"An inventor can not be held accountable for improper use of his or her creations by others."
Exactly -- you understand perfectly. And so does the US Supreme Court: piracy was indeed a very proper way for using Grokster. They encouraged it, built their business model on it, and the email trails show that they knew about it and condoned it. When Grokster told the court that piracy wasn't their intent and that they didn't encourage or condone it, the evidence showed that they were clearly lying.
As long as the EU adopts a standard of proof equal to or above that which the US Supreme Court did in the precedent-setting MGM vs. Grokster case, I don't think Europeans have much to worry about.
"My understanding was that the issue in the MGM vs. Grokster case was that Grokster marketed their software to be used in an unlawful manner. But the judge clearly stated that other software (ie. IM software used to send files, web browsers, etc) and companies would not be held responsible for their tool simply being used for illegal purposes so long as the tool was not marketed to be used in that way. So whats the deal?"
Thank you for pointing that out. Many people have completely forgotten that important point.
I think the US Supreme Court ruling was pretty clear... Grokster was clearly guilty. What the experts in the Wired article are cautioning is that the wording in the EU document is overly vague compared to the precedent set in the US.
" What about MSN messenger? I send executable files across that all the time. Or, heaven forbid, a floppy disk containing copywritten software on it and thrown across the room."
I think the person who wrote the summary mistakenly assumed that most readers would know the background of the recent MGM vs. Grokster case.
The whole point is to separate the "bad actors" from the providers of generic tools. That's what the decision showed us -- if you create an ad campaign focused on piracy, build your business model on inciting piracy, leave an email trail showing that you're aware of and condone what's on your network, and then lie to the government about it, you'll get nailed.
Knowledge is power here, guys -- it's important to understand the difference between people who set about profiting off of other people's works, vs. the people who write IM applications. The EFF page linked in the summary contains further links to the supreme court decision and lots of other stuff which would have answered your question.
"Let's ban everything that attempts, aids, or incites acts of anything. It would eliminate cars, guns, tools, computers, people, milk, water, and air."
Maybe the summary wasn't clear enough. This is an attempt to institute a standard of liability similar to that of MGM vs. Grokster. The folks behind Grokster were taking active measures to profit from piracy -- their ad campaigns and email trails showed that quite clearly. If you're not sure why Grokster fell into this category and a gun manufacturer does not, it may help to compare Grokster's business model and advertising campaign to that of BitTorrent.
Any moron can slippery-slope this one. We're smarter than that.
"I dislike subscription services because they amount to extortion. Keep your subscription, or the music is effectively gone (rendered unusable)."
My XM radio subscription is like that, too. I can listen to all the music I want -- IF I keep paying $10 a month. If I stop paying, the radio stops working! Fucktards!
That being said, while the subscription services have their appeal, I'll be sticking with iTMS as well for the reasons you've covered. Their DRM has never gotten in the way of allowing me to do what I want to do with the music I've downloaded.
Politically venomous? I've known untold pirates who fly the Jolly Roger proudly. The guys who run the warez rings use -- and have always used -- the word "pirate" as a badge of honor. There's no shame or stigma in the word.
When access to pirated works exploded with the advent of P2P, many people new to the world of piracy (e.g. adults with real jobs) took umbrage at the term. Thus, the "call it copyright infringement" movement was born. I suppose this term does sanitize it a bit, and perhaps it does help it go down a little more smoothly for some people who'd otherwise feel a bit guilty, but why use an obtuse legal term when the word "pirate" has served the purpose perfectly well for centuries?
"Any bets on when the Redmond gang will offer their Ad network?"
MSN Spaces is Microsoft's free, ad-supported blogging site. Knowing how Microsoft plays their brands, I believe that they'll continue with that tactic. They get the ad revenue, plus they drive viewers to the MSN properties.
"Crazy!? In scientific terms 'M' is short for Mega, which mean 1 000 000, whereas 'm' is short for milli, meaning 0.001"
Right. Scientists use one set of notation, accountants and businesspeople use another. This is perfectly okay. It happens more than you think.
