The RIAA sees the face of evil, and it's a 12-year-old girl...

[Reeka]

Well, I wouldn't even know HOW to steal songs off the internet, but as far as the RIAA goes, I think TL has a very good point. I'm with you, kind of resent my tax dollars going for that.

If I remember anything about economics, it seems that there are two ways to make a profit: make the product rare and expensive, or mass produce it, sell it cheap and make the profits on a volumn basis.

I don't remember who said it, but it seems to me that the RIAA would be better serviced to create a service the is inexpensive where you could download the individual songs and make their profit by volume.

I rarely buy CDs because, as has been said so much before, I am buying it primarily for one or two songs that I like. I really only buy "classical music" and find them very cheap (nobody much buys those I guess) from little know artists or orchestras and can usually find cds with several piences I like.


I realize this probably would not solve the entire problem, but it seems like a better use of their resources IMHO.

[Chewbacca]

T.L. are you saying that criminally prosecuting pirates and counterfeiters is wrong or that the State is footing the bill for civil prosecution and that is wrong?

Reason why I am asking is I have done secret shops on several piracy joints around Boston. The police sat in their little cop booth in front of my store 15 feet way from a bootleg cart and didn't flinch when I complained. It had something to do with the law requiring representatives of the copyright holders filing a complaint and since the street cart had a valid business permit and I wasn't a representative of the copyright holders there was nothing they could do.

So I called my street reps at Sony, Uni, BMG, and WEA and asked them what they could do. They took it to their bosses and up the food chain this info went. Several months later the bust went down after the labels sent several secret shoppers to this and other bootleg locations in the area . They got the street vendor to tell on his distributor which uncovered a massive CD/DVD burning and counterfeiting operate that resulted in some pretty hefty criminal charges being brought down on the people behind the operation. Turns out these folks were also selling counterfeit designer purses, watches, and other products. All at prices that were Impossible to compete with. We are talking about real greedy criminals here who didn't care about the quality or legitimacy of their products.

I think arresting and prosecuting criminals, thieves, is a fair use of tax dollars. I just wish I didn't have to jump through a bunch of hoops and watch alot of business go bye-bye for months before anything was done about it.

[ 09-10-2003, 04:22 PM: Message edited by: Chewbacca ]

[Chewbacca]

Originally posted by Rokenn: quote: Originally posted by Chewbacca: So go ahead ya'll and boo hoo me all you want, BRING EM ON!!! When your ship goes down I will try not to gloat.

Chewie, may I suggest you start ripping their arms off and beating them over the head with it They might garner a clue that way [img]graemlins/laugh2.gif[/img]

Oh and I cracked up last night playing KOTOR(Knights of the Old Republic) when one of the characters spouted the line in your sig [img]smile.gif[/img] [/QUOTE]Hey I'm really a nice wookie...

Oooh Im waiting for that game to come out on PC!
My sig line is actually in the game? Funny, somebody at BioWare has a similiar sense of humour as I do! That makes me smile. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Faceman]

Originally posted by Larry_OHF: FYI...I learned long ago to not waste money in buying tapes or CDs because the "1" song that I liked from a particular group would be the "1" song I'd listen to, after paying an enormous price...and then in a month, I was tired of that song because there was a better one out from another group.

As I've stated in other topics before audio piracy is not only soaring because it's free but because it's MORE CONVENIENT than legal purchase. If I wanted I could get almost any song, even if I don't know it's name properly, from my home in a heartbeat the illegal way.
The legal way I'd have to:
+ Find a record stor with a qualified storekeep like Chewie who can tell me which song I'm actually looking for
+ Buy a "Best of Album" because it's an old song no longer available as a single
+ Wait for the album to be ordered because they of course do NOT have this particular album in store

This happened to me with the commonly known "Born to be Wild" from Steppenwolf. The only store where I could order their BestOf for 20$ was Virgin (guess music infrastructure is sucky in Austria [img]smile.gif[/img] )
now if I had just downloaded it (which I did not want to mainly because I had no burner back then and wanted to listen to it on my Discman - I'm not THAT honest ) it would have taken me a 30sec google search to find out that "fire all of your guns at one time" is from this song and another 2mins of Napster to download it.
Unless record companies make their methods of distribution more convenient and flexible a lot of people will keep using P2P.

