Microsoft's "official statement" is BS. Firefox seems to be doing rather well in the OS X world, as is Camino. I run a site that is mostly for Mac network people in education, and I've noticed an increasing number of Mac Firefox and Camino users. Personally, I think Microsoft dumped Internet Explorer because it sucked and it would have cost money to make it as good as Safari or Firefox... and the Mac market was too small to justify putting money into it.
The biggest reason that people are not buying as much music is because the corporate offerings mostly suck. The second biggest reason is that there are other, more interesting things to spend your money on in this "day and age" besides music.
Record companies need to offer a better product. And they ought to consider just giving away a couple of songs per artists right off the bat via P2P. It's happening anyway. I'm an idie musician and I've seen jumps in sales every time I give music away. I can only WISH that thousands of people were trading a few of my songs via P2P because it would send some of them to check out my music, and generate some sales. The music industry should take advantage of P2P instead of trying to fight it. The indie movement is already doing this - most indie artists do give away a song or two. Well, the smart ones do, at least...
If an artist wants to use P2P to distribute their songs, they have to figure out a way to get their songs onto the computers of a lot of people who run P2P software. How does an artist do this? Probably by marketing their music and giving some songs away online. So say they accomplish this. Next they want to convince other people to "discover" their music. How does P2P help in that process? At that point, I do not see where P2P is useful. Are people going to somehow "magically" discover the music just because it's sitting on some kid's hard drive? No. It's just a file among hundreds (or thousands) on someone's machine. If they want to turn other people on to the music, then they "could" use P2P software to do this, or they could just send their friends the artist's web page where they can download the free songs.
OR, if some of the P2P users actually buy the artist's CD, then they could P2P the entire CD and the artist doesn't ever see a dime. They may gain FANS, but no money. Gaining fans won't accomplish much for a local artist with no plans to tour. All it will do is deprive them of some small amount of money. If an artist doesn't want money, they can just upload all of their songs to a free site and give them away.
P2P does not help unknown artists the way people think it does. I don't see where it helps unknown artists at ALL. You are better off posting your unknown music to a music site like MacJams and signing with CDBaby and getting your music on iTunes. Give away a song or two, get people to listen to your music, and they might like you enough to check out your songs on iTunes. If I'm going to give some of my songs away, I'm going to do it on a web site where I can promote it myself. Sharing your music via P2P does not really help you as much as sharing your music via a web site on the Internet.
Technically, any band or artist can already do this with iTunes. Any artist can get their music posted on iTunes, no matter what their name is. It's the "evil record companies" that are to blame, or perhaps the fact that the artists signed the contracts with them. I am an independent artist on iTunes and I make 66 cents out of 99 cents per song, after Apple and CDBaby take their cuts. I think that's more than fair. I'm making more per song than any hit artist. Granted, my sales don't match up. But still... if a big name artist had his contract expire, he could choose to go independent, make his own albums, and make more than 50% of the profits. It's only a matter of time until the big name artists figure this out. Right now it might not make sense because they still make lots of money selling CD's at stores, but that market is shrinking every single year.
I have a method that works really well for both myself and my conscience. When I want a song, I will see if iTunes has it. If they do, I'll be a "big spender" and drop the 99 cents on it. If they don't, I will pursue "other means" of attaining it.
My feeling is that if the greedy artist or record company has decided NOT to take my money online in legit fashion, then they lost their chance at my money, and I still want the song. The artists and companies are NOT "losing a sale" in that case, because there IS no sale. I pretty much only buy online. There's no way in hell I'm buying a CD for two songs. Those days are gone.
If it was at one point online and available for anyone on the Internet to see, how is keeping a copy of it illegal? This will set an interesting precedence.
First things first - not all counties and states require you to join a union. Mine doesn't. I'm in education and have never been a union member and never will be. But...
You make 2 good points I agree with, but you're forgetting a couple of details. The two statements "pay a decent salary" and "dismantle teachers' unions" by themselves are in conflict. If you dismantle the teachers unions, schools could arbitrarily fire the good 20 year veteran teachers making $60,000 per year and hire new teachers for considerably less. The one GOOD thing about teaching is job security. But the teacher's unions make it hard to get rid of BAD teachers. You'd need to both increase the pay for all teachers at each level of experience AND guarantee their positions, within reason. How do you do that? I have no clue. You'd have to set some types of criterion, based on student achievement, which opens a whole nuther can of worms.
