Legalize everything and supply and demand will take care of that problem for you. With a wide choice of alternatives at competitive prices, meth's popularity would dwindle, if only because of the health consequences.
Anyone who thinks, or thought at any point, that drug-related problems are caused EXCLUSIVELY by the prohibition of drugs is, in fact, an idiot.
The argument is that we're doing more damage prohibiting than we would allowing the behavior (supply and demand says it will happen anyway) to continue to occur, above-board.
Yeah, thank Prohibition for the dead babies and thirteen-year-old hookers. See, people who are willing to commit crimes to make money have one thing that attracts them: money. Make a pack of Camel Buds cost $10, and your violence (dead babies, flying bullets, graffiti, muggings, crackheads hanging around) evaporates. Since drugs are pure, legal, and cheap the thirteen-year old, if she's even able to get any, will probably not overdose or get poisoned by impurities, making her chances of recovery into society much better.
Let's summarize: 1/300 that the girl is HIV+ 1/1000 that it will get transmitted to you 3/100 that the condom will break so 1/10,000,000 that you will get HIV on any particular encounter
If you slept with a different chick every day for the next 20 years, your chances would still be 1/1449.
Given what you're missing out on, I'd say go for it.
It will be interesting to see how they'll get the ad support necessary. Apparently, these guys don't plan to remove copyrighted content, but have some trick up their sleeve to get around being sued for it. That pretty much excludes anyone within the MPAA/RIAA's sphere of influence as potential advertisers, and really leaves me with the question of, will they be able to get enough advertisers on board to foot the bills fast enough, without over-saturating the site (i.e. clickthrough ads or ads that interrupt videos)?
Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing how this plays out (and crossing my fingers for TPB)
Print on demand? That's not realistic, and it would definitely scare off the impulse buyers... who wants to stand next to a machine (or worse yet, stand in line for one) that takes several minutes to burn their dvd/BR/hddvd? Not to mention the loss of image associated with the fact that it's burned there and then instead of in some factory. If anything, that will make people think "oh, I could just do this at home..."
I'm sure there are ways to make retail dvds theftproof, this just isn't it imo.
Easier to give bad news, but [though ultimately pointless] it is still somewhat more palatable to recieve them in person. It creates a sense of decency/regret, if anything a faux 'shoulder to cry on.' Not that us cheerful robots need shoulders or cry or anything...
I fail to see why we can't go with an option similar to the installer on many Linux distros - selecting features at install. Just have 2 downloads on getfirefox.com - the "basic" version and the "enhanced" version. Have the basic version slimlined to a tiny download and pack the basic features, and have the enhanced installer let the users choose the features - or packages for that matter - they want, from a multi-layered menu. For example, the Enhanced installer can do what installers have done for years - let users pick from Default, Packaged, Full, or User-Customizable installs. Mom and Pop are happy - they get default or the slim version Prosumers are happy - they pick their package Feature whores are happy with full, and tech-intelligent people can pick and choose what features they do or do not want.
It's nice to see someone taking the other side of the situation into account, but in my area, the starving muggers trying to feed starving babies are more like addicts looking to score cash for their next fix, or idiot kids looking to get their next $300 Sean John sweatsuit to wear to school. Unfortunately, the law does not make this distinction.
Your argument is in my opinion invalid, as there are much better ways to get food for your starving baby, or your next overpriced clothing article. We are not living in an impoverished country, and jobs (not necessarily six-figure, but jobs nonetheless), government aid, and private help systems (think food drives and charity locations) are readily available.
As for having to live for a month off of soup, please spare me. If these people were willing to work and use the resources made available to me, they could eke out a decent lifestyle legally for themselves and their families. The ones that resort to crime are in desperate circumstances (which is still not an excuse) or just too lazy to do something constructive.
And a victimless crime? Hardly. How many people have theft insurance on their laptop? How many want to spend the extra cash on it? Not I, and not many people I know of.
