i buy more albums because of soulseek.

fuck the RIAA.

Indeed! Downloading mp3s has totally enriched my life. I've seen more gigs, and bought more music because of various fileshare programmes.

I also say 'anyone who pays for a download is an idiot''

yeah, Its like the wild west out there..

Paying for something that doesn't exist.

I can't believe that's what depth the consumer world has reached.

What about downloading tracks that have been deleted?

I can see complete justification for making people pay for downloads, but if they are to win the moral argument, a record company has to make their entire historical catalogue available.

Currently the only ways of getting hold of deleted records is through filesharing or going through the ardure of finding them second hand in a shop or more likely on eBay (a transaction which also makes no money for the record company or artist)

I think this issue has to be addressed

I heard that next week they're gonna target orphans , fluffy bunnies, and the recently deceased.

When I first read that I thought it read IRA for some reason, REALLY freaked me out.

Grow up you fuckers, FILE SHARING IS THEFT pure and simple.

It's advertising, that's what p2ps do. Ya know, the RIAA should be paying ME for passing out music for others to sample. Don't matter, they can't hurt me, I live in Canada, where sharing music is perfectly legal. I wonder if the RIAA has a problem with me lending a friend a CD for the weekend? Are they going to punish me for listening to someone else's CD? If so, they may as well throw us all into the courtroom, cause we are all guilty of that.

The RIAA is just a bunch of greedy bastards. They are still making money, and bitching. This whole court thing is just increasing the media attention, which causes more people to P2P, who will then buy the CDs, and give the greedy assholes more money. Fuckin pricks.

Perhaps record companies should start charging less for cds..or paying the artists a larger share..the only people who are loosing out are the record company executives..who did absolutely nothing creative. a lot of bands/groups make more money from touring and merch sales than they do off their record sales because the record industry is in general, greedy as fuck. its about time something kicked them in the teeth

If you read the copyright agreements on most cds, its illegal for you to do anything but listen to the cd/dvd you just brought anywhere but in solitary confinement anyway. so perhaps we should all send the RIAA a letter telling them of our sins, and they can lock us all up.. hell..free meals and education in prison ;o)

In addition i will never pay for an mp3 quality audio file because they sound like shite. 44khz cd is shabby enough, but mp3 is just taking the piss.

Can someone tell me quite how MP3's of music don't actually exist? It exists as digital data as part of your hard drive, does it not? Simply because it then can't be thrown around like a CD doesn't mean it doesn't exist. A CD is just a plastic receptacle for digital information, a CD isn't designed just for music, therefore a hard drive is a receptacle of digital information that can incldue music. A cassette tape is the same thing so please, someone justify how an MP3 on a hard drive is not as physical as music on a tape.

Sharing music in Canada is not entirely legal so let's blow that 'truth' out of the window:

'In clarifying what is legal for Canadian online music fans, the Canadian Copyright Board ruled that downloading music files from peer-to-peer networks is acceptable. However, the board declared that uploading music files is illegal and also approved a levy on digital music players based on their storage capacity.'

http://www.macnewsworld.com/story/32400.html

I use Soulseek and Kazaa and use it to sample music, consequently I buy a lot of music and get poor because of that. I use p2p to find bootlegs as these are often more interesting than the studio recorded stuff, not to mention odd bootlegs of comedians (some great Bill Hicks stuff out there that will never be released). p2p is a good thing for advertising, in my opinion some of the major acts lose out through young kids downloading their latest single but many more leftfield acts find it helps them develop a fanbase, the recent BBC article on Jeff Tweedy and Wilco being a good example. I agree that the RIAA are greedy pricks only working to keep the fat bastard company CEOs loaded with coke n' whores but some attitudes here really do surprise me. Mr Diver says this:

"A pretty hefty 405 lawsuits are expected to be issued against students across 18 different US colleges. If they're anything like as financially 'comfortable' as I was at university, they won't have a chance of affording it. Why else would they exchange music in such a way?"

