Post #186346 by Swanky on Tue, Sep 13, 2005 12:10 PM

Clearly we all are saying 'no'. For the most part, there is no bread to be put on the table. Out of release music has no money to make. We are not robbing anyone of sales since there is nothing in existense for them to sell.

What you are really getting at is more about if I was burning a CD from a CD or perhaps even an LP which is in release now. However, that's not what we are doing here.

The way I look at it is that, just as radio is promoting artists and leading to sales and interest, so am I and everyone else sharing a mix CD of their favorites. If I was trading a complete copy of the Haole Kats CD, they should take me in the corner and pummel me. If I had a song of theirs on my mix, and the person hears it for the first time and now knows they love it and need to get over to their site and buy the whole CD, that's promotion. "Fair Use." (Purely an example. Everything I have is off 20-40 year old records.) Regardless of whether the record companies fought radio, they lost. The promotional value of radio was said to offset the usage fees for the same music.

And though Billy Mure was selling his own music, I bet the RIAA did not get their cut and would take him to court rather quickly if they thought there was any money in it.

None of us is going to research if our CDs are "legal". It turns a fun trade of obscure music into a police raid.

Don't get me wrong though. I am not in favor of screwing over artists. My main argument is that there are a lot of uses of music that are being attacked because they assume it hurts sales with no proof, and that there is just as good an argument, if not better that says it works as a promotion and leads to more sales. And I think the industry has been rather much Ludites about it all and could have chosen to adapt, but instead has chosen to sue their customers and campaign for laws that stifle creativity and technology before it's even born.

To get way off topic, suing a P2P provider for music swapping is like suing the phone company when someone plans a bank robbery over the phone.

So, James, are you gonna swap CDs with us or not? I wanna hear the crisp sounds you get through your LP to CD system I have read about.