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Legal Issues Don't Bother American Downloaders
An anonymous reader writes "Ipsos-Reid has released its latest research on file trading. Bottom line, the great majority of users do not believe they are breaking the law. Only 9% feel there is anything wrong with their actions. With 40 million Americans identified as active file traders this is indeed stirring information, though not surprising. Another stat, 73% of US downloaders report that their motivation for trading was to sample music for later purchase. You can see the charts and original press release here."
Someone is censoring these postings. This is obvious to me bacause I posted a reply to something, and it is gone. In addition, someone else had something to say that is gone. Luckily, I copied the article (not mine) and now I will paste it back for you all to read. Enjoy! As they say, information has a way of getting free!
---- The Censored Article -----
Look, I'll be honest. I, like most other people here, have downloaded pirated music from the internet. Its seductively easy, and if you have a nice broadband connection, really quick. The sound quality on the 128k MP3 format may not be "audiophile" quality but for those of us using regular computer speakers, and not $6000 Bose systems, its plenty good. Just like with gay sex and open-source software, its easy to think that because its fun and enjoyable, pirating music is okay, and should be permitted. But thats the wrong answer. Despite all the half-baked rationalizations cooked up by piracy advocates, no one can really refute the truth spoken by the recording industry: Sooner or later, the widespread distribution of near-perfect digital copies will destroy the market for commercial recordings, and make the production of the very product consumers seem so eager to pirate impossible. Just take a look at the music you download now. Sure, you may occasionally in a fit of self-righteous anti-commercialism download a legitimate "teaser" track released legally, or some free songs from no-talent "independent" artists who are giving away their wares because no one in their right mind would pay for them. But you know that almost all of what you download was recorded, produced, distributed, and marketed by the very recording companies you claim to despise, and would never have been committed to disc were there not the possibility of profiting from exclusive distribution rights to audio recordings. Every time you download a popular song illegally, you are decreasing the probability that commerical-quality music will be made in the future, for any price. Anybody who cares about the system of intellectual property which has made the American entertainment and information technology industries so dynamic, and enjoys their fine products, from Windows XP to the "Lord of the Rings" movies to your new cell phone with built-in games and internet access, should understand the necessity of crushing Kazaa once and for all. We know that what piracy companies are doing is reprehensible, and moreover, as the Napster case and every successive suit against online piracy services has shown, illegal. But Kazaa is worse than that. They have deliberately created an organizational structure, similar to the front organizations used by organized crime, to continue to operate and profit from their misdeeds in spite of legal sanction from every civilized country in which they have been sued. And like any crime ring, they have gone to great length to extract as much money from their "customers" as possible, using the enticing lure of pirated music to force paid advertising and virus-like spyware on the computers of their users. But in this modern era of international treaties and multi-national organizations such as the WTO, no one is beyond the reach of the law, and I believe that Kazaa can be crushed. They must be submerged beneath a tidal wave of litigation, until one day no internet provider will dare risk allowing them access. Any desperate tax-shelter island which offers them safe haven should be considered a rogue nation, isolated internationally, and added to the state department list of countries sponsoring terrorism. If the world can beat Kazaa, it will send a strong message that theft is wrong, and allow the content producers to lead the way into the beginning of the true information age.