In this context, the "M" signifies the root word for "thousand." Many romance languages still retain this (as an Italian friend how to say "one thousand" sometime), so perhaps it's less boggling to Europeans than it is to the average Slashdotter.
By the way, if you've ever seen those crazy, wacky capital letters in copyrights (particularly in movies) that look like this:
Copyright (C) MMV
Those are what your parents called "Roman numerals." The M, again, stands for thousand, and the V signifies five. The Romans didn't use decimal notation, so that was their way of saying "2005."
"circumvention devices" is shorthand for what Chapter 15 covers for at least three pages. You're right to be worried -- but your first step should be to read the actual treaty, rather than extrapolating off of a two-word phrase.
"Why do I have to pay a RECORD COMPANY for something they didn't do, but rather the artists?"
95% of the work that goes into getting a CD into your hands was performed by people who are not the artist.
If you're a musician and you have the time, talent and means to find a good producer, rent a studio, hire session musicians, design your cover art, have thousands of CDs produced, sell them into distribution, manage a co-op ad program with thousands of record stores, deal with product returns, produce a music video, get your CD to thousands of radio stations and make sure it gets played, then you certainly don't need a record company at all.
Unfortunately, most artists are not independently wealthy and in possession of expertise in sales, marketing and engineering. This is where record companies come in. They provide time, talent, resources, and most importantly, CASH. In exchange for this investment, they get the rights to sell recordings of the musician's songs in an effort to make back the money they've spent.
If you mean artists who are on indie labels, there's a ton of that on iTMS -- in fact, most of the content is from non-RIAA labels.
If you mean unsigned artists, they're on iTMS as well. It's similar to the fact that many good record stores carry CDs by unsigned artists, but the majority of their inventory is from labels. If you're an unsigned musician you generally have to go through a third party to get your stuff sold on the big online stores. I believe CDBaby used to provide an encoding service for unsigned musicians, but in perusing their site, it's not apparent that they still do.
At any rate, the reseller sets the final price, and Apple won't sell your track at less than $0.99 because they don't need to. You probably heard all the noise when they sold their 50 millionth track a few weeks back. There's just not enough elasticity between $0.99 or $0.89 or $0.79 to make me want to buy more music, and I'd bet their research has shown that there's lots of other folks out there like me.
Generally speaking, radio airplay encourages sales -- it's how many people learn about music. Piracy discourages sales -- once people have an MP3 of a song that they can listen to as many times as they want, there's little need to go buy another copy.
More importantly, each time a song is played on the radio, the artist gets a bit of money (and this is handled in a way that entirely sidesteps the record company). Downloading a song from a P2P site to avoid paying for it does not make any money for the artist.
"ok... so instead of sorting out crime... like the bastards that stole my car stereo, OR LIKE RANDOM BOMBERS"
I'm not sure I follow. Are you stating that if the record companies weren't throwing money at lawyers to sue file sharers, they'd be using the money to find the subway bombers?
"Regardless of whether you think downloading music is right or wrong, I don't see any evidence of all this "damage"."
Check out the earnings reports from some of the publicly-traded record companies some day, or google on "record company layoffs." It's been pretty ugly. The record companies are blaming a lot of this on piracy.
I think your misunderstanding lies in your hugely broad generalization. There are many, many artists who don't play concerts and who make all their money through CD sales. Plus, CD sales lost to piracy reduce the artist's chance to make more CDs, which limits their ability to get concert gigs in addition to, of course, royalties from CD sales. And, the record industry is hugely speculative -- the big hits finance the majority of the CDs that are money-losers. The more risky the business becomes, the more likely record labels are to concentrate on the "safe" (read: crappy) artists that are guaranteed money-makers, in both promoting the music and producing it in the first place. This limits new and unproven artists' ability to get recording contracts and get their stuff heard.
Those are just a few off the top of my head. I hope this helps.
"These record companies will go out of business or figure out a way to continue their business that fits with what we are willing to pay for, such as handcuffware-free ways of listening to music."
