<p>Singles are pap for the short attention span youth of today who can’t sit still through a 50 minute album.</p>
<p>Or they’re for those who hated buying an entire album when they only liked 3 of the songs…</p>
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<p>Well, I know you’re asking in true legal terms, but…
according to the RIAA, the act of someone simply ripping the CD to their computer is illegal.</p>
<p>Of course, it ISN’T. But the RIAA claims it is, which helps to show how ludicrous they are.</p>
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<p>Oh, no, I didn’t mean playing it. I just meant, some games I’ve seen have actually had people torrent them to download the client, rather than just direct download. I just wonder if the people who monitor internet usage would see that and immediately think “PIRATE! SHUT HIM DOWN!”…</p>
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<p>The thing is that no matter how much people try to get them to pay attention, the legislators generally favor the RIAA, for a variety of reasons. This leads to the next best solution: civil disobedience. The Pirates view themselves as the Gandhis and MLKs of this generation.</p>
<p>forget all these arguments about morality and ethics behind downloading music. the issue goes much deeper than that. it boils down to incompetence. it’s a shame how the RIAA and MPAA continue to approach technology. those old geezers and big companies putting money into the RIAA and MPAA to protect copyrights just don’t know how to utilize P2P technology as another form of revenue. some of it is slowly changing with sites like Hulu coming out, but it’s not changing fast enough.</p>
<p>the riaa first started using individual companies providing means for users to infringe on copyrights. that didn’t work. then they focused on users. that didn’t prove to be cost-effective. now they are focusing on ISPs. that will most likely fail as ISPs will have to invest a lot of money for equipment to police illegal P2P sharing activity. the next step is getting the government to make laws to force ISPs to police P2P activity (which is happening in other countries, not in the USA yet that I know of).</p>
<p>the one thing that has continually changed during all this time is the technology. every time the RIAA/MPAA makes a move to protect the copyrights of the companies that put money into them, the technology changes. ISPs want to block or slow down P2P activity, software is out there to encrypt P2P packets. proxies and vpns are created for users to get their P2P fix. and so it continues. this is going to continue and it’s just a matter of the RIAA and MPAA learning to adjust to the technology that is out there.</p>
<p>the RIAA and MPAA need to make a sustainable business model around P2P. all this suing is only making their lawyers rich. so far they’ve only won 2 cases, and in those 2 cases they will most definitely not even see most of the money. they aren’t deterring anyone from downloading music for free.</p>
<p>^^^ you can make an argument on practical grounds. that’s fine. that’s actually pretty smart. piracy is difficult and time-consuming to catch.</p>
<p>however, calling piracy a moral action, which is what a few posters in this thread are doing, is ludicrous. </p>
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<p>oh whatever, this is an after-the-fact justification. people just want to be able to listen to copyrighted music and watch movies for free. </p>
<p>comparing this to the civil rights movement and gandhi’s movement is pretty disrespectful of drs. gandhi and king. they didn’t steal or deface government property because they disagreed with how they treated their peoples. an example: the civil rights movement boycotted the bus system in montgomery because of the rosa parks incident. they didn’t forge bus passes and ride for free. this is way more remarkable because a black man in montgomery in the 1950’s probably needed the bus system to get around much more than a 18 year old today needs to listen to the latest album.</p>
<p>this is not to mention that charging a little bit more than fair for a cd and disenfranchising an entire people are injustices that differ by many orders of magnitude.</p>
<p>i remember somebody making the excuse that if it weren’t for pirating, there’d be no underground scene in music. i say, well, you can enjoy music via concerts and non-copyrighted recordings by without having to buy copyrighted music. i also thought that the underground music scene was full of bands who hadn’t gotten a record contract anyway . . .</p>
<p>no one is holding a gun to your head and making you buy copyrighted media. you can’t turn pirating into a moral action, sorry.</p>
<p>Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free, you are a pirate. Piracy now and forever. </p>
<p>Who uses Limewire anyways? Anyone who uses Limewire is asking to get caught along with virus infections. It’s all about private torrents, direct links, rapidshare, etc…</p>
<p>In my opinion, the RIAA laws are outdated. They should kept up with the modern progression of the interwebs. I suggest each music artists/producers should create a web site where fanatics are able to download free songs with high speed. To compensate for high web traffic, they should implement advertisements on the web page. It is very similar to YouTube where popular youtubers are paid for allowing advertisements on their videos. It is highly profitable. </p>
<p>P.S. Screw the RIAA and others like them</p>
<p>I’ve always considered downloading music and such equal to stealing a disc out of the store. If someone stole 2 music discs from sam goody or FYE, they would probably get no more than a night in jail and a small fine. I don’t see how downloading is so much worse that it justifies 4.5mil for 30 songs. Even if someone uploads those songs to someone else, it’s still not equal.</p>
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Singles are not necessarily a function of the audience of a certain artist but rather the quality of that artist. Who the hell wants to sit through a full Britney Spears album anyways? I would be the one demanding pay in order to do that.</p>
<p>The RIAA of course doesn’t like singles because instead of selling 1 million CDs based upon one artist’s song on the radio, they are selling 1.5 million singles, which is comparatively much less money.</p>
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Refer back to one of my posts (post #155). There are hundreds of thousands of people out there who you’re ignoring; people who use piracy as a tool for acquiring a taste in music and learning to appreciate certain artists. These are people who subsequently end up spending the most money on music out of any demographic.</p>
<p>from post #166</p>
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<p>from post #128</p>
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How would you know those concerts would be worth the money and the time? And there isn’t a fine line between the underground music world and the mainstream. Many underground artists are signed, just that they are mostly signed on indie labels with little means of promotion or legal clout. The vast majority of the underground has been able to develop because of the sharing of materials, whether it be through tape-trading back in the 70s-80s, or the piracy of the 90s-00s.</p>
<p>Of all people who discover music beyond the realm of the mainstream, the vast majority, if not all of them, are pirates who would have never discovered a mainstream without a sharing of files. Underground scenes might start at local events, but the only way for them to survive is through a mass spread.</p>
