Slashdot Mirror
US CD Sales Increase in 2004
Lindsay Lohan writes "BBC is reporting that CD sales rose by 2.3% in the U.S. in the year 2004 despite the growing popularity of legal digital music downloads through services such as iTunes. On the other hand, a BBC report from last July noted that pirated CD sales have hit a record high. Sounds like the RIAA should be going after the real pirates, not little Susie or Grandma."
And they prove that any drop in CD sales was purely because of the economic slump, when non-essential things like CDs and DVDs are the first things to leave the on-the-spot purchase habits of people.
Or maybe the prices have dropped, making the product more desirable to the consumer.
However, they'll just say that it is the result of their "anti online piracy" actions.
If sales slump, **AA will blame it on piracy, and use it as justification to enact even more legislation to protect their profits.
And if sales rise, they'll use it as justification that their methods are starting to work against piracy, and consequently we need to make them even stronger.
I don't see why two things being equally illegal makes them morally equivalent.
It's now clear and obvious (as it always was in spite of the FUD), that the intent of the music and motion picture industry (and the larger media conglomerates that own and manage them) has never been to prevent piracy. In fact it's not even about maximizing profits.
The behavior is perfectly consistent with the abuses against all IP being waged by corporate entities and their legal minions, in the pitched battle to own, control, restrict, and monopolize all human knowlege, invention, and the freedom to create. In a world that has substantively shifted to an information economy, the owner and controller of all IP is king.
We're all quick becoming pawns in a war between human freedom and self determination, and corporate design. The science of shaping opinion, controlling the masses, and disinforming entire nations for fun and profit is run riot directly over the ethical and social designs of our forefathers. We are confronted with the conundrum of the successful operation that kills the patient, and in this scenario, you and I are the patient. Either, collectively as a people, we get some backbone, and a whole lot more intelligence, or we can expect to obsolete ourselves in the next several decades.
This is simply one more expression of our own ignorance, the worst of our animal nature, run amock. The beast that blindly grabs for the reins of all human enterprise is without foresight, mind numbingly stupid, infinitely self absorbed, and manned by men with the conscience of politicians. It's up to us (that would be not only the person writing these words, but also the people reading these words), to lay down new laws, build new barriers to barbarism, and set the stage for the next 200 years of human development. The alternative, is a furture shaped a lot like the fossil record for all of us naked apes.
Genda
The copyright infringement we're talking about here is not civil disobedience. Civil disobedience is not just the act of non-violently disobeying unjust laws. True civil disobedience also requires that you break the law publicly and accept the resulting legal consequences. People who practice civil disobedience usually call attention to themselves breaking the law and insist that law enforcement arrest them and enforce the unjust law. When people are punished for breaking an obviously immoral law, the theory goes, the government and/or society will be shamed into changing it.
If the law is broken secretly or the lawbreaker attempts to get out of the punishment, the powerful moral logic of civil disobedience breaks down. It becomes easy to accuse the protester of breaking the law just for personal gain rather than for the greater good. If he or she breaks the law openly from the beginning and requests enforcement of the unjust law, he or she is immunized from this line of attack.
If you want to practice civil disobedience against current copyright law, you should copy some tracks (like Happy Birthday) that you believe you have a moral right to own and you should alert the authorities and the media. Force the RIAA and the FBI to arrest you. Accept the ridiculous fines and jail terms that come with the crime, and thereby show everyone the ludicrous and immoral nature of the law.
Don't, however, copy 100GB of songs off of P2P networks secretly and call it civil disobedience. It's not. It's just lawbreaking.