Originally posted here by cacosapo
But its easy to avoid MPAA and RIAA:



Just dont download or share any copyrighted material!!

What's wrong with downloading or sharing copyrighted material? As long as the copyright holder has given people permission to do so (e.g. Linux, and an increasing number of music artists) then everything's fine

This is, actually, a more serious point than most people normally think about. Many times, the original copyright holders can make use of p2p distribution to their advantage.

One reason the RIAA has been leading a ferocious charge against piracy is that they know the potential legal uses of p2p make their business model obsolete. Artists make most of their money through tours. If they can promote their tours directly to consumers using the Internet, they can cut out the middleman completely.

The RIAA has been trying to legislate its business model indirectly. But the long and the short of it is that record companies that make up the RIAA are likely doomed by legal market forces, as the actual producers of artistic content develop new ways to get their material in front of consumers and promote their real money-making ventures.

The MPAA is a different matter...movie producers make their money on movies, period, and with the increasing availability of home theatres, piracy represents a real problem for the production of movies. Perhaps they'll find some sort of additional value to add to seeing movies in theatres (already present to a degree, but obviously not enough to maintain revenue by itself). Maybe IMAX will become more in vogue, or perhaps they could add more commercials...

As for TV shows, it seems to me that TV producers could actually leverage p2p trading of shows to their advantage by allowing trading of shows that are complete with commercials. It would help to maintain adversing revenue, and it would keep or increase interest in TV shows.

Of all the cases of piracy out there, it seems to me that movie producers have the most pure, Constitutional case that piracy is at cross-purposes with "the promotion of sciences and the useful arts" (the Constitutional rationale for limiting some exchange of information and ideas thorugh copyright and patents).

Anyway, sorry for the long rant. Just a few thoughts I wanted to get out there...