If you pirate music, you're downloading communism!

[Albert Bouchard]

Alex:
The RIAA is a music industry group. They do not deal with movies or  
things that come on dvd. I am a public high school teacher. I deal  
with teenagers every day. 0% of my students own a CD player. Very few  
ever go to live concerts. Most download music illegally. Is it still a  
mystery why I'm standing on this soapbox? The RIAA works for the  
record  companies. They do not send letters to individual artists.

An argument could be made that illegal downloading is helping maintain  
the popularity of music but I seriously doubt that if ISPs restricted  
access to illegal downloading, that the music would be less popular.  
Maybe some of these more obscure artists would be encouraged to stay  
together if they got some money for their efforts. I also think that  
if every artist was part time that the quality of the music would  
suffer. Maybe it already has.

If you borrow a CD from someone, assuming that CD wasn't stolen, that  
someone paid for the right to listen to that CD and share it with  
their friends. The difference in downloading situation is just a  
matter of scale. Take yourself out of the argument for a second. Think  
about the billions of people who don't own CD players and want their  
music. How are all the people who've worked hard to create that music  
to get paid? I actually think that iTunes of something of that sort is  
the future. it's simple enough to sample some music for free on  
iTunes. I do, however, think they should be lowering their price not  
raising it.

I know this might be out of the imagination of most people but what we  
have to get used to is that intellectual property is real. Just  
because it doesn't take up a lot of physical space doesn't meant that  
it is worthless. The air is free but if we take it for granted we  
could end up very sick and sorry.
Al