The problem is that lots of people, mostly business people, think we can just slap up a standards test, test all the kids at the beginning and end of the year, and judge the teacher by the results. But teachers have no control over the variables that effect a student's life outside of school (drugs, parental divorce, abusive parents, etc) and so we're not dealing with widgets here. You could do the exact same thing each year and have some good results and some bad, based on student motivation which is affected by these variables. Not to mention the fact that when you determine someone's pay by test results, they're gonna teach the test all year. So you'd better make sure the test is ALL you want them teaching, 'cause that's all they're gonna do. And they're not gonna share their best teaching techniques with their colleagues... that wouldn't be in their best interest.
Sigh. We DO need higher salaries in education to be able to have competition for positions, which would give us better teachers. Jack up the salaries and you'll see results. I agree with you about training. Increase the training and you get a mixed bag with the positives usually diminishing over a year or two.
Our school, J. W. Mitchell High School, has been open for 5 years. When we opened, we bought iMacs for around $1000 each, and Dell Optiplex machines with monitors for about $1,000 each. Five years later, hardware-wise, I would say the Macs held up better than the Dells, but not by much. I would say they were close. Software-wise, our 5 year old Macs do better with OS 10.4.1 (the latest Mac OS) than our Optiplexes do with Windows XP Pro, which runs dog slow on them.
Support-wise, though, the Macs are extremely easy to support and the Windows machines have been a nightmare, mostly due to viruses, spyware, adware, and all that stuff. And yes, we do run Norton and update it weekly.
I admit that I am a hardcore Mac fan and I hate Windows, but I won't claim that Dell hardware is significantly better or worse than Apple... I'd say it's about 90% as good, based on what we've seen.
I am a musician who distributes my CD through CDBaby (and thus iTunes) and I've been really happy with the whole deal.
CDBaby's deal with iTunes gives musicians like me a chance to play on the same online stage with the record company "products." Ten years ago such distribution would have been laughable. "No no, sir, you MUST be signed to a MAJOR music label to get your music HEARD." Balls. I recorded the opening track on the CD in GarageBand and now my CD is on iTunes. Thank GOD for CDBaby and Apple!
Reading this thread this morning gave ME a boost, because I am a high school network admin. We're not all idiots, by the way. And I feel like my school measures up pretty well to the slashdot yardstick of this post.
My school district does NOT use student SSN for anything at the school level. We use district assigned 6 digit ID numbers. And I actually HAVE had two times when a student came to me to show me a vulnerability in the way we were doing things. In both cases I thanked him and fixed the problem. Now... if this same student ever wanted me to trust him with something confidential and important, I would not do it. Why not? Because he has bypassed our security on two separate occasions. Doesn't matter why. He's proven that he'll break rules if he feels like it. If the temptation is big enough.
...and a hundred million slashdot nerds will groan about how evil Lucas is. Face reality - A Lucas Star Wars TV show would be a megahit because Lucas, at his worst, is far far better than Rick Berman at his best. Deal with it. The rest of the world doesn't read slashdot or give a rat's ass what you think and if you predict that it will suck or be a flop, you will be wrong.
Stealing credit card numbers isn't an inconvenience. It's a crime. As in "against the law." Oh boo hoo, the punishment is too excessive, boo hoo. It's a non-violent crime. Fine. I'll empty out your bank account and then I'll pay a fine and we'll be cool, right? That'll scare the hell out of people who are tempted to hack into people's financial business. Oh no, we might get FINED. I'm somehow thinking that doesn't have the same threat as jail time.
Lots of the posters in this thread don't know shit. Nothing like starting out with a nice insult to get people to read your post, right?
First... if you're judging public education by your experience back in the 80's, you don't know shit. Education has changed since then. Some changes for the better, some not, but it's different. So shut up.
Second... if you are judging american schools based on your own experience in one or two schools, you don't know shit. That's a sample that is too small to be statistically significant.
Third... don't compare the US to countries where they get to kick all the dumb kids out by age 12. Some countries do that, you know. And only the bright ones get to go to prep (for college) school. Not all countries do that, but some.