Isn't this just terrible? So many in the world are starving and being smashed by oppressive forces yet we should be concerned because kids at US universities might not be able to afford all the CDs they want? I know I'm taking this to the fullest polarising point but c'mon, let's keep things in perspective. How many of those poor impoverished lacking in CDs students are also going to be really fucking poor? People in the real poverty bracket in America find it incredibly hard to get to university with the extortionate fees charged. Mike, I'm not trying to bitch you out but I'm on a real hatred of the 'we want' society element right now. Living in North America with its constant fucking commercialism and consumptive nature drives me mad, people wanting everything and expecting to have everything. It happens everywhere, hence Britons being over a trillion pounds in debt right now. People don't have the patience to wait for products, they expect to own them and, really, if students are poor and can't afford CD's, then shouldn't you just say 'Tough shit'? Most people had it hard at university, I ended up working for one term as a postman for 60 hours each week (cue the ressurection of Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen sketch), but I also remember a lot of people who were pleading poverty driving around in cars, yakking on mobile phones and pissing away a lot of money. You can't always get what you want when you want it, something that much of the Western world forgets.

But yes, the RIAA are shitbags and Cary Sherman is a mouthpiece for Satan. Fuck 'em!

music is pretty much my life, i spend nearly all of my money in ways closely related to music. i am a student and i buy as many cd's as i can. if i bought all that i wanted or felt like giving a go i would need lottery funding. i tend to buy the cd's of poorer bands releasing thier first few albums. having said that if a band really pull their finger out with and amazing artwork then I'm often compelled to buy it whoever wrote it. basically the rolling stones can get to fuck whereas oceansize can have my pennies.

As someone else said, fuck the RIAA.

I spend all the money I possibly can on CDs, going to gigs, guitar strings, etc.
I also download lots of music via filesharing programs too. This inevitably points me in the direction of bands who, in the future, I will end up seeing/buying cds of.

They don't have a fucking clue. They are targeting the people who buy the most music.

Thom, what branch of the population do you think buys the most music? I don't think it's students somehow.

Well people of a student age are often most interested in music perhaps. They are certainly not the smallest group of consumers and purchasers of music.

students turn into real people with money and jobs and to target someone at thier most insicure is evil

do u think they will be checking peoples finacial status before charging people. it could be trailor park john doe on a scholarship with a massive fine to pay.

Students turn into real people with money!? hehe!

Err dunno about you lot but when I was at uni I had more disposable income than I'd ever had before.

I bought more CD's then than I have done at any other time.

I htink the idea of students living at uni on cold beans and cheap beer si long gone........

Again, if it wasn't for filesharing, I doubt I would be very interested in music (on effort grounds) and wouldn't buy as many cds.

Oddly enough, I have to say, the richer the people I know are, the more they download music entirely to get it for free with no intention of buying it.

I earn badger all and I download constantly to see if I like stuff - then buy it if I do. The richer people are, the more they think that paying for stuff is beneath them. Odd but true.

The RIAA are idiots, but I've never seen anyone making the above sociological point before so I thought I'd do it.

Did anyone get that last Public Service Broadcast from Small Town America? The fourth track by Catnap - down with the scene is tasty but you should get down to see them (i think they are playing The Bull and Gate in a couple of weeks) as they have the true Fuck the RIAA song - " The Record Industry is A Giant Penis" - says it all.

We have to look at this from an artists point of view as well guys. I think some bands have lost a lot of money through filesharing, but the only reason for this is that their label gives all the money to their managers. I fileshare, and like others, it gives me a chance to get music i couldn't normally. If I download songs and I like them that much I will buy the cd. It's that simple. For small bands, filesharing can be as powerful as word of mouth. For the big bands, well, they're loaded anyway (*cough* metallica)

I'm English but right now I'm in America at Uni, I'm home for good in a month. Prices here are great, i buy a lot of music. On average a cd is 5 quid. I went to see Muse a few days ago, that cost the equivalent of 7 quid.

If the companies want us to buy more music they need to lower the prices - 16 quid for a cd is unacceptable. The average student would need to work 4 hours on min wage for that one cd. Work it out.

I'm all for filesharing and buying cd's, when used together I think everyone benefits in some way.

The whole thing is a completely false front. Since when were the big lables interested in morality? Its bollox. Signing a record contract as a new band? Might as well save everyone a lot of time and just declare your self bankrupt on the spot and chop your own hands off while you're at it. Big lables have never been interested in people or artists. Theres only one drive and thats greed.

And now the worlds changing wirth technology and the lines are blurring so the empires are shitting themselves. Pretty much everyone can see that there is deffinately one problem with the way its all going, and that problem is the frikking greedy bastards who leave people in the shit at the drop of a hat, pour rediculous sums of money in to a few (lucky? not sure) places, and leave huge numbers of just-as-if-not-more-so brilliant artists without even a look in. The real damage to music and creativity isnt file shareing. Its the gits on the sueing rampage.

