As Bugs Bunny would say: “What a marooon, what an ignoranamous!”

Let’s let the courts decide that first before making such a sweeping all encompassing statement, ok. Let me make this extremely clear for you, Mr. wizard the US is not the WHOLE world! Remember, our neighbor to the north, Canada has found in the consumers favor not the ‘evil empire’ so uploading and downloading music is perfectly legal there, or didn’t you know that? Now let that bit of news sink in before reading any further…

Quote: “So far, the odds of being sued are almost 1 in 10,000. The amount of filesharing users will reach a maximum, but the industry can keep suing for as long as they would like. When the odds of being sued are, say, 1 in 500 or 1 in 50, people will become afraid that they might be the next one in line. As the fear grows, the size of the community will shrink. Period.”

Well once again Mr. wizard I see you never majored in math! I have a, can’t miss, get rich quick, pyramid scheme for you that will make you a millionaire in no time. There is not a court anywhere on this planet that can handle a ‘1 in 50′ new lawsuit case load (aprox 200,000 plus) at the current file sharing rate of well over 10,000,000 users at any given time of day. And remember this is just the ones that are trackable many are quite unknown or did you not do your homework once again and are picking numbers out of your ass? Most people will be old and gray before every stepping into a court room.

Again all your statements fly in the face of reality where every new survey finds the number of filesharers and new networks growing not shrinking unless you subscribe to the riaa backed studies (fun with numbers) that everyone is cowering in a corner and reformating their hard drives. LOL

Quote: “Second, I think they might have had more success had they allocated the money spent differently. Rather then paying the best lawyers in the nation outrageous wages, they could have spent that money on “flood teams.” It would be impossible for operators of these “legal” p2p networks to stop teams from sharing fake files (something we are seeing more and more of). If there were 5 trillion fakes and only 5 billion real songs, soon there would be no real songs and p2p would die. Users would spend half an hour trying to find a legitimate file.”

Gee where do I being? First of all just because you have fake files doesn’t mean anyone will download them. You can’t force files into a p2p network. Remember p2p is a pull not push network or doesn’t that register in your vocabulary? And there are so many ways to detect fake files it should not even be an issue. Just ask all the riaa sanctioned dumbdumbs that have been trying to make people upload them for the last couple of years, unsuccessfully I might add. Even at your ridiculous odds of 1000 to 1 the real files would be found with no problem and in no time at all…

Quote: “I don’t know about you, but my time is worth much more than $0.99 / 30 minutes”

This last piece of hilarity just floors me. Paying $1 (US) for a drm infested crappy lossy format is just mind boggling. You must be what Phineas Taylor Barnum refered to as “A sucker born every minute!”

Quote: “Have fun flaming me in your unwinnable argument”

Dude, I believe it was game, set, match for yours truly. Thanks for providing such an easy target. Now off you go and educate yourself so we won’t have to repeat this beatdown.

http://www.boycott-riaa.com
http://www.slyck.com
http://www.downhillbattle.org

http://www.magnetbox.com/riaa/

for more info on ways to make your voice be heard try:

http://www.boycott-riaa.com
http://www.slyck.com &
http://www.downhillbattle.org

Spread the word for knowledge is power!

You are entitled to make a backup copy for yourself as long as you don’t seek to profit from it! Seeesh where do these morons come from? Keep going and buy the same stuff over and over again each time you or your kids break, scratch or loose it.

Quote: “It’s a violation of copywrite laws and has a maximum penalty of 5 years in jail and/or $250,000.00 fine (If I remember correctly) per offence. So the kid with 1000 songs could face up to 5000 years in jail and/or $250,000,000.00 fine. Extreme? obviously, and no judge would ever do it. The extreme penalty is in place to deter people from breaking the law because copywrite infringement is difficult prosecute.”

Once again you do not have a clue! This is for people that copy and sell cds like major duplicating rings, for profit, etc. Those fines have nothing to do with the, untested in court, so called ‘copyright infringement’ section of the DMCA.

Quote: “They are in place to protect the copywrite holder and to provide incentive to create. They are also time restricted so that the created work will fall into the public domain eventually to stimulate the creation of new works.”

Where have you been hiding friend under a rock? There is no more public domain for music since the 70’s. The label holds the copyright and the artist are just work for hire. It will never expire!