Unfortunately, the iTunes Music Store has been a fantastically wild success by any measure. They just sold their 50 millionth track and their traffic is still growing exponentially. Apple and the record companies are laughing all the way to the bank.
I'm bemused by people who say things like "the record companies will go out of business unless they give consumers what they really want... DRM-free music!". Apple, Napster and the like have clearly shown otherwise. The music stores that specialize in what you say consumers demand (Magnatune, MP3Tunes, and the like) are floundering.
"Yes, because it's the consumers who have damaged music. It couldn't possibly be damaged by all the crappy artists they've promoted the last decade."
Simple bromides won't cover it. It can be due to a lot of things. Blaming it solely on crappy music is just as naive on blaming it solely on file sharers. Even if piracy is responsible for something less than 100%, this does not eliminate the need to fix the problem. If you're not sure what I'm getting at, think of it as if you owned a retail store. If 10% of your lack of sales could be blamed on shoplifting, 10% on bad products, 10% on high prices and 10% on unfriendly employees, you'd still think about getting that better security system while you set about solving the other problems.
That being said, most pop music has always been mediocre. We tend to put on our nostalgia goggles and remember the good stuff from decades past, but trust me: there was a lot of crap in the 80's, the 70's, and the 60's. Each generation takes its turn lamenting how bad music has become recently. The fact that you've started noticing that music has gotten bad is a sign that you're growing up.
I once visited a web site that did it to me. My reaction was not "oh, I'd better go do what they say and launch another browser," but something more on the order of "the web designer is a self-important fucktard."
"Why should the RIAA be paid for me burning my children's photos to a disc? What have I gotten from the RIAA for my money?"
I'm not sure I understand. What does the RIAA have to do with it? Even here in the US, most of the money from the music CD-R levy goes to artists, and none goes to the RIAA.
"And if you've already paid for your piracy, haven't you a license to pirate as much as you want, then? The answer is apparently nope and nope."
Again, I don't understand. The Canadian courts have ruled that -- for the time being, at least -- downloading is legal because of the tariff.
"The music industry wants it both ways - being paid for piracy in a way that implicitly legitimizes it while insisting on its illegality. And who can blame them for trying to get as much money as they can? What's astonishing is that they're being allowed to do it."
Remember, we're talking about the artists here. They're the primary benefactors of both the Canadian levy and the US tariff.
" Last time I checked, 100% of the monies collected from the very beginning were still with the record companies."
Really? Where did you hear that? That's mighty strange, as the CPCC gives money to the record companies, not the other way around. The record companies get about 16% of the money collected by the CPCC, with the rest going to artists.
Would love to see a citation showing that CPCC gave 100% of the money to the record companies -- that would be quite a scandal.
"The CPCC are just like our RIAA, all a pack of crooks."
Who modded this "informative"? Sheesh.
The CPCC is most definitely not the equivalent of the RIAA. The CPCC primarily represents artists, while the RIAA is a trade group representing record companies. Each group has different goals.
The CPCC is a non-profit agency that was set up to distribute the money collected from the tarrif. They distribute the money to songwriters, music publishers, recording artists, and record companies. Specifically, 66% goes to songwriters/composers/publishers, 18.9% goes to performers, and 15.1% goes to record companies. This breakdown is similar to the levy collected in the US on music CD-Rs -- it's primarily for the benefit of artists, with record companies getting the small slice of the pie.
Interestingly, presently only Canadian artists are eligible to collect this money. So, while the tariff is seen by many Canadian Slashdotters as a moral and legal free ride to pirate music, it's only Bryan Adams, Anne Murray and their ilk that are getting compensated. So, you Canadians... start pirating more Rush! Leave our poor US artists alone!
"In a cost comparison, they probably figured a cheap, easy means to get people who otherwise did not know they had a pirated version to purchase outweighed trying to lock out people who knowingly run a pirated copy (i.e., people who will use this hack)."
Thank you for pointing that out -- it's a concept that's lost on many people. It's a bit like the locks that come on your car: they probably won't hinder that professional thief who wants your car, but they'll stop the amateurs.
