I have simpathy for both the ISP....and the IFPI.

If you do block a site, a new one will be born, that's the wrong way of solving it...however i have no idea on how to solve it.

Obviously pbay isn't right either, in fact, their arguments are just retarded.

Just as retarded as it's saying "i wanted to hear first before buying" or whatever crap (complaining about prices etc).

There's no such thing as "check if it's good" on real life, someone has to pay something, somewhere.

Nobody will do it for free on all the levels required for the content to reach the user and then the user decide if it's good or not.
The old (and retarded) argument of "i already had bought it and wanted to save on the new pc" isn't of much help either, unless a few hundred million people loses at least one CD on a daily basis.

uhm....didn't you went into the restaurant and smell something is good and you wanted to order it too? This part is no cost to you, but later if you paid for the food and still think it is bad cooked, what next? Will the store owner charge you for "sampling" the smell or you will ask for a refund on the part you ate?

I disagree with your try before you buy comment, I think you generalized that comment too much. There are many companies that allow you to demo something before you purchase it. Valve software does it with every one of its games at the time of release. Last I checked they were doing ok for themselves.

Oh and I guess someone that might want to play a game on their laptop, that they purchased legally, should have to lug around every single disk for every game they might want to play with them.

Do I disagree that we not combating this problem correctly, no. Oh and yes I know that most of the downloads going on are illegal. My point is though that a lot of these companies brought this upon themselves. Do you have any idea how bad the DRM was on Spore? Then look at the Sims 3 NO DRM! And it is EA's biggest PC seller to date...

.gi khi 06/18/2009 9:31 PM Hide Insert quote.
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--1+ .uhm....didn't you went into the restaurant and smell something is good and you wanted to order it too? This part is no cost to you, but later if you paid for the food and still think it is bad cooked, what next? Will the store owner charge you for "sampling" the smell or you will ask for a refund on the part you ate?

WHAT?!?

Spore was hyped, SIMs has a loyal fanbase and as it gets better, gets more fans and keep the old ones.

Perhaps there should be some kind of centralized (across all companies) form of login where you can manage your rightfully owned stuff.

Obviously try before buy is great, i have purchased games only to play 3 minutes and throw away their crappy CD, some never even worked.

That however does not involve listening to the WHOLE music or playing the WHOLE game.

Almost every label (if not all) has a site for their artist and on their site they have the 30 seconds samples of each music.
There are 3rd pary sites that do that too.

Most (if not all) games have a demo version.

So 99% of the time the "i want to try before buy" argument is used, it's trash...

The only real problem i really see is the management of keys and the stupid stuff that require CD to run (almost gone these days)...anyways, there are a few simple problems to be solved, but they require so much cooperation between companies and so much effort tthat we may never see it (e.g. "uniquely identifying" each one safely, requiring perhaps some form of document which varies by country etc), unless it's done by someone massively giant such as google.

You can smell as much as you want (30 second sample clips, demo versions of games)...you can't eat everything and then decide later on if it was worth or not.
The developers do not work that way, the company does not work that way, NOTHING works that way.

I am not condoning Pirate's Bay (not condemning either)- to each his/her own (trying to be neutral)- I do like someone accusing the IFPI as a monopoly though. Now we just need someone to accuse the RIAA of such a thing.

To whoever said trying before buying doesn't exist in real life, when's the last time you went to a store (K-Mart, Target, Best Buy, etc.) that didn't have a 30 day, full refund policy for everything that isn't video games/music/dvds?

"We do not wish to censor the Internet but we do want the possibility to make a living on what we create."

what it really means:

"We don't know what the public REALLY wants or how to deliver it to them properly so we're going to sue the shit out of everyone, spending more on lawsuits and lawyers than we'd ever actually 'lose', and we all know that there is no way to quantify POTENTIAL profits, so we will just sue them for what we'd charge multiplied by how many times we know it was downloaded even though it's an astronomical amount of money and the sales numbers would be unprecedented in the industry... ever"

you're welcome for the translation of all these useless law suits.

i missed a **most** in there at the end.

