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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."
stop buying them for christ's sake! now these idiots will believe that the frivolous lawsuits against 15-year-olds were successful.
Hasn't the Music industry recorded record profits during the years when it CLAIMED that they lost MILLIONS to illegal downloads? It seems like the rise of p2p has coincided with profit increases for the music industry. I won't say it's a cause and an effect. But it's a drop in a bucket to them. Apple's success shows people are willing to pay, just not the inflated, over-hyped prices of the crap cds the RIAA has been coming out with.
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.
Time for a revolution!
That's not the sort of editorial comment I would have expected from Lindsay Lohan.
The RIAA should just sell their CDs for $5 through shady looking guys on the street.
Those numbers don't look so good if you compare the growth in CD sales to the sales of video (VHS/DVD's) software, or to the economy as a whole:
Video: Consumer Electronics Association: DVD Software Sales Benefit: Although movie-ticket sales fell one percent to $9.2 billion in 2003, consumer spending on the purchase or rental of video software (VHS tape and DVD) rose 18.2 percent to $22.5 billion, according to DEG. DVD accounted for 72 percent of total home video spending.
Overall Economy: CNN The economy has expanded at rates exceeding 3 percent for the past six quarters and seems poised to keep growing. The White House last Friday estimated GDP will expand 3-1/2 percent in 2005.
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.
Hi Lindsay!! I luv u!!!
I went to your site and "rocked out" to the intro, and then i saw nothing but PINK! My eyes actually screamed in pain. I heard them. I shit you not.
Please Lindsay. Redesign your site... for me?
And show me your knockers. :-)
Electric Monkey Pants
I don't see why two things being equally illegal makes them morally equivalent.
"She got some big ass titties"
MY SECRET DIARIES
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.