They are trying to make it illegal to upload files to file sharing network. Spread the word please and talk to your congress person.

http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,59654,00.html

i would just like to take this opportunty to tell everyone to support thier local univeristy radio station...if it doesn't suck. and if yours sucks, support mine.

www.wmucradio.com

It's no secret that the RIAA wants to stop all this music piracy to "protect the musicians who create the music". Which is just a bunch of horse-manure, they don't give a crap about the musicians. They only care for their money grubbing selves.

And my whole family feels the same way. If I could sk8guitar, I would support the local University Radio Station... If I knew if my university has one.

That's bull ish, Im a muscian (pop/R&B) and, it actually
helps when some of your mp3's get spread around.
people know the name, then come to your conerts, or want more
give like 3 mp3s to dl and then have the rest on your cd .

people will want more.

The industry are money hungry F''ers
That's why Indie record labels are getting the good artist now.
look how many people know adays are on Idie labels who are
mainstream artist.

it says they are targeting p2p networks, do the binary newsgroups fall under that as well?

Well, it is illegal. Downloading an album off the internet means you got it for free instead of paying for it, which is stealing. The musicians who make the music dont owe you anything... even if they're insanely rich from making thier music, it's what they do.

You wouldnt expect to work and not get paid, and neither should they.

it's not stealing, or rape or murder or speeding.
it's closer to trespassing, or peeping tom than stealing.
stealing involves a taking of physical property, in a way
that deprives the owner of the use of that property.
there's no taking that deprives the owner of use, you can
only argue that it lowers the value of that original "property".
but, there is no "right" to keep anyone from lowering the
value of your property. making noise, smells, or
blocking light is usually legal, but can easily lower the
value of your property. driving a gravel truck isn't
illegal, but just think of all the damaged windshields and
paint jobs from it.
then there is the issue of whether it is property. by law,
it isn't. it's just a right of control. that's why it's called
copyright, and not chattels or personal property. it's
not a real thing. it's an expression.
so, it's not property, and it wouldn't be stealing if it was.
it would be magic. you could make an infinite number
of copies of it without the owner even knowing.
i wish i could "steal" $100 dollar bills like that. if i
made copies of $100 bills on a color laser printer, you
would call it counterfeiting, not stealing.
copyright holders have the best of both worlds. they
call it stealing, cause that sounds worse than it is, and
they have much more serious fines and penalties
than stealing would have.
fine. call it stealing. but charge me with larceny if you
want to call it stealing. $1.70 a song. so if "stole"
50 songs, that's under $100. petty larceny. return of
the "property", and small fine.

One word....


Peerguardian.

You know something funny? Sometime ago, they've tried to make mp3 format illegal in Denmark. Indeed, it did not work... Just sit back and think about all peoples who owns an mp3 player complainning .

Their rights? What about our rights? How many songs a day does the radio shoot over the air waves? How many people have taken an album over to a friends house or for a party? How many people have *gasp* even taped a copy for them or let them tape one? And do we have stormtroopers setting our houses on fire because we have *blank tapes* with music *recorded* on them? And this is our World Party. My friends - my peers - are sharing tunes and my box is bopping. So what? But people freak at the idea of stormtroopers in their houses - yet not at stormtroopers frying computers IN their houses. My computer is just as much my castle as the roof that keeps rain off it.

Here's something I wrote to myself back when I was discovering p2p:

And all told, I download a song or two a day on average. Yep. Definitely
doing my part to destroy the music industry. Like they don't play about
200 songs a day on a given radio station, all of which I could tape
without having to hunt around for them and having my reception cut off
in the middle of the song. Dips***s.

I sent some Cramps mp3s I'd ripped from CDs I BOUGHT to [a friend] and
she went out and BOUGHT their new album. How terrible for
the industry suits. I say again: dips***s.

How many *new* CDs have I bought since I started downloading mp3s? One.
How many did I buy the year before, without downloading? One. Net loss
for the suits? 0%. Why so few either way, though? Because the f***ing
things cost TWENTY GODD**N DOLLARS A POP, maybe? Third time's the charm:
dips***s.

