Piracy is a Competitor → I will NEVER advocate stealing BUT

In my opinion the music, video, and content publishers NEED to acknowledge piracy. People are unfortunately going to continue to steal content as long as it is easy to do. I personally think that if the content distributors lowered their prices they would make more money (and lose less) than they are now. The Russian site allofmp3.com is a perfect example. They have shown that most reputable people really dont mind paying for their content as long as it is priced right. Millions of people world wide have decided that stealing is wrong, and I guarantee you that if Apple, MS, etc. even reduced the cost of their songs to 50 cents (vs. 99 cents or more) they would more than double the number of songs sold and therefore eat into piracy.

Well if Russia wants to join the WTO it is going to have to shut down allofmp3. They are still pirates no matter how you look at it. Yes the 99¢ one size fits all models is stupid. Older songs should be priced less. New songs could be priced more. Hell back in the ealy 80's I'd paid more than 99¢ for a song on a 45 record. By the way wal-mart sells songs for 88¢ and If you subscribe to Yahoo Music Unlimited you can buy songs for 79¢. You know 79¢ is not that bad of a deal.

The problem is the artist and songwritters aren't going to want to accept LESS money per song. Even though they'll be more likely to sell more songs.

I agree. allofmp3.com makes sense and has an EXCELLENT site and store model. We have yet to see any similar implementation here - but of course, Recording Industry Ass of America and Motion Picture Ass of America don't want to see anything that makes sense.

This is the classic arrogant shit Bush promotes - I don't want top see my tax to be spent on defending fuckin private industrial lobby organisations' interests.

Joining WTO has nothing to do with fuckin Recording Industry Ass of America and Motion Picture Ass of America, period.No, they are not. No matter how you look it at it, THEY ARE LEGAL.For you, perhaps but I want to have a CHOICE.

And Allofmp3.com gives me the choice of paying more for a FLAC or 320k mp3 compressed file.What an utter BS!

It's the stuidos and Recording Industry Ass of America and Motion Picture Ass of America, NOT THE ARTISTS, NOT THE SONGWRITERS BUT THE STUDIOS WHO WANTS TO KEEP THEIR RIDICULOUSLY HIGH PERCENTAGE! Most of the income goes to them, not for the artists.

artists and songwriters are fairly compensated now. For the most part, they aren't.
A few, anointed and branded by the machine make millions. However, the vast majority don't approach anything like a living wage on their works, while the labels rake in huge wealth from their works.

The largest criminal music empire RARELY gets press for their crimes, the RIAA.
They have been fined for collusion, payola and price fixing on a continuous basis for decades. There is no competition on the price of CDs. What they do to keep the price of CD's artificially high, YOU would go to jail for.

Based on the price of getting a CD to market, it's estimated that 70%+ of the revenue generated on CD sales (kept artificially high by price fixing), the RIAA was never entitled to.

THAT is called STEALING.

You want to go after pirates? Fine. But it's hypocrisy to not put greater focus on putting RIAA executives in jail for their more severe crimes.

NV

Er... what does the President have to do with either the RIAA, MPAA, or the WTO? Oh, I'm sorry-- you were just trying to shoehorn your worthless political agenda into an intelligent discussion.

to just "repeat" on the last part of what you say. Yes money CD/Song sells mostly goes to the record companies and the Artist makes most of their money on tour. Which is why the smart artist have started their own record company b/c it allows them to get a bigger price of the CD/song sale

Only one problem with that. Allofmp3 site doesn't reimburse the artists and content owners. They are a pirate company as well. Why do you think the US has refused to let Russia into the WTO until they deal with companies like allofmp3.

It's simply ...
AoMP3 PAYS to the relevant Russian organisation. Period.

The other problem is that many on the internet won't pay 1 nickel for a song as long as they can steal it for free. Lowering prices may get some people to switch to legal music, but not nearly enough to recover the revenue lost by significantly reduced prices. You see the posts here. The music thieves won't be happy unless the music is free.

I keep thinking about the bottled water industry. In much of the US (what I know personally), you can get water for free - as free as you can dl music - there's no incremental cost or it's nominal.

There are drinking fountains, many restaruants will provide free water, at home you can drink tap water.

So how does bottled water compete? Convienience, quality, and marketing. Now, the music companies already know how to market, but their offerings are loosing out in convienince or quality.

CDs just aren't convienient - I can't get that song I just realised I want to hear in 10 minutes if I have to go to a store, especially if it's 2 in the morning when I want it.

The online stores have DRM which often gets in the way, unlike a CD or CD Rip. I can't play iTMS files on my Zen Vision. I don't need a subscription/lock in with CDs, or the other methods. Then, iTunes and the like usually have lesser quality music that is available via other means.

So, they need to make it a no brainer - faster, easier, and cheap enough that there isn't a lot of agonizing over the cost if they want to beat back piracy. Using the RIAA needs to be easier and faster than searching P2P, it needs to be equal or higher quality rips, and it needs to be cheap enough it's an impulse buy.

The price needs to come across as equivelent in effort and cost to free, or at least not more money than the time spent using P2P to get the same thing.

The one thing is a lot of songs that got down loaded wouldn't get paid for. My friend had an urge to hear the safety dance so he downloaded it. Would he go out and buy a men without hats CD (I doubt you can even buy it any more), no way. If he did would the artist ever see a penny of that, no. In fact cheap trick is one of the bands who won't sign off on this stuff so your free to trade cheap trick any way you want. There are other old bands too that don't care what you do with their recordings.

