I believe that sharing music is a cultural thing and that it has been going on since the dawn of time. Certainly far longer than the cartels have been in existence. Putting the cartels into the grave will no more end music than it did before they came on the scene to take up the role of business vampire. It is a fallacy that has been pushed to further their own agenda.

So is the push of how large a percentage of music they “own”. Without them, national anthems would belong to the country that claims them as their anthem. The only difference here is that the cartels have a legal method to steal while denying the public the same.

The cartels have hit the digital era with a well designed effort to sew up fair use rights when the political atmosphere was conducive to their plot. Where it was too much of a problem to end it through political law changing they have used technological methods as an end run around the issue. The right of copyright also means the demise of the privilege as it ceeds into public domain. Public domain is a no-money maker for the cartels. While they haven’t ended it yet legally they have certainly extended the timeline to milk it and have put the eternal guard dog on the product so that it never ever reaches public domain in its original fashion and has been arranged to be illegal to change its form when it does reach public domain.

What’s wrong with this picture?

This case is not the exception, it’s the rule.
The problem for most is not enough cash to fight back,
so they settle, even though they are not guilty of
anything.

I believe you can walk into ANY home into america, and
find mp3’s on the computer that are perfectly legal, and yet
the computer owner would find it difficult to prove. So expensive
to prove, in fact, that they would have to settle.

The law must be fixed.