Your bank-robber analogy is utterly wrong. The bank robber has denied you something: your assets. Once he takes them, those assets are not there and you cannot use them. Copying or downloading tracks does not deny the artist (or record company) the ABILITY to sell the work. They still can and still do. If you downloaded it because your utility for the product is far below the price fixing scheme the labels sell at, then you have denied them nothing because you would never have bought it in the first place. This is not theft, it MAY be copyright infringement, and yes there is a huge difference. I say may be copyright infringement because copyright is there to prevent someone from SELLING the artist's work without permission, not to prevent anyone from making copies, or sharing the cd with friends, or giving it away. There is a massive distinction there that many of you rule-mongering half-wits miss, and the RIAA is desperately trying to change.
The basic problem here is a well established and well documented phenomenon called a black market. Black markets exist ONLY in market inequities. The labels have formed a CARTEL through the RIAA and are COLLUDING to act as a monopolist. The DOJ has already convicted them once for price fixing, but in typical DOJ-save-corporations-mentality has not punished them at all, much like the Microsoft case. So if the music industry would give in to MARKET pressure and give the consumer what they want: lower prices and online distribution, then they would be massively profitable again rather than just merely monstrously profitable. Until the music companies compete against each other and become responsive to market conditions, a black market will thrive and users will exercise their most powerful weapon: the right NOT to buy what they're selling.
If you read the rest of the article, you would have also noted that those same artists are shunning the big lables. Locking them out from what could save them.
Au contraire. Its on a Yugo right now. More like it would be on a Ferrari if ported to x86. Or better, it would be installed on that hopped-up muscle car no one can beat. The depth and power of the x86 hardware world simply overwhelms the Mac side of the fence.
Stevie-boy just doesn't have the balls to port it. He's afraid of a direct apples to apples (haha) comparison. After all, he's been ripping off the Mac faithful for years with higher prices on the notion that their hardware is better. Lots of Mac people would be plenty pissed if their fantasy world imploded.
NO THEY HAVEN'T. They would then have to prove that I fully intended to buy it in the first place. If I never intended to buy to begin with, then they have lost nothing, but gained free advertising and a potential future sale. Furthermore, copyright only concerns who can SELL a work. Copyright never has and never should concern what I do with a work when no money is involved. Copyright is there to protect against another entity copying then selling the work without permission/payment to the rights holder. The RIAA is furiously trying to brainwash us all into believing copyright involves copying only.
Because Joe 16-year-old or average Joe-citizen doesn't have the monetary resources to fight back. Pick someone, persecute them, and get them an insane amount of jail time. Precedent set.
And yes, I meant persecute, not prosecute.
Bestseller books ARE available on the web. The publishing industry has a hard time going after anybody because of a small thing called libraries. Hard to make a case that the internet is killing you when your works have always been available for free at the public library AND you're still turning profit.
This is the music and movie industries. They have ALWAYS acted like babies that need thier bottle on one hand, and ruthless, money-grubbing, slash-and-burn-pirates on the other. They steal and break laws on a whim. These guys just don't want a boatload of money, they want a big-ass-shitload of money. They have always skirted by on ripping of artists and the public because it's entertainment and by definition not important. Of course, now that the shoe is on the other foot, they act like it's a life and death issue.
While we should all applaud their efforts to stop the RIAA from being all intrusive, please also understand that they are also actively entrapping users. They are setting up a 'trap' on a P2P client with artists/songs in the top 100. If you connect, you get banned.
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The words Civil Disobedience mean anything to you? Didn't think so.
Your bank-robber analogy is utterly wrong. The bank robber has denied you something: your assets. Once he takes them, those assets are not there and you cannot use them. Copying or downloading tracks does not deny the artist (or record company) the ABILITY to sell the work. They still can and still do. If you downloaded it because your utility for the product is far below the price fixing scheme the labels sell at, then you have denied them nothing because you would never have bought it in the first place. This is not theft, it MAY be copyright infringement, and yes there is a huge difference. I say may be copyright infringement because copyright is there to prevent someone from SELLING the artist's work without permission, not to prevent anyone from making copies, or sharing the cd with friends, or giving it away. There is a massive distinction there that many of you rule-mongering half-wits miss, and the RIAA is desperately trying to change. The basic problem here is a well established and well documented phenomenon called a black market. Black markets exist ONLY in market inequities. The labels have formed a CARTEL through the RIAA and are COLLUDING to act as a monopolist. The DOJ has already convicted them once for price fixing, but in typical DOJ-save-corporations-mentality has not punished them at all, much like the Microsoft case. So if the music industry would give in to MARKET pressure and give the consumer what they want: lower prices and online distribution, then they would be massively profitable again rather than just merely monstrously profitable. Until the music companies compete against each other and become responsive to market conditions, a black market will thrive and users will exercise their most powerful weapon: the right NOT to buy what they're selling.
If you read the rest of the article, you would have also noted that those same artists are shunning the big lables. Locking them out from what could save them.
Au contraire. Its on a Yugo right now. More like it would be on a Ferrari if ported to x86. Or better, it would be installed on that hopped-up muscle car no one can beat. The depth and power of the x86 hardware world simply overwhelms the Mac side of the fence. Stevie-boy just doesn't have the balls to port it. He's afraid of a direct apples to apples (haha) comparison. After all, he's been ripping off the Mac faithful for years with higher prices on the notion that their hardware is better. Lots of Mac people would be plenty pissed if their fantasy world imploded.
NO THEY HAVEN'T. They would then have to prove that I fully intended to buy it in the first place. If I never intended to buy to begin with, then they have lost nothing, but gained free advertising and a potential future sale. Furthermore, copyright only concerns who can SELL a work. Copyright never has and never should concern what I do with a work when no money is involved. Copyright is there to protect against another entity copying then selling the work without permission/payment to the rights holder. The RIAA is furiously trying to brainwash us all into believing copyright involves copying only.
Because Joe 16-year-old or average Joe-citizen doesn't have the monetary resources to fight back. Pick someone, persecute them, and get them an insane amount of jail time. Precedent set. And yes, I meant persecute, not prosecute.
Bestseller books ARE available on the web. The publishing industry has a hard time going after anybody because of a small thing called libraries. Hard to make a case that the internet is killing you when your works have always been available for free at the public library AND you're still turning profit.
This is the music and movie industries. They have ALWAYS acted like babies that need thier bottle on one hand, and ruthless, money-grubbing, slash-and-burn-pirates on the other. They steal and break laws on a whim. These guys just don't want a boatload of money, they want a big-ass-shitload of money. They have always skirted by on ripping of artists and the public because it's entertainment and by definition not important. Of course, now that the shoe is on the other foot, they act like it's a life and death issue.
While we should all applaud their efforts to stop the RIAA from being all intrusive, please also understand that they are also actively entrapping users. They are setting up a 'trap' on a P2P client with artists/songs in the top 100. If you connect, you get banned.