... so you generally don?t acknowledge that mp3 or whatever Files you can have online are someones work and they should get paid for that, or am I misunderstanding you?
I do acknowledge that those works are not something free that you should just take and use however you want, and that People or Companies do have the right to get paid (in what form or height can or should certainly be debated) for what they do. What I?m not in for is letting People at the "mercy" of RIAA or MPAA (and related organisations) with their laywers and lobbyists. Having a way that keeps the copyright-owners paid and filesharers out of trouble would be an ideal solution for the time being, IMO.
I do of course, but, IMO, the whole system should be changed, before the idea of unlimited digital distribution for certain fixed fee can be even introduced.
Problems are:
1. Most of the money made on 99% of musical albums (except for biggest celebrities) goes to record/production companies, rather than artists themselves, which is why those companies are fighting so hard.
2. In 90% of all the cases there is no way to try out the music before actually buying it, unless you hear it on the radio or some1
shares it, so there's no way to check it out before buying, this way all the talentless "money" projects would simply die off.
3. 13$ for a CD is quite costly at least for me, since i'm always looking to discover something new and interesting.
What could really be done:
1. All music should be available in good quality for free download from official sources with "file expiration date", so it only can be played on a computer or portable player for a limited period of time, let's say 24 hours.
2. 13$ should be the cost of a DVD, which should include musical tracks (DVD-Audio 7.1 quality), video clips and preferably some bonus material.
Overall my complaint is, the majority of musi? is quite badly written, and if you take away all the digital garnish there isn't a proper musician behind it, so most of it smells like a rip-off.
What piracy really creates is a filter for low quality product, sort of a shadow competitor, no matter if it's music, movies or computer games. As i see it, in the last couple of years there's been a lot less crappy PC games than before, only the good stuff gets released, cause most of the gamers will download it, try it out, then if they liked it - buy it and continue playing via multiplayer or whatever.
Basically computer gaming moved on from "Pay then Eat", the fastfood method, to "Eat then Pay", the restaurant method, and i quite like that.
P.S. 50$ /year is miserable amount of money for unlimited downloads, as it's just 4 CDs/year and you can download those four in a minute. If the deal is even negotiable the price will be 100 times as much per user, and it's the ISP who will be charged to pay it, therefore for regular users it will be even more expensive.
