[CLUE-Talk] Hatch Takes Aim at Illegal Downloading

[Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

On Wed, 2003-06-18 at 08:12, black at galaxy.silvren.com wrote:
> I saw that yesterday and it struck me as well.
> 
> Why is it that common sense seems to evaporate whenever congressman and
> associated lawmakers talk about the Internet? Why do they have to put the
> words "e-" and "cyber" in front of every concept and term dealing with
> computers and the Internet?

Largely because they don't understand computers or the concepts behind
them. 

> *lots of hand wringing*
> 
> This appears to be totally absurd. Maybe someone who agrees with this
> logic can step forward and explain it to me. We already have laws that
> make this illegal - adding property destruction to them doesn't seem very
> effectual or necessary.

I'd be shocked if there's someone on this list who agrees with Hatch's
line of thinking... 

I don't agree with the whole file-sharing thing either when it comes to
"sharing" MP3s and movies illegally, but I don't believe that killing
off the ability to copy MP3s for legitimate use or killing someone's
computer is the answer. They actually have a very smart solution that
they could be using, but they're not -- flooding P2P networks with bogus
files that appear to be the music they don't want to see traded. It
doesn't harm anyone except the people who are trying to grab files
illegally while allowing the legitimate users of P2P networks to trade
files that aren't restricted. 

Interesting side note -- the music industry would have you believe that
Kazaa and other networks are used primarily for music -- but surveys of
users on Kazaa and such have shown that the primary draw is porn. If
anyone has a legitimate beef against P2P networks, it's probably the
people who produce porn -- but you don't see Hatch and his cronies
jumping up to defend the IP rights of the pornographers, now do you?

What really burns me is that the music industry absolutely refuses to
address the real problem -- CDs are priced far too damn high for what
they are. The music industry is not delivering what people want at a
fair price -- that's the problem, but they won't admit it. I'm a music
junkie, (800+ CDs so far...) but I very rarely buy CDs at full price
because I feel like I'm getting screwed over. 

I don't use file sharing, though -- I buy most of my music off of
SecondSpin.com -- and you'd better believe that the second-hand music
business will be killed off PDQ if the entertainment industry gets the
DRM features they want. (Some "artists" have already tried to stifle the
sales of used CDs by trying to refuse to sell new product to operations
that sell used and new CDs. This was a big deal in the mid-90s, with
Garth Brooks leading the charge. Thankfully, it fell flat.) 

The real shame of it is that the greed of the record companies is
actually keeping everyone involved from making MORE money... If they'd
drop the prices on CDs, I'd be willing to bet they'd actually be able to
sell more CDs and make more money -- less per individual CD, but more
money overall. I could also go on a rant about the wasted money spent on
payola to companies like Clear Channel...but I won't. 

Take care,

Zonker
-- 
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier
jzb at dissociatedpress.net
Aim: zonkerjoe
http://www.dissociatedpress.net