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Not so rare any more. Pretty much all the tunnels & bridges in NYC are "no photo" zones. Take a look at this entertaining gallery for examples.

While there certainly has been file sharing, and accordingly some loss of revenue to the recording industry.

That's not a proven fact. As Lawrence Lessig says in his book (I just read it last week) Free Culture (link is to HTML version of the book, which is published under a CC license),

The meaning of 'some loss of revenue' in this case is not meant to indicate that the loss is sufficient or large enough to give cause for the RIAA's legal crusade against grandparents and kids. 'Some loss' could mean as little as a few dollars or any amount you want to guess at. The point is that it is unknown. Even Mr Lessig points out that some people will download instead of buying. This is the part where some loss of revenue occurs. It would be easier to estimate the grans of sand on a beach than to estimate the true loss of revenue to the RIAA through file sharing.

I bet most of the RIAA members are wishing they had kept their lawyer on a leash for a while so they could be standing in line behind wallstreet bankers. ooops!

While there certainly has been file sharing, and accordingly some loss of revenue to the recording industry.

That's not a proven fact. As Lawrence Lessig says in his book (I just read it last week) Free Culture (link is to HTML version of the book, which is published under a CC license),

File sharers share different kinds of content. We can divide these different kinds into four types.

A. There are some who use sharing networks as substitutes for purchasing content. Thus, when a new Madonna CD is released, rather than buying the CD, these users simply take it. We might quibble about whether everyone who takes it would actually have bought it if sharing didn't make it available for free. Most probably wouldn't have, but clearly there are some who would. The latter are the target of category A: users who download instead of purchasing.

B. There are some who use sharing networks to sample music before purchasing it. Thus, a friend sends another friend an MP3 of an artist he's not heard of. The other friend then buys CDs by that artist. This is a kind of targeted advertising, quite likely to succeed. If the friend recommending the album gains nothing from a bad recommendation, then one could expect that the recommendations will actually be quite good. The net effect of this sharing could increase the quantity of music purchased.

C. There are many who use sharing networks to get access to copyrighted content that is no longer sold or that they would not have purchased because the transaction costs off the Net are too high. This use of sharing networks is among the most rewarding for many. Songs that were part of your childhood but have long vanished from the marketplace magically appear again on the network. (One friend told me that when she discovered Napster, she spent a solid weekend "recalling" old songs. She was astonished at the range and mix of content that was available.) For content not sold, this is still technically a violation of copyright, though because the copyright owner is not selling the content anymore, the economic harm is zero--the same harm that occurs when I sell my collection of 1960s 45-rpm records to a local collector.

D. Finally, there are many who use sharing networks to get access to content that is not copyrighted or that the copyright owner wants to give away.

How do these different types of sharing balance out? Let's start with some simple but important points. From the perspective of the law, only type D sharing is clearly legal. From the perspective of economics, only type A sharing is clearly harmful.9 Type B sharing is illegal but plainly beneficial. Type C sharing is illegal, yet good for society (since more exposure to music is good) and harmless to the artist (since the work is not otherwise available). So how sharing matters on balance is a hard question to answer--and certainly much more difficult than the current rhetoric around the issue suggests.

Whether on balance sharing is harmful depends importantly on how harmful type A sharing is. Just as Edison complained about Hollywood, composers complained about piano rolls, recording artists complained about radio, and broadcasters complained about cable TV, the music industry complains that type A sharing is a kind of "theft" that is "devastating" the industry.

While the numbers do suggest that sharing is harmful, how harmful is harder to reckon. It has long been the recording industry's practice to blame technology for any drop in sales. The history of cassette recording is a good example. As a study by Cap Gemini Ernst & Young put it, "Rather than exploiting this new, popular technology, the labels fought it."10 The labels claimed that every album taped was an album unsold, and when record sales fell by 11.4 percent in 1981, the industry claimed that its point was proved. Technology was the problem, and banning or regulating technology was the answer.

Yet

Now the numbers above are completely fictional, I have no idea what the average viewership of BSG is, or the average cost per episode. If anyone can find these two items of information, we can calculate the minimum cost per episode to a viewer for BSG to be produced. I'm guessing it'll be closer to $1.99/episode than $0.12/episode.

