Randomness

[CX]

Trying to "scare off" music pirates will just piss a lot of them off and seeking such enormous fines will generate sympathy more than anything else. iTunes has the right idea - charging a fairly low price for each song, but they'll have to go cheaper to really make a difference. While a dollar a song sounds cheap, considering what CDs cost at say Best Buy or Walmart, there's no real encouragement to go the legal route when it costs just as much to do that as to buy an album, and it's still hard for downloaders to be caught.

[JadziaKathryn]

Yes, I for one would buy a lot more music on iTunes if songs were, say, .25 each.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

Hmm, ooookay...!

Horny rhino Jango falls in love with a car dumped in enclosure as sculpture exhibit

[Alelou]

Ah, poor rhino... he needs some sugar...

[CX]

Or a cold shower...

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

World record for most people dressed as Smurfs in Swansea

[Linda]

Well, I guess I never will cease to be surprised at what Humans will do for fun or what any species will do for sex.

[Aquarius]

While a dollar a song sounds cheap, considering what CDs cost at say Best Buy or Walmart, there's no real encouragement to go the legal route when it costs just as much to do that as to buy an album, and it's still hard for downloaders to be caught.

It's usually cheaper if you buy the whole cd at a time. Usually the going rate is $9.99 for a cd, so as long as there are more than 10 songs on it, it's a bargain.

If the cd you want is really that much cheaper at Wal-Mart, then it's no big to buy it and load it into iTunes yourself, and then you can turn around and sell it on Craig's List or your next garage sale or whatever.

[CX]

The excuse most downloaders use though is that they'd only want a few songs off of an album anyway, so selling it by the song online is a better idea that way, they just still charge too much.

[Aquarius]

*shrug* I dunno, I think 99 cents is fair. It's convenient, easy, and if all I want is one song, so what, I can usually find that much digging between the couch cushions. I think the "real" objection from the pirates is that they do, in fact, download massive amounts of music so if they had to actually pay for it, it would cost hundreds to thousands of dollars, so no matter what the legit companies are charging, these people are still going to consider it to be "too much."

[Linda]

I will be offline for a week at a campground in Missouri with my family selling dream catchers and beadwork. Be back June 22. Let the cat out, feed the dog, don't be on the phone too long, no parties with fifty of your closest friends, don't burn the house down. Be good till I get back...

[Asso]

I wait for you.

[CX]

*shrug* I dunno, I think 99 cents is fair. It's convenient, easy, and if all I want is one song, so what, I can usually find that much digging between the couch cushions. I think the "real" objection from the pirates is that they do, in fact, download massive amounts of music so if they had to actually pay for it, it would cost hundreds to thousands of dollars, so no matter what the legit companies are charging, these people are still going to consider it to be "too much."

99 cents is about how much an album would cost if you add them up, though. So they either have to go cheaper or set up something like a subscription service where you pay a monthly subscription fee or something.

[Aquarius]

Monthly subscriptions aren't the answer either. I haven't downloaded any music since November, so for me, this would end up more costly because if I want to download music, I now have to pay for something whether I'm using it or not.

[Elessar]

I will be offline for a week at a campground in Missouri with my family selling dream catchers and beadwork. Be back June 22. Let the cat out, feed the dog, don't be on the phone too long, no parties with fifty of your closest friends, don't burn the house down. Be good till I get back...

Where in Missouri!

In a lot of ways I think this conundrum (music piracy, intellectual property, etc) fits into an overall category of cultural geography that's being radically swept away by new technology. The other day I was talking to my mom about how everything is cheaper on the Barnes & Noble Online store from the B&N storefront and how eventually, especially with the dumping economy, most if not all retail store fronts are going to start evaporating, because of the irrevocably lower operating costs of a website store that just has a factory/shipping warehouse rather than a whole retail operation. It got me thinking about how technology in the sense of internet shopping and international shipping has basically started a path towards making the entire retail industry completely obsolete. I mean, there is the fact that many people genuinely enjoy the retail experience (women & shoes, men & guns, everyone & books, etc), but even that will eventually be replicated with technology. Eventually you'll be able to look in the mirror and see a holographic representation of yourself standing before it in the dress you're looking at online, and I'm not talking 100 years. Probably 20, maybe 25. But eventually, the entire experience is going to be wholly replaceable, and we'll have arrived at a different question of "how do we fight to keep the storefronts alive", to more of something like "Do they even make sense anymore?" Unfortunately, the position of assuming those things can and should be saved is operating on a somewhat static perception of our civilization and culture. Just like heavy industry eventually made the master/apprentice system complete obsolete, and just like people at the time watching it begin would have bemoaned the loss of such an aspect of their lives; eventually, I believe, certain mainstays of our everyday lives will be completely gone or wholly unrecognizable as a result of technological evolution of our culture.

At the forefront of this since Napster (and of course before, but Napster really mainstreamed it), is music downloading. "Can you save" the concept of owned music, of proprietary sounds? I, personally, don't believe so. I think that entertainment industries like film and music will be continuously running from the 8-ball as they try to keep up with the ever-increasing capability of the internet to adequately replicate the services they produce. Call it right or wrong, it's happening and it's going to continue to pick up momentum and evolve. In an unrelated discussion about Jolene's hubby and how he is pushing the entertainment industry in his company towards more revenue derived from live performances - I think that is exactly the way to think right now. You can't rip off or copy an experience... at least not yet. One day, when you project your holographic image complete with sensory input, with a "pirate signal" into a concert crowd, they'll have to figure out a way to evade that too , but until we live (and I don't intend to turn this into a political debate, but this woudl certainly stop it) in an authoritarian state, this kind of thing is going to be unstoppable.