"It's nice to hear the CD before you pay $20 for one good song and fifteen crap songs. I have never downloaded off of a P2P myself though.. ((smile))"
If you're paying $20 per CD, that's nobody's fault but your own. The average price of a new release is now about $13. Even in the worst-case scenario of there just being one record store in your town that's adding a 100% markup, you can get your stuff mail-order via Amazon.
And, as somebody else pointed out, if you're finding that you only like one track off the CD, you should find better music. Really. The worst case I can think of in the last five years of buying CDs is one in which about 60% of the tracks were good and 40% were not. And as somebody else pointed out, that's the beauty of iTunes: just buy the hot track that you've heard off the radio, and ignore the filler. Or spend the $5 per month for Yahoo!'s service and download the whole freaking album.
In short, unless you're deliberately using the "I pay $20 for my CDs and they average only one good track" story as a deliberate excuse to rationalize your use of P2P services -- and if you are, God bless ya -- there are plenty of trivial ways to address your issue without having to resort to P2P.
The vagaries of colloquial English often are at odds with the more analytical, black/white approach of the typical Slashdotter.
While both sides can be argued, I think one would be tilting at windmills to stop the public at large from using "steal" and "theft" and its variants in colloquial, non-literal form. Sadly, we will continue to use phrases like "theft of service" (vis. cable TV), "stealing your thunder," "stolen kisses," "steal first base," and so on.
Just look at all the "I don't have a boat and an eyepatch, so I can't possibly be a pirate" posts to see that Slashdot is not a very homonym- or colloquialism-friendly place. Those of us who revel in colorful use of the English language may indeed be called idiots or trolls (to use your words) by the Slashdot crowd, but that's okay: my guess is that O'Reilly manuals are more the norm around here than the great works of literature.
Slashdot Mirror
"An inventor can not be held accountable for improper use of his or her creations by others."
Exactly -- you understand perfectly. And so does the US Supreme Court: piracy was indeed a very proper way for using Grokster. They encouraged it, built their business model on it, and the email trails show that they knew about it and condoned it. When Grokster told the court that piracy wasn't their intent and that they didn't encourage or condone it, the evidence showed that they were clearly lying.
As long as the EU adopts a standard of proof equal to or above that which the US Supreme Court did in the precedent-setting MGM vs. Grokster case, I don't think Europeans have much to worry about.
"My understanding was that the issue in the MGM vs. Grokster case was that Grokster marketed their software to be used in an unlawful manner. But the judge clearly stated that other software (ie. IM software used to send files, web browsers, etc) and companies would not be held responsible for their tool simply being used for illegal purposes so long as the tool was not marketed to be used in that way. So whats the deal?"
Thank you for pointing that out. Many people have completely forgotten that important point.
I think the US Supreme Court ruling was pretty clear... Grokster was clearly guilty. What the experts in the Wired article are cautioning is that the wording in the EU document is overly vague compared to the precedent set in the US.
" What about MSN messenger? I send executable files across that all the time. Or, heaven forbid, a floppy disk containing copywritten software on it and thrown across the room."
I think the person who wrote the summary mistakenly assumed that most readers would know the background of the recent MGM vs. Grokster case.
The whole point is to separate the "bad actors" from the providers of generic tools. That's what the decision showed us -- if you create an ad campaign focused on piracy, build your business model on inciting piracy, leave an email trail showing that you're aware of and condone what's on your network, and then lie to the government about it, you'll get nailed.
Knowledge is power here, guys -- it's important to understand the difference between people who set about profiting off of other people's works, vs. the people who write IM applications. The EFF page linked in the summary contains further links to the supreme court decision and lots of other stuff which would have answered your question.
"Let's ban everything that attempts, aids, or incites acts of anything. It would eliminate cars, guns, tools, computers, people, milk, water, and air."
Maybe the summary wasn't clear enough. This is an attempt to institute a standard of liability similar to that of MGM vs. Grokster. The folks behind Grokster were taking active measures to profit from piracy -- their ad campaigns and email trails showed that quite clearly. If you're not sure why Grokster fell into this category and a gun manufacturer does not, it may help to compare Grokster's business model and advertising campaign to that of BitTorrent.
