Slashdot Mirror
EMI Says ITMS DRM-Free Music Selling Well
An anonymous reader writes "'The initial results of DRM-free music are good' says Lauren Berkowitz, a senior vice president of EMI, at a music industry conference in New York. Berkowitz went on to say that the early results from iTunes indicate that DRM-free offerings may boost revenue from digital albums as well as individual songs."
Who'd have thought that treating your customers with respect and giving them what they want would pay off?
Amazing!
Unexpected
That's too much for a friggin' itunes !
And why exactly does it cost 35% more than before ?
We told you so. Listen to the geeks next time
that with 2 earlier articles - making DVD copying even more illegal (if that were at all possible), and a "desire" for a Canadian DMCA, that we "now just find out" people are willing to pay for DRM-free content. I did my part and paid for a couple of tracks that I bought with DRM and "upgraded" to the DRM-free version, and will continue to do so as more become available, and as content I want becomes available DRM-free. Let's really show them where we willing to spend our $. Seems to be the only thing they listen to ...
But what about all that unthinkable PIRACY that goes on with the now-DRM free music?! Will Intellectual Property ever be secure?! Ye gods!
Try my nuts to your fist style!
Well if they are willing to go drm-free, how about a site
to buy their 'tunes if you are NOT running M$.
We need an itunes for Linux.
Wow, you mean I can put music the same music on my laptop, desktop, MP3 player, and burn a CD to listen to in my car with out having buy the same song 4 times???
Hmmm....this sounds a whole lot like Napster back in the day. Sheesh, it's only taken them six years to come up with a business model that works. Charging us for what we were doing on Napster anyway.
QueenB.
HDGary secures my bank
I had bought about 200 songs off iTMS in the 2 years i have been using it. Not a single song was from EMI.
I don't know what that is important to this discussion, but if felt like sharing.
Mikey
I've always been the kinda guy to fall for the girl dressed like an eskimo.
I have a soft spot for artists getting screwed by technology. Every technological advance seems to fall on artists particularly hard, so, while I really do hate the RIAA and the music industry and movie industry, I still think there might be a place so someone could show pictures of their work on the internet without having them stolen.
My wife used to use Napster (pre-lawsuit), and Kazaa, but she switched to iTunes because iTunes was more convenient and not choked full of ads, and paying a $1 a song is not so bad. If you add the threat of RIAA letters, then, iTunes seems like a pretty good deal indeed. She also feels a need to support the artists.
But really, the value of iTunes is the convenience and cleanliness, and there's no reason someone could not make a similar, ad-free thing but for file sharing writ large. Really, DRM free on iTunes is predicated on the fact that the recording industry must feel like it is getting some sort of handle on musical file sharing - that is, RIAA lawsuits to music downloaders must actually be working. Were there REALLY no DMCA or copyright controls on music, though, someone would eventually make something with a really cool user interface, like iTunes, but where music would be genuinely free.
Then, musicians would starve.
This is my sig.
I know I'm in the minority here, but I actually prefer DRM music. DRM adds a certain ineffable flavor to otherwise bland music. It's like a sprinkle of cinammon on hot chocolate. The bass sounds more meaty and the singers sound just a little more angelic and bird-like.
I know, I know, I'm a bit of an audiophiliac. I don't want to sound too pretentious. But give it a try! You'll see. Music just sounds better with DRM.
yours truly,
David Massey
The more significant figures would be whether the amount of EMI music being passed on peer to peer services has changed. I highly doubt it has increased more than its usual variance (it may even have decreased), and I hope the other RIAA companies notice this. I'm of the opinion that there's roughly a fixed number of people who would pirate regardless, and distributing music without DRM won't change this. However making music harder to listen due to DRM might actually drive piracy numbers up.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
Raising prices increases revenue!
Call up Apple and offer to port the Quicktime runtimes to Linux for free, and not have license compatibility issues. It would have to be a closed-source binary, and could not make use of any GPL code. Good luck! :)
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Somehow, I think EMI knew that selling DRM-free tracks would make a profit all along.
