The Hoboken Cafe 

RIAA vs increase exposure is what it boils down too.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2894-2002Sep2... Britney and other high profile stars are stating that online music sharing is illegal.

And how one songwriter questions the values that RIAA has
http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html

With a followup reaction to Janis article
http://www.janisian.com/article-fallout.html

I find it rather funny that the music industry is flying the flag of injustice in this whole debate..

Basically...until they invest the money to comeout with some type of media that is not easily copied they are are just pissing in the wind to put out a fire..

No one has ever had a problem with people taping songs off the radio...this is exactally the same thing..just a much, much bigger radio...

As far as I am concerned once a song is converted to digital media it becomes free-ware..block it all you (industry)want, hell even try to bounce off my firewall looking for it, you (industry) will still fail...I just consume due to others who want to share...I do not actually share myself..

so I guess I am a thief and a greedy one at that..

Britney Spears can kiss my white ass if she thinks that her pockets will buldge less from music swapping..the bulk of musicians profit is from pimpin' a clothing line, doing concerts, selling trading cards, and god forbid pushing some Pepsi down people's throats...

It is not if everyone who has been in the music industry since oh say...1990 has not known that this was coming..and everyone getting into the industry now is well aware of what lies ahead....I do not remeber them (industry) taking Magnavox to court when they started selling a two tape boom box (late 80's)that could dub a tape in half of the time..

Consider music 'theft' to be free advertising and distribution of your portfolio of head shots and other marketing tools...

Actually, I was informed that during when radio was coming out, there was a debate on letting music be aired on the radio. However, the people against it was not the recording industry. It was the artist themselves.

Then after an experiment, they (artist) realized that they gain a lot of exposure and sold more albums than ever before.

Now, today, we have statistics on both sides claiming that sharing music online (P2P or peer to peer network) has benefit or hurt the music industry. So the ultimate question is, during the time of Napster, did CD sales drop. From what I have been hearing from the pro P2P, no, they did not drop. From the recording industry, they state that they lost additional money (but they don't admit to a drop in sales for CD). Hmmmm... <sarcasm>

scrivet said on 9/26/2002 1:18 PM

>No one has ever had a problem with people taping songs off the radio...this is exactally the same thing..just a much, much bigger radio...

The funny thing is that both the MPAA and RIAA have brought lawsuits to stop many technologies that we accept today. Cassette tapes, VCRs and movie rentals were all technologies that the MPAA/RIAA claimed would destroy movies/music and hurt artists. VCRs are only legal today because of a 1984 Supreme Court decision against the MPAA.

Not exact you would think.

So far in this thread, we have been stating that sharing or at least exposure is good for an artist. Well Microsoft feels the same way

http://salon.com/tech/feature/2002/09/26/piracy_unlimited/in...

Now, you have to understand in the business world, MS is competing (for all of non-techie out there) against a force called Open Source. You may have heard terms like Linux or BSD. I won't go into details on Open Source (for me it would take way too long). I found it interesting that MS has back off against China on piracy (China is the second worse offender). However in other articles that I have read, China government as declared Open Source to be the choice of systems on concerns with Microsoft ability to deliver trusted computing (in other words, apply increased security over on their products). And Microsoft understands the importance of market share. So much, that they are willing to "give" it out for "free" provided that everyone else can pay their own share.

Touche!