Perhaps if muggings only happened to the upper class, I would not be so concerned. Someone that makes $5,000 in a week is not going to be troubled too much to spend $3,000 on a new set of toys. Someone who had to work all summer for that one laptop or iPod (and, in my experience, students with a passion for tech like myself are much likelier targets because we have no choice but to go through dark, poorly-policed areas to get to and from school/work.)
Granted, my perspective is biased from having been the victim of several muggings and assaults myself, but here in NYC, the most common type of mugger is in high school, listens to 50 cent, and has absolutely no legitimate means or need to dress himself in $300 sneakers to show that he is "pimp" to his classmates, which he sees about once a month in class and about thrice a day smoking weed, an activity also largely funded by this type of action.
Unless someone develops another alternative, I can easily see this becoming the primary type of fuel cell on the market for one simple reason: greed.
Methanol is readily available at your local drug store for $1.99 per bottle. That bottle will last your laptop, your iPod, and your cell phone several months.
Hydrogen, on the other hand, cannot be so easily obtained by the end-consumer, so instead of stopping off at Rite-Aid and spending $1.99 on a bottle of rubbing alcohol, you'll be stopping off at Rite-Aid to spend $9.99 on a 4oz bottle of hydrogen, courtesy of Energizer. It's all economics.
Technology has the intent of pushing forward so that our lives can be easier, less expensive, and more enjoyable. Corporations, on the other hand, have the intent of crippling technology to make our lives more difficult and expensive. That's the way it's been for a while: Digital audio --> DRM; iPod phone --> Moto ROKR; and now fuel cell --> overpriced solution by Canon.
I don't know about you, but unless I can go to a drugstore and pick up my gadget's fuel at a price point that would make the difference between charging it from a power socket and buying fuel for it negligible, I'm going to stick with Li-ion batteries.
I've not watched a single show on TV for years... Not because I'm repulsed by commercials per se, but because I don't usually want to wait for a show or movie to come on. With broadband, it's possible to stream medium (400kbps) to high (1000+ kbps) content on demand. I wouldn't mind streaming an episode of a show I want to watch, commercials and all, if it were free and easy to access (i.e. I would not have to wait an hour for BT to find seeds or for newsgroups to download and unpack the avi file.) If I could watch an episode of south park by going to www.tv.com/southpark and choosing an episode, I wouldn't mind having 10 mins of commercials before it plays, as long as I do not have to watch them during the show. This would make the show the ad revenue it needs to make money, and would not tie me down to "wait until 8pm, watch 5 mins of the show then 5 mins of commercials" etc.
As for paying for shows (I imagine something like $3-5 a pop), I wouldn't want to do that. If they offered a single-play, $0.50-$0.99, commercial-free licence, I wouldn't mind. But knowing the MPAA, they're probably going to want something like $2-4 per episode for a single-play licence. I'd rather download a season overnight.
The idea behind this is good, but as it is the custom of these things, I suppose it will be overpriced, low-quality, and will probably still play a commercial or two before the show. I don't think this will ever fly well in competition with free alternatives such as BitTorrent.
In today's world, it's impossible to avoid buying advertised products. The important thing is to know how to look past the hype and decide which products/offers have value, and which do not. Sometimes, advertisements help us do that (i.e. find a product we needed but otherwise would not have found, or inform us about the best available deal.) The reaction some people have displayed (I will not buy it because advertisement sucks) is the polar opposite to the "buy it because I saw an ad for something and now I feel I really need it" reaction, and is equally stupid. Advertisements are not completely worthless, and although I'd rather see them take up a much lesser part of our everyday lives, I'm not ready to turn amish and live on a farm without electricity to avoid them.
Is it just me, or has the end user become completely dieregarded in recent years?
Look at, for example, the DRM schemes of today: The end user can consume information he/she legally purchased from only one point, and is restricted in terms of where he/she can transport his/her media. Did we have such laws before? Was it possible to pass legislation, or release content for that matter, that would limit the end user's rights to consume it? Could Sony's label release a CD that would only play 3 times, or that would only play on PC's and Sony CD players, without causing a public outrage? I think not.
