'ISPs don't work for the RIAA'

There is a vast difference between what is reasonably priced and what is overpriced. I personally feel that office 2007 is overpriced. People can find alternatives to that. However, for that $15 CD that you listen to for free, those most people would buy if they couldn't pirate them. I am very certain of it.

As you said though, it would depend on the person and that I can agree with.

People don't need to prove "their innocence" RIAA needs to prove they are "guilty"

No, it's less that we can't see your view point, its that your viewpoint seems to espouse a 100% view. Neither view covers 100% of all potential consumers. You just have to find out what middle ground works the best for both the producers and the potential consumers.

-tom

I dunno. I don't understand buying from iTunes either... BUT, there is one thing here we're all missing...

With Rhapsody (I like their service btw...) or iTunes or whoever, you can burn a cd. That's right. A CD. Suddenly it's an audio cd with no drm. Why bother having it there to begin with???

Anyway, for me, $10/month on Rhapsody is fine. I still buy VINYL records (viva la Vinyl), and cd's from my local music store, and sometimes from another town, just to go over there and look for good tunes.... The $10/month is just like buying a cd every month, but I get way more use out of listening to Rhapsody... don't buy often from 'em, but sometimes it's an ok deal for music you wouldn't otherwise be able to find in a store.

Granted, I still think FLAC should be sold everywhere as the standard for downloadable paid for music. If I'm to spend $10 on an album, it should be lossless and without DRM.

I also think iTunes (even with low quality) would be FAR more popular without DRM. iPods would still be a success, but the iTunes store would be even bigger. Look at eMusic. Not much major stuff, but they sell TONS of music. I've even used them, and I got a fair deal... lots of music for $25, VBR MP3's (192-ish...) with no DRM crap. Did I feel like uploading any of 'em, hell no. Would I, hell no. I paid for some tunes, I make album cd's, then mix cd's as needed, and that's about it. They still trust people to their fair use of purchased songs. I think, for one, it works, two, that's how it should be...

Does anyone here realize how much money goes to the artist on a service like Rhapsody??? $.01, one cent, per stream. Something like $.70 per $1 of a purchased track. That's not a lot, but it's about fair. Even with eMusic's model, an album still makes the artist money... Granted, I'm talking direct payout, not after a label, an "association," an executive, a lawyer, and whoever else gets their cut.....

Heck, I'm a musician too. I understand wanting to be fairly compensated, but I also don't give one hoot if people wish to share low bitrate files. Right now we have freely available music on our site. Once we wish to sell our CD, we're (thinking about) going with CD Baby. They will then become the official exclusive online distributors.... getting our tunes to iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, eMusic, and lots of other legal distributors. If our album ends up on p2p services, guess what, I still won't care. People that want to buy our real album, digitally or delivered as a real cd still can, and they will. I'm not worried in the least.

Now, OTOH, I'd rather be able to distribute our music in FLAC format. Do any services offer this??? Probably have to do it on our own, but then we'd be violating CD Baby's terms. ...The only other option would be to distribute it ourselves as the exclusive distributors. That means having our own "label" with which to do all that fun stuff. Heck who knows, it might even be worth it.

Glad some people here can still reason things on one level or another.

Good day.

Good point. As if the logging of their IP, and proof that the person doing the pirating was coming from this household wasn't enough. Its enough for a subpoena and search warrant thats for sure.

$15 for a one-track wonder is a pretty big rip if you ask me.

No, I was mostly curious. There are plenty of rights holders that do consider it to be theft. New & used stores still don't rate very high on the "favorites" list of most retail organizations. It's also why most software isn't actually an out and out purchase but a "right to use" (RTU) agreement. The *AAs just want to be able to move from purveyors of sold goods to RTUs. RTUs have been fine in the B2B world, but damned few consumers like the idea of not owning something they "bought".

-tom

I never said everyone would buy every piece of software or music. I said they would buy as much as they could afford. There is a difference. Just as some are saying they wouldn't buy any at all. None, nada, nil. Yet, I don't see people like yourself crying "BS" at them.

Ah well, I guess this thread has went its course. I am done for today. Glad we got to a middle ground on some issues and some good discussion went on here. No one is going to budge on this issue, and I don't expect them to. It was a great conversation and debate on the issue.

Later everyone!