Any moron can slippery-slope this one. We're smarter than that.
"I dislike subscription services because they amount to extortion. Keep your subscription, or the music is effectively gone (rendered unusable)."
My XM radio subscription is like that, too. I can listen to all the music I want -- IF I keep paying $10 a month. If I stop paying, the radio stops working! Fucktards!
That being said, while the subscription services have their appeal, I'll be sticking with iTMS as well for the reasons you've covered. Their DRM has never gotten in the way of allowing me to do what I want to do with the music I've downloaded.
Politically venomous? I've known untold pirates who fly the Jolly Roger proudly. The guys who run the warez rings use -- and have always used -- the word "pirate" as a badge of honor. There's no shame or stigma in the word.
When access to pirated works exploded with the advent of P2P, many people new to the world of piracy (e.g. adults with real jobs) took umbrage at the term. Thus, the "call it copyright infringement" movement was born. I suppose this term does sanitize it a bit, and perhaps it does help it go down a little more smoothly for some people who'd otherwise feel a bit guilty, but why use an obtuse legal term when the word "pirate" has served the purpose perfectly well for centuries?
"Any bets on when the Redmond gang will offer their Ad network?"
MSN Spaces is Microsoft's free, ad-supported blogging site. Knowing how Microsoft plays their brands, I believe that they'll continue with that tactic. They get the ad revenue, plus they drive viewers to the MSN properties.
"Crazy!? In scientific terms 'M' is short for Mega, which mean 1 000 000, whereas 'm' is short for milli, meaning 0.001"
Right. Scientists use one set of notation, accountants and businesspeople use another. This is perfectly okay. It happens more than you think.
In this context, the "M" signifies the root word for "thousand." Many romance languages still retain this (as an Italian friend how to say "one thousand" sometime), so perhaps it's less boggling to Europeans than it is to the average Slashdotter.
By the way, if you've ever seen those crazy, wacky capital letters in copyrights (particularly in movies) that look like this:
Copyright (C) MMV
Those are what your parents called "Roman numerals." The M, again, stands for thousand, and the V signifies five. The Romans didn't use decimal notation, so that was their way of saying "2005."
"What the hell is $100mm? Is it supposed to be $100M?"
No, but perhaps $100MM would be more accurate.
M = a thousand
MM = a million
In this style of notation, M stands for the Latin root for "thousand." It's also where we get Roman numerals.
I interchangeably use "MM" and "mm" in emails, but "MM" is probably correct.
"That wording sounds dangerously ambiguous."
"circumvention devices" is shorthand for what Chapter 15 covers for at least three pages. You're right to be worried -- but your first step should be to read the actual treaty, rather than extrapolating off of a two-word phrase.
The summary contains a handy link to the chapter.
"Why do I have to pay a RECORD COMPANY for something they didn't do, but rather the artists?"
95% of the work that goes into getting a CD into your hands was performed by people who are not the artist.
If you're a musician and you have the time, talent and means to find a good producer, rent a studio, hire session musicians, design your cover art, have thousands of CDs produced, sell them into distribution, manage a co-op ad program with thousands of record stores, deal with product returns, produce a music video, get your CD to thousands of radio stations and make sure it gets played, then you certainly don't need a record company at all.
Unfortunately, most artists are not independently wealthy and in possession of expertise in sales, marketing and engineering. This is where record companies come in. They provide time, talent, resources, and most importantly, CASH. In exchange for this investment, they get the rights to sell recordings of the musician's songs in an effort to make back the money they've spent.
If you mean artists who are on indie labels, there's a ton of that on iTMS -- in fact, most of the content is from non-RIAA labels.
If you mean unsigned artists, they're on iTMS as well. It's similar to the fact that many good record stores carry CDs by unsigned artists, but the majority of their inventory is from labels. If you're an unsigned musician you generally have to go through a third party to get your stuff sold on the big online stores. I believe CDBaby used to provide an encoding service for unsigned musicians, but in perusing their site, it's not apparent that they still do.
