Send back your stolen mp3s!

[Straylight]

A worthy cause, methinks:

http://www.sendthemback.org/

[Benu]

Won't You Be In Bigger Trouble If You Send Them Back?

[Stephen]

BAHAHHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHHAHHHAHHA

Whew for a second there I took that serious and was like..only thing Riaa will ever get from me is a warm bag of crap....laughs...sarcasm is a wonderful thing.

[Mr. Rogers]

[inkhana]

He he...I'm gonna need more cds...

[Tet-chan]

I already deleted all of them

[Spencer]

Boy, these guys must think we're stupid or something.

(Hint: You might consider putting in a note saying you're sorry.)

Dear RIAA; I'm sending you these songs I stole from you even though you all have enough money as it is and are you making a fit over nothing.

(Hint: MP3s usually end with the letters ".MP3" or ".mp3"

No way! I thought that the .mp3 was there for decoration.

(Did you know that "hex" is short for "hexadecimal?" Well now you do!

Actually I thought it meant hexacraffalappanuss. Silly me.

Can you figure out how many batches your MP3s will take...without using a calculator!

Very good boys and girls!

Talk about lame. That was probably put up by the RIAA themselves.

[Stephen]

You all do realise its a big joke not to be taken serious....c'mon guys your looking silly taking that serious...

[ShiroiHikari]

o_O Uhhh.

[LorentzForce]

hahaha fax them back hahahaha

[Locke]

............. hahahahahahaha

is that a joke???????

[inkhana]

I dunno, faxing mp3s was pretty funny to me...O.o But then again, I'm crazy...

[Bobtheduck]

hahahahahaha... Attatch all your MP3's and send them to the RIAA, hahahaha... Fill up their mailbox so you get a good laugh before you're arrested.

[Straylight]

hehe, revenge is sweet

[HondaTooru]

Hmmm... Well, every time I buy a CD it gets stolen. I'm serious! One year my car got broken into 3 times! It happens every once in a while, on the one night I forget to bring my tiny 30 disk CD case inside. The last time, there was only a cardboard box and a bible in my front seat, and nothing to take! But they broke into my car again! Besides, I'm always broke now. I don't download whole CDs, I would buy it if I liked it that much. But for the most part, I really don't think they're losing money off of me, because I don't have any money that I can spend on that kinda stuff!
Also, most of the music I listen to is hard to find and can only really be bought on Amazon for like, a million dollars bill (plus shipping and handling). Imports are too expensive!

That being said, this thread did give me a tinge of guilt, even if it is in jest. What do you all think about it?

I'm especially interested in what DJNoz has to say about "file sharing."

[Straylight]

I'm especially interested in what DJNoz has to say about "file sharing."

In the days of old, artists would make money by doing live performances. Then some really clever people invented the record. Suddenly an artist could make a lot of extra money by recording their performance onto lots of these "records" and selling them.

It wasn't long before "record labels" emerged, big companies resposible for producing and distributing records. Because artists relied on these companies to make the majority of their money now, the companies were able to take most of the profit acquired from the sale of the records. The only reason artists made live performances was because the record labels wanted the artist to promote the product.

This continued for an extremely long time. Nowadays, if you buy a $12 CD, only about $1-$2 goes to the artist.

In the meantime, something called the "indie scene" lived on. These were "unsigned" bands that didn't have a contract with a record label. The majority of a fairly well known local indie band's money comes from live performances. They get payed a reasonable amount of money for their work, and are able to continue their music career.

The internet, combined with non commercial radio (eg. bbc, pirate, or webcast), and word-of-mouth(VERY important) offers a great way of promoting music for indie artists. They can distribute their music on a website or file-sharing network for people to freely download, thus earning fans. When that band comes to their town, there's a good chance they will pay some money for a ticket to see them. The band does quite well for themselves despite the fact that they sell very few records, because they are making good money from their live performances.

The above approach focuses on the music. Large record companies take advantage of their distribution monopoly to make large amounts of money. This is all about to change though, because people if people stop buying CDs (which they are), the record industry will be starved of what it need most - money.

In the light of this, draconian measures aside, I doubt the future even has a record industry. Even if it does, it'll be a very small one. Good news for the artist and consumer, bad news for that industry CEO who can't complete the contruction of his $5,000,000 house

[HondaTooru]

Well put ol' chap! That's about how I feel as well.

Anyhow, one way or another, I know this freedom will not last. They'll eventually make it so that one has to pay a monthy fee or something in order to download music. (I think they've already started trying to implement that) *whatever* I'll just go with the flow. Even that will be better than spending money on CD's! I like bein' able to download certain songs from each artist I like instead of buying an album and finding out that I only like one song on it.

Besides, DJNoz has a really valid point about it how it actually aids in the promotion of indie bands.

On a similar note, there are many japanese bands that I wouldn't have even heard of if it weren't for file sharing. And that opened the doors to many other languages as well. I'm a huge Tarkan fan, thanks to file sharing! He's a Turkish singer and I do buy his CD's once in a while when I see them at Border's. Bought one for my sister on her birthday.. Without the internet.. Tarkan who? But with the internet, I can search for Turkish music, Japanese, French, you name it!

I just hope that all this is sorted out soon. Like I said, even if they implement a monthy fee, as long as it's reasonably low, I won't mind paying it. I just want downloadage to be legal!

[Mithrandir]

There's another side to this coin... The RIAA is not above taking advantage of the filesharing phenomina. Have you hear the media talking about how many $$$s the RIAA puts into tracking what get's the most dls, so it knows what to promote? No?!?! What a shock!!! (sorry, I'm sorta inclined to sarcasm on that one). While I believe the artist deserves to make $ on their CD, charging $20.00 for something that costs $0.75 to produce and giving $0.75 to the artist just seems like exploitation to me.

[HondaTooru]

Twue... Twue...