While i tend to agree with you on the priciple, I may have some point for you to consider:
While Piracy is illegal and morally questionnable, what is really nagging people up is the way those corporation reacts. It goes beyond P2p, but i'll get back to this later. Let's stick to music for the moment (those are not facts btw, mearly my perceptions)
* While the download of entire albums can hurt sales , most of the download seen on P2p seems to be mostly the Hit singles, wich you can hear+record+play in public freely by way of fm radio. Granted, the quality is not the same, but when you can hear a tune any time of the day and record it, does the bitrate really matters?
* The RIAA has yet to prove that the downloading of music really affect it's profits and in what proportion. Some serious studies tend to proves that P2P usage help the sales of records (again don't ask me for sources, this is just an opinion, see some stories on/.)
* Here in Canada, there is a levy on each recordable media sales that goes directly to copyright owners, then artists. It doesn't make pirating legal, but it does help exercise our Fair use rights whith a clearer consience.
* The real pirate are on the streets and in flea Market selling cd copies of the most recent album for about a quarter of the asking price.
Considering this, why would the RIAA bother to sue the little file sharers?
You have to take into account all that is happening on the IP front lately and you start to get the big picture: *Trusted computing platform (see Microsoft PlayForSure certification to see the future at work now) *Broadcast Flag *Satellite radio (Fee based goodness, again) *Digital Tv *Increased effort in copy protection on all media *DRM *The old Divx initiative (i'm not taking about the codec here and no it's not dead...) *Increasingly esoteric licences agreement *etc...
all this point to one thing: control of ownership. Since the entertaiment insdustry is a HUGELY profitable one, the only way for them to continue making a profit in the new digital age is to lockdown their contents in ways that can't be bypassed. This will enable them to do as they wish with their "properties". No one will be able to own a thing they buy anymore. Why would they let you own something when they can loan it? And if you got free then heaven help you, they are going down on your a$$ mafia style.
Try to rip your new store bought cd to your ipod? Thanks for trying, but you have an TC intel platform that will let you write only to you PlayForSure compatible player. Oh we forgot to tell you that the licence for portable media is restricted for 3 month. You'll have to buy a licence for another 3 month or take our special year long subscription for only 5 buck a month for that particular cd!
Try to listen to the music you bought from ATunes on a laptop computer while you are traveling, chances are the tune will be limited to one or two machines, and you will need to be connected to the internet to validate your licence. And if you reformat your computer? Back to ATunes for you, where you can download all your library back, for a fee...
You just bought the New Lion Queen from WaltCrispey to play on your spiffy blue ray broadband connected DVD player but, suprise, surprise, you'll have to pay a small fee each tiem you want to listen to it, billable directly to your credit card. What? your credit card is overloaded? No biggie, just pay next month! Remember now that you cannot go bankrupt anymore, and the card fees are through the roof...
Wow, it looks like 1984 and the matrix mixed into one doesn't it? I am of course (hopefully) exagerating a bit but some of those things are happening right now. So before you take a stance and say we brought this upon ourselve, or its all the fault of pirates, just think that this was in motion way before P2P and the World Wide pirate Web.
this is about one thing and one thing only: Control.
They have to have control so that we dont. To spoonfeed you what they want. To have lifetime ownership over susch things as "Happy birhtday". To make more money so they can have more control.
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While i tend to agree with you on the priciple, I may have some point for you to consider:
/.)
While Piracy is illegal and morally questionnable, what is really nagging people up is the way those corporation reacts. It goes beyond P2p, but i'll get back to this later. Let's stick to music for the moment
(those are not facts btw, mearly my perceptions)
* While the download of entire albums can hurt sales , most of the download seen on P2p seems to be mostly the Hit singles, wich you can hear+record+play in public freely by way of fm radio. Granted, the quality is not the same, but when you can hear a tune any time of the day and record it, does the bitrate really matters?
* The RIAA has yet to prove that the downloading of music really affect it's profits and in what proportion. Some serious studies tend to proves that P2P usage help the sales of records (again don't ask me for sources, this is just an opinion, see some stories on
* Here in Canada, there is a levy on each recordable media sales that goes directly to copyright owners, then artists. It doesn't make pirating legal, but it does help exercise our Fair use rights whith a clearer consience.
* The real pirate are on the streets and in flea Market selling cd copies of the most recent album for about a quarter of the asking price.
Considering this, why would the RIAA bother to sue the little file sharers?
You have to take into account all that is happening on the IP front lately and you start to get the big picture:
*Trusted computing platform (see Microsoft PlayForSure certification to see the future at work now)
*Broadcast Flag
*Satellite radio (Fee based goodness, again)
*Digital Tv
*Increased effort in copy protection on all media
*DRM
*The old Divx initiative (i'm not taking about the codec here and no it's not dead...)
*Increasingly esoteric licences agreement
*etc...
all this point to one thing: control of ownership. Since the entertaiment insdustry is a HUGELY profitable one, the only way for them to continue making a profit in the new digital age is to lockdown their contents in ways that can't be bypassed. This will enable them to do as they wish with their "properties". No one will be able to own a thing they buy anymore. Why would they let you own something when they can loan it? And if you got free then heaven help you, they are going down on your a$$ mafia style.
Try to rip your new store bought cd to your ipod?
Thanks for trying, but you have an TC intel platform that will let you write only to you PlayForSure compatible player. Oh we forgot to tell you that the licence for portable media is restricted for 3 month. You'll have to buy a licence for another 3 month or take our special year long subscription for only 5 buck a month for that particular cd!
Try to listen to the music you bought from ATunes on a laptop computer while you are traveling, chances are the tune will be limited to one or two machines, and you will need to be connected to the internet to validate your licence. And if you reformat your computer? Back to ATunes for you, where you can download all your library back, for a fee...
You just bought the New Lion Queen from WaltCrispey to play on your spiffy blue ray broadband connected DVD player but, suprise, surprise, you'll have to pay a small fee each tiem you want to listen to it, billable directly to your credit card. What? your credit card is overloaded? No biggie, just pay next month! Remember now that you cannot go bankrupt anymore, and the card fees are through the roof...
Wow, it looks like 1984 and the matrix mixed into one doesn't it? I am of course (hopefully) exagerating a bit but some of those things are happening right now. So before you take a stance and say we brought this upon ourselve, or its all the fault of pirates, just think that this was in motion way before P2P and the World Wide pirate Web.
this is about one thing and one thing only: Control.
They have to have control so that we dont.
To spoonfeed you what they want.
To have lifetime ownership over susch things as "Happy birhtday".
To make more money so they can have more control.