Fourth... don't assume that throwing more money at the problem will not help. It will. Let me explain. We can't get teachers because no one wants the shit pay and lack of respect. Steve Jobs said it best. Pay teachers $100,000 per year. What would happen? We'd have extreme competition and some of the brightest and best people would pursue teaching, instead of a field that actually pays their fucking bills. The more competition, the higher the quality of the candidates. Teaching would be a respected profession. Kids would want to grow up to be teachers. The process of learning would take on a greater meaning because it would be tied to what we americans worship most - the almighty fucking dollar.
Fifth... don't think you can throw the blame at one or two groups. Our entire economy and way of life is based on us continually buying a bunch of shit we don't really need (capitalism.) There are larger factors at play here than just "bad parents." Everyone, including parents and teachers and students themselves, needs to do their part to help.
By the way, I work at a high school. I am doing my part.
This is/. We write EVERYTHING off and criticize EVERYTHING!!! Star Trek? Sucks. Star Wars? Sucks. And now Pixar? Um, well, the TITLE to the movie sucks, so the movie will probably suck.
Sheesh. I've very much enjoyed the Pixar movies so far. I give them the full benefit of the doubt. Some people here just like to WHINE.
Glad you liked it! My CD will definitely be on iTunes, but they won't say when. It can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months to get into iTunes, if you're an independent artist. 3 months is a long time, but I really can't complain - I'm just happy they're willing to carry small independent artists like me.
I am also in the camp that would like to see copy protection gone, even though I am a so-called "content provider" myself.
I recorded a CD and released it online. I also allow some of the tracks to be downloaded for free at MacIdol. And here's what I've found...
As I have made more tracks available for free downloading, CD sales have INCREASED. I think I know at least one reason. We all can recall an artist that we sorta liked on first listening, but then liked more and more as we listened more and more. When you allow several songs to be downloaded for free, you increase your chances of this happening. If people dig the music enough, they might order the CD. If they don't, then you've lost nothing. But they still have your "free" songs out there and they have friends, and you never know.
And instead of releasing the worst songs from the disc for free, I released what I thought were the best songs. I wish big artists would do this.
I'm in line to get the CD into iTunes, but the waiting list to get in is long, so it can take months for a little guy to get in. But I just see iTunes as another way to get exposure. Once the CD is on iTunes, I will still allow free downloading of some songs, because I really believe it will help, not hurt, CD sales. My freely downloadable songs are located at:
I was JUST about to post a comment that said essentially the same thing. "Boo hoo, we all hate George Lucas and he's Satan and worse than Bill Gates and he's only concerned with money." My question to the whiners would be, "What have you contributed to Science Fiction? Oh, NOTHING? Then shut the fuck up."
Fortunately I don't give a rat's ass about "karma." Certainly, I'll be flamed, just as certainly as I won't bother reading the flames.
But seriously, it's one thing to disagree with George's choices, and it's another to vilify him. If you feel THAT strongly about a movie series, perhaps it's time to get a part time job, save up some money, and buy a real life.
Reminds me of the last school I worked at (as Network Admin.) Various support departments were e-mailing teachers a kabillion times a week, and as a result the teachers stopped reading the e-mails - there were too many. I told each department, "Hey, why don't we set up a web page, and each of you can have one paragraph on it. Then we just tell the teachers to check the web page once a day!" They would not consent to it - they said they had "too much information to share." When I pointed out that no one was reading their e-mails anyway at this point in time, they just looked at me. I'm pretty sure they were thinking "Don't confuse us with the facts!"
Your background knowledge is in Windows, not OS X, and that is painfully obvious. I can restore an OS X machine with NetRestore (free) in 15 minutes, not two hours. You don't know what you're doing with OS X because you lack the background knowledge. PC's win on hardware costs and compatibility but the rest of your argument is based on your ignorance.
I'd say the bottom line on which platform to choose is support. If you have a support staff that only knows Windows, you might ought to choose Windows. If your support staff knows OS X, you should choose OS X.
It boils down even simpler for me. I'm a CONSUMER. I like, sometimes, to buy stuff that I want. I'm surfing the net and an old Genesis song comes on the Classic Rock station, and I think, "Hey, I love that song! I wish I had it." I CAN have it. Here are my choices:
1. Go to the store and buy the whole album. Too time consuming and pricey.
2. Go to the used CD place and buy the album used. IF they have it. Time consuming, costs maybe 5 or 6 bucks. Quality unknown until I play it the whole way through.
3. Buy it new or used online. Then I pay 5 to 15 bucks, and I have to WAIT for it to be delivered. This is an impulse buy situation, so that won't work.