[Felix The Assassin]

Now TL, don't forget about that other $27K of your tax dollar. You pay my salary also, and if you dislike the tax dollar working to put "internet no good doers" where they belong, then forget to pay your taxes next year!

Thou I fight for your right, no matter your view, does not mean I have to like you or what you are doing. Theft is theft, and if it cost tax money to fix it, then you are gonna get me mad at you as well. The money Uncle Sugar spends on what you might conceive as petty, might be enough to bring my salary above the poverty level, and to increase a joes lot by $175 a month!

Like others have posted, if you can't afford the cost, then go away. Disperse. Better yet, pop smoke and draw fire!

Felix

[Luvian]

Originally posted by Chewbacca: I must add that file-sharing isn' the sole reason for the decline in CD sales, but to imply it hasnt negatively impacted sales a meaningful way is bit naive in my opinion. I used to think that file-sharing might actually help CD sales as people could try before they buy, but the facts haven't materialized to support such an idea...yet.

Oh, I have no doubt piracy has it's role to play in the "downfall" of the music industry, but look at it this way. There are a lot more dissatisfied customers than there are pirates, and that's without considering all the dissatisfied pirates that would not buy any either.

And so what if a bunch of kids download 40 gigs worth of songs each? Do you think they would have bought that much music? It's not the number of songs that's important here, it's the buying power of the individual. When I was 12 I had enough money to buy maybe 1 cd per 3-4 months. I'm sure the music industry can survive without that important demographic...

When the music industry say "XX millions of dollars's worth of songs were downloaded off the internet this year", they really mean "a bunch of kids able to afford 100 000$ of songs in a year downloaded music for free on the net".

Of course the first version get a lot more sympathy, but if the music industry really think people whould have been able to afford the millions of songs downloaded each years, they are really overestimating their customers. Every pirates download a lot more than he could afford.

With my connection speed I could download one song every few seconds, but I could really afford maybe a cd or two per months.

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: Luvian, you need a decent used CD store. Works for me.

Great! When can I start?

[Chewbacca]

You make a great point Luvian how the statistics can be distorted to overstate the actual loss industry-wide. I hadn't thought of that. Blah.

[Melusine]

Like Reeka, I buy classical music almost exclusively (roughly 1 popular CD in every 25 classical ones) and it's very cheap.
Sometimes I treat myself to something like a recording made by a famous singer, like recently I bought a CD by Natalie Dessay containing Mozart opera arias that was a bit on the pricey side, but still well worth the money. [img]smile.gif[/img] And it's actually nice to be able to buy yourself a gift like that sometimes instead of downloading it just to have it.

But most of the time, I get good quality recordings even of lesser known works/composers for around 6-12 dollars/euros and the maximum price I pay for a CD is 20 euros in very special cases. For instance, a double CD of Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle and Stabat Mater, recorded by well-known musicians (Lucia Popp, Brigitte Fassbaender, the Labeque twins etc.) cost me slightly less than 20 euros, and a double CD of Faure's Requiem, his Cantique de Jean Racine, Duruflé's Requiem and several selected works of Poulenc, also performed by very good musicians (Academy of St Martin in the Fields etc) cost only 12.99 in euros. ALL that for only 13 euros. To me that's a complete bargain! I have complete operas of Mozart for as little as 7 euros, no kidding. Good quality, relatively good to very good musicians. I also go to a store where they often have "2 for 11.99" or "2 for 7.99" deals.
So my advice to you all is to develop a taste for classical music