Even if you can prove that it was coming from the inside the house, you need to hold right person responsible. Please tell me who many police raids had been done for RIAA by police? I am going to guess zero to 1-2. Basically this is a civil matter and police do not get involved. No RIAA police exist yet(i am sure we are getting to that point soon) that raid your house, so they have to "subpoena" you're computer which will be encrypted, enjoy breaking my encryption and if you're successful you will find that it's blank. Their are ways to win case against RIAA that's why they haven't won a single case because it never really goes to trial. They have one right now and riaa is not doing well in that case. Only reason they may win is because girl acknowledge that she pirated the music

New computer's still cheaper than one of the *AA's offered "settlements". Then again, maybe that's why they're pushing the new "$1K easy settlement": it moves the break-even point.

Besides, they're welcome to try cracking the encryption. They're the *AA, not the NSA.

-tom

Not in a CIVIL lawsuit.

okay, riaa needs to prove by preponderance of the evidence, still riaa needs to prove it, not other way around

Ok, so murder is overstated....

In the end, what right is right, what's wrong is wrong.

Er...I think the ideals of "innocent until proven guilty" still hold in a civil suit. The only difference is, unlike in a criminal suit, the prosecution only needs a majority consensus of the jury...not a 100% absolute vote.

So here we go.

IP Address
Timestamp
Owner of internet account

Game, Set, Match.

IP Address-proves that someone from that account was using the connection
time stamp-proves what time that ip was using the connection
owner of internet account-proves who the ip "belongs" to, that still doesn't prove who is performing this "download"

And by this logic, I could sue an apartment complex for something one of the tenants did. I'm sorry, but suing an account is impossible. You can sue the owner of the account, but then you will need to make your case that it was indeed the owner that performed the crime.

Kinda hard to prove when you just have an IP and a timestamp.

Worldvision FTW!

Now that is not 100% true. Unlike criminal court, in most all civil courts, the defendant does need to respond and deny all accusations or else the plaintiff could easily end up with a default judgment. Simply put, they tell the judge that the IP in question is yours and your IP was sharing copyrighted works. Now, if you fail to respond to this complaint stating you did not do this and request proof that this act of copyright infringement was committed by you, you lose. You can then enjoy wonderful things like wage garnishments, bank attachments and property liens.

True. In a criminal court, you have the freedom to choose to not show up, and just get the book thrown at you...but that's kinda foolish when you stand accused of something that'll make you lose your shirt. Should it actually go to court, however, all one needs is to remove the ground that the charges plant themselves on (ie. who was the downloader?), and pray that your jury's not retarded.

You over simplifying everything. Yes RIAA can request summary judgement against you if you do not reply but most judges will not grand one when we are talking about thousand of dollars. You still need to show the court "judge" that you have the evidence who was doing it. Just because that person is ip account holder doesn't mean that person is responsible. Preponderance of the evidence means more likely then not, having just ip, time stamp and account holder doesn't rich that level that is needed.

The government can request information without a warrant, and they can do so under anonymity by issuing a gag order to the person(s) they did. If they want the info they will simply tap your ISP gather the info, and be on their way, Nobody would even know.

Without a warrant? I guess the 4th amendment been repealed. Government always needs a warrant except in case of national security and even then they got 72 hours to go back and get one. So no government will need a warrant.

I had an itch to reply, but thankfully you scratched it for me.

Or so I thought.....

Two wrongs doesn't make a right. Breaking the law to catch law breakers is WRONG, especially by an organization that has targeted the wrong people quite a few times. Now, if they had a 100% success rate on ID'ing the right person EVERY SINGLE TIME I would feel better about them getting handed private information. But there should be some major oversight on this, and major penalties levied (read: worse than what the 'file sharers' are hit with) if and when the organization puts somebody undeserving on that chopping block.

Do I pirate music and software? YES! Do I do such actions for ANY sort of personal gain, other than 'try before you buy'? NO! For music, many bands I had never heard of and probably wouldn't listen to are now on my playlist. If I see them playing locally I consider attending, whereas previously I wouldn't, not knowing who or what they are. Other people hear chatter about them, or hear their music from my devices, and also take interest. I don't buy many CDs, but 99% of the time I actually do I buy one that I had liked based on whatever way I came across their music. Most of my music use is via Sirius anyway these days, but I still grab a CD every few weeks just to give a group some deserved support.