We can retranslate that to pirate language too:

"Since you don't know how much you're losing and i MIGHT (but will almost never) buy it anyways, i'll keep downloading it. You're not losing as i'm not going to buy it anyways...just entertain me for free.
If i'm short on cash...i'm sure you'll excuse me, i have bought that one $9.99 software...i think i can download this $900 software now for free.
But iff i'm doing ok on the bank account...i may as well buy one of the products after complaining about pricing and having downloaded and used a dozen of others...maybe i'll buy Photoshop after using for free DreamWeaver, Illustrator and the whole suite. Maybe i'll complain about the price and won't. You evil corporation...charging whatever you want for the product YOU develop.".

If folks get really angry at RIAA,etc. then why don't they do the same as I do.
1.I buy no large label music products
2.i buy no music form artists who sign with RIAA
3.i only support and buy that is small label and local music.there are a ton of music from artists like myself who will never sign with the shysters so do not think that there is no good music unless it comes from a large label.
4.i buy very little new movies
5.when i do buy movies i buy em used so the shysters won't make profit off me.

when will we ever have a international boycott where you get millions upon millions of folks going on as buying boycott against shyster studios who are quick to rip us off.

the point is its not the ISP's fualt what people are doing on the internet. Its alot like sueing the eletric company becuase someone is stealing TVs.

arrrrr me maties! /pirate

For all those people here that believe the record companies are robbing the consumer blind think again. All new artist get a multi-album contract that pretty much says that the record company gets their money back first and then the artist gets their money. So this leads to...

If the artist's first album does not do well enough to cover all the costs of production, marketing, and distribution of said album, the artist will not make any money on that album; and any costs not recouped from the first album will be recouped from the sales of a second album... and so on.

Also, the artist does not get paid until everyone else, managers, agents, lawyers, promoters, songwriters, and producers, get paid. This will come out of the money after the record company gets theirs first.

So, in the end a new artist might make $0.10/sale if the album is a hit, i.e platinum or better sales. He or she will make nothing if no one buys the album.

And my second conclusion is, that YOU are not being screwed by the record company the artist is.

So if you like an artist that has a large record company behind them, buy their music and don't download it for free.

In order for me to get a refund I would first have to do what? And most stores don't accept blanket refunds for opened items, most stores charge a 15% restocking fee.

And who illegally downloads a song, decides they like it, and then goes onto iTunes and purchases that same song? Same thing goes for movies and software. The whole "try before you buy" doesn't make any sense. It might spur FUTURE sales but you still got that first item for free. Nothing is free.

What annoys me about the RIAA etc is that they aren't moving with the times. If I was them I'd look at how and what people are downloading illegally and adjust the product distribution to suit peoples habits. People are more likely to buy something if it's what they want. People don't want to buy a cd with 12 tracks when they only like 1 track on the disk. iTunes is reviled by as many ppl as those who love it. People don't want their media to destroy their computer should they decide to play it on such a device. I fail to see why movies and music haven't come up with their own distribution method for the 21st century. Its almost like they're taking a page from the motor industry where they just do what they want and everyone is sposed to pay them for whatever crap they come up with.

I can't tell you how many albums I've found on utorrent in 192kbps or better; there's even FLAC and WAV on there as opposed to the rubbish 128kbps record companies/distributors expect you to pay for.

Also has anyone else ever tried looking for "hard to find" artists? Faye Wong has sold tens of millions of albums and I can't find all the songs I like at a good enough quality for the life of me. So the best I can do is a torrent (of every song she's made, mind you) at 320kbps. Can I buy her CD's easily? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

How about a

"suck my balls" instead?

Boy there sure are a lot of people from the riaa posting on this one!

If the IFPI cant make a iving out of what they do, how come they can
a) Afford to pay employees
b) Afford to stay afloat
c) Afford mega law suits
That too in the time of economic meltdown....

I believe there is something called a live show?
Iron Maiden have sold 14 Million records. They do 200+ concerts a year. They also hold the record for the largest number of concerts in a year-295(World Slavery Tour, 1985). You can say the promoters, venue owners , record companies etc get max moolah. If
a) 1000 people watch each concert (the average Maiden concert has 50K, the record was 250K in Brazil, lowest 20K in India)
b) each pays USD 20
c)The band does 100 concerts a year(The bare minimum the band is expected to do if they want to get rich)
d) That makes USD 2 million
e) Assuming the band only gets 10% of the money. Thats USD 200000. If an artist "cant make a living" on that, then he/she is a greedy hog.

