There are three kinds of people in this world that I despise: Thieves, Liars and Bullies, and the RIAA is all three in one convenient, easy-to-loathe package.
I'm old enough to have owned (and nostalgic enough to still own) vinyl LPs and cassette tapes. My friends and I shared all our albums with each other by taking the time to record them onto cassettes, and we all had piles of homemade cassette tapes. Some of them were even labeled as well. Why did we do this? It's called "sharing" and it's how we were raised. Also because it saved us money because we didn't have to buy that particular LP. I'm sure the music industry lost money from us doing that, but twenty or thirty years ago the government wasn't completely bought and paid for by big business.
File sharing is just like spending a rainy afternoon at a friend's house turning a stack of records into a stack of tapes. It wasn't called stealing then and it's no different now, it just doesn't take as long. I now have stacks of CDs and a CD recorder, and I will gladly copy anything I have for someone.
Do I make 1000 copies of a CD and sell them? No, because that is pirating, and I have no issue with arresting someone doing that. But when the RIAA sues some little kid for a ridiculous amount of money for downloading her favorite songs I have a huge problem with that. Way to take the moral high ground and make an example out of a hardened criminal! If you are savvy enough to not have to pay for your music, awesome! If your favorite band comes to town, pay for a ticket to see them live, because at least they'll make more than a dollar from each ticket, unlike their latest CD, which, even though it still costs $18, made the record company fifteen times as much money as the artist. And why do CDs cost as much now as when they first came out over 20 years ago? Especially when you consider the cost of a CD player started out at around three grand, and now you couldn't give one away because DVD players are so inexpensive now?
I know someone who worked in a CD factory 8-10 years ago, and they told me that, including the packaging, it cost about a buck and a half to make a CD. Even taking into consideration the cost of shipping, advertising, paying the wage slaves to move it from one point to another in the store, and what the artist is being paid (minus the advance they already got, thank you), the price of a CD should be under five bucks. The only reason, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that Cds cost as much as they do is corporate greed.
So share your files with your friends, neighbors, acquaintances, online friends, even complete strangers, as long as you're sharing and not making money off of someone else's work.
I'm old enough to have owned (and nostalgic enough to still own) vinyl LPs and cassette tapes. My friends and I shared all our albums with each other by taking the time to record them onto cassettes, and we all had piles of homemade cassette tapes. Some of them were even labeled as well. Why did we do this? It's called "sharing" and it's how we were raised. Also because it saved us money because we didn't have to buy that particular LP. I'm sure the music industry lost money from us doing that, but twenty or thirty years ago the government wasn't completely bought and paid for by big business.
File sharing is just like spending a rainy afternoon at a friend's house turning a stack of records into a stack of tapes. It wasn't called stealing then and it's no different now, it just doesn't take as long. I now have stacks of CDs and a CD recorder, and I will gladly copy anything I have for someone.
Do I make 1000 copies of a CD and sell them? No, because that is pirating, and I have no issue with arresting someone doing that. But when the RIAA sues some little kid for a ridiculous amount of money for downloading her favorite songs I have a huge problem with that. Way to take the moral high ground and make an example out of a hardened criminal! If you are savvy enough to not have to pay for your music, awesome! If your favorite band comes to town, pay for a ticket to see them live, because at least they'll make more than a dollar from each ticket, unlike their latest CD, which, even though it still costs $18, made the record company fifteen times as much money as the artist. And why do CDs cost as much now as when they first came out over 20 years ago? Especially when you consider the cost of a CD player started out at around three grand, and now you couldn't give one away because DVD players are so inexpensive now?
I know someone who worked in a CD factory 8-10 years ago, and they told me that, including the packaging, it cost about a buck and a half to make a CD. Even taking into consideration the cost of shipping, advertising, paying the wage slaves to move it from one point to another in the store, and what the artist is being paid (minus the advance they already got, thank you), the price of a CD should be under five bucks. The only reason, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that Cds cost as much as they do is corporate greed.
So share your files with your friends, neighbors, acquaintances, online friends, even complete strangers, as long as you're sharing and not making money off of someone else's work.
1 comment:
Scary no? it was about 11 cents after mastering, 33 cents including mastering and about $1.50 w/ packaging. There was also a licensing fee they had to pay for the legal right to manufacture a CD. Everyone there was paid pretty damn good too. So that should tell you that the record companies are just RAKING it in.
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