Reply #79: I want artists to get paid and consumers to be served, and $750 per 99 cent song is too much.

[caseymoz]

Is that overcharge supposed to be about the principle of the thing, or is it supposed to terrorize people? If you go to a store and steal a $5 worth of merchandise (about 5 songs at 99 cents) is a fine of between $3750 and $750,000 in any way just? No. In fact, it's so unjust, and so biased toward the wealthy that it deserves protests. Like the war on drugs, if you protest it directly by any normal political methods, it could put your name on a list of people to check for illegal downloads. Now that is chilling. Worse, if you try to pay the artist directly through their website after a torrent download, that in itself could be construed as probable, and get you searched for illegal downloads.

There is another way the government could catch people: by the same surveillance program that's supposed to be saving us from terrorists. It makes the government a dictatorship favoring the RIAA.

I'm torn though. I want musicians to get paid. I want the creative people to see money for what they make. Would paying them through the Internet generate enough revenue? It's not just music I'm worried about here. It's movies, TV shows, software, news stories and writing. Hollywood is now damn worried about what's happening with downloads, and they should be.

Now, if we could totally take the RIAA out of the picture, maybe creative people can have their websites, and before or after their product recordings, movies, or written pages they could actually "self-advertise" (I mean why not? For years other "free content" was paid for by advertising). You'd have to wonder how to put small payments on your ATM card, but it should be possible.

Let's say if they want a bigger production, they release the "acoustic track" or demo first and just ask people for money to put more production value in it? Or maybe the fans could do it and present it to the artist for approval? (That would turn the creative process on its head, but people are already doing mostly the same things.)

Meanwhile, the big movies would probably become extinct, once the price of the first run goes from $10 to $2 per view.

I don't know if any of this would work. If people will pay for things they already own. I hope it does. One thing for sure, once any product becomes digitized, it's practically free for the whole world. The person who created it then has to depend on "the kindness of strangers" to get paid. Musicians might be doing better than they are now, since they receive such a small percentage of the sales for their work.

The point of the Internet was swift, free exchange of information. Nobody knew how broad a meaning "information" could have.