1. Release DRM-laden, horrific quality tracks
2. Watch consumers buy tracks
3. Wait for consumers to grow angry and realize the restrictions placed on their media
4. Release DRM-free, slightly better tracks
5. Wait for the consumers to REBUY or 'upgrade' all their tracks
6. ???
7. Profit!!
THEN the second round
8. Release slightly better quality tracks...
9. Wait for the consumers to REBUY or 'upgrade' all their tracks...
But really, the value of iTunes is the convenience and cleanliness, and there's no reason someone could not make a similar, ad-free thing but for file sharing writ large.
No, there isn't, except for the fact that it would require a fairly large investment, it would meaning risking a lawsuit from the RIAA, and unless you fill it with ads there's no profit in it. Who's going to do that?
Personally, I think iTunes (DRM-less) is the exact right model for legal online music sales. The interface is clean, the selection is large, the quality of the songs is decent, and it's easy to find what you're looking for. On top of all that, the price is low enough that many people will actually pay for the convenience of near-instant decent-quality digital music with a large selection through a clean interface and have it all be *legal*. In other words, it's not the music alone that makes it worth $1/song $10/album-- part of what people are paying for is *convenience*.
And it's been demonstrated time and again that people will pay for convenience. Even the success of higher-priced DRM-free music depends on people paying in order to avoid the hassle of DRM.
DRM on itunes probably only deters casual file sharing with friends. The songs downloaded off the internet that RIAA is going after probably were just ripped off CDs. DRM on itunes is irrelevant to wide scale downloading.
Give me a way to do my work once, doesn't matter what it is, and live from it until I'm dead, and I'll think it's fair for musicians to have the same privilege. Otherwise, forget it. It's simply fair that they work everyday, as everyone else does, by doing whatever they're good at, as everyone else also does. Copyright is at best illogical, at worst an aberration.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
> Then, musicians would starve.
Or lose their bullshit sense of entitlement, rock star attitudes and return to performing?
-- random AC musician
I think Jonathon Coulton would be happy to contest your point of view.
But then he's making a living from his music. His music that he sells as DRM-less mp3s... that he releases under the Creative Commons license...
Strangely, despite it being perfectly legal for me to give his music away to the world, or for you to download it from whichever file sharing app you want... in other words... despite him making his music available for free... he's making a living.
Not true.
Copying CDs has been pretty easy for a long time now... but musicians haven't starved.
Copying copyrighted music has always been illegal... the DMCA didn't make it "more illegal" or whatever.
Some (I would argue most) people really do like to follow the law, even when it's easy not too... those people will always continue to buy the music they want to hear. Not too mention that some of us feel _good_ about buying cds because we like to support artists that we enjoy (even if most of the money doesn't go to them, more cds sold = good chance of another from the same artist).
Really... assuming that everyone in the US (or world) would break the law and not give any compensation for any entertainment they enjoy is just foolish. I think the RIAA and MPAA forget this sometimes... that 99% of people in the world are actually good people who like to do the right thing.
Friedmud
>>Give me a way to do my work once, doesn't matter what it is, and live from it until I'm dead, and I'll think it's fair for musicians to have the same privilege. Otherwise, forget it. It's simply fair that they work everyday, as everyone else does, by doing whatever they're good at, as everyone else also does.
In Soviet Russia...
You mean like http://www.emusic.com/? Funny, I've been buying DRM-free music from those "starving artists" since way back, and they seem to be doing perfectly fine as is.
I wish apple would offer this option to indie musicians (like me), I'd sign up for straight away.
(strictly speaking they'd have to offer it to the the aggregators like tunecore that people like me use)
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
I agree that technically, it's not a watermark - but the end effect to the average user is that of a watermark, as to them the data is the whole file and not just the encoded audio data within the AAC wrapper.
You have to call it something, and to my mind watermark is an acceptable term even if it's a variant of the core meaning.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Your steps make no sense - because after you upgrade a track, EMI has just as much money as if you had bought the DRM free version in the first place!
It what world is it more beneficial for EMI to get a partial payment now, and then HOPE that maybe they might get a little more later, instead of just collecting the same amount upfront?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Since is is NOT a watermark, calling it one is simply incorrect.
Now maybe I'll start buying music online.
:meek:
All I want is the rights to copy it to my laptop and/or portable music player and/or the media center PC that's hooked up to the sound system.
