<p>Jags, no. Just no.</p>
<p>ehiunno, I agree with some of your assertions, but I think you need to take a few economics courses...</p>
<p>no no no, you see cav, thats where you come in with all of your econ major brilliance and correct all the flaws in my argument. And then we take over the world.</p>
<p>honestly, the vast majority of you are completely ignorant when it comes down to the illegal music downloading. </p>
<p>now, i'm not saying that the record companies arn't at fault. lets face it--they were greedy. charging $18.99 for a CD was too much, and for many years they got away with it. the fact is, downloading music illegally has caused these companies to have massive losses and in turn there were massive layoffs. Some companies don't even really 'exist' anymore. </p>
<p>Example: Arista Records. I'm sure many of you will see Arista labels on the back of your CDs (look at Sanata, Whitney, Avril, Kenny G, (those are the ones i can think of right now) etc.), yet most of you don't realize that Arista exists in name only now. That wasn't the case 3 years ago. Hundreds of people were let go because they couldn't make a profit. Now was illegal music downloading the only reason? Of course not--spending was out of control, but the fact remains that they lost millions because product wasn't being pushed.</p>
<p>on another note,</p>
<p>who cares about the artists? they make plenty of money. and also--trust me--the big executives arn't really getting hurt. they give them tons of money to come run the company, and then pay them tons of money when they fire them. but the fact is, its the common person who gets hurt. people get little or no raises, and are expected to do more work. thats the problem with downloading.</p>
<p>also, on the artistic side of things, even legal music downloading is destroying the record industry. due to the fact that you can download individual tracks--people only want the hits. bon jovi was on howard the other day explaining how theres no money in albums anymore--its just in singles. how can that be good for the furthering of music?</p>
<p>jags, I am not sure if your 'ignorant about illegal music downloading' statement was directed at me, but I am going to respond to it.</p>
<p>For one, saying the artists make plenty of money is a vastly ignorant generalization that does not cover the majority of music that is listened to. Is Little John making way, way more money than his ignorant half brain can handle? yeah, he really is. This is true for a lot of pop artists. The problem is that not all artists are like this. The vast majority of the music many people and I listen to comes from little known bands, or bands that are new to the record label scene. Its the new artists, the start ups that get hit when you steal music. These guys don't make plenty of money, they barely make enough to live on, and msot of the time they are never able to make a second album on a major label because they couldn't pay back the recording costs from the first one.</p>
<p>And I definitely think you are right about the record executives not taking a hit. That was part of my point above, they aren't going to sacrifice anything and the end user, the artist, and the little guy (thanks for bringing that up) take the hit.</p>
<p>[OT rant]
and for the record, I cannot stnd Kenny G. I would be honestly ok with him if he and his marketing would stop calling him jazz. Its guys like him that make everyone think that jazz is elevator music, when in actuallity it is the most thoughtful, exciting form of music there is with moods ranging from deep and slow to ultra energetic bebob and even fusion. Its people like him that make everyone think jazz solos are just wanking, or playing just to hear yourself play, when real jazz musicians put more into one note or one rest than he has in his whole career as a 'smooth jazz' arist. Yeah, I know this is the most off topic post you have ever read, thats why its a OT rant. I'll stop here.
[/OT rant]</p>
<p>downloading music is wrong...i completely agree with jags but...</p>
<p>ehuinno,</p>
<p>i wasn't really directing that at you. however, in response, the little artists don't make money for the labels if they don't sell. why would the label want to give away the music? regardless, whenever music is illegally downloaded, the label doesn't make money, which means they are less likely to sign unheard of or risky artists.</p>
<p>the music industry is really at an end. in 5 or so years, things will be completely different. unfortunately, the internet has ruined the music industry as we know it.</p>
<p>Jags, that was really my point exactly. When you steal music, the artist sells fewer cds, and the record company cant justify spending the money on them again to have their cd sales so low that they can't pay back the cost of making it. Thus new artists slip through the tubes.</p>
<p>You guys really need to learn some economics before coming to a conclusion.</p>
<p>[EDIT] To make my post slightly more reasonable, I'll elaborate.</p>
<p>Piracy isn't stealing. This is a major point that needs to be repeated over and over, because the RIAA likes to believe copyright infringement is the equivalent of stealing, even though it's not. Downloading an illegally obtained music file is not the same as stealing a candy bar from the grocery store. They both may have cost a dollar, but it's not the same thing. Now, a few more times.</p>
<p>Piracy isn't stealing. Piracy isn't stealing. Piracy isn't stealing.</p>
<p>It's just piracy. Renaming it as stealing is a poor analogy, which frankly is just propaganda. If intellectual property were actually "real" property, then we'd treat it differently--there would be no justification for copyright expiring, for example.</p>
<p>It is illegal of course, but it's not wrong in the same way that stealing is wrong. If I steal your car, I deprive you of its use. Stealing is wrong mostly for this reason. It's utterly inapplicable to piracy.</p>
<p>Copyright is a government-granted monopoly on certain speech. The argument for copyright is much more indirect... copyright raises the price of music (as do all monopolies) which increases the incentive to create music, and we're all better off if music is created. Note that the purpose here is to make consumers better off. The "right" to restrict others from reusing music is a mechanism; not the goal.</p>
<p>So copyright directly makes everyone worse off except for a few musicians, by raising prices. Copyright indirectly makes people better off, by increasing the music supply, but also has an indirect negative effect, by reducing "reinterpretations" of art and reducing the supply. When deciding the strength of copyright i.e. how long it lasts, there has to be some reasonable weighing of these competing factors. Unfortunately political power rests mainly with original producers right now so we're stuck with ludicrously long copyright terms.</p>
<p>Just because something is illegal, does not make it wrong. That line of thinking is only applicable on the premise that the law is infallible, which is not. That is why people deliberate; that is why we have the courts to decide on the constitutionality of laws; that is why laws are set to expire. It used to be illegal for black people to vote. It is illegal to download music in some cases. But civil disobedience is allowed, and if I download, it's because I disagree with the current state of the law.</p>
<p>[EDIT #2]</p>
<p>Plus, there's DRM. This is why I hate the RIAA.</p>
<p>[EDIT #3]</p>
<p>Someone else mentioned that the internet has changed the music scene. This I agree with. It reduces the need for large corporations like the RIAA, and gives the independent musicians a tool to hit the big scene without having to resort to signing contracts with major record labels that force them into stringent contracts. This doesn't sound like a bad thing to me. In fact, the world as a whole is getting a little more "flat"--as Thomas L. Friedman likes to put it--thanks to such innovations as the Internet. That is how the market works; it evolves. The RIAA is losing numbers in CD sales; at the same time, sales of CDs for independent artists are rising. The RIAA will have less of a say in "popular" music. How catastrophic that must be.</p>
<p>if you think big companies, which employ 100,000s of people, going out of business because of illegal actions by millions of people is a bad thing, then you've got another think coming to you.</p>
<p>Man, if I wanted to read a bunch of crap I already know I would have actually read my Econ201 textbook.</p>