At any rate, the reseller sets the final price, and Apple won't sell your track at less than $0.99 because they don't need to. You probably heard all the noise when they sold their 50 millionth track a few weeks back. There's just not enough elasticity between $0.99 or $0.89 or $0.79 to make me want to buy more music, and I'd bet their research has shown that there's lots of other folks out there like me.
Generally speaking, radio airplay encourages sales -- it's how many people learn about music. Piracy discourages sales -- once people have an MP3 of a song that they can listen to as many times as they want, there's little need to go buy another copy.
More importantly, each time a song is played on the radio, the artist gets a bit of money (and this is handled in a way that entirely sidesteps the record company). Downloading a song from a P2P site to avoid paying for it does not make any money for the artist.
"ok... so instead of sorting out crime... like the bastards that stole my car stereo, OR LIKE RANDOM BOMBERS"
I'm not sure I follow. Are you stating that if the record companies weren't throwing money at lawyers to sue file sharers, they'd be using the money to find the subway bombers?
"Regardless of whether you think downloading music is right or wrong, I don't see any evidence of all this "damage"."
Check out the earnings reports from some of the publicly-traded record companies some day, or google on "record company layoffs." It's been pretty ugly. The record companies are blaming a lot of this on piracy.
"why are artists hurt by P2P?"
I think your misunderstanding lies in your hugely broad generalization. There are many, many artists who don't play concerts and who make all their money through CD sales. Plus, CD sales lost to piracy reduce the artist's chance to make more CDs, which limits their ability to get concert gigs in addition to, of course, royalties from CD sales. And, the record industry is hugely speculative -- the big hits finance the majority of the CDs that are money-losers. The more risky the business becomes, the more likely record labels are to concentrate on the "safe" (read: crappy) artists that are guaranteed money-makers, in both promoting the music and producing it in the first place. This limits new and unproven artists' ability to get recording contracts and get their stuff heard.
Those are just a few off the top of my head. I hope this helps.
"These record companies will go out of business or figure out a way to continue their business that fits with what we are willing to pay for, such as handcuffware-free ways of listening to music."
Unfortunately, the iTunes Music Store has been a fantastically wild success by any measure. They just sold their 50 millionth track and their traffic is still growing exponentially. Apple and the record companies are laughing all the way to the bank.
I'm bemused by people who say things like "the record companies will go out of business unless they give consumers what they really want... DRM-free music!". Apple, Napster and the like have clearly shown otherwise. The music stores that specialize in what you say consumers demand (Magnatune, MP3Tunes, and the like) are floundering.
"Yes, because it's the consumers who have damaged music. It couldn't possibly be damaged by all the crappy artists they've promoted the last decade."
Simple bromides won't cover it. It can be due to a lot of things. Blaming it solely on crappy music is just as naive on blaming it solely on file sharers. Even if piracy is responsible for something less than 100%, this does not eliminate the need to fix the problem. If you're not sure what I'm getting at, think of it as if you owned a retail store. If 10% of your lack of sales could be blamed on shoplifting, 10% on bad products, 10% on high prices and 10% on unfriendly employees, you'd still think about getting that better security system while you set about solving the other problems.
That being said, most pop music has always been mediocre. We tend to put on our nostalgia goggles and remember the good stuff from decades past, but trust me: there was a lot of crap in the 80's, the 70's, and the 60's. Each generation takes its turn lamenting how bad music has become recently. The fact that you've started noticing that music has gotten bad is a sign that you're growing up.
I once visited a web site that did it to me. My reaction was not "oh, I'd better go do what they say and launch another browser," but something more on the order of "the web designer is a self-important fucktard."
"Why should the RIAA be paid for me burning my children's photos to a disc? What have I gotten from the RIAA for my money?"
I'm not sure I understand. What does the RIAA have to do with it? Even here in the US, most of the money from the music CD-R levy goes to artists, and none goes to the RIAA.
