreds of dollars producing an album (studio time ain't cheap) that only sells 10 000 copies. What do they get in return? $2500. They're lucky if they break even. This tends to be the norm for most artists.
5. So why do they go broke doing this? Here's a newsflash for you: artists actually do something for humanity. We listen to music because we enjoy it and humans have a need to be entertained. It's not as important to us as food & shelter, but given the basic necessities for life, we will tend to seek out entertainment. This is why even the most primitive native tribes around the world play music. So if you don't think that music is important enough to pay for, I'd like to see you live without it.

For the record, I'm not a musician myself but I have a lot of friends that are. I find it amusing that RMS says, "Programming has an irresistible fascination for some people, usually the people who are best at it. There is no shortage of professional musicians who keep at it even though they have no hope of making a living that way," as most of the professional musicians I know spend their nights & weekends doing music, but they program durring the day to pay the bills.

My 2 bits,

-"Zow"

Perhaps Xerox should've sued Apple for stealing THEIR intellectual property!!!
Speaking of which...
For those of you who haven't heard it yet, hurry and download "Every OS Sucks" by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie!!!
Get it here. Quite humourous.

----