JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Petition to stop P2P-users abuses

Kit,

There have always been and will always be sweat shops in China that pump out illegal copies of anything that is made in the west with little we can do. But when teenage girls in Iowa are distributing 100 CD's a day from their kitchen to kids coming from all over town because they can get any CD they request (or collection of songs) from them directly instead of buying any of them from a record store, people can slow that down a great deal if the parent of those girls might lose their car for letting them do it. I visited 20 States and found examples at nearly every stop of a young kid with thousands of illegal files on a computer in places I visited. Most were then buring these songs to CD's for their friends and family members, or filing up iPods with them. None of them had bought a single CD ever.

That's the final result we are looking at. I asked two families about it, one of which who happened to be using a Mac computer. I explained they could legally buy those songs for 99 cents a piece. They looked at me and laughed and said "why should we pay 99 cents for it when we can download it for free?" I then explained that, though it's remote, they might find themselves being sued by the RIAA. They said everyone else does it so they weren't worried about doing it either.. and that they had no plans to pay a service for songs they could get free. The other family immediate had a discussion with their kids, delete all the files and programs and told their kids they were no longer allowed to download illegal files. The reason again wasn't because they cared that it was stealing, but they WERE worried a bit that they might get sued so at least that fear was enought to get them to stop.

Venues already don't want to pay artists to perform. Everyone laments how hard it is to get a decent paid gig. Touring is just as hard. Sadly, most tours make more on selling T-Shirts than albums. That's lame, but it's great for T-Shirt manufacturers.

The lawn mower analogy works as follows:

You buy a riding lawn-mower for $1000. You don't use it day and night and it just sits there. Why shouldn't someone else be able to use it and just return it the next day, especially if that causes you no harm? You're in a recording studio and spend $1000 dollars recording a song. Why shouldn't someone be able to get that song, record it on CD, distribute it to anyone else who wants to hear it without paying you? How about you spend $3000 on a hottub. Why shouldn't everyone be able to use it when you aren't at their sole convenience? It's just sitting there... who are you to say someone else can't use it? Technically, it doesn't cost you more than what you paid if they just sit in it when you aren't around right?

If you write a song and pay money to record it, you've invested even more in it than someone who buys a lawnmower or hot tub. If anything, you should have even MORE protections and rights, not less.

Brian