These kinds of services are akin to cash cow utilities, such as the phone company. Due to the largely the automated "back office" bookkeeping, every trade doesn't equal an attendant rise in expense to the brokerage. How is the CD producer going to reduce costs? There is no economy of scale in the manufacturing although pure electronic distribution would completely eliminate that process and costs. I think the RIAA is going to simply have to hunt down swappers and try and close the PSP providers, on a never ending basis.
Well, let me modify my premise. CD sales are inelastic within a reasonable price structure. At $20 per, sales are going to obviously go into a steep curve. They have been gouging for decades and at those "reasonable" price levels, demand has not really changed. What is causing the elasticity now is the availability of a free source for virtually the identical product.
this is what annoys me..... the concept of file sharing is not illegal. it's just a program that allows people to share files. THIS IS NOT ILLEGAL. what is illegal is the exchanging of copyrighted material. i think it is an individual's choice if they want to fight the current law and download/share copyrighted songs. i also think if music companies are going to sue, they should sue the individuals breaking the law (they knew it was illegal and took the risk), not the company that makes a file sharing program. funny how both parties blame eachother. no one wants to be responsible for themselves. file sharing companies will argue what i just did, but then when an individual gets caught they say, THEY SHOULD SUE THE COMPANY THAT ALLOWED ME TO DO THIS! on fox news yesterday, a woman who is getting sued said that! she wants to blame kazaa instead of herself and her child. i can't stand it when people don't take responsibility for themselves and others suffer because of their patheticness. this is just like suing a gun maker because of a drive by shooting.
I think the current heat from the RIAA is on the individual swappers. As far as your gun manufacturer analogy, they don't advertise that their products are specifically designed with illegally murdering people in mind. P2P sites seem to openly promote the illegality, for example, search engines with "Title" and "Artist" categories listed under the selection "Audio."
yes, now they are going after individuals. but i think when all this first began, the RIAA was going after P2P software makers, like napster, instead of the individuals. i disagree with that. i don't think this is really an issue. since it IS possible that some "artists" with "titles" for their "audio" don't mind their music being shared. so should we ruin it for these people that want to do this legal activity just because other people don't play by the rules or want to challenge them? no! it would be exactly like not allowing violent movies because some moron might act out the violence in real life. so then you ban violent movies and i can't watch a violent movie because of some idiot. THIS IS NOT THE WAY THE WORLD SHOULD WORK.
The majority of downloads are of major artists and are copyrighted material. There are plenty of venues for indie producers/musicians to offer their wares such as directly from the artist themselves.
imo, it doesn't matter what the majority use it for. the RIAA should go after the majority then and let the legal people do their thing. as axeman (A TRUE GREAT MIND) has said in another thread, a democracy is basically majority rule. this is like you saying because the majority abuse kazaa, stop kazaa, although it can be used for legal purposes. i say if the RIAA wants to sue, they should go after individuals, not kazaa. as i would argue, and probably axeman, too... it should be approached like a republic, which respects rights of the minority. in this case, the minority would be the legal file swappers. YOU DON'T RUIN IT FOR THEM BECAUSE THE MAJORITY DOES WRONG!
I think the entire mess is a purely legal one. How to implement it is the problem. Obviously the RIAA knows there is a legal problem in trying shut down P2P providers. However, Napster got zapped.
i disagree, bung. sure, they did get publicity, but their stance really divided a lot of their fans. wether you agree or disagree with metallica, i think they were voicing what they really believe. i used to be really into metallica (5-10 years ago).
i agree with your statements. i'd even pay more than 25 cents to download a song. 50 cents to a dollar per song seems about right. good point about not needing a file sharing program if they did this. it will be easier. as it is now, when you download a song from P2P, many of the songs are fake. it might take 10+ downloads before you really get what you want. i wouldn't mind just paying 50-100 cents per song, downloading it direct, and getting a high quality file. artists should do this on their own sites and bypass the labels. kind of like how dell sells computers.