Government and special interest groups just trying to gain total control and/or push their own ideas and views on others. Here in America it seems to be everywhere. All of you over in Europe and elsewhere...Watch it!

+1

This is the key that everyone is missing. The traditional distribution model is severely outdated and inefficient. Artists make peanuts off of CD sales anyways which is why you never hear the actual artists complain but the distributors instead. The industry needs to harness this new distribution model (which the community is fronting the cost for) and use it to their advantage instead of trying to label everyone as criminals. Do you think people would bother pirating a game that's free with ads injected in it? I'm sure there would be a community dedicated to removing the ads but I guarantee you it will be nowhere near as big as the current pirating community is. Imagine the next NHL 2K10 game that has 3 minute commercial breaks in between periods during online matches. If I can watch a real NHL hockey game for FREE on TV I should also be able to play one as well using the same revenue model but no one wants to change this because its a big endeavor. The technology is there, the advertising potential is there, the comfort isn't because its untested. This is the same hesitation you're seeing in the auto-industry. People know there is a need to change our traditional sources of fuel used for transportation but nobody wants to step too far into new territory, they'd rather stay with something familiar and only change if absolutely forced to (like they have been lately).

Concerts and theaters are making MORE money today than they were before. The Video Game industry continues to grow and has every single year DESPITE an increase in piracy. Artists aren't starving and they're not finding it hard to make a living, distributors are because they continue to rely on an inefficient model that costs the consumer more than it should.

At the end of the day, I guarantee you will not find a single person who LOVES an artist and only owns a pirated copy of their work. People who truly appreciate an artist will buy their work. No one who claims to LOVE "The Dark Knight" hasn't bought the actual DVD or BluRay. People who pirate (copy) material aren't interested in paying $20 for it, the industry needs to figure out a way to get $1 out of them (or even better, out of an advertiser) by giving them another delivery channel which IS there, they're just not using it.

Think about how many people come to Tom's to read because its FREE. How many would still come to Tom's if it was subscription based? Would it be reasonable for Tom's to say they're 'Losing' money on all those people who are getting they're information from other free presses? Of course not, they'd tell Tom's to be free and rake in the extra revenue they'd get from advertising vs the subscription fees. Evolve.

since when is anyone guaranteed a right to make money on anything? wasn't there a time that, if you made a product and couldn't get anyone to pay you for it, that you made something else or got into another line of work. wot i hear from the proponents of the music cartels is that they're not making a killing from records because there's no way of knowing wot the consumer will like till they've invested lots of money into production. how is this our problem? they choose to invest into something that they already know may or may not make them their money back. if the artist can drum up enough attention themselves, why should we be forced to pay the record companies anyway by way of bulk royalties on recording equipment and various other tariffs they place on things that may be used to replicate their awful products? it's insane to think that people can be convinced that anyone should have to be paid simply because they made an effort to produce something. the idea that people should be protected and laws drawn up to ensure they make money from everything they 'produce' is rather dubious. i'm a computer tech and there are no laws that ensure i have a job simply because i made an effort to educate myself in the field. if i can't find work or if people find my work subpar... i suffer and i have the decision to move to a different career or do better work. i don't sue employers because they're not paying me for the career i chose.

No. You can't.

viva la pirateria...!!

IFPI and RIIA.. big money pig's fuck'em... live freedom.. support regional artist and low price, and good music, no pay for one famous song or movies garbage..

no more money for big pigs!

Sadly enough, the amount of money a company makes or looses is more important then the rights of the people. GAH!!!!!!!!!!!! But, if there are a few honest judges out there, they should realize that the IFPI is NOT above the law... in fact no company or government is. Let them burn

Unfortunately this comes back to bite those of us that do. The reason being now they ARE actually losing sales. So their numbers do now reflect a drop in sales, and when they misinterpret these numbers and attribute the drop in sales to pirating or whatever else they WANT to blame it does make for a more convincing argument.

Eventually things will change to the point that they will be forced to choose a new distribution method or financing method. As more and more people realize that the RIAA's numbers/theories are flawed and decide to stop feeding the beast... well that's the only way to solve this 'problem'. The question is, will it happen soon enough? Or will it not change until our kids are old and its too late?

I'm glad I live in a free country Although I don't really use pirate bay.

Why is it that every person that speaks even the slightest bit negative about piracy gets downrated here?