I was browsing the web when I came across http://www.riaa.org/Music-Rules-2.cfm I never thought sharing mp3 was illegal in the US. I always thought of it like making and trading tapes 15 years ago, only that now technology has made this easier and massive, but I still think it is the same concept, therfore shouldn't be illegal (it's obvious that is not debatable but its just an opinion). Record labels are the big losers here and they want to make us think that its artists who lose the most here, there are many cases in which bands have been helped by sharing their songs.


what can big record labels do? I think the answer is quite simple: lower cd prices. Instead of
coming up with useless copy protection, which can be cracked or with which
many cd's don't work on every player, big labels should just price cd's
around US$ 5-7.
The perfect example that this will work is what Pearl Jam did: they
realeased every live album of their 2000 tour, and priced every double cd
at around US$ 12, which is cheap for a double, with that they beat the
bootleggers. The same thing can be applied to the whole industry. I still
buy cd's for the better quality of sound and for the lyrics, liner notes,
etc. But there are many people who are not real music lovers and don't
care about the quality, so they just dowload massively, therefore if any
given cd is priced around US$ 5-7, I am sure that everyone will go back to
buying cd's, even cd's in which people only like one or two songs, will be
purchased.
File sharing and cd burning are technologies that were embraced massively
mainly in response to crazy cd prices, for example in Mexico, where I
live, cd prices skyrocket, a cheap cd here is like US$ 20. The music
industry cannot stop the flow of technology, it can only accept the fact
that they now have competition, they have a huge disadvantage because
their comptetition is free, but then again the big advantage of a record
label is that they offer the quality product because many downloads are
of extremely poor quality. So if you offer quality sound at a lower price
people are gonna buy it! Volume of sales would compensate for the lowering
of prices. Maybe record executives think I am completely wrong, but if
they lower their prices they can bet that at least my record collection is
gonna grow a lot.


I would like to hear anyone's thoughts on this matter.