Theyre not trying to protect music. They're trying to protect their own private kingdoms.

Mp3s are compressed tracks off a cd. Im sure at itunes they pay some bloke to rip promos then idiots pay for them online. Id rather get the lossy files via a fielsharer, play them, find the lps shit/great, then go to the shop/supermarket/internet shop and buy the damn thing. I can rip it into other file formats or just play it, do what i want.

Mp3 filesharing will never go away, its actually got more widespread over the last few years.
The offical download charts are massively popular too.

If companies like Sony moan about losses from mp3, why do they make Sony Brand cdrs? They have their fingers in every pie. And their *lets not be vulgar* up our arses. Wankers

To be honest, I don't have any sympathy for anyone being sued - the risks are well known these days. You pays your money, you takes your chances.

Two things, however:

a) I imagine a lot of people on this website probably do use P2P networks to download stuff to sample it, but remember: you're not a representative sample in any way. I imagine more people download because, y'know, it's free than "to sample".

b) I really, really hate the way that, in the various pro-file sharing arguements thrown about, bands are portrayed as innocents, exploited by multinationals who care about nothing more than greed. BANDS WHO SIGN BIG MONEY DEALS KNOW WHAT THEY ARE GETTING INTO. There's plenty of evidence to show that, hey, maybe big labels aren't so nice, and frankly anyone who goes into a big money deal expecting something different is a complete moron.

Of course they know what theyre getting in to. You make your choice and live with the consequences.
But that doesnt excuse the situation, and neither does it mean that there isnt a problem.

It doesnt take a huge amount of intelligence to work out that if the music industry was about protecting artists then there would be a huge amount of things that work very differently. So when anti file shareing is billed as protecting music and artists. Well. Come on. For all your capital letters, do you really believe them?

I read in an industry paper last year that 2004 saw the most albums sold in the UK since records began......bit weird that considering how badly the industry is doing.

All downloading is doing is changing the singles chart. The only reason the RIAA are going nutty over file sharing is that for the first time they have the means to prosecute people as hometaping was unpolicable. I think the industry LOVES file sharing. Free advertising...more money from the occasional sting operation. Rich people get richer.

Really, if the RIAA wants some sort of insurance against students downloading music, why doesn't it sue the universities that run the I2 networks?

Do they have just better lawyers, or have precedents already been set about use of networks to download?

Why sue the universities? They provided a network for academic usage, if the students then use the network for other illegal purposes then that's their fault and therefore get sued accordingly. Sueing the universities is like sueing British Airways for drug smuggling when someone flies in with a load of smack in their briefcase. Sueing a university is also harder work than it is sueing one skanky student at a time.

I agree with Guntrip who says that the people on DiS who use p2p networks aren't a representative sample. Here in Toronto on Yonge Street, many times I've ended up in one of the numerious internet lounges and Kazaa's been installed. Alook through the search list shows that it isn't really album downloads people are going for, it's singles, usually the most successful and commercial ones at that. The sort of person who reads Pitchfork and DiS is generally someone who will buy their music in my opinion.

The album sales figures in the UK have been going up each year for quite a while, it's generally considered that the mid-price sections have helped enormously to bring this figure up, and it's the mid 20's to 40s market that buy most albums. Total sales figures. ie. albums and singles. get brought down by the lack of energy in the singles market. I've asked this question before and it still applies: when it costs way more to make a pop video than it does to record an album, when it's well known that singles are not profitable at all, when it's known that albums make the profit for the companies, and when it's known that more moeny ends up promoting singles than albums, why the fucking hell do they keep pumping the cash into singles? It makes no financial sense whatsoever.

I remember an NME article a few years ago saying that Pulp's Different Class album sold over 100,000 copies to be number 1 and then (I think) Catatonia's International Velvet sold around or under 30,000 copies to become number 1. This was back in dial-up days at best so the p2p piracy issue didn't come into play. Are album sales less healthy than that time? I doubt it.

The copyright infringement notions are linked to this case, the Sony versus Betamax case, link is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._v._Universal_City_Studios

tbh all i think that the record companies are just trying to recoup money that they lost from the monster that is file sharing.

its something that they cant control so there like shit!...where did that come from...so hence the lawsuit's...

but i just hope in time they can "embrace the technology" like someone said earlier. from my point of view its healthy on the whole for music, making people music collections alot larger...and generally buying more CD's...cant be a bad thing