It is sad to see the consumer, who is essentially the sole reason these companies make money, reduced to a state where he/she is forced to swallow limitations on the media purchased, and risk legal prosecution by choosing to use that media for himself in a way that the content distributors never intended. It is even more sad to see users succumb to this.
Legislation like this is a good step in the right direction, but I, for one, will not purchase a single file or disc until I can use it any way I want. Until I can insert my newly bought CD/DVD into my computer and have the CD's software offer to make me as many backup copies as I want, as many "friend" copies as I want, and as many transfers to any other device I wish, I will not buy a CD.
It's not enough to place the responsibility for monitoring the validity of the DMCA on some obscure board that will review a couple of formats once every three years, I should have the right to demand that my media plays in the way legally intended by the DMCA, at least, and the burden for ensuring this should be placed on the people that release the media. I should be able to sue, and win the lawsuit automatically, if I cannot use my media in the way I am legally entitled to without resorting to third-party solutions on shady sites the average consumer has never heard of, and will never find out about. I shouldn't have to re-encode my audio files through three different formats and manually rename and reconstruct the ID3 tags so that I can properly use my media, I should be offered to have everything done in a clean, quick, and effortless way by the CD itself, or at the very least be forwarded by the CD to a reliable website with clearly labeled instructions on how I can easily and effortlessly do so. Until then, our rights as consumers are not being enforced, and nor are the labels' responsibilities.
Space/rw time is not the only factor you need to consider here. Most people will not be buying discs as a storage medium, but rather as a convenient transportation medium. I don't know of one person that will take his HD out of his system to transfer a movie to someone else. A DVD does that best. Most people will not buy RW's as a method of storing their data for everyday use. Instead, they'll buy 5 discs to transfer files between systems that are more than 100m away. If you look at Blu-Ray/HD-DVD from that perspective, it makes much more sense to lend your friend a $20 HD-DVD RW than to lend your $80 hard drive. Don't forget that the convenience factor, while commonly overlooked by people, is what got many products started in the market. Look at USB thumb drives, for example. Their only purpose for existing is convenience. Since you can't put 20 gigs' worth of MP3s (or porn, as would more likely be the case with/. users;),) or a copy of an HD movie/game, on a thumb drive, and you aren't going to give your neighbor your hard drive, this presents a solution to a problem which will soon present a very real challenge to the majority of 18-25 year old college students. That, and the backup segment (both of which are generally happy using the cheaper recordable discs) are what the new format is aiming for, not a hard drive replacement solution.
not to mention the insane backing the minidisc has in asia...
Sony may be lame for pushing a proprietary game and boning consumers with it, but they know their stuff. Look at how many people hate, but still use, their proprietary formats just because it's the only thing they can use with the excellent hardware Sony keeps putting out. If not for the PSP, their PCs, and their digicams, Sony would've sold maybe 5% of the MSDuo's they do, if only due to the fact that the comparable SD is sold at much lower price points.
I don't believe parent is talking about the end-user machines the content is delivered to.
If you don't think there are real costs associated with distributing music, you are mistaken. The server space, the CPU, and the bandwidth needed to store, process, and deliver the ~5mb/each songs to the end user, are not free. Apple pays royalties on the songs and pays for the above, so their profit, while significant, is not 100% of the money they get.
I, for one, applaud Jobs - instead of succumbing to pressure and using the price increase to increase his profit margins, he's doing something decent by resisting the record companies' pressure. Granted, his motives may not be entirely altruistic, but nevertheless, Apple is setting a superb example that, no doubt, many companies will follow. If Jobs keeps prices at 99c a song, competing services will hardly be able to raise prices without losing customers to Apple - something they decidedly do not want to do. So in this case, Jobs is keeping the market stable in the face of significant pressure from the record companies.
