@jkr: I also use P2P but not too much i usually use it to download a mainstream song that i know that the artist is already rich enough and i bought most of my music, i know using P2P is bad but sometimes i just can't afford all my music.

miguelon918

Mama Mia!

Kaiser-Machead

Did someone switch out the elevator muzak for Woody Guthrie at the Italian Parliament?

"I hate a song that makes you think you're not any good. I hat a song that makes you think you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are either too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that....Songs that run you down or songs that poke fun of you on account of your bad luck or your hard traveling.

I am out to fight those kinds of songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood."

WeldInspector

the bands should just sell the songs for a lot of money to p2p providers and then they can do what ever with them and the providers can get money from adds and stuff

cristian77

Italy 1
RIAA 0

i4ni

here is the bottom line; you should pay for music. I don't, and I know it's wrong. They charge too much for the music, and that is wrong too, but legal. I really do use P2P, even though I know it's wrong. I'm not condemning anybody, but I think that if you download music, the artists should make some money. The problem is the "trust" like labels. The way they also pursue those that share music is also atrocious, and even validates people stealing music. In life people have a basic need for balance. When somebody is punished way beyond what is fair, there is retaliation, in this case, music downloading. I'm not saying that people are downloading more because of how unfair the RIAA is, but it does give downloading some measure of credence.

jkr

Legaliiiize It.....
Don't Criticiiiiize It....

92BuickLeSabre

As if we didn't have enough reasons to move to Italy.

tehethan

isn't it still legal in canada?? don't remember, I think it is. But uploading is illegal? someone check that out.

Rob C

now y can't the US do the same thing?

crazykid

*applauds*

now there is government action the US should follow!

=P

no, bad ron paul supporter, bad!

xacked

@MickeyMoo: unless it's the part in sicily?

oo0cyst0oo

It would have killed you to use this picture instead?

[news.bbc.co.uk]

The Godfather pic is racial slur - and an inaccurate representation of Italian Italians - maybe save it for an article on corruption in New Jersey.

MickeyMoo

bring on all the free music, as long as its degraded!
[www.zixpk.com]

zixpk.com

GO CANADA!

Ruzzel26

@mickeymoo: I can understand you being offended by the Godfather picture, but bear in mind that it portrays far fewer criminals, real or fictional, than the picture you chose. According to Beppe Grillo, among the ranks of the Italian Parliament, and the Italian reps to the European Parliament, there are currently 24 convicted criminals.

@tehethan: Italy's a great place to travel, but I wouldn't want to live there right now unless I had a great job set up. I'm tempted to just blame Berlusconi, but apparently there are a few other factors as well.

In response to the article itself, all i can say is FORZA AZZURRA!!!

stronzo

@crazykid: the government does it out of spite Bcuz of people like u. that's y.

uptonogood

I can't believe I'm finding myself on this side of an issue, but I agree with the point that I think JKR is trying to make. I want inexpensive and easily portable music. That's kind of hard to come by, so in lieu of that, hypothetically there may arise situations where I decide to take it for free, just because I can (RIAA lawyers: this is not an admission of guilt but a rhetorical construct).

That said, I get really uncomfortable with an entire country giving its people a pass to steal the intellectual property originating from other countries either implicitly (China) or, apparently now explicitly. If Italy wants to allow its people to have at it with Italian IP, that's their business. But they have treaty obligations to protect the product of other countries just as those other countries ostensibly work to protect theirs. I don't like the precedent it sets.

And this just isn't the kind of win I want. I want music labels forced by consumers to change, but I don't want them to have all the protections of law that are rightfully theirs stripped away. It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

HonusWScruggs

@Heartwork: Totally agree with you. The thing is, a CD with it's cover and booklet, costs in production about 30 cents. With the costs of marketing and studio producing it costs 1USD. If they would sell them for 5 USD, the record labels would still make tons of money. Imagine Ford earning 500% on every car they sell. Impossible... And as for the concerts, P2P makes us have more concerts in the world than ever, and that is never a bad thing.

proseven

As much as laws like this could spell trouble for musicians, I think musicians have already lost a lot of what say they may have had in their fate, when they signed a record label contract. It's unfortunate that artists lose money because of P2P, but record labels are losing a lot more, and that's never a bad thing. Most bands make the majority of their money off merch and concerts these days anyways, since retailers and labels take such an enormous percentage of their CD sale profits.

Heartwork

This is not new. Since forever it is legal in Italy to download music and movies as long as you don't sell them.
The difference between Italy and the USA is that like Sweden, Italy has sane copyright laws.

proseven

I like how people justify downloading music by saying "I do it because the RIAA is evil" or "I do it because the record company is evil" or "the musicians already have enough money." Take all those evils out of the equation and the majority of pirates would still be pirates.

Trent Reznor, who is the opposite of an evil record company did an experiment and found that most people downloaded for free rather than supported the artist.

If you're going to pirate, don't be a hypocrite about it! Say the truth "I am a cheap bastard and pirate music because I can" if that's what you are.

And then imagine what would happen to the computer industry if customers had the option of downloading computers rather than paying for them.

