o.o can someone please point out the laws behind this? Less than 10 years ago; there were no laws, or anything of that nature for this stuff. It seems to me that its only "guidelines" set by the RIAA and MPAA; and prior to that !@#$%, the fines were for the distributors of said item, not the receivers.
I assume it would be the same laws that they have for any other kind of stealing. There might be more but it's not really necessary. If someone broke into a store and stole all the CDs, then gave them to you and you accepted them, knowing that they were stollen, you'd still be breaking some law. It doesn't make sense for it to be any different just because it's files and not a hard copy
At least with iTunes the artist is still making some money, but with piracy he isn't.
Piracy > CDs > iTunes in the long term. Piracy will kill of record companies, and removing them is the only way for artists to actually make any money. Pirate your music, then send a check for $20 to the artist. Seriously.
That makes quite a bit of sense.
I think cash would probably be better. Sending your name to someone when you are trying to make up for doing something illegal just seems like a bad idea.
lol, true. but then you'd risk someone else taking the $20 bill before it even got to the artist. it's more about making sure the artist gets the money (instead of the record company) than making up for something illegal
and I don't agree with this... you need to look at it from the record company's point of view. you act as if it's wrong for the record company to profit from the artist's work, but don't you realize that it was the artist who made the deal with them? it's not like the record company is illegally profitting from someone else's work. the artist could have chosen to distribute his own music online for free (then no money would go to the record company), but he didn't. why should you steal from the record company because you don't like the decision the artist made?
and why do you think he didn't choose to do that? it's because the record company isn't always bad for the artist. having a deal with the record company usually helps to make the artist more well-known, so he's able to have more concerts and make more money that way. if he wasn't interested in concerts and just wanted to make money from CDs then he could sell them himself, but in that case he wouldn't be making a deal with any record company so it's irrelevant.