<p>And this is ultimately why I despise the RIAA: its intentions to protect its own capital can potentially inhibit the growth of the underground music culture, and without that, the music in America is essentially that: uncultured, monotonous music meant to capitalize rather than to truly please.</p>
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Don’t be surprised. Visit online music communities such as last.fm and you’ll quickly find hundreds of thousands of music pirates who, yes, also purchase a significant collection of their music. People who care give back. It’s not a perfect system which is why it needs to change, but if all you are arguing is that you are against downloading, what are you arguing for? The stagnated state of the music industry that clearly cannot exist with the presence of the internet?</p>
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No it’s not. I can’t even believe you would be so foolish to think in that way. Music files are intellectual property; you can’t compare them so literally to concrete quantities.</p>
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<p>This kinda makes it sound like you feel that you are entitled to listen to free music. Look, I’ve broken copyright laws. I don’t however pretend like I had a moral imperative to do so. </p>
<p>For the record, I don’t think that piracy is the most terrible thing in the world, but I really think that it is amusing that many people have convinced themselves that it is a moral action.</p>
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<p>I don’t understand this. Because companies don’t do a good job of supporting their artists, the musicians need piracy in order to “make it”? Surely you could buy the recordings through the label. Just because piracy was rampant then/now and helped spread the word doesn’t mean that you necessarily need piracy to do so.</p>
<p>edit:</p>
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<p>It is an exaggeration I admit, but it is the same concept yes.</p>
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<p>Well then, in absence of evidence, we’ll just have to disagree. I think that it is ridiculous to think that people will eventually rebuy all of their music when they can get it originally for free.</p>
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<p>What I am arguing against is the notion that illegally downloading music is a moral action. I won’t disagree with the last sentence in this quote.</p>
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Music files =/= physical items. When you steal from a bank, you are taking a fixed quantity. When you download a music file, you are copying that file without taking it. By the RIAA’s current illogical campaigns, they are entitled to remunerations as if music is a finite source. Essentially, by their logic, they are entitled to infinite wealth.</p>
<p>You can’t compare physical items and digital files with each other because they are on entirely different premises.</p>
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Is it moral for the RIAA to arbitrarily assign its own pricing system on a set of items that can hardly be identified, let alone priced? Is it moral to then ask consumers to blindly buy into music despite not knowing what they are receiving? An evaluation of what one is actually purchasing is essential for any product, regardless of what that product is.</p>
<p>Of course, the RIAA will counter this by arguing that they already have evaluative tools such as the radio and MTV. But these can only extend so far; both channels of promotion tend to promote only mainstream materials.</p>
<p>And yes, there are solutions that are rising up to the occasion that I think deserve a lot more focus. Internet radio is wonderful; so is software designed to allow for evaluation without ownership of a file, such as Spotify. But then why isn’t the RIAA trying to lead its own industry to a solution rather than to a dead end, and why has the RIAA even gone so far as to attack internet radio sites?? All this clearly indicates that the RIAA is in no mood to resolve the music industry but rather to capitalize upon it and abandon ship at the right moment. And until these solutions (internet radio, Spotify, etc) finally get the refinement and the attention they deserve, the only true evaluative tools that remain are piracy clients. And in that sense, they are completely moral. Is it moral to abuse this evaluative intention in order to simply acquire a large collection of free music? Absolutely not; I agree with you in that regard.</p>
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It’s not. In fact, this is why the music industry still exists over 10 years since downloading technologies first began. Many people have intrinsic moral values that withhold even in the face of piracy.
Why would anyone buy your music if they don’t even know you exist or if they don’t know what you sound like?</p>
<p>They have this great thing for hearing music you don’t have to buy–it’s called a RADIO and has been around for decades. You can listen to many stations over the internet if you don’t have any you like nearby. You also have the various TV versions of MTV and similar channels. Combined you can hear thousands of artists without stealing and find what you like. And then buy it.</p>
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<p>i get that. yes, it is not as bad as theft. the argument that because it isn’t stealing, it isn’t bad isn’t something i understand though. do you really think that piracy is moral?</p>
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<p>Again, I repeat. I don’t understand why you feel that you are entitled to this. You aren’t forced to consume their product.</p>
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<p>I don’t know. You still haven’t argued why piracy is necessary.</p>
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<p>He’s saying that he can’t use those avenues to listen to the music that he wants to. That is too bad. What I don’t understand is how he feels himself entitled to listen to obscure copyrighted music.</p>
<p>[Study:</a> P2P thieves buy more music | The Open Road - CNET News](<a href=“http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10223789-16.html]Study:”>http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10223789-16.html)</p>
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Because, oh I don’t know, I SUPPORT UNDERGROUND ARTISTS? What I don’t understand is how you’re so oblivious to the fact that many underground artists cherish the exposure they receive through piracy, whether through legal means or not. And I hope you understand that without an underground music culture, American music is literally confined to shallow contemporary pop music and unoffensive rock bands like Nickelback. If that’s the culture you want the RIAA to create, then fine, but keep it out of the law system, something that is meant to be altruistic and impartial to corporate biases.</p>
<p>silence_kit, you fail to understand that there are TWO essential elements to the music industry right now, and the RIAA only cares about one: monetary value. In turn, they are willing to sacrifice musical integrity, experimentation, and most of the other components that make up musical quality. And the RIAA should not have a right to prevent the spread of a form of legitimate art, much less make it mandatory through law.</p>