The age of free legal (or even semi-legal) mainstream music has come and passed. You still have advertisement-supported radio, but to legally get ad-free, high-quality music, you can no longer go to a source like KaZaa and BitTorrent and expect the transaction to be risk-free (although I haven't heard of anyone being nabbed for getting MP3s from newsgroups, IRC, or various FTPs.) Not to say that there is significant risk - about 15 of the ~1200 tracks on my iPod were obtained through "good" sources, and I've yet to hear a word from anyone - but it is no longer as convenient or as safe to download them illegally as it is to buy them. This creates a balancing act between the difficulty of obtaining music freely/morality/risk factor and the price of legal music, and Jobs realizes that disrupting that balancing act by raising prices could create a trend of dissatisfied customers that decide to switch to illegal methods.
What puzzles me, though, is how blindly record companies are pressuring the distribution networks that are, in a way, their safety net for the tech-savvy majority of the highly appealing 18-25 demographic. While I've stopped expecting intelligent decisions from them long ago, the RIAA are now crossing the boundary between pure greed and pure stupidity. I believe that this will, eventually, kill them, and I, for one, have no objections to that.
The best option of the two, in my eyes, is having the best of both worlds - i.e. a national, online, book leasing system.
The concept is simple - tie a pdf file with serious DRM, put it on a server with free download and retention for up to * days. After this, the user needs to log on and re-establish a lease on the book. For every day the user does not do this, his credit/debit card is charged a certain amount. With enough clever programming, I think issues such as checkout bots and pdf-ripping can be avoided.
Obviously, this would not sit well with book publishers, but with proper restrictions, such as limiting the amount of copies of a certain book that can be out at one time, limiting the amount of books per user, and limiting the amount of time the book can be out (and slapping fines on those who keep them out longer), I think that this can be a viable alternative.
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exercise those rights, and you will stop owning your body faster than you can say "freeze."
Legalize everything and supply and demand will take care of that problem for you. With a wide choice of alternatives at competitive prices, meth's popularity would dwindle, if only because of the health consequences.
Anyone who thinks, or thought at any point, that drug-related problems are caused EXCLUSIVELY by the prohibition of drugs is, in fact, an idiot.
The argument is that we're doing more damage prohibiting than we would allowing the behavior (supply and demand says it will happen anyway) to continue to occur, above-board.
Yeah, thank Prohibition for the dead babies and thirteen-year-old hookers. See, people who are willing to commit crimes to make money have one thing that attracts them: money. Make a pack of Camel Buds cost $10, and your violence (dead babies, flying bullets, graffiti, muggings, crackheads hanging around) evaporates. Since drugs are pure, legal, and cheap the thirteen-year old, if she's even able to get any, will probably not overdose or get poisoned by impurities, making her chances of recovery into society much better.
"I wonder what the appropriate punishment for a politician who rides raped children as a rethoric horse to reach office would be ?"
Bring back tarring and feathering?
On a side note, I wonder what that would do to this presidential race...
Let's summarize:
1/300 that the girl is HIV+
1/1000 that it will get transmitted to you
3/100 that the condom will break
so 1/10,000,000 that you will get HIV on any particular encounter
If you slept with a different chick every day for the next 20 years, your chances would still be 1/1449.
Given what you're missing out on, I'd say go for it.
It will be interesting to see how they'll get the ad support necessary. Apparently, these guys don't plan to remove copyrighted content, but have some trick up their sleeve to get around being sued for it.
That pretty much excludes anyone within the MPAA/RIAA's sphere of influence as potential advertisers, and really leaves me with the question of, will they be able to get enough advertisers on board to foot the bills fast enough, without over-saturating the site (i.e. clickthrough ads or ads that interrupt videos)?
Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing how this plays out (and crossing my fingers for TPB)
Print on demand? That's not realistic, and it would definitely scare off the impulse buyers... who wants to stand next to a machine (or worse yet, stand in line for one) that takes several minutes to burn their dvd/BR/hddvd? Not to mention the loss of image associated with the fact that it's burned there and then instead of in some factory. If anything, that will make people think "oh, I could just do this at home..."
I'm sure there are ways to make retail dvds theftproof, this just isn't it imo.
Something sitting on the side of my monitor and watching my por^h^h^honline activities? No thanks.