4. Download it illegally. That's assuming I can FIND it. This is Genesis we're talking about, not Maroon 5. And if I do find it, odds are it's gonna be a 128 kbps mp3 file, and that file format is NOT high enough quality for me. It may be fine for the kiddies who listen to music over their $49 Dell plastic speakers, but I've got an actual real stereo.
5. Download it legally from an online music service for a buck. The easiest to use service being Apple's.
I don't give a RAT'S ASS about big business, fair to artists, whatever. I just want the song. And #5 is the most logical solution here.
I think people who are stealing music online because they want to "fight the power" should examine everything ELSE they purchase. Like their sneakers. Some poor 6 year old in China or Korea went home last night with bloody fingers so you could have those $90 sneakers. (cue violins.) Seriously, people shouldn't get all high and mighty about one issue and then conveniently ignore analyzing every other product they buy that might exploit someone. The whole argument is just to justify stealing music online. If you're going to steal music, be honest about it at least.
Slashdot Mirror
Greatness anymore would imply greatness to begin with...
Microsoft's "official statement" is BS. Firefox seems to be doing rather well in the OS X world, as is Camino. I run a site that is mostly for Mac network people in education, and I've noticed an increasing number of Mac Firefox and Camino users. Personally, I think Microsoft dumped Internet Explorer because it sucked and it would have cost money to make it as good as Safari or Firefox... and the Mac market was too small to justify putting money into it.
Record companies need to offer a better product. And they ought to consider just giving away a couple of songs per artists right off the bat via P2P. It's happening anyway. I'm an idie musician and I've seen jumps in sales every time I give music away. I can only WISH that thousands of people were trading a few of my songs via P2P because it would send some of them to check out my music, and generate some sales. The music industry should take advantage of P2P instead of trying to fight it. The indie movement is already doing this - most indie artists do give away a song or two. Well, the smart ones do, at least...
Broadband + OS X = Problem Solved. Oh NO, someone will mod my post DOWN and it will hurt my KARMA! Oh dear! Now I'll need to sleep with a nightlight.
If an artist wants to use P2P to distribute their songs, they have to figure out a way to get their songs onto the computers of a lot of people who run P2P software. How does an artist do this? Probably by marketing their music and giving some songs away online. So say they accomplish this. Next they want to convince other people to "discover" their music. How does P2P help in that process? At that point, I do not see where P2P is useful. Are people going to somehow "magically" discover the music just because it's sitting on some kid's hard drive? No. It's just a file among hundreds (or thousands) on someone's machine. If they want to turn other people on to the music, then they "could" use P2P software to do this, or they could just send their friends the artist's web page where they can download the free songs.
OR, if some of the P2P users actually buy the artist's CD, then they could P2P the entire CD and the artist doesn't ever see a dime. They may gain FANS, but no money. Gaining fans won't accomplish much for a local artist with no plans to tour. All it will do is deprive them of some small amount of money. If an artist doesn't want money, they can just upload all of their songs to a free site and give them away.
Richard MacLemale on iTunes
Richard MacLemale on iTunes.
-----
My music on iTunes:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/ viewAlbum?playListId=30843087
My feeling is that if the greedy artist or record company has decided NOT to take my money online in legit fashion, then they lost their chance at my money, and I still want the song. The artists and companies are NOT "losing a sale" in that case, because there IS no sale. I pretty much only buy online. There's no way in hell I'm buying a CD for two songs. Those days are gone.
I'll get clobbered for this post but I don't care. It's really very simple... Dvorak is a FUCKING ASSHOLE. Next story, please?
If it was at one point online and available for anyone on the Internet to see, how is keeping a copy of it illegal? This will set an interesting precedence.
You make 2 good points I agree with, but you're forgetting a couple of details. The two statements "pay a decent salary" and "dismantle teachers' unions" by themselves are in conflict. If you dismantle the teachers unions, schools could arbitrarily fire the good 20 year veteran teachers making $60,000 per year and hire new teachers for considerably less. The one GOOD thing about teaching is job security. But the teacher's unions make it hard to get rid of BAD teachers. You'd need to both increase the pay for all teachers at each level of experience AND guarantee their positions, within reason. How do you do that? I have no clue. You'd have to set some types of criterion, based on student achievement, which opens a whole nuther can of worms.