It's harder to do with cable than broadcast, because cable channels get per-viewer subscriber fees for their revenues in addition to advertising. The subscriber fee is for the whole channel, so they can decide how the apportion it to a particular show.

For broadcast, it's basically around 60 to 80 cents that advertisers pay per viewer for a popular show. For broadcast, a solid popular show gets around 10 million viewers. Cable ratings are much lower. Battlestar Galactica specifically gets around 2 million viewers on a good night. But since it's on cable, they can still afford it since they have those subscriber fees.

Subscriber fees for the Sci-Fi channel are 16 cents per month per subscriber, and they have 79.88 million total subscribers, so $12.8 million a month. How much of that to apportion to Battlestar Galactica? That's what makes this hard. Flat per hour division gives you roughly $18,000 per hour. Cable ad rates are like $6500 per 30-second spot (who knows if the Sci-Fi channel can command a higher rate?), and assuming about 20 paid 30 second spots per hour (don't include promos, PSAs and the like), you get $148,000 revenue for an episode of BSG.

So: ~$150,000 revenue per show / ~2 million viewers = $0.075. Seven and a half cents per viewer is what they are happy to take in to show you BSG (they haven't canceled it, so they must think it's worth it). So it seems closer to your guessed at 12 cents than the $1.99. Don't worry for the media companies, they're swimming in profits.

About a year ago I thought about this subject, and came to the conclusion that for downloadable shows they could charge about 80 cents for an hour show without advertising, and make the same as they do now when they show it on an over-the-air broadcast network. If they left the ads in, they could make it available for free, just like they do with over-the-air broadcast.

Of course, they'd be stupid to charge even that much for what could be considered either:
a) promotional (hey, cool show! Now I'll watch it!)
b) supplemental (I already am a fan and watch the show, but I missed an episode)
c) extra (I wouldn't watch the show anyway)

Only if you are
d) replacement (I'll watch the show on my computer instead of on TV)
would it make sense to charge for it. Even for case c), you'd be better off not trying to screw down and squeeze every last cent out, you'd do better to try and convert people to being fans of the show. If they don't, you don't lose anything you weren't getting anyway, and if you do, woo-hoo! If you charge, those people won't be paying.

So instead they charge $1.99. Yes, they find a lot of suckers who will pay that, but they could maximise their profits a whole lot more if they brought that price-point down to approaching free. Ah well, old business models and all that...

http://offtheshelf.nowis.com/index.cfm?ID=13

About a year ago I thought about this subject, and came to the conclusion that for downloadable shows they could charge about 80 cents for an hour show without advertising, and make the same as they do now when they show it on an over-the-air broadcast network. If they left the ads in, they could make it available for free, just like they do with over-the-air broadcast.

Of course, they'd be stupid to charge even that much for what could be considered either:
a) promotional (hey, cool show! Now I'll watch it!)
b) supplemental (I already am a fan and watch the show, but I missed an episode)
c) extra (I wouldn't watch the show anyway)

Only if you are
d) replacement (I'll watch the show on my computer instead of on TV)
would it make sense to charge for it. Even for case c), you'd be better off not trying to screw down and squeeze every last cent out, you'd do better to try and convert people to being fans of the show. If they don't, you don't lose anything you weren't getting anyway, and if you do, woo-hoo! If you charge, those people won't be paying.

So instead they charge $1.99. Yes, they find a lot of suckers who will pay that, but they could maximise their profits a whole lot more if they brought that price-point down to approaching free. Ah well, old business models and all that...

http://offtheshelf.nowis.com/index.cfm?ID=13

Partly saying "What the last guy said."
I must say I agree with him, and the comparision with lending a book is a good one, okay, there is only one hard copy of that book that is being exchanged, meaning that the author/publisher has been paod, whereas there could be any number of copies of files. But those files (say MP3s) came from original copies too...somebody bought the album and maybe converted the tracks either for personal use (I'm very protective of my CDs...some have only been used once...) or because they felt the stuff was so damn good other people might like it too.

I have often introduced friends to books, or have been introduced to books by friends which has led me to but the book even though I've read it at least once already, or else other books by the same author.
Equally so, when I have been lent CDs, often of bands who are quite unknown or whatever, I have been known to buy a copy (which is a rare thing, I hate buying CDs, they are so overpriced in this country...thankfully these underfunded bands sell their CDs at half the price of the overpriced ones, they even keep these prices when the artists hit it big (say, Damien Rice, though damn him for his B-Side extras and so on...).