This my unesteemed friend is what the riaa would have you believe but like urban legends is totally false. They fear having to go to trial so that is why they coerce people to out of court settlements. Once they lose the charade is over for them…

Quote: “This is not the case in P2P sharing. The people who have been forced into the settlements HAVE broken the law. P2P itself has been found legal, as it should be, but users must utilize it in productive ways, so that the freedom is not taken away from us.”

Here’s a clue for you dude the US is not the entire world! Other countries, like Canada for instance have found in favor of the consumer, with the costs being recouped by a tax on the sale of blank cds going directly to the riaa’s coffers.

No one entity should be allowed to control the internet for obvious reasons whether it be political, religious or financial. So it stands to reason that just because the riaa has elected itself and it’s various cronies the new internet nazis they can go piss in the wind for all the affect they will have on the world as a whole.

Quote: “It is sad that such a large group of people continues to support this unworthy cause.”

It is sad that a large group of people have had to resort to this because of the riaa’s various tactics:
1. such as discontinuing cds some as little as only a couple of years old simply because they did not make enough money from their sales.
2. refusing to release their back catalogues of music for the same reason stated above.
3. discontinuing the cd single again for the same reason as above.
4. forcing less and less new releases with the same tired boy girl band format crap.
5. forcing currently contracted artists to produce at least one cd a year regardless of content before their popularity dies (no wonder the many onehit wonders abound)
6. pricefixing cds the last decade.
ad nauseum…

Quote: “You guys are such freakin’ hypocrites. You yap about the big evil record companies and studios, but somehow their “inferior” product is all you or any of your fellow thieves of other people’s hard work want to steal. ”

I guess for your next trick you’ll be telling me how much change I have in my pocket and what number I am thinking of!

I guess you in your selfdeluded way have never heard of Independent music? Here’s a stat for you Kreskin the riaa controls 90% of the music marketing with only 10% of the artists. Get it??? There is a large artist population out there that will not have a single thing to do with the evil empire!

Quote: “Copyright infringement is a crime. Don’t like it? Work to change the law. The content owners are taking that route. If they get their way on the massively destructive Inducing Infringements Act, it’ll be because boneheads like you P2P fans gave the weasels in Congress an excuse to do more for the content owners who line their pockets than they’d ever have done without the push from you. The honest people and tech employees of the world will owe you a lot if the IICA passes.”

Guess who changed the law in the first place? Come on you’re supposed to be smart! Well it was the record companies because of their fear of the internet. Now it seems that they are hoping to have further changes because of the DMCA in it’s current form is having them hang on for dear life to a very gray area of it which are you surprised, they have interpreted for themselves to allow their current campaign of invasion of privacy. Which incidently has been stuck down more and more with each appeals court having to visit the same ridiculous frivolous charges…

Here’s a clue for you Einstein: http://www.boycott-riaa.com

Once more for the class, since it seems like no one has been paying attention! It is not stealing/shoplifting, because if you steal something then the owner no longer has it! It is just like recording off the air waves as in sampling or the more proper term is fair use. No profit or money has changed hands!!!!

Quote: “Digital copies (mp3, wav, au, etc) do not degrade with each copy so your comparison to cassettes is not really accurate. Since every copy after the first would be identical to the first copy. Those of us who were around in the days of making a cassette of a LP know that every copy was a little worse untill it was more noise than anything else”

As Bugs Bunny would say: “What a maroon, what an ignoranamous!” Look friend everyone knows this, but the point other than the one on your head, that you appear to be missing is that these digital files are crappy lossy vastly inferior to a cd quality file. See? Comprende? You speakee English???

And yes the price of a cd has plummeted from around $18 (US) for a two pack down to pennies in bulk, but the average cost of a new CD has risen! The riaa has been caught and charged with pricefixing for years. Remember the class action suit and settlement just last year?

Look stop showing your ignorance and go educate yourself:
http://www.boycott-riaa.com

I hate to repeat myself but listen up and listen good. It is not *STEALING* dumbass. To steal means to take something and not have it anymore. This is called sampling or fair use just like recording from the air waves. What they received is a lossy poor excuse for a music file not a cd quality equilvalent.

Quote: “iTunes, Napster and others are legal ways to buy music online.”

