VeeshanVault

$1 for an online download is too much. At least for the type of consumer I am. If I like one song I'll more than likely want the whole album. In that case I just go buy it at the store rather than paying close to the same amount to have it in a format with restrictive DRM and at less quality than I can get from a CD (and make my own MP3s from it to boot).

miir wrote:If you make copies of legally purchased music for personal use, there is no court in any country that would find you guilty of theft.

Actually, in the UK, it is illegal to rip CDs to your computer or copy the music to an MP3 player. This is not the result of recent legislation, but rather law several centuries old. Even the politicians agree it's outdated.

Telegraph.co.uk

Vaemas wrote:

miir wrote:If you make copies of legally purchased music for personal use, there is no court in any country that would find you guilty of theft.

Actually, in the UK, it is illegal to rip CDs to your computer or copy the music to an MP3 player. This is not the result of recent legislation, but rather law several centuries old. Even the politicians agree it's outdated.

Telegraph.co.uk

Actually, that's irrelevant, because they would never convict you of it. That's what happens when you have a country that measures it's age in millenia instead of centuries, you get the occasional archaic law on the books that you have the common sense to ignore.

For instance, that bloke that was knobbing Princess Diana; according to the laws still on the books he should have been hung, drawn, and quartered, and she should have been burnt at the stake...

It is relevant because it is an example of the direction the RIAA would love to be able to push the laws in the U.S. Regardless of whether or not a court in the U.K. would convict the accused (if a case were brought before the courts, the courts cannot just "disregard" the laws), the fact of the matter is that the practice is illegal (in the U.K.).

The purpose of the post is two-fold. Or ten-fold. Or whatever. First, that Miir's statement is not wholly true. There are some incredibly draconian laws on the books regarding copyright. Second, this is a pretty good example of what the RIAA would love to have as law, so they could then sue all of us to force us to buy multiple formats of the same song.

But screw that. If I have an LP, cassette, DVD-Audio, CD, purchased MP3, or 8-Track of a song, I've paid my money. My personal feeling is that once you shell out the money for a recording of the song, you should be able to have personal use of the song in whatever way you wish.

I like some parts of iTunes. I don't mind paying $0.99 for a single track or $9.99 for a whole album (typically). Hell, most of the time, buying the entire album on iTunes is cheaper than buying the CD in the store. I don't use iTunes because I think it's the only way to work with my iPod (in fact, I have used and still use several different 3rd party tools to manage my music collection). I use iTunes because its music selection is pretty vast and it's easy to use. If I want something now, there's a very high chance I can purchase it for some instant gratification.

I can drop $0.99 for the track that I want or I can spend 30 minutes or an hour trying to find it for free on the Internet, then worry about whether or not it's a plant by the music companies, figure out what the hell the P2P software is doing, deal with crap speeds on a Torrent...

Frankly, when you attach an earning rate to my time, it's more expensive for me to try and find the music for free. So screw that, I'll buy the track and cover the cost of quite a few more in the time I'd spend otherwise.

The entire argument of depriving these industires of profit is pretty stupid IMO. They're selling other people's talents. They are middle men that are no longer needed, and they realize that.

The simple fact is that all the record companies in the world can fold up and never pay another artist to create music. Guess what? People will still make music. People will still be able to download new music all the time.

Whenever I put in a DVD I bought, and it has an infomercial that I cannot skip about how DLing media is illeagal, it makes me want to return the DVD I just purchased and DL it for free. These companies are thier own worst enemies. I also enjoy it when they blame everything on illeagal DLs and they are never to blame for making a year of shitty movies and mediocre music. Hilarious.