Easier to give bad news, but [though ultimately pointless] it is still somewhat more palatable to recieve them in person.
It creates a sense of decency/regret, if anything a faux 'shoulder to cry on.'
Not that us cheerful robots need shoulders or cry or anything...
Makes sense. Per capita, what is someone more likely to need, a new cell phone accessory or a breadboard?
I fail to see why we can't go with an option similar to the installer on many Linux distros - selecting features at install. Just have 2 downloads on getfirefox.com - the "basic" version and the "enhanced" version. Have the basic version slimlined to a tiny download and pack the basic features, and have the enhanced installer let the users choose the features - or packages for that matter - they want, from a multi-layered menu.
For example, the Enhanced installer can do what installers have done for years - let users pick from Default, Packaged, Full, or User-Customizable installs.
Mom and Pop are happy - they get default or the slim version
Prosumers are happy - they pick their package
Feature whores are happy with full,
and tech-intelligent people can pick and choose what features they do or do not want.
I, for one, welcome our new Piracy overlords.
I like it!
First-time Windows users?
Isn't that an oxymoron?
It's nice to see someone taking the other side of the situation into account, but in my area, the starving muggers trying to feed starving babies are more like addicts looking to score cash for their next fix, or idiot kids looking to get their next $300 Sean John sweatsuit to wear to school. Unfortunately, the law does not make this distinction.
Your argument is in my opinion invalid, as there are much better ways to get food for your starving baby, or your next overpriced clothing article. We are not living in an impoverished country, and jobs (not necessarily six-figure, but jobs nonetheless), government aid, and private help systems (think food drives and charity locations) are readily available.
As for having to live for a month off of soup, please spare me. If these people were willing to work and use the resources made available to me, they could eke out a decent lifestyle legally for themselves and their families. The ones that resort to crime are in desperate circumstances (which is still not an excuse) or just too lazy to do something constructive.
And a victimless crime? Hardly. How many people have theft insurance on their laptop? How many want to spend the extra cash on it? Not I, and not many people I know of.
Perhaps if muggings only happened to the upper class, I would not be so concerned. Someone that makes $5,000 in a week is not going to be troubled too much to spend $3,000 on a new set of toys. Someone who had to work all summer for that one laptop or iPod (and, in my experience, students with a passion for tech like myself are much likelier targets because we have no choice but to go through dark, poorly-policed areas to get to and from school/work.)
Granted, my perspective is biased from having been the victim of several muggings and assaults myself, but here in NYC, the most common type of mugger is in high school, listens to 50 cent, and has absolutely no legitimate means or need to dress himself in $300 sneakers to show that he is "pimp" to his classmates, which he sees about once a month in class and about thrice a day smoking weed, an activity also largely funded by this type of action.
Unless someone develops another alternative, I can easily see this becoming the primary type of fuel cell on the market for one simple reason: greed.
Methanol is readily available at your local drug store for $1.99 per bottle. That bottle will last your laptop, your iPod, and your cell phone several months.
Hydrogen, on the other hand, cannot be so easily obtained by the end-consumer, so instead of stopping off at Rite-Aid and spending $1.99 on a bottle of rubbing alcohol, you'll be stopping off at Rite-Aid to spend $9.99 on a 4oz bottle of hydrogen, courtesy of Energizer. It's all economics.
Technology has the intent of pushing forward so that our lives can be easier, less expensive, and more enjoyable. Corporations, on the other hand, have the intent of crippling technology to make our lives more difficult and expensive. That's the way it's been for a while: Digital audio --> DRM; iPod phone --> Moto ROKR; and now fuel cell --> overpriced solution by Canon.
I don't know about you, but unless I can go to a drugstore and pick up my gadget's fuel at a price point that would make the difference between charging it from a power socket and buying fuel for it negligible, I'm going to stick with Li-ion batteries.
Taken from somethingawful.com: "Interestingly enough, this was the entirety of Gator's EULA: Hahaha, dumbass."
