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Would You Pay 5 Cents For a Song?
irikar writes "An academic at McGill University has a simple plan to stop the plague of unauthorized music downloads on the Internet. But it entails changing the entire music industry as we know it, and Apple Computers, which may have the power to make the change, is listening."
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Canada just recinded a 3 or 4 year old blank cd media tax.
Up here, lobbyists pressured the gov't to tax blank CD media which would then be handed over to the music industry. Their reason: people will steal music no matter what, so let's just obfuscate the the music industry's perceived profits by making people pay for it one way or another.
A few years back ontario deregulated the hydro and within the first year, some people were paying 50 cents per kilowatthour (average is about 6 cents) and their hydro bills were astronomical at the peak of the summer. Later, the ontario gov't put a cap of 4.7 cents but the balance was paid for by our taxes. It was a kick in the balls and a pat on the head move and is not going to be the last.
Whatever happened to the days where companies stood or fell on their own terms, and not propped up by the handouts of some third party such as the gov't?
As a democracy, I say we all rise up and quell any further stupid shit that spews forth from our parliament/congress/whatever. I say we bring back the gillotine.
cheap goods are made for cheap people
There is a saying that goes something like this:
I'm not rich enough to buy cheap things.
Even though cheap goods are made for cheap people, it's a false sense of cheap, because the cheap good will inevitably break, forcing you to buy another one and another one, when for the same amout of money as 2 or 3 cheap goods, you could have bought a more expensive high quality good that would last you a lot longer than 3x lifetime of cheap good.
I've seen it time and time again, especially with electronics, umbrellas, and of course, digital watches, which, for some reason, seem like a good idea.