But how would the **AA, fat cats fill their pockets then? They couldn't possible make enough for their Beverly Hills home, Aspen Cottage, and Cayman vacation spot with only $.50 per song. They WANT to RAISE prices to $1.50+ per song remember??

allofmp3.com is currently legal. The Russian government hasn't made it illegal yet, and the US government doesn't legislate over the countries in the world. If China decided that copyrights weren't valid, then it would be legal to copy in China, despite any of your moral ideas.

As to the current debate, there's nothing that says people would "enjoy" content if it wasn't available for free. I feel many people that "pirate" would just move on to something else (internet radio, friends loaning them, renting, etc).

It's like a fireworks show. It's free for the people that want to watch it from a certain distance. Those people do not pay for it, even though it's a performance by a group and there's a cost to produce them. There may be a fee to be on site and enjoy "extras", and people will buy tickets to be on the site even though they could watch it for free from a distance. If all the people that go watch the fireworks for free had to pay to take a look, do you really think there would be as many people watching? The movie and music industry have to adapt. I've said years ago they could include priviledges inside the cds (like key codes for free website content, forums, news, tour ticket priority, etc) that would increase the value of the cd. Yet they're complacent and all they've done is include DRM and general annoyances to the customer. The last CD my girlfriend bought had protection against ripping it to MP3s. Well guess what, my girlfriend only listens to MP3s. Do you really think she'll buy another Sony CD that she has to go through loops to enjoy? No, she won't. Simple stuff like that.

Some walmart songs are censored though!
specially the RAP[not that i listen to it]

Umm what part you were unable to grasp thus misinterpreting?

Since you are a Spiderman fan, what would Spidey do? I doubt he'd buy your argument and haul you to jail.

What a rubbish, illogical crap - 1. what kind of "lost revenue" you have to recover 2.how is that "lost" when you're arguing those would never pay?

ROFLMAO!
Classic circular reasoning - why am I not surprised it's coming from Tjunk...?

He certainly wouldn't stand for the Recording Industry Ass of America and Motion Picture Ass of America but rather for the citizen who want s legal, affordable and non-crippled music instead of the current shitty quality, DRM-crippled, crazy expensive crap.

don't forget the sound quality of mp3's is lower then both vinyl and compact disc

allofmp3.com is NOT legal. PERIOD. Anyone that thinks otherwise is severely mentally handicapped. They wouldn't have the record industry trying to shut them down if they were legal since you kind of need the record industries permission to sell LEGAL music.Just because a thief offers you choices in the stolen property they sell doesn't mean it's still not stolen.

A lot of bands don't care yet their labels do. IIRC, some bands (who didn't have the foresight to sign away some of their rights to their labels) have even had conflicts with their labels over this very issue.

IMO, the labels, and NOT bands or songwriters, are THE problem when it comes to the music industry...they know they are dinosaurs and are trying to litigate their survival.

-SC

"don't forget the sound quality of mp3's is lower then both vinyl and compact disc"

Bull.

Vynil was recorded with "RIAA equalization" and you can tell when you play a file from vynil (never mind the pops and clicks). This can, of course, be dealt with with the right software, such as cool edit.

MP3 was not designed to be a direct competitor for CD's, obviously, since it is a compression scheme. However, once again software is your friend. Convert it to WAV at 48 Khz, process it with your software, then burn to .CDA format. Works quite well.

Ummm...in your zeal, you miss the point: They ARE CURRENTLY LEGAL, because it is CURRENTLY LEGAL TO DO WHAT THEY DO IN RUSSIA.

In any case, our laws mean squat in russia, regardless of if the RIAA/MPAA like it or not.

"Just because a thief offers you choices in the stolen property they sell doesn't mean it's still not stolen."

Since, under russian law they aren't thieves, it appears what they offer is not stolen. For all you really know about them, they could have just went out and bought CD'
s to rip. Obviously, a CD one has bought is not stolen.

"Lowering prices may get some people to switch to legal music, but not nearly enough to recover the revenue lost by significantly reduced prices."

Well, golly gee, that's just too bad for them. I guess they'd just have to compete like the rest of us have to and produce a quality product instead of the crap they do now, eh?

This is the same argument used by the government to oppose lowering taxes. The want the money but they dont want to give decent service to taxpayers

"The music thieves won't be happy unless the music is free."

The REAL "music thieves" dont CARE if it's free or not as long as they get theirs. Fact is, the vast majority of downloaders are individuals who download tracks for their own use. The laws are aimed at those that do so to re distribute for profit.
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It is Legal, do some research before posting drivel.

Are you RUSSIAN? It's LEGAL to gamble online if you are a Briton. Can you bet online now? Um no. So no they are not legal. If in some county it's legal for a 13 year girl to film porn according to you that means it's pefectly ok for you to view it. Once again NO. American laws may not apply to russian, but they apply to YOU. And it does apply to Russia because it's called FAIR TRADE. I guess since it's ok to sell pirated DVDs in China that means that not stealing either. And yes it is ok in China because they rarely if ever go after them. A law that's not enforced isn't much of a law is it?

I post the truth. Don't be jealous because you are ignorant. You are OBVIOUSLY pro-theft. Nice morals you have. Hope your children are proud of their theiving parent.

It's perfectly legal to buy a product from a website, wherever the site is located.