Oh and back it up onto DVD/tape/toilet paper/papyrus.
So only about 5 copies will be made but it will be used by me and the immediate family, is that okay Mr MegaCorp CEO.. Sir?
And just out of interest:
I asked the company that develope the commercial music software I use and they say it's okay to install it onto my laptop and home PC and use it at the same time, I bought it, they say I can do what I want with it as long as I'm the only one that use it. I'm pretty sure they won't mind if I use it and maybe teach my girlfriend how to use it at the same time.
I'm just saying this because I feel like I could be a criminal or something!
You're probably basing that on the fact that iTunes didn't ask you to upgrade any of your music, right? That doesn't necessarily mean it's not EMI.
I don't know why there hasn't been more noise about it, but iTunes is apparently making only a tiny fraction of the most popular EMI music available through iTunes plus. For example, Ferry Corsten is an EMI artist, and most of the stuff he's released has been through EMI. Go try to download a non-DRM version of anything he's released. It's just not there. Certain other EMI artists are having only selective parts of their catalog released through iTunes plus -- to cite a more mainstream band, the Pet Shop Boys have been on EMI since the mid-'80s. By my count, about 2/3rds of their tracks on iTunes are still listed only as the DRM-laden "iTunes minus" variety.
They are slowly expanding the set of DRM free songs, and have said they will allow anyone that wants to use this to do so - contact them.
I didn't have any songs that were DRM free at launch of iTunes+, but just recently two came up as upgradeable.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is the single biggest, highest profile way we can get the message to the industry that DRM doesn't pay.
So please, find a Mac or Windows box if you have to, but go buy something from the iTunes music store. Even if it's just one album and you then shunt the AAC files back to Linux to listen to.
Personally, I recommend something from the Mute back-catalog.
(And yes, I've bought 2 albums so far, I plan to keep buying preferentially from iTMS at least until the other labels get the message.)
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
On AVERAGE 256 is okay, but it's not ALWAYS okay. Lossy is lossy. JPEG is lossy. TIFF or PNG is PERFECT. You WILL hear artifacts, unless you are already oblivious to that (there's your 8 out of 10). Lossy is listenable, absolutely, but lossless (i.e., the digital "original") is the ohly way to fly.
Hahaha, what a spaz you are!
Were there REALLY no DMCA or copyright controls on music, though, someone would eventually make something with a really cool user interface, like iTunes, but where music would be genuinely free.
They already have. It's called Oink.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Then you should be happy. Back in the vinyl and early CD eras, you had to have a record label in order to make or promote a record. Now an artist can rent studio space for a pittance, or even build his own studio for very little. (S)he can have a thousand CDs pressed for a thousand dollars, inclucing cover art and case, and promote them using P2P, MySpace, intternet radio, or other internet offerings.
The RIAA labels rape artists and have traditionally done so. Google for "courtney love does the math" or quite a few other pieces by other artists describing the despicable actions of the theives at the record labels.
You could have fooled me.
She also feels a need to support the artists
Then she should forget Bryan Adams and listen to indie music, where the artist actually gets paid more than a pittance. Sure, megastars like Adams or Metallica or Ted "if Jimmy Buffet had my money he'd declare Chapter 11" Nugent get filthy rich, but most musicians live on subsistance wages. Very little money comes from sales of anything but concert tickets and merchandise.
Really, DRM free on iTunes is predicated on the fact that the recording industry must feel like it is getting some sort of handle on musical file sharing - that is, RIAA lawsuits to music downloaders must actually be working.
Don't believe everything you read. The lawsuits aren't what is getting people to switch to paid services; most people would have gladly paid at the start had there been a legal alternative. Now that there is iTunes and other legal venues, it doesn't make much sense to use P2P. If the lawsuits had anything to do with it, file sharing would have declined earlier and people would stop using illegal drugs. You can go to prison for marijuana, but millions of people smoke it anyway.
Were there REALLY no DMCA or copyright controls on music, though, someone would eventually make something with a really cool user interface, like iTunes, but where music would be genuinely free. Then, musicians would starve.
