People aren’t going to stop downloading. And the federal government has bigger things on it’s mind than chasing a rat deeper & deeper into uncharted crevices (namely a looming big time recession & the clusterfuck in Iraq). The recorded music business just isn’t big enough to matter right now & technology develops too quickly for policing to be guaranteed effective. It can actually be guaranteed ineffective. Oink got shut down & 2 popped up to take it’s place. Shut them down & you’re guaranteed 4 more, ad infinitum. If ISPs start snooping into file transfers, encrypted transfers will just become the norm. And that channel, I would guess, is going to be open as long as we have any want for general e-commerce. The pirates will always be two steps ahead. Get used to it.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that the music was dead long before the industry. If Rhianna doesn’t get some fat royalty check, well… sucks for her, I guess. You’re right in that most people really don’t care. Because… what’s there to care about? The WELL NEEDED CHANGE is for another 1967… another Nirvana… another band that matters… that people CAN care about. But it might even be too late for that.

The government and internet service providers need to step in, toughen up policies, and regulate the net. Make ISP’s responsible and prosecute owners of illegal sites to the FULLEST extent of the law. Thankfully, its already being done, we just need to make it happen on a universal level.

We can change this. This year, lets stand behind the rights of artists and make the WELL NEEDED CHANGE!

CDs cost a consumer about $8 to $15. Artists get paid roughly $1 for every album they sell. So who’s taking the other $7 - $14 out of the artist’s pocket?

I still buy CDs because I want to support the artist, but I’ll be a lot more sympathetic when the labels start giving artists a fair cut of their sales. Yes, illegal downloading is wrong and it hurts artists, but it hurts labels a helluva lot more.

In the meantime, I’m more interested in supporting a band by going to their shows and buying their merch — areas where labels don’t “rape” them quite as badly (yet).

It stopped coming to the artist LOOOOOOONG before the digital age. U2 need to ditch their label — they don’t need them anymore — and this guy needs to direct his vemon at the industry that got fat and lazy on the backs of inflated CD prices, taking 80%+ of artist sales (and owning the rights to their work) and manufacturing ‘artists’ who can’t muster hit without an army of truly talented songwriters and producers.