File sharing investigation

[lee635]

A US court has ordered an internet service provider to reveal the identity of a user accused of illegally downloading hundreds of copyrighted songs. The ruling is a landmark for the music industry.


News story (http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993297)

[Scott Greczkowski]

What a country, they can catch a guy downloading MUSIC yet they still have not found Bin Laden. :nono2:

[firephoto]

And this person has hurt who exactly?

I'm sure if they hadn't of downloaded any of the music that they wouldn't of went out and bought it instead.

The RIAA isn't losing money, they just aren't making as much as they think they should be. They have killed careers of good artists, and locked away their music so they can no longer profit off of it. This isn't a poor struggling industry as they would like you to think. The RIAA would be charging everyone that listens to music on the radio if they could.

I applaud Verizon for taking a stand on this.

[lee635]

Originally posted by firephoto
This isn't a poor struggling industry as they would like you to think. The RIAA would be charging everyone that listens to music on the radio if they could.


Uh....Radio stations already pay a royalty for every song they play based on the number of listeners. :scratch:

[firephoto]

I realize that, but the end user isn't paying to listen to that radio station.

[MarkA]

Yeah, I agree with fire. But I also see the RIAA's side of things. The law is in their favor. Therefore, I don't download music. And I guarantee you, if I was able to download music to see if I liked it, I'd probably buy a lot more CDs (a downloaded file is NOT the same thing, 128kbit MP3s that often aren't even well encoded are not the same as an uncompressed PCM bitstream. They don't sound nearly as good)

[TNGTony]

Zac,

I'm with you.

I download music and if I like what I hear, I buy the CD. If I don't, I erase the file.

Since I've been doing this, I've bough music from artists I'd never heard of or would never even think played music I liked before I plucked it off the net.

India Arie, John Mayer, Bare Naked Ladies, Frankie Negron, Andrea Bocelli, Charlie Parker, Shakira, Dave Mathews Band, La India, El Gran Combo, Oscar De Leon and many more owe my CD purchase to the ability to download their music to see if I like it.

Another thing I do is I download tracks I already own on another medium. I could (and have) copied my albums to MP3. But I find it easier to ger Zep 4 from the net.

There are legitamate uses for downloading music.

See ya
Tony