I agree, it's not the authors that hate file-sharing. Essentially, file-sharing is advertising for the authors, "paid for" by the music labels. Muscians in general make most of their money from performances and concerts. I read somewhere that only 4 out of the top 50 top-revenue-earning-artists made more money from selling cds than from performing.

For some proof, there's a similar artist coalition in Canada called "the Canadian Music Creators Coalition"

- CMCC

Here are some of their interesting press releases:

- link

And I'll throw one last link in:

And then in 2008, Canada again outperforms U.S. in digital sales, and Industry Canada commissions a study which shows a positive correlation between file sharing and music purchasing. CMCC argues against anti-circumvention legislation. link Michael Geist

Unfortunately, even if everyone stopping pirating today, legislation will still get worse and worse. The fact that pirating is possible at all still gives enough incentive to special interest groups like the RIAA (and Sweden's equivalent) to continue lobbying. In fact, it will be even easier for them, since the only thing holding back the politicians is the fact that there are at least some people fighting back.

Despite what we wish in our hearts, politicians never look out for "the common good". You have to give them an incentive to look out for your interests, and if you don't, they will cater to whoever does the most to get them re-elected. Since we can't match industry's campaign money, all we can do is try to organize as many people as possible to make things politically unacceptable. Don't roll over, fight back damnit.

Yeah, that's one of my "other reasons that doesn't create shareholder value" that I mentioned in my earlier post. Technically, in addition to what you mentioned, buybacks also decrease the dillution to other shareholders. If the buyback is only being used to prevent dilution, then essentially it's the cost of a management compensation scheme.

Well, I'm not an expert, but I've taken some finance and valuation courses. In general, stock buybacks are a way of returning cash back to investors, i.e., it's kinda like a really huge dividend. There's a couple reasons for doing this: (1) the managers think that the company is worth more than what the market values it at, or (2) the company doesn't have any available projects where it can invest the $40million. In the first case, they buy back the shares now at a cheap price, and then issue more later at a higher price. In the second case, they say "Well we're not doing anything useful with the money, you shareholders go spend it yourselves". There's other reasons for buybacks, but they're questionable as to whether they actually produce value for shareholders.

Going back to March 30, the company was only valued at $120million. It had $170 million in cash on hand, and no debt. I think it's pretty obvious that the company thought their company was worth more the market was valuing it at, i.e. it's stock was cheap, so they wanted to buy back their shares. Offhand, holding a huge amount of cash isn't very useful, since it's not a return-producing asset. Some for liquidity, yes, but not a huge amount. It's probably a good thing that they're spending it in some way.

Looking at the SGI deal, it's pretty obvious that Rackable thinks that their $25million investment is going to produce value than a stock-repurchase. They're acquiring all of SGI's assets, and they're not going to have to take on all their debt. Without looking at all the numbers, it sounds like a decent plan.

Final note, I don't follow this stock, my analysis isn't rigorous at all, and anything I say should hardly be taken as a fact. I'm just a random dude on the internet, and I'm not giving you investment advice.

I won't state my personal opinion, but philosophers such as Rawls would argue that by being part of society you don't have the right to do "whatever you want". You have implicitly agreed to a social contract and if the rest of society thinks that it is a crime, then what you personally consider it to be doesn't matter.

Of course, there are other philosophers who don't agree with social contract theory. I'm not sure they'd stand behind you though.

More evidence from Wikipedia

Getting really offtopic, but I thought I'd share this interesting Economist article regarding Atlas Shrugged.

http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13185404

That link is from 2005. Here's a more recent link regarding a study done for Industry Canada in 2007.

The premise that "some people are geniuses, and this special-ness is a necessary requirement for certain theories to be discovered" isn't quite as self-evident as you make it out to be.

In Pratchett's "The Science of Discworld 3: Darwin's Watch", there is a chapter that deals specifically with this issue. The author argues that there is a "time" when the mass of previous evidence and research will result in the theory being "created". See this guy's summary:

"They also show how it's not enough to have an idea, but the idea has to fit in at the right time. The example they give is the steam engine which they show was invented and re-invented on a regular basis since the days of Hero of Alexandria. They argue that James Watt's genius was not inventing the steam engine, but in seizing the time and making the steam engine relevant. Watt showed why steam engines were useful devices. Similarly Darwin's Natural Selection did not come out of nowhere, but the reason we look to Darwin as the father of Evolution rather than Alfred Russel Wallace is the sheer work and mass of evidence Darwin compiled. Darwin was able to show his ideas fitted in beautifully with other facts which were becoming known like the immense antquity of the Earth." link

So, yes, geniuses help develop ideas, but arguably if they didn't come up with their theory, then another genius would have come up with the same theory soon after.

I think that table you linked is only for short-term treasuries. Check out this table: http://www.treas.gov/tic/shlptab1.html. My link shows that China holds some 1.2 trillion dollars in total debt and equity. Who knows how accurate this is though, since China may have entrusted a third-party country such as Switzerland to hold some of the instruments.

I admit that my "trillions" comment was a bit overstated, but the actual amount is still almost 10% of the total outstanding U.S. government debt. $1.2 trillion is also approximately 32% of China's GDP. That's hardly insignificant.

Here's an Economist article from back in November. There have probably be more details released recently, but I haven't done that much research into it.

Economist

You should probably sharpen your knives more often.

Also, little known fact: sharper knives are safer than dull knives; less chance of slipping and cutting yourself.

Not the millions of migrant chinese workers who have lost their jobs, which will probably also cause civil unrest. Also, the Chinese holding trillions of dollars in U.S. treasuries will also be slightly annoyed when the U.S. government inflates away their debts.

Finally, the vast majority of China's stimulus package was already announced before this major recession. You have the order backwards.

Provide some evidence for that. My personal experience is that the CBC produces exceptional content. Their news coverage is excellent compared to, say, CTV, or ANY american news station. CNN, Fox, etc make me want to retch.

Not saying I agree with the RIAA, but it seems to me that it'd be hard for them to compete.

Benefits provided by pirating from private torrent trackers:
1. Free
2. Huge selection, high quality
3. Fast downloads

Benefits provided by theoretical customer-friendly RIAA approved sites:
1. Good selection, hopefully high quality
2. Hopefully fast downloads

Even if they can match the selection, quality, and download speed of the private torrent trackers, they can never compete with free. What other aspect can they provide which the private trackers can't? Other than being unambiguously legal of course.