If you pirate music, you're downloading communism!

[trev]

hear hear...good insight, al

trev

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From: "Albert Bouchard" <albert at CELLSUM.COM>
Sent: Friday, March 27, 2009 11:29 AM
To: <BOC-L at LISTSERV.ISPNETINC.NET>
Subject: Re: If you pirate music, you're downloading communism!

> 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
>