Interesting article. For me, morally as well as legally, one should obtain music in a way that at least has the potential to provide the writers and performers of the music with money unless they specifically choose to give the music away. That could be through direct payment for the music or it could be by consuming the music through a service where advertising revenue is fed back to the producers of the music or any other such arrangement as someone can devise.
I also don't think that obligation goes away if we happen to know the commercial arrangement between a particular artist and their record company and think the record company is being greedy. The article makes mention of the supply of technology and services to enable music to be pirated and it is perhaps worth noting that the supply of these is subject to competition which tends to work in favour of the consumer compared to the supply being a monopoly. By contrast whoever holds the rights to a creative work has an effective monopoly. The same song has not been written by anyone else nor the same movie produced by anyone else. Here in the UK the rights to televise some football matches have been auctioned for a ridiculous sum of money which the companies concerned expect to recover from their subscribers because they know many of them would never refuse to pay and do without the content concerned, yet that is the correct response when we, as consumers, do not find the terms offers by the rights owners acceptable. Finally we come to the analogy of the neighbourhood called "The Net" and its lack of police force. This analogy is clearly designed to lead us to the conclusion that extra laws that restrict the rights of citizens or allow them to acted against as if guilty when guilt has not been established are as natural as putting in the missing police force. Here I must wholeheartedly disagree. Principles such as innocent until proven guilty and the freedom of people to go about their business without undue interference are more important than the problems of the rights owners and should not be eroded. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fozzy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=8592 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=95541 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
