The Effect of Pirated CDs

Moderation abuser writes "The real reasons music isn't selling as much as it used to, and not a lot to do with file sharing." I'm not sure that I agree that piracy is the reason for all of the music industry woes - I think creativity also has something to do with it, but those are still some huge numbers for pirated CDs.

Comments

"Cue" not "queue" you illiterate monkey

[Anonymous Coward]

yeesh
ridiculous

Re:Dismissal of piracy is astounding

[Lonath]

I've observed some of the same things, and I totally agree with you.

Expect the thieves....errr "copyright infringers" to trot out all of the usual arguments like:

1. The giant record companies are corrupt
2. The giant record companies colluded to keep CD prices high,and all I got was this lousy voucher.
3. They don't pay the artists enough.
4. They screw artists out of their royalties, therefore I should screw the record companies out of their income.
5. If I knew the artists were getting the money, I would pay for it gladly.
6. I'm doing it for the artists. Don't you care about the artists?
7. Britney Spears sucks. Why would you support her?
8. Congress is corrupt.
9. They bribed Congress.
10. The courts are corrupt.
11. They bribed the judges.
12. I don't have the money.
13. I wouldn't pay for it anyway, so they didn't lose a sale.
14. Information should be free.
15. Copyright lasts too long.
16. All thee RIAA base are belong to me biznatch.
17. I've been doing this for so long, that now I'm entitled to keep doing this, so they can't take it away.
18. They jack up the prices so that they can pay money to all of the crappy bands that they have on their labels. I don't want to pay for those shitty bands.
19. I don't like the DRM on CD's so the only way I can play the music is to download it.
20. NSync sucks. Do you think supporting them is more important than freedom?
21. My downloads aren't going to make a difference.
22. They're keeping the indies from getting mainstream exposure.
23. The stores don't have any of the music that I like.
24. If they had my favorite band X on their label, I would buy it, but all they have is crap crap crap!
25. They waste money on stupid shit like Cristal and promotion and advertising.
26. I could make better music than they could at 1/10 the cost.
27. CD's cost less to produce per copy today but cost more.
28. Look. I'm not going to buy the music anyway, and if I stopped downloading they would still blame the decline in revenue on filesharing, so I may as well join in.
29. Christna Aguilera sucks. I refuse to support an industry that would produce such crap.
30. The music is all crap anyway.
31. There's only one song I want off a CD, so why should I have to pay for the whole thing?
32. They can't put N million people in jail.
33. It doesn't matter. I've started an open source P2P project that will have totally anonymous users, perfectly secure encryption, and the license will be set up so it will be illegal for the **AA's or law enforcement to log onto the network, so we'll be totally safe! The project is in the alpha planning stage, and we're looking for coders!
34. Piracy? WTF are we putting on eyepatches and swords and raiding the **AA headquarters? I'll stop when they stop libeling us with their offensive use of that word.
35. I only downloaded a few songs.
36. I only downloaded songs that I can't find in a store anywhere.
37. I wanted to listen to it on Linux and the only versions available for legal download work on WMP.
38. Who cares, I'll just set up an index on Sealand and they'll never be able to touch it.
39. We'll always keep ahead of them technologically, so they can't win.
40. I don't agree with their business methods.
41. It's an obsolete business model.
42. They need to change their business models.
43. If artists had tip jars, of course I'd pay them for downloading their music. Then I would KNOW where the money's going.
44. I think the entire concept of copyright is wrong.
45. I don't think that filesharing is illegal.
46. I can sample and hear different kinds of music and that will make be buy more CD's.
47. As soon as a micropayment system is in place that doesn't use corrupt services like Paypal, I can pay the artists directly.
48. I'll bet even some of the music industr