I've not watched a single show on TV for years... Not because I'm repulsed by commercials per se, but because I don't usually want to wait for a show or movie to come on. With broadband, it's possible to stream medium (400kbps) to high (1000+ kbps) content on demand. I wouldn't mind streaming an episode of a show I want to watch, commercials and all, if it were free and easy to access (i.e. I would not have to wait an hour for BT to find seeds or for newsgroups to download and unpack the avi file.) If I could watch an episode of south park by going to www.tv.com/southpark and choosing an episode, I wouldn't mind having 10 mins of commercials before it plays, as long as I do not have to watch them during the show. This would make the show the ad revenue it needs to make money, and would not tie me down to "wait until 8pm, watch 5 mins of the show then 5 mins of commercials" etc.
As for paying for shows (I imagine something like $3-5 a pop), I wouldn't want to do that. If they offered a single-play, $0.50-$0.99, commercial-free licence, I wouldn't mind. But knowing the MPAA, they're probably going to want something like $2-4 per episode for a single-play licence. I'd rather download a season overnight.
The idea behind this is good, but as it is the custom of these things, I suppose it will be overpriced, low-quality, and will probably still play a commercial or two before the show. I don't think this will ever fly well in competition with free alternatives such as BitTorrent.
He was being sarcastic or hypocritical.
In today's world, it's impossible to avoid buying advertised products. The important thing is to know how to look past the hype and decide which products/offers have value, and which do not. Sometimes, advertisements help us do that (i.e. find a product we needed but otherwise would not have found, or inform us about the best available deal.) The reaction some people have displayed (I will not buy it because advertisement sucks) is the polar opposite to the "buy it because I saw an ad for something and now I feel I really need it" reaction, and is equally stupid. Advertisements are not completely worthless, and although I'd rather see them take up a much lesser part of our everyday lives, I'm not ready to turn amish and live on a farm without electricity to avoid them.
Wouldn't the stupid bastards be the ones that have the gullability to click on the ad?
I completely agree on the staking to a fence and setting aflame thing though. Although I'd have the common courtesy to piss on them once they're dead.
Is it just me, or has the end user become completely dieregarded in recent years?
Look at, for example, the DRM schemes of today: The end user can consume information he/she legally purchased from only one point, and is restricted in terms of where he/she can transport his/her media. Did we have such laws before? Was it possible to pass legislation, or release content for that matter, that would limit the end user's rights to consume it? Could Sony's label release a CD that would only play 3 times, or that would only play on PC's and Sony CD players, without causing a public outrage? I think not.
It is sad to see the consumer, who is essentially the sole reason these companies make money, reduced to a state where he/she is forced to swallow limitations on the media purchased, and risk legal prosecution by choosing to use that media for himself in a way that the content distributors never intended. It is even more sad to see users succumb to this.
Legislation like this is a good step in the right direction, but I, for one, will not purchase a single file or disc until I can use it any way I want. Until I can insert my newly bought CD/DVD into my computer and have the CD's software offer to make me as many backup copies as I want, as many "friend" copies as I want, and as many transfers to any other device I wish, I will not buy a CD.
It's not enough to place the responsibility for monitoring the validity of the DMCA on some obscure board that will review a couple of formats once every three years, I should have the right to demand that my media plays in the way legally intended by the DMCA, at least, and the burden for ensuring this should be placed on the people that release the media. I should be able to sue, and win the lawsuit automatically, if I cannot use my media in the way I am legally entitled to without resorting to third-party solutions on shady sites the average consumer has never heard of, and will never find out about. I shouldn't have to re-encode my audio files through three different formats and manually rename and reconstruct the ID3 tags so that I can properly use my media, I should be offered to have everything done in a clean, quick, and effortless way by the CD itself, or at the very least be forwarded by the CD to a reliable website with clearly labeled instructions on how I can easily and effortlessly do so. Until then, our rights as consumers are not being enforced, and nor are the labels' responsibilities.