First, lets not confuse copyright, which COULD be a good thing if its term limits were what previous generations had (12-30 years) rather than the present calamity, and the DMCA.
Secondly, Roger McGuinn, an early '60s rocker (the Byrds) stated that the old, illegal Napster revitalized his career!
Many artists DO give music away. The link is to free recordings of live shows in lossless format of some friends of mine. They've released two CDs (the first one is their best) and play all over the midwest. here is a bluegrass version of a rap song(!!), while here is a cover of an Allman Brother's song. However, that's not their usual style. Links are lossless, but there are MP3 and Ogg versions available.
I link them because these are friends of mine, but there are literally thousands of artists who are giving it away, as the money isn't in selling recordings, but rather in performing. This is the megastars as well as the little guys. And the only ones who are starving are the ones that suck.
And if the CD you bought only has one good song, guess what? They suck!
-mcgrew
FLAC (or other lossless) studio- or CD-quality tracks from a store I can access from my Linux or BSD system. I'll pay more than the AAC stream price per track, and I want a discount for albums, which should include the cover art and text in a generally readable, like PDF, format. The album could be packed in a container file.
/. and I will check it out.
Yes, I CAN tell the difference between 256 kbit AAC and CDs on more than half of the streams I have tested, but I can also tell the difference between clean vinyl and CD, which could be related more to the dynamic range limitations of CDs than the sample rate. Fewer bits per sample lowers the data rate (information), just as sampling at a lower frequency does, which is why I requested studio-quality, since those files usually have more bits per sample as well as more samples per second.
With these files, I can use my home stereo system to good effect, plus down convert to something usable in a car or portable where the background is too noisy to hear much subtlety in music, and the number of tracks is a convenience.
When a store offers that, post to
I'd like to know where the photographer got that "perfect" lens and infinite-resolution film to get that PERFECT image in the first place.
All sound formats, including analog ones, are lossy. The question isn't whether compression artifacts will be present, but whether and to what degree they are noticeable.
Even for the "best possible" (with our current technology) you'd need a way higher bitrate than CD, and then you truly are talking about impractical file sizes for consumer use.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Then, musicians would starve.
Or they'd make their money by performing and selling t-shirts
What would prevent them from making live shows? Like, you know, all musicians during the whole human history always did?
According to Google, 99.48% of musicians that have performed live shows are now dead. That's a pretty high mortality rate.
>Were there REALLY no DMCA or copyright controls on music, though, someone would eventually make something with a really cool user interface, like iTunes, but where music would be genuinely free.
I suppose we could stop all murders by making a crime of "Double Murder", then, right?
One crime, one law. Not one crime, billions of laws. If something that simple can apply to a crime as serious as murder, why can't it apply to copyright?
Either scrap copyright from the constitution, or scrap the DMCA. One or the other. Decide which you find suits you best.
>Then, musicians would starve.
By the same process that all the plasterers starved when we invented drywall, I assume.
>My wife used to use Napster (pre-lawsuit), and Kazaa, but she switched to iTunes because iTunes was more convenient and not choked full of ads, and paying a $1 a song is not so bad.
It is if you consider the production value of one song as compared to the production value of 3:30 of any other copyrighted work. Music has *never* cost this much for consumers, apart from singles, which were never very popular with consumers. And the excuse with singles was always the cost of the materials and labour in getting the product to you, otherwise they'd be "dirt cheap" (like hell).
>I still think there might be a place so someone could show pictures of their work on the internet without having them stolen.
If someone steals your pictures, usually your insurance company covers this. If you don't have insurance on valuable pictures, you're a fool. Or maybe you're talking about the "new" stealing, where anything is "stolen" when it's copied? Yeah, if that's the case, that's fine. I steal all the time, I have a camera *and* I use the university's photocopier. Luckily the cops haven't busted me yet.
>that is, RIAA lawsuits to music downloaders must actually be working.
According to the RIAA music piracy is at an all time high. That doesn't sound like the reaction of someone whose been using a strategy for a decade and has found it to be working.
Apparently almost everyone on slashdot can tall the difference!
I figure they built there own bionic ear or something...or are delusional.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Were there REALLY no DMCA or copyright controls on music, though, someone would eventually make something with a really cool user interface, like iTunes, but where music would be genuinely free.