I'm not defending antiquated and horrible practices in the record industry. But if you take away the incentive to profit from your work, whether you make music or computers or whatever, innovation and production would grind to a suck.

frigg

the music, she wantsa to be free, no?

Pixlmonkey

@jkr:

Actually, with the world going digital, the music should be free. Digital media is an unlimited resources. They should allow the music to be free, but use the music as a means of selling a scarce good.

It's kinda like going to the movies, you're not actually paying to see the movie. You're paying for the movie theater experience.

One indie label that I frequently buy music from allows you to receive the album 2 weeks in advance if you pre-order the CD. That's enough to earn my money. I've seen albums come with a 'limited edition' liner notes (lyrics to all the song, pics from some tour, a chance to win something). That's what the music industry should be doing right now...trying to make it worth buying the CD, rather than downloading it.

TriZz

@proseven: That's a misconception.

[www.ifpi.org]

Mark Wilson

I recently bought my first Cd in about 10 years. The reason? I want it signed by the artist. Unfortunately you can't have digital copies signed. The record companies are not losing as much money as they would have us think. They are solely being preemptive and are scared of the digitizing of their product.

Ryanraven

@frigg: Quite right.
And quite depressing as well.

Aren't we lucky that we have such a perfectly antagonistic enemy in the major labels? If that weren't the case, we'd have to admit to ourselves that we commit all these crimes out of boredom, greed and sloth.

Hvedhrungr

You said it's legal in Canada as long as you don't upload. I am not sure whether or not that is true, but even if it is true, people who use a Bit Torrent Client are forced to upload. There is NO WAY you can stop any bit torrent client from uploading to other peers the file you are downloading. Yes, you can throttle your upload speed, and even attempt to set it to "0", but bit torrent is set up to not allow anything slower than a 3 kb/s upload speed... Every bit torrent I've ever used or tested does the same thing. Now Kazaa or Limewire, yes, you can stop that client from uploading anything to any other peers. So the bottom line is... if a Canadian uses a Bit Torrent client, they ARE uploading to others.

BY ROB C AT 02/02/08 11:14 PM

isn't it still legal in canada?? don't remember, I think it is. But uploading is illegal? someone check that out.

SBM_from_LA

"educational use" huh?

How about downloading all this music and using it on say, a radio show or something? I mean, I'd be education people on different music by making them aware that there's stuff out there other than Fall Out Boy, Soulja Boy, and Rhianna.

gokor

Go Italy!!!

@MickeyMoo: Stop with the PC crap.

photophile

"Scientific use": I propose to study the effect of lossy compression on selected musical works.

There, that justifies downloading every MP3 ever made.

TVGenius

@Photophile: Agreed - This is a Mac Fanboy site, PC is definitely out of place here.

weldinspector

Canadians pay an additional fee everytime we buy blank CD's. I think it's an extra $0.05 per disk or something like that.

At tax time, if you have your receipts and run a buisness that requires CD's (like I do) you can get that money back.

There's also a potential law in the works that would see an additional fee placed on MP3 players. The amount of the fee depends on the storage size of the device but it can get upwards of $75.

I might have missed it, but to date I've not heard of the RIAA going after Canadians. I suppose the reason being is that we've already paid the "fine" ahead of time.

@SBM_FROM_LA. that's not completely true. Most, if not all, BitTorrent clients have a setting for upload limit. You can set that to 0 and the client won't upload.

diverguy

If it's an accident.. well it's the best slip up for the people that live there, that could of happened.

-Core-

@frigg: You are completely right on this one.

While I can't confess having clean hands when it comes to owning all of my music (although I actually do buy CDs if I like them), piracy never ends well for the artist.

I keep hearing people say that most artists earn their money from shows, but those are artists whose names you know. This is coming from someone who has gotten shows booked: there is an incredibly small amount of money in it. If you're a no name, you have to hope that your friends will spread the word for you, or that you can somehow hop onto the coattails of a bigger band, or whatever method seems necessary because there are not a lot of people who pay $5 to hear someone they've never heard of. Of course, there is the option of playing for free, but most places require you to pay them to use their facilities and you have to hope to make money back. Either that, or you have to be able to guarantee "x" amount of people will show up beforehand, which throws one into a catch-22.

While some record labels are a crock, they are incredibly necessary so artists don't have to deal with the crap when it comes to marketing, distributing, etc. and instead can focus on music.

Also, to whoever said that it costs 30 cents per CD, yes, that's half true, however the record label pays for it up front in a lot of cases, and in that same regard justifies its taking money. Just looking at a quote I got for making 2000 CDs, assuming I already made the artwork myself and it was in a paper CD wallet, it would cost $2800. Thats about $1.40 per CD, plus the fact that I would have to pay for them up front. Now, factor in studio costs, plus the countless hours of effort put into the CD and the instability of album sales and now a $10 price tag seems a bit more justified.

So amidst all of these pirates vs. RIAA stories, the people both are claiming to protect are getting screwed over in the end: The artists.

The-Vagrance

Italianos say da RIAA itsa Fun Ghoul.

ANoel