I can't believe this cr*p!!!

[Tomas]

While I dont agree with tarrgetting students who have less money than most, they really have no excuse and have been caught out. They should use bittorrents, much harder to be traced though still not impossible.

Hard to track?? All ips are available to anyone! You can easily see the ips in a bittorrent program like azureus. Dont see how it can get easier than that.

[Tomas]

I am sadly one of these nasty criminals, even though i dont really download music. I myself download tv series, but this is not because i want to break the law, but it is because i am forced by the tv industry to get my tv series the illegal way.
I myself am a fan of science fiction, but sadly the only science fiction show on norwegian tv right now, is the first or second season of battlestar galactica. Firefly did never air, star trek enterprise did never air. star trek DS9 did never air, stargate sg1 or atlantis did never air and the list goes on.. There is also no legal movie/tv on demand service for us norwegians, due to the fact that the tv industry refuse to distribute these series to anyone outside of USA. Itunes video store is not available, bittorrent.com on demand service is not available, xbox 360 video marketplace has only a handfull of old movie trailers and not a single full tv show.

Downloading shows like buffy, firefly + more actually made me buy the dvd sets and even got me to buy the ticket at the theatre for serentiy the sequel of firefly show. If it was not for me downloading, then i would never have discovered these excellent shows and thus they would have actually lost money.

I would happily pay a few bucks to download a tv episode or pay a monthly subscription fee.
But i dont go buy a whole dvd set without having watched at least a few eps to judge whether or not the serie is for me. Not that the dvd sets are available before years after it ran on US television anyways..

[Tomas]

most record companies make pennies per cd the only reason they have large of money is because they sell millions of cds. if you have millions of people downloading music they lose the millions of pennies.

You got it completely wrong! It is the artists that make pennies per cd while the record company take most of the share.

[Tomas]

people miss the point though here if do not hold the copyright you have no right to copy even if for no profit. whoever hold the copyright holds all power to how the song is used.

That is true for USA, but many European countries have a law called fair usage, which covers backup copies for personal usage and even copies for your close friends and families and all of this is entirely legal even though the music industry want to brainwash your otherwise. It is also legal to circumvent drm to lets say play back your legally bought music on lets say your mp3 player or play back your dvd on for example linux or amiga.
It is by the way NOT legal here to put drm on audio cds without placing a warning on the cover and your entitled full refund if you bought a DRM enabled album without this warning.

[Tomas]

And if anyone wants to comment about how the publishers get all the money anyway, ask yourself who'd publish them if they didn't? Without the publishers getting their cash the band would make no money at all, as they'd HAVE no publisher.

I bet you also think it is good how RIAA treats indepedants artists? Like how they want internet radio stations to pay them royalities even if they play their own made music or music from indepedants artists who actually wanted their music to be streamed for free.

And like i said, it is not always easy to get the music you want from the average record shop and music sold on itunes and similar is bogged down with DRM that goes completely against the fair usage bill. Our government is actually trying to ban DRM.

In the napster days i downloaded music and actually got to know some artists that i would never have known about otherwise, since that band was simply not marketted in my country. I ended up buying their albums, because i liked it and wanted to support them.

RIAA does not do anything good for music at all! They only help the big mainstream artists and themself while they hurt the smaller artists who are not mainstream and thus less innovation. Radio stations also these days only play mainstream music thanks to these idiots.

[Tomas]

It ticks me off that kids are getting busted for downloading music tracks when I've got a bunch of people in my town center every weekend selling pirate DVDs in public and they never get arrested.

This really pisses me off as well. They do nothing about those who actually profit on selling piracy, but instead go after the average joe who does not earn profit and mainly does it from his/her love for music.

The fact is that everyone downloads music, including people in law enforcment, teachers, artists themself and even the average politician.
Basically the majority of the population is a criminal and should all serve years in jail according to these minority. The proposed jail time in usa, is actually higher punishment than what you get for lets say raping someone. It just does not make sense!