A 50 cent disc of shiny plastic selling for 20 bucks. And THEY call ME
the thief?

And how many have I bought this year? A couple - one of which I decided to get because a friend sent me some mp3s from it. And how many albums do I want to buy? Dozens. And how many can I find in the store? None. I could buy them from Amazon or whatever but I don't like online money transactions. And I could special order them but the record store always manages to screw up the order. And that's the key - I want to buy weird cool stuff and not Madonna and boy bands and whatever crap the industry wants me to buy. I want to buy stuff from *small INDEPENDENT* labels and not the big three labels. And with the net we can find out about the cool stuff and the little labels are on an even footing with the big ones and bands can sell music via their *OWN* websites without the RIAA and the big labels robbing them blind by signing them to a contract which puts them in *debt* for the first ten years of their recording career if it lasts that long. *THAT'S* what this is about - the big labels feel control slipping from their grasp and little labels and grass roots bands making them unnecessary. And to do this they pretend to be "protecting" the artists and sticking up for "intellectual property" and buy off senators to pass these ludicrous fascist bills - to protect their business. Only. Screw 'em. I support *music* and *musicians* by getting their music and spreading the word. Think the Dead were huge because of Arista or whoever? No - it was touring, touring, and bootlegging, bootlegging. Word of mouth and power to the people.

*cough* *drinks a lot of water*

Your just trying to rationalize what you know is wrong. I like music for free too but if I was making it I would want to get paid. Eventually the party will end & the internet will be ruined by laws & taxes & such.

trivia fact: record sales were higher than normal during time of napster and took a nose dive when napster closed.

If you had read it you would notice that they are trying to make it illegal to upload music. This doesn't just affect us (the end user) this is also a sly gambit to keep the musicians themselves from distributing the music how they want (remember weezer uploading their album for free downloading on their website?). This move alone shows what they care about and its not about putting money in the pockets of the artists. If you want to give artists your money go see their tour show. They make much more off that than they ever do off their album sales. To give a metaphor this would be similar to the MPAA trying to say it is illegal to talk about a movie after you saw it since it might slander their product and decline their sales.

Also with your line if reasoning it should be illegal to even tape/record a copy of the song of the radio since that would be "stealing". Ever had a friend copy a cd to tape for you? They consider that stealing too. As far as the RIAA is concerned you should have to buy multiple copies of a CD if you want to listen to it on more than one device but they can't do that...yet.

I'm not rationalizing anything. I'm saying the economic model for the music industry is a dinosaur ready to be killed by alternative means of distribution. The RIAA is that dinosaur, trying to trample on our privacy and freedom of association and integrity of *our* property to fight the destruction of their economic model. I'm saying that a cartel is paying off our politicians to pass bad laws to preserve their gravy train. Musicians are in it to make music and make money. If I upload or download a song I'm not preventing the making of music or of money, I'm giving them free advertising or submitting to free advertising. That ain't stealing crap, any more than I steal a song when I turn on a radio. The bands make their money from LIVE gigs and selling albums. An mp3 on a p2p network is an advertisement for a live gig or an album. And some bands know this and put up music on their own sites. And this p2p and websites and live gigs undercuts Sony and whatnot. The bands don't need any labels at all and if they do have a label a band can get just as much exposure whether they're on Epitaph or SubPop or Sony or WB. Because we upload what *we* like and download what *we* like and go buy what *we* like, no matter the label or what the rotation on MTV is (or isn't). What I want to know is how people rationalize support for a cartel buying off politicians and subjugating musicians to slavery and threatening to spy on and destroy computers while providing nothing themselves but spending some money advertising Madonna on MTV and living it up on a yacht in the Gulf of Mexico.

the whole idea of copyright is completely unnatural.
you have to be taught over and over that it is illegal.
something being right or wrong has little to do with
whether it is illegal or not. the general public doesn't
see anything wrong with downloading music, but they
know it's illegal.
don't bother telling people they know it's wrong. you
may as well tell gay people that they know what they
are doing is wrong, and they should just stop. or
tell black people that they don't have any business trying
to vote, cause they know it's wrong. a lot of times it's
the laws that are wrong.