Quote:
Originally Posted by yoav
so in your logic if you pay to see a movie in a movie theatre, you've actually purchased the rights to see it again, as many times as you want, for free?
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I think we can all agree that having a CD, and making a copy, and putting it on every possible device you can listen to it on, is not, in the spirit of the law, illegal. Nor should it be in the letter of the law. But this discussion was never about making a personal copy for yourself... At least I don't think so.
I'd go so far as to say sharing music with friends, playing it at an open mic, putting up Youtube videos of your band, giving online lessons on playing a song, or playing Guitar Hero, all shouldn't be illegal. I also don't think any artists is seriously bothered by any of these things (except maybe Metallica).
"Sharing" over P2P is definitely not the same as giving 2 people a CD to copy. Sorry. I'm somewhere between Bob and Yoav in all this, but the point about those 2 things being equal isn't right, even to me.
I don't think the music has anywhere close to the worth the RIAA puts on it, and for the most part I think if they make it, it should be "out there". I don't think it's fair to pay for a song that has any restriction on what I do with it. I also don't think I should pay for some song I want to use once to splice into a clip of a funny home movie. I don't like to be micro managed.
Also, as I said, if you make it hard for me to get your music in any small way, I'm going the free and easy route. That's your fault for not adapting to the market's desires.
This is quite the gray area, I understand. Saying someone should make something and it should be given away all the time is stupid, no matter the format. Unless as mentioned, there was no money, or they didn't depend on that money to eat. Then, yes, all things should be free in an ideal world.
I also think it's unreasonable to say that if you make something for the public because it's supposedly what you love, that you get to decide, for every little thing, what and when to charge people in the end. It's usually not even the creators deciding. Many would much rather you go to their shows and/or pay much less for the music.
The market does decide, even if the market is made up of "thieves". Because of technology, if someone doesn't want to pay for something, they can easily choose not to. I don't know what the answer to this is. I don't think it should spur a bunch of silly laws, and I don't think it's entirely right in all circumstances, but you can't put the genie back in the bottle.
The industry needs to find a way to give people what they want, the way they want it or they will keep losing. If they had done that in the first place, we probably wouldn't be in this situation.