On software, most times when my corporate hat is on I can get a full featured demo of what we're interested in. Personally, places never want to open up full featured software for me to give an honest 'test drive'. Sometimes my 'test drive' may be four, five, six months, however if it remains useful and practical in that time period I'm sold.

My point in that is, what have they lost because of this? People with shitty music, or companies with shitty code, have lost a VICTIM, however those that were up to snuff GAINED a customer!!

Now, I know not everyone may be as "ethical" on these issues, but the fact remains that this is nothing new at all and will always continue. If every single song sold online, disc purchased at the store, etc were encrypted and totally UNBREAKABLE, one can always resort to the ways of ~10 years ago -- If it can be heard or seen, it can and WILL be recorded. It's just like dubbing mix tapes back then, or recording every Simpsons episode on VHS to kick back with friends and laugh with. The only thing changing here is that the RIAA/MPAA/whatever are all money hungry, driven by companies and artists that would actually be doing better if they put real quality control steps in ensuring their final, SOLD product is completely up to their customers' standards.

PC games are a perfect example. Up until about a year ago I was a very avid gamer, buying the latest and greatest and playing "beta tester" to these companies whom took my money for an unfinished product. I would have pirated them too in fact, if I didn't care about online play quality, and many (most) would have been deleted within days. Most games and software in general requires so much post-RTM patching just to function properly, excluding new feature additions, that it just sickens me to buy anything somewhat recent at all.

These same pirates don't go steal a car because theirs crapped out, do they? Do you think these people steal food from bystanders' plates when they get hungry? NO. Sure, both are easy to steal, however the quality of it still is better when you buy it yourself. Pirating software/music is not STEALING, it is a direct result of the product itself's quality as seen by the consumers.

Until the industry can step up and provide quality content that people actually want to pay for, this will continue at such a large scale.

Thanks anyway tcp1........

edit: small clarifications

Easy, if people pirate then that means many less people are willing to buy a album than buy it. So instead of selling copies for 8.99 for each user, there is just one copy sold so everyone is getting a good for free and we only get 8.99?

To keep thing's simple I will go and ask the indie label to give me a estimated amount of there total costs just to operate the facility and there staff. How much profit they gain and so forth.

If you want proof I will send it your way, because I don't come here and try to bullshit nobody and I seen those paper's myself but I know that does not mean anything unless I post something that has some real value like a bill. I will keep your username on my to do list and I will send you a PM when I have that info.

I am sorry but I don't record all that rap or pop bullcrap because those are clients. The RIAA can do all they want but I work for a independent label and the artists I know are just regular joes who enjoy music and want to get a small income from what they make and every time I talk to these artists in person because we are just talking about something that shares our interest usually the problem's with bills arise.

Then they go off in rants saying how morons talk on the net how piracy is not an issue and that basically they are getting robbed every time without being able to do anything about it and some have just quit and gone to work for a company or hotel.

So what burns me the most is you destroying people's dreams you worthless trash.

P.S I don't work for the RIAA, it's a independent label and we are simply a group of high school student's who help out local artists in the community. But because we are cheap as hell we are growing fast. But if you don't want to purchase our work, fine. But don't go out there giving the stuff we worked weeks on as free pudding.

Don't like it? Don't buy it. Get with the program or go to jail, period.

Please try again, you can't go to jail for civil offence sorry

It should be a misdemeanor not a civil offense.

Are you 100% sure that less selling copies simply isn't the result of the merchandice quality slipping? Perhaps the market isn't willing buy and/or pay as much as it used to. Its certainly easy to blame downloading as the cause to all ills...but that doesn't mean anything in terms of proof.

Music is not an essential commodity, and unlike staple family restockables like toilet paper or groceries, one cannot just assume X number of sales of a CD per Y number of people. If the CD's a flop, people won't buy it. Music is not something we must use in our daily lives - purchases can fluxuate.Indeed. I would love numbers or anything that directly correlates digital downloads into an overall loss in sales. And none of the **AA cooked data either which just assumes a 1:1 ratio in downloads to "losses". Tell me an actual amount of pirated music (ie. loss), compare that value to purchasing customers made online (ie. gain you would not otherwise have), and then tell me if there's a net loss involved.