stateyourpoint

Nearly 26,000 have been sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for allegedly pilfering music tracks off of the Internet. The first case made its way to a Duluth, Minnesota federal court Tuesday where the RIAA is accusing 30-year-old Jammie Thomas of sharing 1702 songs through the Kazaa peer-to-peer network.

She claims that she has never illegally downloaded any songs from the Internet, and the RIAA even acknowledges that they couldn't find any evidence of the Kazaa file-sharing program anywhere on her computer; but certainly the courts will figure this one out.

What's at issue, whether you agree with the police-state tactics the RIAA uses to track down alleged thieves, is the concept of copyrighted media. Few would argue that it's OK to steal cars, clothes, toasters or physical media such as CDs or tapes. For some reason, however, people seem to think the rules don't apply when it comes to digitised media. Maybe they think because they can't see it or touch it or hold it, then it doesn't really exist; hell, I don't know. The fact is, allowing other people to have copies of copyrighted material is immoral and unethical, and the copyright holders should be protected by government, just as citizens are protected from thieves and con-men.

That said, the RIAA is a dinosaur, attempting to grab its last dying breath and hold on a few more months or years. The record companies have ceased to have meaning or relevance in the modern world where anyone with access to a cheap computer and a microphone can create their own music, burn their own CDs and distribute the music (or even other works of art) extremely cheap via technology like the Internet, file-sharing programs, etc. Little (if any) of the cash they have extorted from people who have settled RIAA lawsuits instead of squaring off against them in court has ever been given to the artists involved...it's gone straight into the RIAA's own pockets.

Their hipocracy and irrelevance will surely bring them down, but that doesn't excuse otherwise sane people from being criminals when it comes to distributing copyrighted material in an unauthorised manner.

First off, legally you are right, of course. But the situation causes me to wonder the state or reality of things.

Who gave Musicians and thier handlers or industry the right to recreate thier songs.......and for the purpose of wealth? Didn't they simply take it upon themselves to do?

Since when do athletes , entertainers and the attendant industry have the absolute right to wealth greater than the bulk of mankind? I'm talking about people who simply entertain us. If we esteem jesters as wise, and the truly wise as fools. Is it anchored in granite?

If I buy some tomatoes from you, let them dry, then remove and plant the seeds. And wind up with my fields overflowing with tomatoes. Would it offend you? If I traded some tomatoes for cucumbers from another who did the same with cucumber seeds, is it a crime?

If a song is so personal that it shouldn't be shared, then it ought not to be. Honor due is honor due. Let the honor be to the creator. It is the artists reward. Then again, even God requires tithes and offerings, hand in hand with honor.

We live the length of our lives on the bounty of earth and intellect. We esteem it ours. But is it? Before my Mother passed away she said, "You work and struggle all your life for what you think is yours. But it's only yours for as long as you can prevent others from taking it from you. So it's never really yours."

Right and fairness is all for which one can truly hope in life. So, being right and fair is ones duty.
Wonderings end.

Sharing a naturally occuring thing is something quite different from "sharing" a man-made creation. You're offering the proposition that anything man-made should be freely available to all regardless of ownership, from what I read--or at least freely avaiolable for whomever successfully takes it from you. I couldn't possibly agree less.

We are all entitled to the ownership of what we create (or at least certainly should be) and to then trade or sell that creation for whatever we wish, with whatever stipulations we wish. If a buyer agrees to those stipulations and then breaks the agreement, he or she has committed a civil crime and should be taken to task through the courts. Conversely, if someone doesn't like the stipulations we might set, they're free to move along and either create their own creation or trade for someone else's.

Works of art are no different than any other man-made creation; they exist only because someone created them, and those creators must possess full rights of ownership until they sell or trade away those rights.

I agree. I wouldn't trade or encourage anyone to trade music on the internet. But as far as art goes, I think that the mass production of the original creation by the artist and industry for the purpose of wealth, does, in the act of mass producing it, escape any pretense of private ownership. It's like shouting aloud your private thoughts, while laying claim to privacy rights and being offended if your shoutings are heard and repeated.
It could be that the technology which allowed the industry to flourish has now become so commonplace and excessive that the industy has simply run its course and withered.
When I was a teenager, we used to tape songs and broadcasts off the radio as well as cassette albums to blank cassettes. We didn't think it was wrong or illegal. And apparently it had little or no effect on things outside our own little spheres of existence because we never heard about it.
At any rate, if they were my kids I'd tell them not to be involved with internet music sharing, becuase it's illegal and they say it robs the artists.

I remember using cassette tapes to record music from radio stations way back when. So what is the difference in using cassette tapes to record music over the airwaves or to record music for a friend from my collection of records. Is is OK to record their music when its put out over the public airwaves vs music put out over the internet. I don't see a difference. And what about VCR's and TIVO? I downloaded thousands of songs back when NAPSTER was free, but now, I just go to Wal Mart, on- line, and pay 88 cents per song. Not that much new music that intrests me now anyway. If I were a person who made a living off selling music, I wrote or produced, I would be pissed off, but I'm not, so I really don't give a damn, and I don't like the way they go about screwing with those that steal from them. I know, twisted logic. Its just that way when it comes to music for some reason. If they were still putting out albums, with the great art work that many of them had back in the good old days, I think the average person would still buy the album just to be able to hold it in their hands. Many Albums also came with posters. I have hundreds of Albums and 45's worth more to me than thousands of digital CD's.