I hope everyone doesnt think that if you download song BAM!! Your SCREWED!! No, its not like that. Who actually cares beside the artist about it? Actually my brother who is in a band actually freely distributes his music. Why? Because he more than happy to know that people like his music and listen to it. Not like those greedy artists.

I believe artists should get their pay for performing, not by sitting at home. Singers from live shows, actors from movie theatre ticket sales, game creators from online advertising and P2P gaming (access to which should be paid, higher levels should be paid too).

CDs, DVDs should never be sold at such ridiculous prices – but at cost price. No profit, no loss. Only then will this wanton culture of celebrities and hyper fandom drop to believable levels.
Let them really earn their lifestyle, then we’ll see some real talent shine through.

Just an idea.

Like ken said – we can listen to music free on the radio – whats the difference? it does my head in to be honest. yeh sure its only 79c to download a song.. i currently have nearly 10,000 songs on my itunes, which would have cost me nearly £7,900 if i’d have bought it. i LOVE music, and would not be without it. therefore, will not pay for it!!

What we’re doing is unlawful reproduction. They don’t lose money because I download. If I stole a cd, they wouldn’t be able to sell it; they would then lose money. That’s theft. If I download a song (or entire cd) they still have just as many songs and cds that they can sell and thus have lost no money.

I download music because I didn’t have the money to legally purchase it at the prices they put this stuff out. So, really, they don’t lose any money from my downloading because I wasn’t going to buy the damn song anyway. Whether I downloaded it or not, they wouldn’t get money. Considering the falling costs of music production hardware and software, maybe music companies and artists should think about reducing their fees and pass that on to consumers. Then we would buy their shrink wrapped, mass produced crap.

On the other hand, as it stands now, I have a much larger income than I had in the past so I purchase more than I download illegally. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop completely. Illegal downloads are leading to more purchases from me so they should really be thanking the file sharing community. Anyway, that’s my take.

I use tunneling software/multi redundant ip cloaking(my own version invention) I have a cisco pix hard firewall and a Sonicwall, and im hubbed out around the usa and i have hubs in other countryies (one of the benefits of being a network test developer-the other countries don’t even know about my hubs!!) I have been doing this since the dawn of DRM/cd copy protection/since downloading was doable and i don’t thing im going to get caught-I invite riaa/mpaa/drm idiots to try and take me down-i sell and trade more music in a day than they do in a year-i think i’ll keep doing it forever and send them an email or 500 from paraguay about how they are SO SLOW AT FINDING EVEN ONE OF MY HUBS!!! I GOT HUNDREDS to “spawn from”

Thank you and good night
NO NAME Illegal downloading god

I normally don’t brag about this-but i had to finally announce that i’ve been around in the backround all along-watching listening, learning, This will be the only time you hear from me…………………..

SCREW RIAA
SCREW MPAA
SCREW DRM
SCREW CD-COPY PROTECTION/VIDEO PROTECTION-I broke macrovision-encoding on vhs-tapes in an hour in 1991 and i was a kid……….

So, which is it?

This article does not explain the big picture.

The music industry is going to target consumers who are using the most popular methods of distribution. It is the path of least resistance for them. The methods that provide the most transparency will be the most risky. Its much easier to investigate file-sharers on Kazaa because anyone on Kazaa can know what you are doing.

The solution is to find a method that is lesser known and less popular, but still has the selection you want. One way I have found is IRC chat rooms. There are traders on IRC who have enormous libraries, and are willing to send mp3s for free. The software behind the exchanges is robust enough to allow for searching and batch downloading as well. Also, the RIAA targets those who provide the files you are downloading, not the one doing the downloading. IRC allows you to place the risk squarely on the distributors. Bitorrent does NOT provide this protection. Torrent downloaders are involved in the uploading process as well. The only way around this is by hacking the actual torrent software, and this is a good way to become unpopular quickly. If you are on a private torrent network, then congratulations, but the RIAA has been working to infiltrate these groups as well.

Here is a quick tutorial on mp3 file sharing on IRC:
http://www.mp3daze.com/findmp3irc.htm

Another risk free method was mentioned in the article, however it is not nearly as hard to do as the article would have you believe. It involves doing Google searches for mp3s. It is possible to practically automate the process with Firefox.

Here is a quick tutorial on how to use Google to download MP3s:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRv953XZX6Y

Lastly, the RIAA will not target downloaders who share music outside of thier own labels. The RIAA is a dynamic, every changing entity. Labels come and go. http://www.riaaradar.com/ is a resource that keeps track of what tracks are protected by the RIAA. You can search riaaradar.com’s database for a song. If it comes up clean, you can download from anywhere without risk of litigation. Just be wary of compilations and discographies. Batches of files (i.e. most music torrents) will contain both RIAA label and non-label tracks. Downloading these is still risky. Musicians often times use multiple labels so one album in their discography might be safe, whereas others may not. Be thorough when you investigate.

Alternatively, you could join one of the thousands of online forums that share files via free file sharing sites. The file might be called “rhcpam.rar” and inside it’s a zipped folder of Red Hod Chilli Pepper’s albums.