Then, musicians would starve.
Yeah. We would hate to have them join the ranks of the starving programmers, who are still jobless since the release of Ubuntu and Firefox and OpenOffice.
And authors of webcomics are starving, too. Not to mention all those hungry bloggers.
Won't somebody think of the artists?
So I'm a troll now, awesome.
Back to the topic though. I contend that "watermarking" is in fact DRM. Digital Rights Management is not about managing the consumer's rights, or curbing them, it's about managing the rights of the artists and the record companies that represent them.
Therefore, to all of the responders who claim it's not DRM because it doesn't restrict the rights of the user, you're an idiot.
It is not unreasonable to claim that a tracking system attached to a track is an attempt to MANAGE the RIGHTS of said DIGITAL content. Pretty simple.
Also, I couldn't care less what the impelmentation is. Ok, so it's a text file. It's easy to edit and delete. If the watermark is seen as DRM by a judge (which, following the previous line of reason, it wouldn't be that far-fetched) and they can prove that a consumer deleted or altered said watermark then said consumer would be in violation of the DMCA for circumventing or attempting to circumvent a copyright protection scheme.
So let me make my position very clear and simple, so that all of the wonderful slashdotters don't (once again) miss the forest for the trees. I can physically go to a store, buy a CD, rip the songs to my hard-drive, and that's it. Content, in any format I please, that is compatible with any device I choose. (For example, I don't buy songs on iTunes because I can't chop them up with Audacity and make ringtones out of them.) There are no watermarks. There is no "metadata" for me to have to even think about editing or deleting. Until the online multimedia vendors provide the exact same experience for the price, I will continue to buy CDs and rip them.
One more thing, if someone steals my CD collection, but I still have the jewel cases, insurance covers it. Trust me, it happened to me. If someone steals my harddrive, iTunes makes me buy the tracks all over again. You have to have the actual file on hand, and if you lose it, too bad.
If they want my business, they have to earn it. You can't just promise DRM-free tracks and then "attach metadata" to them with my information on it. That's crap. Sorry I'm a troll for thinking that's crap. But you're dumb if you don't think it's crap. If Amazon ends up offering tracks that are identical to tracks I would acquire from ripping CDs, then they will have won my dollars.
QED, bitches.
--"insert clever quote here"
yea, because none of the music was available in non-DRM form until itunes released it! how dare they pull something like that!
oh wait...
No, all formats are not lossy.
You man loose information when you take the picture or record the sound, but if you store in a lossless format, there is no additional data loss.
You can encode to and from FLAC 1000 times, and end up with the original data.
With a lossy compression, data is lost, and each additional encoding may loose more data and add more artifacts.
The defining feature of a digital watermark is that it cannot be removed given only the watermarked data.
Then to the user, it is a watermark, as it's metadata embedded in the file that cannot be removed by consumer tools.
You can hack other digital watermarks to degrade or destroy them, how is it any different that you can "hack" the file to remove or replace the email address contained?
More and more, it seems a grey area to me to consider any metadata in the same file as data to be off-limits as far as using the term "Watermark". My definition is an attribute that marks a file uniquely, which makes a lot more sense when you consider that there is simply no watermarking technique that cannot be overcome in terms of removal - the very existence of a hack would then render the watermark, not a watermark. To say the presence of a unique identifier in a file is a watermark then seperates the existance of a watermark with the degree of repudiation it offers.
I laud your attempt to try and keep terminology accurate, but I just cannot agree in this case.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The MAFIAA pooped their cute little pants.
I too am waiting for something like FLAC encoded CD quality (or better) downloadable recordings before I get back into seriously buying music again. There are companies doing this already. For example Linn (search for "linn flac" in Google).
As for your "calling bullshit" on the quality thing, you might be right but really and truly my Linn LP12 still blows the socks of a CD player in my experience. I could not tell you exactly why, but I can tell you that I really do enjoy listening to a piece of music on my Linn vs. anything else. It's just more satisfying and to me that kind of equates to "quality".
Surely it is possible that information was embedded, but we are unable to read it?
Blar.
>With a lossy compression, data is lost, and each additional encoding may loose more data and add more artifacts.
