But, every time this issue comes up, it’s always “Filesharing isn’t illegal.”

The RIAA and the MPAA are like any other large corporations. And, they have enough money to lobby the government to do what they want.

The market for music and movies literally changed overnight. The studios were caught unaware, with their pants down, and every other phrase you can think of for saying “How’d that happen?” And, since they were caught unaware, they overreact.

But, back to the point.

Perhaps you should begin writing your local and federal government and ask them if a movie is really worth more than a life. Be polite, it will get you farther. Don’t rant. Do you agree with copyright law? Point that out. How about pricing? Too much? Say this may be a possible cause for the problem. But you have to tell the people in charge.

That’s the only way anything will get done.

This means that for the USTR that imposition of those few methods of creation, distribution and funding of creativity and innovation where the USA dominates *IS* a priority. This is clearly opposed to all the anti-protectionist anti-free market, anti-free trade stuff that we heard from governments in the past, but they have been able to dupe people into thinking that protecting a subset of US special interests is somehow “recognizing international standards”. Orwellian double-speak for you.

Canadians should check out the words used in the USA’s 2005 Special 301 report:
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/discuss/4801

as far as this administration is concerned (with the exception of orrin hatch R)
your average file sharer isn’t their problem
its as bad as oh, speeding??
now kporn, fraud and id theft is a different story

“It is illegal for anyone to violate any of the rights provided by the copyright law to the owner of copyright.”

Distributing a work without the copyright holder’s permission is. Filesharing is just the scapegoat.

A movie studio or record label holds the copyright to a given work. It’s fully within their rights under US copyright law to legally prosecute anyone who violates that ownership. The Berne Convention loosely allows legal prosecution of anyone outside the country of the copyright holder.

Fair use doesn’t include distributing quantities of copyrighted work, even if the distribution doesn’t net the distributor any compensation. (I wanted to use remuneration here, but that would have hurt me more than it did you.)

But that aside, filesharing doesn’t seem to be hurting the studios much, with increasing and record profits these last few years. I do feel that the price could have been made more attractive, but the damage has already been done. Making it free at this point would be the only way of getting people to “buy” product. It’s just too easy to download it from non-authorized sources. The authorized ones are just too much of a joke to be taken seriously.

We all have to realize that, as much as we may not like it, it is illegal to “share” music and movies, simply because they are protected under local and international copyright law.