Two unrelated topics:

[JP Dogberry]

And I"M tired of peopel so wrapped up in the system that they defend it in all circumstances, without any regard to the purpose and function of that system.

Money is a medium of information transfer. The moment it stops being that and starts being the most important thing (That is, the moment any corporation becomes more powerful than any person) capitalism is broken.

[Legion]

The Fines that the RIAA are tying to get is $250,000 USD per song.....Now if the fine was only like $100 per song I do not think that I would have any real problem with what they are trying to do. $100 per song is reasonable and is a big enough fine that will deter most people away from it, because they will see more people going to court and being found guilty.  Also the people against it would not be as popular because it is not the BIG giant pushing the little people around.  It would turn into a company trying to stop people from stealing from them.  I have downloaded songs, most of the time I do this in order to find out if I would like the CD....I know most people do not do this, most people will D/L the whole CD and never buy it.  This is not right, and some people do need to stop it.  In moderation it would be ok, but the line of moderation is too hard to draw.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

No, Sprig, I think you've got the concept wrong there. They are not asking for a payment for a service with a lawsuit. THey're asking for consequences. They are asking for a punishment. A punishment that far outstrips the potential damage said crime causes.

[Entsuropi]

Commit theft and steal a family's car, and you get a few months in prision, and/or a fine. This fine will be unlikely to be equal to the cost of the car. So why is it reasonable to have the fine for stealing a song by approximately 150 thousand times the cost of the song?

[The Jade Knight]

In addition, if you steal a car, that takes a car away from someone else.  Not so with mp3s.

When the RIAA reported a 4% drop in sales (which could have been caused be a plethora of things, not excluding the rise in Indie music and popular boycotting of RIAA-supported music), several times as many CDs worth of music were being traded online as were being sold.  So if that magnitude of filesharing causes such a small drop (and I think it's a stretch to assume that filesharing is the cause of that drop in sales), I don't really think you can compare it to "stealing" in the traditional sense at all.

Personally, I believe that if you really think an artist is good, you should put your money where your mouth is and support them financially.  I think it's important.

But the RIAA and MPAA need to stop this extortion.

Spriggan, if you haven't read it yet, you need to read Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, a Law Prof at Stanford (in terms of IP credentials, he was involved in the Microsoft antitrust case, among several others).

You can download the book for free online at www.free-culture.org

[Legion]

I recently heard that the sales of CDs has gone up, Have not check it out for myself, but if it has then the RIAA argument would be completely false.

Side note: good point both JadeKnight and Entropy

[The Jade Knight]

Oh, and the maximum fine is $150k per "willful violation" according to Lessig, unless it's been upped in the past few years.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I want to reiterate my stance. I'm not saying that stealing music should be legal and there's nothing wrong with it. i'm saying that the draconian and mafioso style behavior of the organizations trying to prosecute are out of line and should be curbed.

[The Jade Knight]

I'm more or less with Saint E on this one.