file shareing law fair/unfair?

[a_Guest03]

I think prosecuting for theft is fair. Do I think that charging $20,000 per download is fair? No.

Online music piracy is theft, pure and simple. Everyone who does it knows it. Have I stolen music? Sure. Have I taken a five-finger discount in a store? Sure. I didn't get caught, and I thought I was immune. Nobody ever caught me stealing when I was a kid. Nobody ever caught my friends stealing. If they had, we faced: juvie, expulsion (theft from school), fines, parental punishment. These are heavy punishments for a kid. Do you think you'll get caught, and thus suffer these punishments? Not really.

Stealing online is the same way. The lunchlady is NEVER facing you, and everybody is stealing. She can't catch everyone. The problem, guys, is that they now have hundreds of lunch ladies catching everyone they can. They petitioned the government to increase the punishments, and now that they've done that, they are catching every thief they know how to catch. The government will screw every thief to the floor and smack them with rubber fish and bamboo poles.

The RIAA made some intelligent moves in terms of punishment, but alienated their fan base. We have wants, and they have gone ignored and rejected for too long. I want to sample music. I want to buy only what I want and/or need. If an artist comes up with a clever series of songs, I want just the clever series in that order. I don't want to pay $20 per CD. I don't want to pay $12 per CD.

The movie industry solved this problem by allowing rentals, and that soothes my need for seeing a movie. Rather than paying $8 X 2 for a movie for me and my girlfriend, we can watch a movie for $3.59, and watch it multiple times until my 5 days are up. This isn't as good as owning it, but it gives me an out. I have an option to have a movie with the perks of great sound and massive screen, or a movie in my dingy living room with 2 dogs sitting on the couch. Movies are still stolen, but I'd rather watch it on TV than steal it. It's too much hassle to download that much crap for such awful quality.

The recording industry could learn much from this. Online jukeboxes at 2