Slashdot Mirror
Bootlegged Music in Russia
Guppy06 writes "MosNews.com has an interesting article on the thoughts and opinions of everyday Muscovites on the rampant music (et al) piracy in their country. It seems that some of them don't have much trouble justifying it to themselves, with quotes like 'Yes, I know that some of the sellers are here with burned CDs. But they have to earn a living too, I can understand them.' The article also mentions 'In a country where the average monthly salary is about $240, buying the latest album for $15 is a grotesque luxury, let alone spending $600 on Adobe Photoshop or a similar computer program.' Apparently, catchy slogans like 'Listen up, you pirate, I choose copyright!' just aren't working."
I don't care if it's legit by whatever loophole on whichever side: it's immoral. And you're helping them continue their shady service by advertising it on Slashdot. Do you think the non-Russian artists who are on that site get paid for their hard work? 99.9999999% that they get jack squat. Shame on you for using such a service. Might as well use P2P if you use their service and not feed the pockets of those who set up such dubious services.
A blog like any other.
Around 1-5% of the price of the cds goes to the actual artist
Every time I see someone complaining about this statistic, I ask the same question, and no one can give me a straight answer. Why on Earth should the artist get more than 5%? It takes a lot more than just that one person to produce the CD. How about the people that financed it, produced it, directed it, wrote the music, wrote the lyrics (Oh, you thought they still write their own songs? That's cute), created the cover art, marketed the CD, mixed the sound, delivered the CDs to the stores, and all the other people involved in making a CD? Why should the "artist" be paid disproportionately more than all those other people, who typically have more education, put in longer hours, and in many cases, even have more talent? What makes the artist so special that they should get 20% of the profits, with the other 150 people fighting over the scraps?
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
It's easy to take the moral high road when you earn more in two-three weeks than the average Russian person earns in a year, isn't it?
Perhaps the parents of the average Russian child should have made better decisions.
There are reasons for these situations. It's ok to blame someone who did something to inhibit their child's competitiveness.