If you pirate music, you're downloading communism!

[Alex S. Garcia]

> The RIAA is a music industry group. They do not deal with movies or
> things that come on dvd.

True. There ARE music DVD's out there too, though. But regardless, if you
add a new medium to the market (such as DVD's) it makes sense that sales
on other mediums will drop, especially if that new medium becomes as
popular as DVD's did. Just ignoring that doesn't make it less of a
reality. The RIAA should at the very least acknowledge this.

> 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?

Don't they have CD players on their computers?

Admittedly, though, that's a somewhat different crowd than the one I've
dealt with. Those I've talked to all had CD players.

Teenagers are a bit of a special case, though, since they tend to try and
challenge authority to see how far they can go. Whether this tendency
holds or not depends a great deal on how the challengers are dealt with
;-)

> 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.

Of course not. But you wouldn't see an increase in sales either. The poor
would simply no longer be able to listen to music at all (aside from
radio) while others would just have a harder time deciding what to buy.

> Maybe some of these more obscure artists would be encouraged to stay
> together if they got some money for their efforts.

Absolutely. I just don't think that blocking downloads would get them more
money.

> I also think that
> if every artist was part time that the quality of the music would
> suffer. Maybe it already has.

Not necessarily. One of my favorite bands (Shadow Gallery) work part time.
It just takes longer to finish an album (usually 3 to 4 years with them...
and without ever touring.) But hey, if that's the price to pay for quality
I don't mind, personally.

> 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?

But, Al, if these people don't own a CD player, how could they possibly
buy a CD in the first place? Artists are not losing any money from these
people since they would not be able to buy anything anyway!

> I actually think that iTunes of something of that sort is
> the future.

On this point, I agree ;-)

> 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.

I never claimed otherwise. Though one could argue (and one did earlier in
this thread, LOL) that what we buy when we buy a CD is the object, not the
music on it, since we'd have to pay for it again if we lost the CD (or
when the formats change, like when we switched from vinyls/tapes to CD's.)
So technically downloading music is not stealing anyway since it's not a
physical object, not to mention that the original remains with the artist.
It doesn't affect the copyright in any way (downloaders don't claim
ownership, for instance.) A real theft, on the other hand, would be going
into an artist's house and stealing the only existing copy of a new song
:-(



Alex.