"And if you've already paid for your piracy, haven't you a license to pirate as much as you want, then? The answer is apparently nope and nope."
Again, I don't understand. The Canadian courts have ruled that -- for the time being, at least -- downloading is legal because of the tariff.
"The music industry wants it both ways - being paid for piracy in a way that implicitly legitimizes it while insisting on its illegality. And who can blame them for trying to get as much money as they can? What's astonishing is that they're being allowed to do it."
Remember, we're talking about the artists here. They're the primary benefactors of both the Canadian levy and the US tariff.
" Last time I checked, 100% of the monies collected from the very beginning were still with the record companies."
Really? Where did you hear that? That's mighty strange, as the CPCC gives money to the record companies, not the other way around. The record companies get about 16% of the money collected by the CPCC, with the rest going to artists.
Would love to see a citation showing that CPCC gave 100% of the money to the record companies -- that would be quite a scandal.
"The CPCC are just like our RIAA, all a pack of crooks."
Who modded this "informative"? Sheesh.
The CPCC is most definitely not the equivalent of the RIAA. The CPCC primarily represents artists, while the RIAA is a trade group representing record companies. Each group has different goals.
The CPCC is a non-profit agency that was set up to distribute the money collected from the tarrif. They distribute the money to songwriters, music publishers, recording artists, and record companies. Specifically, 66% goes to songwriters/composers/publishers, 18.9% goes to performers, and 15.1% goes to record companies. This breakdown is similar to the levy collected in the US on music CD-Rs -- it's primarily for the benefit of artists, with record companies getting the small slice of the pie.
Interestingly, presently only Canadian artists are eligible to collect this money. So, while the tariff is seen by many Canadian Slashdotters as a moral and legal free ride to pirate music, it's only Bryan Adams, Anne Murray and their ilk that are getting compensated. So, you Canadians... start pirating more Rush! Leave our poor US artists alone!
"In a cost comparison, they probably figured a cheap, easy means to get people who otherwise did not know they had a pirated version to purchase outweighed trying to lock out people who knowingly run a pirated copy (i.e., people who will use this hack)."
Thank you for pointing that out -- it's a concept that's lost on many people. It's a bit like the locks that come on your car: they probably won't hinder that professional thief who wants your car, but they'll stop the amateurs.
"It's nice to hear the CD before you pay $20 for one good song and fifteen crap songs. I have never downloaded off of a P2P myself though.. ((smile))"
If you're paying $20 per CD, that's nobody's fault but your own. The average price of a new release is now about $13. Even in the worst-case scenario of there just being one record store in your town that's adding a 100% markup, you can get your stuff mail-order via Amazon.
And, as somebody else pointed out, if you're finding that you only like one track off the CD, you should find better music. Really. The worst case I can think of in the last five years of buying CDs is one in which about 60% of the tracks were good and 40% were not. And as somebody else pointed out, that's the beauty of iTunes: just buy the hot track that you've heard off the radio, and ignore the filler. Or spend the $5 per month for Yahoo!'s service and download the whole freaking album.
In short, unless you're deliberately using the "I pay $20 for my CDs and they average only one good track" story as a deliberate excuse to rationalize your use of P2P services -- and if you are, God bless ya -- there are plenty of trivial ways to address your issue without having to resort to P2P.
The vagaries of colloquial English often are at odds with the more analytical, black/white approach of the typical Slashdotter.
While both sides can be argued, I think one would be tilting at windmills to stop the public at large from using "steal" and "theft" and its variants in colloquial, non-literal form. Sadly, we will continue to use phrases like "theft of service" (vis. cable TV), "stealing your thunder," "stolen kisses," "steal first base," and so on.
Just look at all the "I don't have a boat and an eyepatch, so I can't possibly be a pirate" posts to see that Slashdot is not a very homonym- or colloquialism-friendly place. Those of us who revel in colorful use of the English language may indeed be called idiots or trolls (to use your words) by the Slashdot crowd, but that's okay: my guess is that O'Reilly manuals are more the norm around here than the great works of literature.