Seriously now, I have downloaded a few songs in the past, mostly older material for nostalgic reasons, songs I have on cassette tapes. However, I don't kid myself into thinking it is not stealing. I do feel that it matters how much you download and for what purposes. In my case, it was for instance a few songs from Faith No More's Angel Dust because I used to play them a lot on tape (copied tapes, if I'm not mistaken, aren't considered illegal by almost everybody because of the loss of quality involved) and I wanted to hear them again. However, if I come across a "nice price" copy of Angel Dust in the shops, I will buy it, rather than downloading the entire CD which I haven't done so far. I've convinced my boyfriend to do the same - I think most people don't even consider the fact that what they're doing is illegal and not quite morally sound, because they get away with it so easily it doesn't "feel" like a crime. Anyway, he'd downloaded some old Alice In Chains tracks out of nostalgia and when we came across the CD I told him if he really liked the music, he should buy it. He's now quite pleased when he puts "Dirt" in his discman.
On rare occasions, we use filesharing for the same reasons as people like Grojlach do: to check out new bands. We heard a great song on the radio (The Mars Volta - Inertiatic Esp), downloaded two more of the same band to check whether we liked the whole CD and then went out and got the CD, plus two concert tickets to go see the band live (the concert is tomorrow, WHOOO!!). To me that is legitimate use of filesharing: it's akin to listening to the CD in the shops before buying it, only you have more opportunity to actually listen to the songs closely.

Anyway, I think there are gradations in filesharing: a brat bragging about the 20 gigs of illegal music on his HD that should find a bloody job and save up to buy a few CDs a month (I just know he would actually appreciate the music more if he'd saved up for it!) to me is worse than someone who downloads a few songs to check them out or songs he/she used to listen to as a kid, who might still buy the album as a whole, and who doesn't have a whole load of downloaded songs on his/her PC.

[Gammit]

Originally posted by The Hierophant: quote: Originally posted by Chewbacca: They have merely helped unemploy literally tens of thousands of people (INCLUDING ME!) making less than 40k a year. The retail workers and record label street reps are the mains ones to get hurt, not the executives or artists. So all I have to say to music theives and priates is I believe in karma so if you know what you are doing is wrong, I believe you will indeed get yours one day. edited out offensive middle finger smiley.

boo hoo. Go get a different job. The sooner the music 'industry' decays and musicians are forced to back to singing for their supper (myself included) instead of living 'the rocktar lifestyle' the better. For the most part, the 'industry' serves to employ vampiric parasites who have nothing to do with musicianship at all. Hangers-on like retailers, promoters, marchandisers, and advertisers should never have been given the chance to form their racket the way they have done over the past 50 odd years in the first place. The sooner they die out the better. [/QUOTE]Maybe. And maybe all the sound engineers and other such low people on the totem pole are getting shafted too... and without being parasites.

[WillowIX]

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: If you lower prices by $6 but sell a lot more records, you have made less on each one but made an overall better profit. It's not at all obvious that lowering by $6 means they were making money. They may be lowering prices due to the fact they were losing money. CDs sitting on shelves don't make money unless they're purchased. *snip*

Yes but while file sharing is still a possibility I doubt they will raise there sales. Why? Simply because it's so much easier to download the file you need instead of going out and buy the album. That does of course not rectify downloading songs illegally. So why lower the prices at all? Are they finally understanding that their reputation is now non existant? But hey, if you hire by stupidity it's not all that surprising that the industry is going down the drain. How hard would it be fot them to hire a couple of programmers to make their own file sharing client. Then charge people per song they download? Naah it's better to use a couple of billions to hunt down some youngsters. Heck if we're not happy no one else has the right to be happy. [img]graemlins/blueblink.gif[/img]

And going after a 12 year old is still totally ridiculous. If I was 12 I would have thought I paid my ISP the charge to download the songs. After all most cable suppliers say that you can download how much you want for $40 a month.