by TWilliam » Fri 18 Apr 2008, 12:47:24
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('FoolYap', 'P')eople who rail against the Evil Big Corporations Who Rip Off The Artists, as an excuse to justify their thefts, make me puke. "Look at me, I'm some kind of Robin Hood!" Uh huh, riiiiight.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, of the many thousands of dollars that the RIAA and the MPAA have managed to extract from file sharers so far,
not one penny has gone to any artists. It has
all gone to RIAA and MPAA lawyers. I think we can see who it is that are the
real thieves here.
Many artists actually endorse sharing (except for those who are about the money more than the art), because it increases their exposure. In fact, there has been at least
one study that has shown that sharing often
increases sales, ostensibly because it offers an opportunity for people to hear music they might otherwise not be exposed to. I can vouch for this personally, and I've also heard the same from people I've known who download.
The bottom line is that the industry whiners screamed bloody murder when recordable cassettes came along, insisting it would 'destroy the industry'. Well, it didn't. And they sang the same refrain with recordable disc media. Again it didn't. And neither will file sharing.
EFF estimates over
60 million people in the U.S. alone have used file sharing services, despite industry lawsuits against more than 20,000 individuals and numerous P2P providers, and they expect that number to continue growing for the foreseeable future.
This is what the public wants, and it's
not going away, so get over your misguided holier-than-thou proselytizing. If you're
really concerned about 'starving artists', then find ways to support those who are working to create a viable means of compensating them
directly for shared music (which is the
real reason the industry fat cats are worried about P2P).
"It means buckle your seatbelt, Dorothy, because Kansas? Is goin' bye-bye... "