All kids high school to college students I know all either downloaded, shaere or have copies of cds. If it is all criminal activity” then all the kids are “criminals”. If the parents are responsible, then all parents are “criminal” also.

But as in the land where the average height is 10 feet, and being 10 feet does not make one tall, in the land where everyone shares or copies or owns a copy then no one is a criminal for doing it. Copying is then right. the acceptable thing, a tradition. Too easy to prohibit.

If lobbies and their politicians differ in values, they then do not fit. They are not part of the society they live in another world, out of economic convenience. But they do not own the government, the people do.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

Notice that I said ‘distributing’, not creating. The corporate conglomerates don’t ‘create’ anything, they just distribute it. They are rapidly becoming a superfluous middleman in delivering creative works from those who create them to those who enjoy them.

No wonder, they are full of bluster and blather because their empire is threatened. The people running these conglomerates are not artists and entrepreneurs, they are accountants and lawyers. So, it’s only natural that when they feel threatened, the lawsuits spew forth, and the beans get counted, and the numbers get cruched, and jiggled, realigned in deceptive ways to ‘prove’ the dubious points in their spurious lawsuits supported by exceptionally tenuous evidence, or computer printouts (with no chain-of-custody or authentication) they claim is evidence, but that someone could have just ginned up with a word processing package.

Where are they getting their statistics from? No doubt from some place where the sun don’t shine.

–TurboGeek

I dout that one hundreth of one percent percent of American youth has been convicted of a felony.

Innocent until proven guilty.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

The cartels aren’t the only one monkeying with the stats to make it sound good. It’s so common place today that hardly anyone remarks on the obvious fallacies involved. One has only to read the newspapers and see the latest criminal bust to find “adjusted” figures. Another good example is the Business Software Alliance figures that come up fairly regularly. Outlandish claims of software unpaid for in huge amounts and equally outlandish assumptions that it is a lost sale. Maybe the cartels are in better position in this matter than they would like to make out to be, eh? There certainly couldn’t be a hidden agenda in their position could there? (/sarcasm mode off)

Where else could they get free advertisement and at the same time sue for further income? The rampant greed of such organizations always seems to speak louder when associating them with their words and deeds. One should never take a devious demeanor at their word but rather by their deeds.

Now, there’s an album or movie available for download on some p2p network. I have actually made a copy of it (but you can’t replicate an apple), the original movie is still available for sale on blockbuster video, there’s no fuckin’ scarcity that applies. Yes you haven’t paid to watch the movie, but you haven’t prevented anybody from watching it either.

Perhaps, you think $17 for a new release is too much to pay, and you’re not willing to pay that much, but they give you no choice, $17 or nothing, but again, there’s no scarcity like I said. When there’s no scarcity, the price of an item should be as low as it can be, not a fixed price arbitrarily set, or you’re being price discriminated, which should be illegal in some situations if you ask me.

Water, or air, are not really infinite resources, but they’re treated like they air, because for all practical purposes they are. I know they sell bottled water (I am fine with tap water), but they’re not just selling the water, or nobody would buy it, they’re also selling the idea bottled water is better for you for a, b, c reasons, just pure marketing strategy. You’ll live just as long drinking tap water all your life, believe me.

Anyway, see, there’s a difference. A movie is an infinite resource, it can be replicated forever, if you set an arbitrary price for it, you are depriving a segment of the papulation of having access to what have been labeled as cultural expression items. Price discrimination should be illegal for this kinds of things, music, movies, etc…

Of course, greed won’t let this be.

How convenient that the MPAA failed to include in their report information that could very well prove that movie “piracy” promotes legitimate movie viewership.