Do the words 'professional musician' ring a bell? Those people make a living from the profit on their sold records, and not all of them (by far, I might add) are as rich as, say, Michael Jackson. If you download music instead of buying it, you're depriving the musician of his honest buck. I haven't got a problem with the way you utilize it (only downloading stuff you already paid for anyway), but that's not how the majority views the filesharing of copyrighted music.

Oh well that's okay then. Hmmm...There is too much money in banks anyways...I wonder if that could be used as a defense if you rob a bank. [img]graemlins/1ponder.gif[/img] </font>[/QUOTE]Good point! LOL

There's not too much money in music business. Maybe in some areas. But if you go look at the smaller bands or the more exotic bands they and their record company need it. Record companies make things possible for some bands and if they don't get money from CD sales those things will become less frequent or less as well.

And then you're going to download music to get the record companies. ROFL like that gives the artist any money. If you buy a CD at least some percentage gets to them. Do you send an artist $10 for a CD? You're stealing from them too.

It's their work. I had a link to an interview with like 25 bands on downloading. They asked things like how much of your music do you think is illegal and what do you think of it. And ALL of them said it was bad for them. Hell, some are even doing another job next to making music cause they have to live while if all their albums were sold legally they would only have to care about making music and they could live of that income. I can't find the thing now and I don't recall anymore if it was in English or in Dutch.

The singer of one of my favourite bands had a quote on this. It was something like "The inventor of the internet is a f*ing idiot" in response to a question about the internet and filesharing.

Just a side note:
Bit torrent consumes 50% of all file shareing traffic, and over 35% of all internet traffic, if bit torrent were to be shut down it would be absoloutly devistating to many many people all over the world and many ligitimate sources of downloads.

And I have this report that indicates that a majority of the professional recording artists are positive or not overly negative towards file sharing. More than a third of the thousands of the artists who participated said that they thought that free file sharing has actually contributed to the music industry.

What? Musicians didn't have jobs on the side before internet piracy became popular? The "if all their albums had been sold legally they'd be able to live of their music" is wishful thinking at best. A very small fraction of recording artists have ever been able to live of records sales alone. Then there's the fact that record sales provide a relatively small part of the money an artist earns from his music anyway, concerts is usually the main source of income for a musician.

[ 12-22-2004, 10:31 AM: Message edited by: Rataxes ]

And I have this report that indicates that a majority of the professional recording artists are positive or not overly negative towards file sharing. More than a third of the thousands of the artists who participated said that they thought that free file sharing has actually contributed to the music industry.
</font>[/QUOTE]Of course there are musicians as well that support it and might have gotten better of it. I hope you're downloading their stuff [img]tongue.gif[/img] BTW there's a difference in how artists use the internet. I'm reading that file now but it seems that the interviewed group is a specific group of artists who do things via the internet. There's a difference in putting your music only for little money or free and then get a large fan base of it and putting a sample online so that people will buy your CD.

What? Musicians didn't have jobs on the side before internet piracy became popular? The "if all their albums had been sold legally they'd be able to live of their music" is wishful thinking at best. A very small fraction of recording artists have ever been able to live of records sales alone. Then there's the fact that record sales provide a relatively small part of the money an artist earns from his music anyway, concerts is usually the main source of income for a musician. </font>[/QUOTE]It's a double-edged razor there. Working equals not touring. It's the total picture and then I find it sad that a band estimates that the number of CDs sold is 10-25% of what's really out there. Some artists need their label as well so the number of CDs sold affects them in that way too.

I would feel *less* concerned if they copied my electronic goods, and left me with the origionals however.
But I can see how copying unique property is illegal.

Stealing actual CDs is completly different from copying music, it is still stealing, but less serious, I admit it is seriously bad for the industry, but ok, what happens when my local music store doesn't have the CD i'm looking for? what if I only want one song and don't want to buy he whole album?
And sometimes sitting in the comfort of your own home is nicer than going out needlessly.

Untill the launch i-tunes worldwide, there is no alternative for some, untill CDs drop from $30 AUD i am less inclined to buy them (although I still do).

Bottom line: We're all broke. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

<span style="color: lightblue">Not directly, no. But think of it this way: if every song that was downloaded illegally had been bought, there would be alot more money with the artists.

Ofcourse, the ideal world would take advantage of what file sharing has to offer, rather than trying to shut it down. Artists would release songs for free, to give a taste of their music. If people like those songs, they are then more likely to go out and buy full albums. But that can't come straight away... not until the illegal 'sharing' is stopped. These lawsuits are going the right way about it, I think. The Microsoft way, Paladium - oh, sorry, "Digital Rights Management" (or, whatever they're calling it this week) - won't work. There are always ways around those things. Especially when it makes as little sense as "You can only play this file on two computers"... how will they enforce that? No, shutting down the filesharing systems that aren't accountable for what their users do (eg, Kazaa) is a good first step. Shutting down the illegal servers that are accountable will help quite a bit. Then work can start on the ideal world...

<span style="color: lightblue">Not directly, no. But think of it this way: if every song that was downloaded illegally had been bought, there would be alot more money with the artists. </font>[/QUOTE]Not quite. A lot of songs people download are songs/artists that they have been recommended by others. These songs would not be bought and are only being downloaded to see what the band is like. Admitedly it is very easy to download whole discography's, but if you think about it, this music sharing could actually make people buy more albums, because they listen to the band, like them, recommend to others, and buy a cd. This can then make others do the same etc. etc.

Basically, these people probably wouldn't have bought the albums in the first place from the songs, and so the artists aren't losing anything.