Copyright
I’m sure most of the people are aware about copyright infringement over the internet. The MPAA and RIAA fight back ineffectively employing DRM measures and try to stop P2P by suing users as well as providers of such services.
In my opinion, the movie and recording industries are wrong about copyright and filesharing in multiple ways:
First of all, their business model is obsolete. Record companies are no longer needed. The internet provides a convenient and cheap way for artists to get music to their fans and to collect the money without a man in the middle that has to be paid a substantial part of the income. More and more artists should start selling their music themselves instead of relying on companies.
Moreover, even if _nobody_ would buy their music although they are popular because of P2P, they still could make a living by playing their music live. P2P does not make people stop going to concerts, after all.
Supporting this point is the fact that nobody should be entitled to make money long after the work is already done. At the moment, artists make a record in a few days, maybe weeks and they get money for the sales long after they finished the record. Naturally, their income increases with time. They make a CD, sell it, make a new CD, sell it and they still get money for their first CD then they make a third CD and get money for their third, second and first CD (although the money they get for the first two will be less). It’s basically “fire and forget”. You get money but you do not have to work for it. Furthermore, famous artists get a substantial amount of money from advertising deals. Spreading their music freely over the internet should only increase their popularity and therefore their income from such deals.
Artists won’t stop making music when they don’t get money for it. Humans will always make music as they always have, long before recording music was even thought of. I suppose the quality of the music would increase when nobody would have to pay for it. Only passionate musicians would write and perform songs and therefore there would be less junk that only serves to collect a quick buck.
The RIAA and the MPAA probably recognize that they are not needed and now they abuse the government as life support. I think we should unplug the machines that artificially lengthen their lives although their death is long overdue.
The strongest argument against copyright I can provide, however, is probably this:
We are living in a democracy. The idea is that the people can decide. Obviously, taking into account the popularity of file sharing, we could state that a whole lot more than 50% of the population do not support copyright or at least do not consider copyright infringement a crime. The majority of people are pro file sharing. The majority does not condemn copyright infringement. In my opinion, in a democracy it should therefore not be illegal.
The people have spoken!