The problem is that lots of people, mostly business people, think we can just slap up a standards test, test all the kids at the beginning and end of the year, and judge the teacher by the results. But teachers have no control over the variables that effect a student's life outside of school (drugs, parental divorce, abusive parents, etc) and so we're not dealing with widgets here. You could do the exact same thing each year and have some good results and some bad, based on student motivation which is affected by these variables. Not to mention the fact that when you determine someone's pay by test results, they're gonna teach the test all year. So you'd better make sure the test is ALL you want them teaching, 'cause that's all they're gonna do. And they're not gonna share their best teaching techniques with their colleagues... that wouldn't be in their best interest.
Sigh. We DO need higher salaries in education to be able to have competition for positions, which would give us better teachers. Jack up the salaries and you'll see results. I agree with you about training. Increase the training and you get a mixed bag with the positives usually diminishing over a year or two.
Support-wise, though, the Macs are extremely easy to support and the Windows machines have been a nightmare, mostly due to viruses, spyware, adware, and all that stuff. And yes, we do run Norton and update it weekly.
I admit that I am a hardcore Mac fan and I hate Windows, but I won't claim that Dell hardware is significantly better or worse than Apple... I'd say it's about 90% as good, based on what we've seen.
CDBaby's deal with iTunes gives musicians like me a chance to play on the same online stage with the record company "products." Ten years ago such distribution would have been laughable. "No no, sir, you MUST be signed to a MAJOR music label to get your music HEARD." Balls. I recorded the opening track on the CD in GarageBand and now my CD is on iTunes. Thank GOD for CDBaby and Apple!
My CD on iTunes is located here
My school district does NOT use student SSN for anything at the school level. We use district assigned 6 digit ID numbers. And I actually HAVE had two times when a student came to me to show me a vulnerability in the way we were doing things. In both cases I thanked him and fixed the problem. Now... if this same student ever wanted me to trust him with something confidential and important, I would not do it. Why not? Because he has bypassed our security on two separate occasions. Doesn't matter why. He's proven that he'll break rules if he feels like it. If the temptation is big enough.
Words per minute I can type: about 80 Words per minute I can handwrite: about 15 Why do I need a tablet again?
...and a hundred million slashdot nerds will groan about how evil Lucas is. Face reality - A Lucas Star Wars TV show would be a megahit because Lucas, at his worst, is far far better than Rick Berman at his best. Deal with it. The rest of the world doesn't read slashdot or give a rat's ass what you think and if you predict that it will suck or be a flop, you will be wrong.
Stealing credit card numbers isn't an inconvenience. It's a crime. As in "against the law." Oh boo hoo, the punishment is too excessive, boo hoo. It's a non-violent crime. Fine. I'll empty out your bank account and then I'll pay a fine and we'll be cool, right? That'll scare the hell out of people who are tempted to hack into people's financial business. Oh no, we might get FINED. I'm somehow thinking that doesn't have the same threat as jail time.
First... if you're judging public education by your experience back in the 80's, you don't know shit. Education has changed since then. Some changes for the better, some not, but it's different. So shut up.
Second... if you are judging american schools based on your own experience in one or two schools, you don't know shit. That's a sample that is too small to be statistically significant.
Third... don't compare the US to countries where they get to kick all the dumb kids out by age 12. Some countries do that, you know. And only the bright ones get to go to prep (for college) school. Not all countries do that, but some.
Fourth... don't assume that throwing more money at the problem will not help. It will. Let me explain. We can't get teachers because no one wants the shit pay and lack of respect. Steve Jobs said it best. Pay teachers $100,000 per year. What would happen? We'd have extreme competition and some of the brightest and best people would pursue teaching, instead of a field that actually pays their fucking bills. The more competition, the higher the quality of the candidates. Teaching would be a respected profession. Kids would want to grow up to be teachers. The process of learning would take on a greater meaning because it would be tied to what we americans worship most - the almighty fucking dollar.
Fifth... don't think you can throw the blame at one or two groups. Our entire economy and way of life is based on us continually buying a bunch of shit we don't really need (capitalism.) There are larger factors at play here than just "bad parents." Everyone, including parents and teachers and students themselves, needs to do their part to help.
By the way, I work at a high school. I am doing my part.
Sheesh. I've very much enjoyed the Pixar movies so far. I give them the full benefit of the doubt. Some people here just like to WHINE.