Also, I do download things, such as mp3s or music videos. Generally of Japanese (but moreso, non-western artists), this is because about 5 years ago I simply gave up on the western music industry, I already have any worthy oldies and everything from underground to mainstream music was just hypocritical forms of the same crap. I had an interest in Japan and started by checking out some of it's artists...I downloaded quite a few mp3s, clips from live shows and music videos to get a good feel for the stuff, and fell in love with it. I then went to buy things by these artists, using the wonderful export site www.cdjapan.co.jp, and have now bought about $900 worth of stuff, maybe more, a lotof the stuff by the one artist in fact. I bought all I owned in originally "illegal" digital formats (though no laws existed to say that these were illegal in Europe at the time, though I believe the EU has decided to allow people to be deported, or certainly tried under US law), and more.

Now I said earlier, I am not someone who buys music, I liked music since a young age, had people buy me things as gifts and such, but in my entire life I have bought/been given a total of 4 albums and 2 singles (previous to import shopping sprees), I just felt buying music was a waste of money and overly costly (about 23 euros or more for an album, I am a student, I get about 30 euro a month for whatever wants I have, I always felt books made more worthwhile purchases).

However, because of downloading mp3s I found something that I loved and was prepared to shell out a lot of money for it, 30 second song bites would never have convinced me to get any of it. There are some artists I have yet to get hard copies of what I own, but when I have money in my hand it flies out quite quickly! Interestingly, it costs me as much to export an album (with DVD, which does up the price) all the way from Japan by EMS as to buy one in my local music shop.

The transfer of copy-righted things can result in the exchange of fair cash, not always, I'd say I'm a somewhat rare type. I know I did download some western music/rip friends' CDs, but I just deleted them...the stuff was just dreadful. But the thought that transfering mp3s takes from the industry's earnings is absolute tripe. I *never* was happy buying stuff, and the stuff I did download I would never have paid good money for. The industry is losing money (though I doubt it is), because people are disillusioned.

Also, to further go on with the comment that this started with...
If you walk into a store and steal anything, you get arrested (some call this bad luck!), and you will get some punishments. What is different here?
Have a read of (or skip to the summary if you're lazy) http://offtheshelf.nowis.com/index.c

• I think you're really missing the actual argument made. The argument that it's not theft does not mean it's not
• bad. The point is that the RIAA/MPAA/BSA/DemonSpawn are trying to call it theft to make it an emotional issue instead of the legal one it is. Also theft is worse, as the owner no longer has the ability to make money of the item stolen. A copyright holder can still make barrel loads of money from a work that's been downloaded online because they still have it available to sell.

  That doesn't make it right, but it really makes the discrepancies in the punishment even more obviously ludicrous. There was a post yesterday where someone compared the penalties for downloading a file vs. going to a store and shoplifting it. The results were very telling, if you stole it you faced a maximum of 1 year in jail and a $100,000 fine. If you downloaded it you faced a maximum of 1 year in jail, a $100,000 fine, $3,300,000 in damages + the legal fees of the owner of the copyright. The article can be found here.

  So while neither is morally right, a lot of people are so shocked and pissed about the HUGE discrepancy in punishments that they stop seeing downloading as evil. It's a way to stick it to "the man" who's gotten these ludicrous laws put on the books.

  Personally I have no ambiguity about it, if I download something that's copyrighted and I don't own a copy already it's not legal. I'm also well aware than the fansubs in the anime community aren't legal either, but at the same time I really feel that the punishments handed down for downloading an item shouldn't be legal either. Frankly I could probably go rob a Blockbuster, kill every employee and customer in the store while I was at it and receive less punishment than if I downloaded a copy of a movie. There's something very wrong there.

  Finally to address you argument about if someone violated the GPL or other open source license. Yes /. and myself would be royally pissed, but I wouldn't say they were stealing. I'd say they were breaking the GPL/etc. and violating a contract and/or copyright. I'm fair with my values, it's still not theft even if it's my personal copyright being violated, it's copyright infringement, a very different thing.