Space/rw time is not the only factor you need to consider here. Most people will not be buying discs as a storage medium, but rather as a convenient transportation medium. I don't know of one person that will take his HD out of his system to transfer a movie to someone else. A DVD does that best. Most people will not buy RW's as a method of storing their data for everyday use. Instead, they'll buy 5 discs to transfer files between systems that are more than 100m away. If you look at Blu-Ray/HD-DVD from that perspective, it makes much more sense to lend your friend a $20 HD-DVD RW than to lend your $80 hard drive. Don't forget that the convenience factor, while commonly overlooked by people, is what got many products started in the market. Look at USB thumb drives, for example. Their only purpose for existing is convenience. Since you can't put 20 gigs' worth of MP3s (or porn, as would more likely be the case with /. users ;),) or a copy of an HD movie/game, on a thumb drive, and you aren't going to give your neighbor your hard drive, this presents a solution to a problem which will soon present a very real challenge to the majority of 18-25 year old college students. That, and the backup segment (both of which are generally happy using the cheaper recordable discs) are what the new format is aiming for, not a hard drive replacement solution.
not to mention the insane backing the minidisc has in asia...
Sony may be lame for pushing a proprietary game and boning consumers with it, but they know their stuff. Look at how many people hate, but still use, their proprietary formats just because it's the only thing they can use with the excellent hardware Sony keeps putting out. If not for the PSP, their PCs, and their digicams, Sony would've sold maybe 5% of the MSDuo's they do, if only due to the fact that the comparable SD is sold at much lower price points.
I don't believe parent is talking about the end-user machines the content is delivered to.
If you don't think there are real costs associated with distributing music, you are mistaken. The server space, the CPU, and the bandwidth needed to store, process, and deliver the ~5mb/each songs to the end user, are not free. Apple pays royalties on the songs and pays for the above, so their profit, while significant, is not 100% of the money they get.
I, for one, applaud Jobs - instead of succumbing to pressure and using the price increase to increase his profit margins, he's doing something decent by resisting the record companies' pressure. Granted, his motives may not be entirely altruistic, but nevertheless, Apple is setting a superb example that, no doubt, many companies will follow. If Jobs keeps prices at 99c a song, competing services will hardly be able to raise prices without losing customers to Apple - something they decidedly do not want to do. So in this case, Jobs is keeping the market stable in the face of significant pressure from the record companies.
The age of free legal (or even semi-legal) mainstream music has come and passed. You still have advertisement-supported radio, but to legally get ad-free, high-quality music, you can no longer go to a source like KaZaa and BitTorrent and expect the transaction to be risk-free (although I haven't heard of anyone being nabbed for getting MP3s from newsgroups, IRC, or various FTPs.) Not to say that there is significant risk - about 15 of the ~1200 tracks on my iPod were obtained through "good" sources, and I've yet to hear a word from anyone - but it is no longer as convenient or as safe to download them illegally as it is to buy them. This creates a balancing act between the difficulty of obtaining music freely/morality/risk factor and the price of legal music, and Jobs realizes that disrupting that balancing act by raising prices could create a trend of dissatisfied customers that decide to switch to illegal methods.
What puzzles me, though, is how blindly record companies are pressuring the distribution networks that are, in a way, their safety net for the tech-savvy majority of the highly appealing 18-25 demographic. While I've stopped expecting intelligent decisions from them long ago, the RIAA are now crossing the boundary between pure greed and pure stupidity. I believe that this will, eventually, kill them, and I, for one, have no objections to that.
The best option of the two, in my eyes, is having the best of both worlds - i.e. a national, online, book leasing system.
The concept is simple - tie a pdf file with serious DRM, put it on a server with free download and retention for up to * days. After this, the user needs to log on and re-establish a lease on the book. For every day the user does not do this, his credit/debit card is charged a certain amount. With enough clever programming, I think issues such as checkout bots and pdf-ripping can be avoided.
Obviously, this would not sit well with book publishers, but with proper restrictions, such as limiting the amount of copies of a certain book that can be out at one time, limiting the amount of books per user, and limiting the amount of time the book can be out (and slapping fines on those who keep them out longer), I think that this can be a viable alternative.