OFF: MP3s, pirates, & all that jazz

[William Duffy]

Hi there

I was just contemplating over another email I wrote about The Sweet
re-recording their old material yet again, & got to thinking that, as
someone living in West Australia, it is almost impossible to find nothing
but Greatest Hits or Best Of CDs by a vast majority of artists (with the
exception of the really big names).
If you go into any shops here, you are very unlikely to find anything by
Hawkwind, with the exception of maybe 2 CDs in the specialty shops in Perth
itself. With many others you have no chance, which brings me to my headline.
No wonder a great deal of people are doing this sort of thing, when it's
impossible to get the stuff (not being into drugs myself, I bet it's a lot
easier in WA to get it than a CD by someone like Bill Nelson!).

I just wish more artists could find a way to make this material more easily
accessable to the fans (and in a legal way too). They could provide some
means to download all the material, covers, etc., off the net, but through
some sort of secure server?

Going very slightly off topic again, why do companies that produce software
sometimes make you charge about the same amount as a PC for an upgrade?

I know this sort of thing has been covered before, but the way things seem
now, it's becoming easier to get things illegally than it is legally.

William