re: Why is it ok to steal media?

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literally have 3 albums, 3 cassette tapes, 3 CDs..and a '3 CD collectible' of the same 3 disks as we speak. WTF i was a stupid a-hole

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Well, you were stupid to buy something repackaged, but let's take that example of you buying media in three forms. You paid, at most, $15 a pop for each, meaning you've paid $45. If we're going back to albums and cassettes, chances are high you're in your late 30s or early 40s. But let's say you've had these albums for 30 years. That means, you have shelled at $45 for 30 years of an album. You want a perpetual license to the music, transferable across all media for $10. $10 for a lifetime license to do anything you want with the recording, and you think it's unreasonable that RIAA opposes that? If you want a permanent license that you even argue is transferable to other people, you are asking for something more valuable than a $10 one time charge. Even the $45 you have spent comes down to about a $1.50 licensing fee per year, which may be a bit high, but not if you get the freedom to literally do whatever you want with the recording, including give it away for no fee.

Look, the record industry has screwed us for years, so I'm not exactly weeping tears for them. Remember when they drove prices of CD's to $18.99? Yeah, so do I. And they weren't above taking advantage of consumers and their artists, so I don't want to say I think the recording industry is either blameless or saintly. They're pretty rotten as well. But given a chance, consumers have screwed over artists a billion times worse than Warner Brothers ever could have dreamed of.

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all we're talking about is *QUALITY*. spotify gives you access to any song any time for free more or less..but if i want a copy in the format of MY choosing..that's wrong.

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Yes, i get it. You want both the highest in quality and unlimited rights, yet you don't want to pay for it. It is shocking that media distributors do not agree with your perfectly reasonable position that you get high quality recordings in high quantities, you retain all rights to transfer it to other people and other formats, and you pay next to nothing for it.

Indie bands literally made more money by pressing a record themselves and selling a hard copy by mail to maybe a 1000 people than by having half a million people download their material on the internet.

There is no incentive for bands to put their music online other than A) record companies force them and B) goodwill. Since you don't give them goodwill, artists really should pull all of their material off of iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, hell even CD's at this point. All of it. Just press an old fashioned record and at least you'd be able to make rent. There is no monetary incentive to innovate for artists. And they are beginning to figure that out, which is why some indie acts are pulling their catalogs from these services if they can wrest control from the record companies.

I don't think it's unreasonable that artists ask to get paid for their efforts. And now that they are literally making $20 a month off of half a million plays (split amongst the band!), they actually have an incentive to not put their material online.

musicians and writers are the only two professionals expected to give their work for free, and viewed as unreasonable assholes when A) they want to exert some control over their creation and B) to get paid a reasonable amount.

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same goes for DISH/Direct/Comcast TV's shitty DVR product. they promise the ability to record your favorite shows..yet due to a combination of rain fade or incorrect guides or football games that run long, many times you fail to get the product YOU HAVE ALREADY PAID FOR.

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And really, how often does this happen? I use a DVR, record a lot of shows, and I have only failed to get a recording a handful of times. Every DVR I'm aware of has a feature to allow you to record extra time in case of the football game going long. But you use this incredibly flimsy excuse as moral justification to download, for free, every show ever created at the highest possible quality.

And you have the gall to say its the industry's fault? You are just coming up with excuses to not pay for things.

And, look, I do agree that the policy of "embargoing" works is terrible and encourages people to find illegal/unethical ways to get the product. Remember when we didn't have every movie ever made on video or DVD? I grew up in an era of the "Lost Hitchcocks", when there were five films that you simply couldn't see. and not obscure titles, it was The Trouble With Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Rear Window, Rope and Vertigo.

We have more access than we've ever had before, and this is a good thing. The only way to see Apocalypse Now before VCR's was to wait until it was aired on TV.

But in this era of extreme access at remarkably high quality, I don't think it's crazy that people get paid for their work.