I think the poster is referring from the original loss when encoding from the actual performance to a digital recording. (And whatever signal compression they use, etc).
Even following NyQuist, you put a limit on how much sampling you need to do in order to reproduce a certain amount of information... but there's likely more that you could get if you tried. (it just may not matter to most)
But has anyone actually done this? I hear a lot of "There is no crypto, it's just tags" but I haven't yet found anyone who has done as you state. Perhaps I'm not looking well enough...
Blar.
I upgraded every EMI song in my music collection, all 2 of them! Hopefully, other companies will go DRM-free on iTunes, so that I can convert the other 99.999% of my iTunes collection as well.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I'm sure they're intending to, in due time, but it's pretty unorganized in the iTMS camp. Specifically, there's a different label manager for each global region in which you sell your product, and something like this requires a renegotiation/re-signing of the contract for each region. Most of the indie's basically get ignored (last contract we had to sign with them had a ~8-week turnaround from when we mailed it in to confirmation that the manager had even seen it. And that was just for the US). We're realizing more and more that, in order to get any real feature spots, even a niche genre like electronica/dance needs a fulltime iTunes relation manager, because they simply don't care about anyone outside of the Big Four.
Conversely, there are a lot more boutique sites out there which sell better bitrates, without DRM, globally. Turnaround time from initial contract signing to posting content live? Beatport can have you signed on Thursday and putting content live on Tuesday. Even Rhapsody, eMusic, and Napster are easier to work with, and they certainly aren't small by any means.
Until they're willing to play ball, we'll continue to ship them at the very end of the distribution cycle. Fans are willing to pay up to $3/track, and with the artist getting 60% of that, the boutiques serve a better avenue to support the niche. Who would want to sell their music on the digital music version of Walmart?
Never attribute to Hanlon that which can be adequately attributed to Heinlein.
I lost my sig.
Who would want to sell their music on the digital music version of Walmart?
I imagine, anyone who would like to make a lot of money through far wider distribution.
There obviously can be a path where it makes a lot of sense to ignore them and go boutique as you say, especially for very specialized music. But for many artists that kind of reach is what they dream of.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Oh my god, all the mail I receive is watermarked with my address! They are on to me!
You make it sound like a cd is perfect but in the real world its also a 'compressed' (as in not lossless) copy of a master that by all changes are better than what a cd can produce. Now aac at 256Kbit might infact be better if (as they claim) its pulled from the master say at 96/24. The whole idea that cd's are perfect and can even match masters over 30 years old is just plain wrong or atleast not the whole story.
any process going from analog to digital is a best effort system, trying to catch the signals as best as possible within the sample limits you start catching and storing the signal.
Daniel.
Answer: no, they shouldn't be able to profit from previous work.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Slashdotter reacting to his files being personalized : "They wrote my name in there! How dare they!"
Fan who buys a CD which has been personalized : "they wrote my name on the CD! How cool is that!"
Get some perspective people, this is just cool, it's marked with your name, _because_the_music_is_yours_ enjoy it.
K.
I studied music and wanted to be a musician, but it is hard work that is mostly lowly paid.
The problem is that you are getting confused about the role of musicians in society. Their role is not to make CDs, their role is to create music (compose it, perform it).
The musicians that have understood this are working hard touring and playing music. The ones that want to live a parasitic life of play once, sit in you fat ass for the royalties kind of lifestyle, well, they can go to the moon as far as I am concerned.
Recorded music brought an anomaly in how musicians and people relate to music. Before recorded music the musicians neede to perform in front of paying audiences in order to make a living, this was fair because they were doing as in any other trade: they performed a job, they weh compensated for their efforts.
Come the recording of music, and now some musicians play once, and they want to make money for doing precious little, based in a completely artificial mechanism (copyright) that the companies exploiting them have extended beyond anything that is fair.
If copyright was limited in a reasoned, sensible way, I may be more inclined to sob for the poor musicians (the poor ones actually don't care about CDs, they have to do real work to make a living or earn some money), as things stand now I can't care less if the rich fat cats are deceive from their profits. I will not partake in breaking the law mind you, but find nor place on my heart for musicians that are masochistic and lazy.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.