Um, time to take that High School civics class again. We DON'T live in a democracy, we live in a REPUBLIC. That means that laws do not necessarily reflect what a majority of people want. The government is designed to protect the rights of everyone, including those of people who are not powerful, famous or popular. Sometimes that means that the law sticks up for the little guy (the minority) and makes sure that his rights are protected and not trampled upon by a mob (in this case, the techno-mob).
Do you think that in 1954 when the Supreme Court was deciding Brown vs. the Board of Education that a majority of people in the U.S. wanted integration, or would have VOTED for it? Get a clue!
(Furthermore, there are 278 million people in the U.S. 20 million is a lot, but not a majority. Of those 20 million -- how many are of legal age to vote anyway?)
So far, I'm not impressed with the "enlightened self interest" of music fans.
Make all the copies of your own music that you want...just don't share it with 20 million of your closest friends. The reason that the RIAA never cracked down on cassette copying before is that it was not cost effective nor time effective for someone to make enough copies to really make a difference. You had to pay for the cassette at least and then manually copy music to each one. With Napster, you can download hundreds of songs in a few hours at no cost AND make them available to 20 million people AT NO COST.
The law has always been about "intent" and the INTENT of Napster has always been to pirate music. For God Sake, they have e-mails from the founders of Napster that say EXACTLY that. The LAW has always gone after mass piraters. What Napster has done is effectively turn each and every one of its users into a potential mass pirater.
traused said: "poorly done website in my opinion" So, the site loads fast, is easy to navigate and doesn't have any annoying spinning logos, gratuitous grpahics or "clever" mouse-over buttons that really add no value. In addition, it has actual CONTENT, which you might not agree with, but that's beside the point. Just curious...what exactly is poorly designed about it other than the fact that you don't agree with it? Oh yeah, did I mention that I had to design the site myself? Couldn't hire a fancy web designer because contrary to popular opinion, we're not puppets of the RIAA or multi-millionaire rock stars. Just folks who have jobs, kids and mortgages actually putting some FREE time into getting our message out. I'm sure it's MUCH easier to sit around posting messages dissing other people's ideas and work, though.
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Do you think that in 1954 when the Supreme Court was deciding Brown vs. the Board of Education that a majority of people in the U.S. wanted integration, or would have VOTED for it? Get a clue!
(Furthermore, there are 278 million people in the U.S. 20 million is a lot, but not a majority. Of those 20 million -- how many are of legal age to vote anyway?)
So far, I'm not impressed with the "enlightened self interest" of music fans.
The law has always been about "intent" and the INTENT of Napster has always been to pirate music. For God Sake, they have e-mails from the founders of Napster that say EXACTLY that. The LAW has always gone after mass piraters. What Napster has done is effectively turn each and every one of its users into a potential mass pirater.
Hello! $15 million in VC funding sounds like "profit" to me. Are those folks at Napster working for FREE? Don't think so.
traused said: "poorly done website in my opinion" So, the site loads fast, is easy to navigate and doesn't have any annoying spinning logos, gratuitous grpahics or "clever" mouse-over buttons that really add no value. In addition, it has actual CONTENT, which you might not agree with, but that's beside the point. Just curious...what exactly is poorly designed about it other than the fact that you don't agree with it? Oh yeah, did I mention that I had to design the site myself? Couldn't hire a fancy web designer because contrary to popular opinion, we're not puppets of the RIAA or multi-millionaire rock stars. Just folks who have jobs, kids and mortgages actually putting some FREE time into getting our message out. I'm sure it's MUCH easier to sit around posting messages dissing other people's ideas and work, though.