1 since i know a little bit about the case history of their past lawsuits and their propensity to sue grandmothers and 10 year olds, i would tell them to kiss my ass... the idea that copying music is taking away from some starving artist is ridiculous... the artists make their money mostly by selling merchandise at concerts, not by selling music... the contracts they have with music labels usually stipulate that they get next to nothing for album sales... and oh, the poor record companies, they have been bending the public over without lubrication for decades... how else would you explain how something that costs less than ten cents to produce gets sold for $20? i cant wait to see someone get hit with such strong arm tactics that counter sues them for racketeering and price fixing... and ogre, i should perhaps note that copyright violation is not stealing. stealing is traditionally defined as depriving someone of their property or money... making a copy of a song does neither... in most cases the person doing the copying wouldn't actually pay for the song if they had no other choice, so there is no lost sale there... now, it is a crime, and it is (morally) wrong... but it is not stealing... i sit 2 desks away from the security guy here at work and he is constantly handling subpoenas for RIAA/MPAA cases, usually they ask for some obscene amount in fines, and then "settle" for a lesser amount... i recommend checking out http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/ they have copies of the letter you mentioned there as well as extensive case history for similar actions...

2 Sorry, but you'll never convince me it's not stealing. If I make something and you copy it, you've stolen it from me. That's what copyright is all about. If I write a book and you copy it and give it to others with the primary purpose of getting it to them without paying, you HAVE stolen from me. If that's not true, there's no point in copyrights at all. I don't give a damn how much it costs anyone to make anything. That makes no difference. If they want $20 for something and some people will pay them, that's freedom. If it costs me $100 to make a table and someone wants to pay me $1,000 for it, why shouldn't I be able to do it? To suggest they're making "too much" profit reeks of socialism. It's not even close to price fixing when people are willing to pay and have a choice to not pay. If the miserable, slimy thieves who are copying wouldn't pay for it and wouldn't have it if they didn't copy it, then they shouldn't have it at all. The fact that they're settling means they're NICE! The RIAA could be asking all these selfish scumbags to be thrown in jail!

3 i suppose i should differentiate between downloading and copying... downloading music that you haven t paid for is a crime and is something that i don't personally participate in... however the RIAA/MPAA would also love to be able to say what you can and cant do with their product after you legally purchase it... so im partially bitter... did you know that according to the DCMA, that if you buy a CD, and then transfer the contents of that legally purchased CD to another medium, your hard drive or ipod, then you are a criminal? Likewise, if you are in my situation and have young children, i am a criminal if i make a copy of a DVD so as to not destroy the original that i purchased legally... its my damn money, i bought the damn thing, and if i want to pile all my CDs in the living room floor and burn them, i should be allowed to do so... as for criminal prosecution, as far as i know it has never been brought against someone that was "file sharing"... now some of the warez groups have been charged criminally but that is usually charges under hacking laws and not copyright issues.

4 i suppose i would be a little more sympathetic if the RIAA didn't habitually sue people that couldn't have committed the act... hell the one that i love the best was the case where they sued a man who died during litigation... the RIAA then files a 60 day continuance.... following the 60 days, they sue his children...

5 I guess I'm sympathetic because I've made things that are copyrighted, and I would prefer people pay for them. I completely agree with them when they say it's not legal to copy. If it were not: I buy a software CD. It contains Vista. I put it on 3 computers. Then I sell the three computers and buy 3 more. Then I make three more copies. Then I sell those computers. Oh, and I'm Best Buy, and I happen to be making not 3 copies, but thousands. If copying isn't illegal, that situation would be perfectly legal.

6 right, and in your scenario there is loss of revenue... the bigger problem i see is that the RIAA constantly says that the loss they suffer from music downloading is billions and billions of dollars each year... the problem that no one notices is that they never factor in how many of those downloads are from people that wouldn't have purchased the music in the first place, so the losses in sales are fictitious... the sales figures aren't losses... so the cry that they make about loosing money, while it might be partially true, a good portion of those "losses" are bullshit

7 In my mind, I really don't care how many loses are real and how many are fake. If there's theft, people should pay. I have been involved with pricing structures of copyrighted information -- and they literally have to factor in a piracy factor. They raise the price because they know they'll sell less because of thieves.

8 While I don't condone the downloading that is taking place, copyright law is in deep need of an overhaul. As near as I can tell, in its current form, it is doing very little good for the copyright owners, and it is depriving honest customers of the right to use materials that they purchased in ways that really do not affect the copyright holders at all. I think that a lot of people tend to hold the RIAA in utter contempt because copyright law in its current form doesn't stem from any sort of clear moral high ground. (i.e. I bought the CD... who are the RIAA to tell me what I can do with MY CD? I paid for it! If I want to distribute it on the internet, what difference does it make??). The key problem is that copyright "licenses" content instead of selling a product. And no consumer is really interested in buying a license. As far as they're concerned, they're buying the CD and it's theirs to do with as they want.

9 Excellent points. I think one of the first changes that could be made is education -- people could get taught and understand they're buying a license...