Glad you liked it! My CD will definitely be on iTunes, but they won't say when. It can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months to get into iTunes, if you're an independent artist. 3 months is a long time, but I really can't complain - I'm just happy they're willing to carry small independent artists like me.
I recorded a CD and released it online. I also allow some of the tracks to be downloaded for free at MacIdol. And here's what I've found...
As I have made more tracks available for free downloading, CD sales have INCREASED. I think I know at least one reason. We all can recall an artist that we sorta liked on first listening, but then liked more and more as we listened more and more. When you allow several songs to be downloaded for free, you increase your chances of this happening. If people dig the music enough, they might order the CD. If they don't, then you've lost nothing. But they still have your "free" songs out there and they have friends, and you never know.
And instead of releasing the worst songs from the disc for free, I released what I thought were the best songs. I wish big artists would do this.
I'm in line to get the CD into iTunes, but the waiting list to get in is long, so it can take months for a little guy to get in. But I just see iTunes as another way to get exposure. Once the CD is on iTunes, I will still allow free downloading of some songs, because I really believe it will help, not hurt, CD sales. My freely downloadable songs are located at:
http://www.macidol.com/jamroom/bands/999/music.php
I was JUST about to post a comment that said essentially the same thing. "Boo hoo, we all hate George Lucas and he's Satan and worse than Bill Gates and he's only concerned with money." My question to the whiners would be, "What have you contributed to Science Fiction? Oh, NOTHING? Then shut the fuck up." Fortunately I don't give a rat's ass about "karma." Certainly, I'll be flamed, just as certainly as I won't bother reading the flames. But seriously, it's one thing to disagree with George's choices, and it's another to vilify him. If you feel THAT strongly about a movie series, perhaps it's time to get a part time job, save up some money, and buy a real life.
Reminds me of the last school I worked at (as Network Admin.) Various support departments were e-mailing teachers a kabillion times a week, and as a result the teachers stopped reading the e-mails - there were too many. I told each department, "Hey, why don't we set up a web page, and each of you can have one paragraph on it. Then we just tell the teachers to check the web page once a day!" They would not consent to it - they said they had "too much information to share." When I pointed out that no one was reading their e-mails anyway at this point in time, they just looked at me. I'm pretty sure they were thinking "Don't confuse us with the facts!"
Your background knowledge is in Windows, not OS X, and that is painfully obvious. I can restore an OS X machine with NetRestore (free) in 15 minutes, not two hours. You don't know what you're doing with OS X because you lack the background knowledge. PC's win on hardware costs and compatibility but the rest of your argument is based on your ignorance. I'd say the bottom line on which platform to choose is support. If you have a support staff that only knows Windows, you might ought to choose Windows. If your support staff knows OS X, you should choose OS X.
It boils down even simpler for me. I'm a CONSUMER. I like, sometimes, to buy stuff that I want. I'm surfing the net and an old Genesis song comes on the Classic Rock station, and I think, "Hey, I love that song! I wish I had it." I CAN have it. Here are my choices: 1. Go to the store and buy the whole album. Too time consuming and pricey. 2. Go to the used CD place and buy the album used. IF they have it. Time consuming, costs maybe 5 or 6 bucks. Quality unknown until I play it the whole way through. 3. Buy it new or used online. Then I pay 5 to 15 bucks, and I have to WAIT for it to be delivered. This is an impulse buy situation, so that won't work. 4. Download it illegally. That's assuming I can FIND it. This is Genesis we're talking about, not Maroon 5. And if I do find it, odds are it's gonna be a 128 kbps mp3 file, and that file format is NOT high enough quality for me. It may be fine for the kiddies who listen to music over their $49 Dell plastic speakers, but I've got an actual real stereo. 5. Download it legally from an online music service for a buck. The easiest to use service being Apple's. I don't give a RAT'S ASS about big business, fair to artists, whatever. I just want the song. And #5 is the most logical solution here. I think people who are stealing music online because they want to "fight the power" should examine everything ELSE they purchase. Like their sneakers. Some poor 6 year old in China or Korea went home last night with bloody fingers so you could have those $90 sneakers. (cue violins.) Seriously, people shouldn't get all high and mighty about one issue and then conveniently ignore analyzing every other product they buy that might exploit someone. The whole argument is just to justify stealing music online. If you're going to steal music, be honest about it at least.