| DJ_Jester |
02-20-2004 08:13 AM |
So I read up on all that stuff yesterday and I was so irritated by the end of the read. I mean I download music so I might be biased but I think I do it in an appropriate way. I mean I think if you download a song to preview it and then like it and go out to buy the CD, what's wrong with that? There's no difference between doing that and going to FYE and scanning in a CD to check it out, or to one of the boothes in Tower or Virgin and listening to a whole CD. I buy at least 2 CD's a week and I really don't see why it should be wrong to preview music using P2P sharing.
I also noticed that it's not the downloaders but the ones that are sharing music are the ones that are being sued. I still don't see a problem with that. If I bought the CD and have it somewhere for others to preview and then buy the CD themselves, it's actually a good thing. Not all artists showcase their music on their websites and amazon only showcases the first several tracks off the CD. And snippets in my opinion suck because it's like the boring parts of the songs. Refrains, intros, yadda yadda when it's like the bridge or the hook that gets me interested.
I know that the system can be abused. People can download a whole CD and never buy the CD or support the artist. Personally I buy the CD because I like the artist and want to support them. The thing is, some idiot researching for RIAA doesn't know what the intentions of the user are. It's like, you see me buy a red sports car with a 240mph reading on the speedometer so you're gonna sue me because I'm going to speed. And to take actions that are questionably unconstitutional over these shallow assumptions is just irritating. Because they can't stay with the times and figure out an appropriate way to distribute their product they have to inconvenience the ISP's which drains resources which drives our ISP costs up. So higher ISP costs, more expensive CD's, and people that start losing interest in music from the mainstream.
I totally agree with that girl from Jersey that is sueing them beause of mob like tactics. They shouldn't be able to intimidate people for $3K each. And it really gives them a monopoly of sorts. The artists associated with this union get the benefits of all that money being thrown around to promote themselves in ways they deem legal. The little guy coming up in the business however doesn't have all that money to use for promoting and not many people want to pay to download songs from a band they have never heard of just on a whim. Free downloading gets their name and sound out there. But the little guy loses that advantage and the big boys continue to over charge. I mean what's the difference between me downloading the whole Incubus album or going to the their web site and downloading it a week before the CD is released? There was a reason for that and whatever reasoning they had for doing that is a good argument for P2P from an artist covered under RIAA.
All right all right... I've spent way to much time ranting... back to work. Just keep reading these articles that Rock posts and get more and more irritated about the subject. If anyone disagrees... feel free to. I mean it IS a discussion forum so I'd like to hear other sides to the topic.
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