What a moron! Crapster & LooneyTunes try to control how you listen to their music. So try listening to it on a home stereo or in your car, etc.

Also the music itself is a crappy lossy format not a flac or wav file.
Don’t know the difference? Well then I have some bridges for sale you may be interested in.

And I saved the best for last: Know how much the artist makes for each of those LEGAL $1 (US) downloads? Zero, zip, zilch, nada!
http://www.downhillbattle.org/itunes/

So go get a clue and stop spouting bullshit!
http://www.boycott-riaa.com

I think you missed the point here dumbdumb. No one is stealing you idiot. If you steal something that means the other person no longer has it! This is either an extremely deluded individual or a riaa paid troll spouting it’s useless propaganda.

This falls under fair use the same as recording off the airwaves. The tracks people use to sample and base their future buying decisions from are crappy lossy files not cd quality wavs.

So stop making us puke from laughter and go educate yourself so we can breath again. http://www.boycott-riaa.com

When in doubt educate yourself dumbass! http://www.boycott-riaa.com

Way to go Jon on a great article! A 10 minute standing ovation is in order.

If you want to make a difference, contact the members you have purchased from before and let them know that you will not support the terrorist tactics of the RIAA.

Ciao

The system will bring itself down.

Steve.

If you’re going to say, “It’s up to you to check out what that means” does that mean every time I buy something I have to make a due diligence search before I use it?

“I even think it is fine to loan it to a personal friend, as long as when they are using it, you are not. (i.e. only one copy playing at a time).” So I lend a friend my CD, the original. I have a back-up and if I want to hear it I have to phone him to make sure that he isn’t playing it?

The 5800 don’t need to face trial. They WOULD be found guilty. They are not STEALING, they are breaking a LICENSE. When you “buy” music you don’t own it, you own a single license to do certain things with that music. Listen to it, make a backup, etc. I even think it is fine to loan it to a personal friend, as long as when they are using it, you are not. (i.e. only one copy playing at a time)

This is not the case in P2P sharing. The people who have been forced into the settlements HAVE broken the law. P2P itself has been found legal, as it should be, but users must utilize it in productive ways, so that the freedom is not taken away from us.

If the users being prosecuted wanted to make a stand, that would be their choice. The music industry would not drag out the case, they would not need to. They are absolutely correct in their lawsuits, and have evidence/law to prove it.

It is sad that such a large group of people continues to support this unworthy cause.

The 5800 don’t need to face trial. They WOULD be found guilty. They are not <i>stealing<\i>.

So far, the odds of being sued are almost 1 in 10,000. The amount of filesharing users will reach a maximum, but the industry can keep suing for as long as they would like. When the odds of being sued are, say, 1 in 500 or 1 in 50, people will become afraid that they might be the next one in line. As the fear grows, the size of the community will shrink. Period.

As the community shrinks, the odds of being sued will rise. See where this is going? More fear leads to fewer and fewer people sharing. Without the multitude of users, or a central server, sharing will dwindle. It will become harder and harder to find legitimate files. This might not happen this year, or next, but it will happen. Marginal analysis of the risk of a lawsuit, the time spent finding files, and subsequent inconvenience of p2p will be outweighed by the one dollar price of a legal music download.

The great part about buying one track at a time is that it forces bands and authors to create a compelling reason to buy the entire album. If a band tries to ride on one hit, they might sell a lot of that single, but will not be as successful as bands that can sell an entire album. This means that we might see an improvement of the art form. It also makes distribution for Independent Labels and artists much easier.

I agree that suing p2p users is not the perfect solution for a couple of reasons but not the ones you stated.

First, it gives the RIAA a very bad image. They are the scary, big brother figure, bearing down on their own customers. Only driven by their intense greed. Too bad they already had this image.

Second, I think they might have had more success had they allocated the money spent differently. Rather then paying the best lawyers in the nation outrageous wages, they could have spent that money on “flood teams.” It would be impossible for operators of these “legal” p2p networks to stop teams from sharing fake files (something we are seeing more and more of). If there were 5 trillion fakes and only 5 billion real songs, soon there would be no real songs and p2p would die. Users would spend half an hour trying to find a legitimate file. I don’t know about you, but my time is worth much more than $0.99 / 30 minutes.

Have fun flaming me in your unwinnable argument. Later.