Re:The RIAA brought it on themselves (Score 2, Insightful)

there's a big difference between shoplifting and copyright infringement, I'm sure there is but not in the sense of - I pay for a CD and I can hear it any time, or I don't pay for a CD and I can hear it anytime. In the sense of not paying then filesharing and shoplifting are the same. The piece of plastic means nothing anymore. And yes you can do all those things, such as copying and making mp3s, and you're still just using your right to listen to it when you want. I'm not going to attempt to defend the RIAA. But it's obvious that the whole original Napster thing really scared them all - it could really make a dent and even put them out of business. Now there are cases of record companies not playing fair etc. but think what we would lose without them. And at the end of the day they really are music fans like us, especially the small labels. It's just their job to maximise revenue from an Artist (and they need someone to do this). It's irrelevent how much the CD costs, the whole ship is funded by lots of people paying a certain amount. I used to work in a recording studio. The equipment and acoustics are expensive, and you have to keep replacing it. These are peoples jobs, mortgages etc we are talking about, and it's all funded from CD sales. Yes you can set it up in a bedroom, but there will be no hardware to actually buy without CD sales. And at the end of the day - why should some people pay and not others. It's not fair, not sustainable and it's ethically wrong. And also - believe me, the record companies want to make it as easy as possible for you to buy their stuff - no filesharing and DRM would definitely be out of the window - an easy, playable on anything solution is far better for them. But you are right, with the possibility of mass sharing, they'd never do it.