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A. No they don't earn enough.

B. Nor do a lot of the other people involved in that line of work, as they are going out of business all the time.

C. There is a principle here. You don't have a technical right to that music. The value of an item is PURELY based on how much people are prepared to pay for it- that is basic economics. And people are clearly prepared to pay for them at their current price.

Now, obviously this sort of thing isn't exactly the greatest crime in the world and everyone does a certain amount of this sort of thing, but there is no real point in trying to justify it.

I'm with Ush, it is wrong to download music with out paying for it. But that's not stoping me, I do it anyways. But when it comes to bands I like, I will buy the CD's, the quality is a little better and you should support the artists. I just recently bought a program that allows me to burn my MP3's on to CD's. It's really great! Now I can listen to them in the car and all that other good stuff.

Isn't it illegal to do MP3's now? Or wait, it's not if you pay a monthly fee, right?

I don't think it should be a crime. You can copy VHS tapes, as long as you don't make a profit showing what you recorded. The same should be for music, I think.

I download all the free music I can get my hands on. I'm a poor college student who can't afford to go buy all the CD's I want, just the important one's, like Oasis, U2 and Flickerstick. There is a site out there better than Napster, its www.kazaa.com

JediOasis-

bUT ARN'T ALL THESE nAPSTER KNOCK OFFS ILLEGAL? i THINK THEY ARE (NOT THAT IT MATTERS)

i download one or two songs from an album to see if it's any good, then if it is i buy it. takes too much time for me to download a whole album, and it's better to get it with the real cover and everything.

tHERE'S A BAND CALLED 'weezer' tHEY PLAY SOME PRETTY COOL TUNES. i SUGGEST YOU CHECK IT OUT.

CD prizes are ridiculously high. And the music companies make shitloads of money. Lower the CD prizes and illegal CD's will go down. I am certain of it.
Of course, as a Dutchman this is a sensitive are for me. Not so much because we're cheap, but for almost 15 years we had the highest average spending on CD's in all the world. Prizes were almost double from the old LP's then, prizes have never gone down, only up. We pay $20 for a CD now! Only England is worse. Pure rip-off, even if you order and LP now it's still almost half the prize.

So Internet generates a sense of true democracy, power no longer lies in the hands of large music companies.

Oh, I don't do it myself, I want to have the original. Just a weird thing I have, but I have no love for these companies. I have nothing against it.

I pay 19$ for a CD! It's rediculous!

The average for new CD's here is about $20, then after 6 months they usually fall to inbetween $13.99-$17.99. Now they are making music DVD's which will eventually blow CD's out of the water. That's when the prices will go down!

I saw on the news that Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) are asking permission to hack PRIVATE pc to look for "illegally" downloaded mp3`s and then delete them but they wont take responsibility for damages done to the pc`s.
They are trying to get this through Deterrence and Prevention of Cyberterrorism act which is allegedly debated on "The Hill" these days.
Things that make you go hmmmmmmm

That old 'faceless corporations ripping off punters' philosophy espoused by quieeq there is old-hat myth; very 80s. Publishing in all mediums is a hugh risk-area; people think film makers are secure but a ludicrous amount of them go out of business; itonly takes one bad film for that to happed (look at United Artists), then someone ELSE buys them, keeps the name and the whole darn thing starts over agaun.

Besides, I will repeat. It is a basic rule of economics that you sell something at the price people are prepared to pay for it. That is the ONLY measure of something's worth- how much people are willing to pay.

Governments can subsidise (i.e. make cheaper) products for the opublic good (which is why VAT on heating in the Uk is a VERY dubious idea because that is the exact opposite), but music is nothing other than a lucury good and you should pay market for it.

And the music companies aren't stupid; if lowering prices would reduce piracy to the point where they would get their moiney back they would do it. But they don't. How come pirates always argue that if prices were lower they would not do it, but ALWAYS ignore the fact that if they did not do it then prices would be lower?

Like I say, I won;t criticise anyone for light piracy but it is a waste of time trying to justify it, doubly so as some sort of strike against 'selfish' companies; when you pirate something it is easy to see who the selfish one is. It's a trait we all share; no point denying it.

United Artists? What movies did they make?

Well, in a way they still make them (though as I indicated aboe, it has the same name but its not the same people)

They were bakrupted by ONE bad movie- Heaven's Gate. And they were one of the biggest, too.

It's not always that drastic but there is always this odd perception that these people are far more secure than they actaully are.

I don't know that one...
MP3's are ok; but it's wrong...

Not many people have seen Heaven's Gate. That's part of the reason it bankrupted them!

It is not the Mp3 in itself that is wrong, it is the downloading of Mp3`s. Mp3 makes it possible to copy your own cd`s to the pc, very much the same deal as with video recordings. But when they(Mp3`s) are laid out on the net for others to copy them it becomes illegal.