"...the message is 'a clear example of him thumbing his nose at the verdict and not taking us seriously.'"

Ya think??????????????????

The RIAA deserves NO respect for its unrealistically punitive stance and actions. All it is doing is creating enemies that will never agree to anything the RIAA wants.

Right. And when someone steals your property, you'll take a similarly generous position. Or maybe, when it's your income that's drying up, you'll feel differently about thieves.

dank48: Actually I'd be flattered if someone wanted to reprint my writings. Assuming you can find them, since the people who own the rights have long since went under.

That aside, we're not talking about someone taking an Aerosmith song and claiming they wrote and recorded it--there is no "stealing". Someone likes a recording. They share it by making a copy. This sort of thing has gone on for decades, long before Napster, Pirate Bay or even the Internet.

What's different is the self-destructive way the recording industry is going after individuals and the absolutely negative press coverage that results. Sales are down and they are continuing down. The net "profit" from these suits at no point makes up the difference, nor apparently is it stopping people from sharing. Sharing technology evolves faster than the enforcers can create counter measures that the public find palatable. Indeed, each new step in an attempt to rachet up enforcement turns the consumer off even more.

The ultimate conclusion to all this is that music acts will have to find new ways to market their product. The recording industry still has a role here--most acts know music, not marketing (or technology). But until the paradigm shift is completed, forcing 82 year old grandmothers and college students into court only enriches the lawyers.

To be confident that I remain in compliance with all applicable law, I've just simply stopped buying any product that displays the RIAA anti-piracy warning...only way to be sure I won't duplicate in my sleep and face financial doom as a result.

HDHale, you're missing the point. It is too stealing.

Let's say you're a publisher. You sign an author who has written or is writing a book. You have the up-front costs of development, copy editing, design, typesetting, proofreading, indexing, printing, and binding, not to mention the little matters of warehousing and getting copies to bookstores and direct-marketing customers. All those costs are incurred before you sell a single copy.

Now, when the book becomes available, a handful of people buy a copy. Let's say technology lets them make as many copies of the book as they like at virtually zero cost--since they certainly don't have to worry about paying your editors, designer, typesetter, proofreader, printer . . . These folks give copies of the book to their friends, who will thus not be buying any from you.

You as publisher have the privilege of providing the product. The innocent angels who rip you off will do so while muttering their mantras about the evils of capitalism, no doubt.

And from the author's (musician's) viewpoint, this arrangement is a bit less than perfect, since the ripoff artists pay no royalties. These people are not innocent in the least. They are craven parasites, too lazy to create value but plenty eager to steal it from those who take the risks.

They make me sorry I no longer believe in hell.

And incidentally, having to pay all those costs without being reimbursed by the purchasers is probably among the reasons all them publishers has went under.

Tennenbaum will not be twittering anything when sitting in jail for contempt of court.

dank48: I'm not missing the point at all. I understand that audio production costs money as does marketing an artist. My point is that while the law may be on RIAA's side, they simply are losing the war because each legal battle they win makes them look positively hideous to the very consumers to which they are trying to sell product.

You see, I have the benefit of being old enough to remember when radio DJs would give a wink and a nod to people who recorded whole albums off the airwaves. There was even a local radio station that made a point of having a show every night that played albums one side at a time without commerical interruption. Where was the RIAA then? At best you could argue that what people were grabbing off FM radio and recording onto cassettes and reel-to-reel wasn't CD quality. Neither was most of the content of Napster when it had its "heydey".

No, I *want* people to find ways to make money off music in the digital era. I'm just not sure letting the "buggy whip manufacturers" sue people in vain effort to stay in business is the way to go.

YO _perplexed_

you need to take the next step...stop listening to music completely...there are no copyrights on the wind blowing...running water...birds chirping...oh...wait...the RIAA has lobbied to add those sounds to there list of sounds they own too.

sorry...

Hi.. Students should not encourage ill-legal activites..

stutalk

Hay I got one - what about the motion picture group that forces manufactures to set a limit to the times you can change the region code to 5 times then locks it - so if I buy a legal copy of a DVD in Thailand where is teach I can play it because my DVD is lock to region 1 - I would say that is restriction of trade...the courts frown on that!