Man, I really hope this is just scare-mongering.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tD1yaE0GfQ

well, I'm gonna have to smack a bitch.

what the heck, it doesn't show it. Open it in a new tab

You forgot the 'banner.jpg' at the end of the image address.

Pretty much. I don't know who gets their new music by blindly buying CDs off the shelves, at full retail. Who can afford to? And who would want to? So much out there sucks ass.

Some bands have impressive discographies already (Behemoth, Amon Amarth, etc), and I'll buy their new album right off the shelf, as soon as it comes out. But mostly metal is a pretty underground thing, and you have no chance of discovering many of the smaller acts unless you can download something, from somewhere, and give it a try.

For that reason, over the past 6 or 7 years I have listened to albums from almost 2,000 <i>different</i> metal bands. Know how many I found to be any good? 231, so far. Know how many CDs I own? Go look at my collection, close to the same number. The ones I don't own I just haven't found yet. (<i>Hackled in Gore</i> where are you???)

I have no problem spending money on bands that rate it. Downloading is an awesome filtering tool for that. And frankly I don't think the RIAA gives a shit about metal.

Not quite. Even if it was canned, there is a good chance it will wind up tacked onto the anti-child pornography legislation they are getting ready to pass.

but isn't child pornography already illegal?

Besides some points made here which I agree with, I will always be disgusted by how the entertainment industry acts. Didn't they never heard of the law of supply and demand? The demand for physical media has obviously gone down for years, yet the prices are as high as ever. Why can't they realize they're shooting themselves in the foot? They bitch on the internet and piracy for their lower income, yet they never tried anything that could actually help them sell more. We all know how very expensive some stuff can be sold for, the artist, the one they claim to defend making a mere fraction of the overall price of the item, the publisher making outrageous profit. Well, the only artists that are not too abused are the big artists, which are those who needs the less that protection. It's obvious that all who take advantage of the copyright circus are the publishers and such, but I don't think I'm teaching anyone anything here. What's incredible, is that they'd rather force you their conditions than adapt to the new realities or demands. No matter how downloading affects negatively or positively, one thing's for sure, is that they ignored the fact that people probably think that their products are not worth the price. Instead of giving us a fair price, meeting the demand (which has lowered), they literally try to cheat us. They are so hypocritical and manipulative it sickens me.

Brofist.

I think that image was too small.

I think it's fine

Dude fucking edit that shit. or put it in spoiler tags. You're fucking the whole page format.

I could barely see the picture it was so big.

The corporate music industry has been fighting digital media tooth and nail since the early 90s. The Hollywood studios didn't join in until bandwidth improvements made downloading TV & movies reasonably accessible. The major publishing houses only recently hopped on the bandwagon because they're afraid their eBook sales will be affected.

Any idiot could have seen the writing on the wall back in 1990. In fact, a lot of idiots made millions during the dotcom boom, so I guess many did see the writing. One has to wonder why the music industry didn't try to capitalize on it too. Or Hollywood, or the major publishing houses. Why didn't they see the digital revolution coming?

The answer is they did. And they saw it as a threat, not an opportunity.

The business model of all your corporate record labels, movie studios, and publishing houses is about establishing a distribution bottleneck. They don't produce anything. They just make people pay them to access stuff other people produce. So the leaps in technology that made media digital, and downloadable, was in direct conflict with their business model.

They didn't resist (and are still resisting) the digital age because of rampant piracy. That was a bullshit line from day 1. They resist because musicians, moviemakers, and authors can distribute their work themselves now. The corporations are no longer necessary.

Now real piracy, where someone copies a work and tries to make money off it, such as China stealing practically everything CD, DVD, or game ever made, is a legitimate thing to try to stop. You shouldn't be allowed to make money off content that isn't yours. Ultimately that's why Napster got shut down. And recently Megaupload.

But there are already legal avenues to handle that kind of thing. And they're quite successful. But that's not what the corporate interests care about. They have lost their grip on their distribution bottleneck. That's what they care about. That's why they have quietly over the years expanded the definition of "piracy" to include any copying of any kind, even if there is no monetary gain. From a strict legal perspective, you can't even copy music or movies for your own use. Read the legal warning at the start of all your corporate produced DVDs. For the last few years it's had a "monetary gain" clause that didn't used to be there.

And so we get SOPA and PIPA. Legislation aimed at shutting down not "pirates", but distribution channels. They hold up one scofflaw, The Pirate Bay, and pretend that organizations of that nature are rampant. But we all know they're not. There actually aren't many sites like that, in the grand scheme of things. But there are millions of content producers and content consumers out there that are distributing and accessing content without corporate involvement. And that's what they really want to stop.

Do not mistake legislation of the SOPA/PIPA variety as an attack on grandmas and kids who download music, or even really on legitimate pirates like those that make a living passing knockoffs off as the real thing. It is an attack on content producers, not content consumers. They want to stop downloading not because each download represents a lost sale, which is ridiculous, they want to stop downloading because each download represents an independent artist who is distributing their work without paying a corporation a dime.

If you're an independent artist, I'm sorry, but your independence is inconvenient to corporations. If you aren't going to sign away 90% of your blood, sweat, and tears to a corporation, then they'd rather you couldn't distribute your work at all.

This...is probably the best thought-out, most reasonable stance on the issue I've read in a long time.

Good post, and very accurate overall, but this isn't necessarily true. Regardlesss of their clauses, those legal warnings are not legally binding, and if the law in your country allows the making of copies for non-profit personal use, nobody can do anything about that (other than trying to change the law so it becomes illegal to make copies for non-profit personal use, of course).

That is probably true. And it would be ludicrous to try to take legal action against anyone who made personal copies of anything. The main point is that "piracy" used to be defined clearly as intentionally violating a copyright for monetary gain. Think of the street vendor selling fake Levis jeans out of a stall somewhere, having sewn a Levis label onto $10 remnants. Or the trouble eBay used to get into for sellers hawking fake Gucci bags. Those a pirates.

And as far as the law is concerned, it still is (also, assaulting ships and the like; parrots, wooden legs and other accessories are not mandatory, though), unless something drastically changed in the last few days and I missed it (it would have changed if SOPA and PIPA passed, but they haven't yet; however, ACTA is still a major concern). What certain corporations want you to think is a different matter, of course. We all know that saying about how "a lie told enough times becomes truth" or whatever. Luckily it doesn't seem like they're succeeding: we've all seen the "you wouldn't download a car" anti-piracy ad, and I assume most of us have thought "hell yes, I would if I could".

Farewell, filesonic. Looks SOPA and PIPA aren't needed afterall. Who's next? mediafire? Youtube?

I had to repost this elsewhere. It was really good.

Well it was Filesonic that pansyed out, I don't think they were shut down. Sucks though.

I keep saying this around myself, but...

On one hand, yeah it sucks. Simply put. But on the other, I won't be surprised if we see more filesharing sites pop up within the next few weeks to take MU and FS's place. Although the timing is risky with SOPA/PIPA just being passed over, the situation reminds me a bit of Kazaa closing down for awhile, but then other clients popped up to take its place shortly after. This happens a lot with torrent sites as well still. And there's still plenty of new alternatives to MU and FS popping up out there already.

Rapidshare even came out saying they think "filesharing is a legitimate business", and it really is for a lot of people using these sites for school or work projects, or storing their own personal data, etc. Nice to see them have balls though, but them being based out of the US probably keeps them a bit safer than others.

Rapidshare rock anyway so I hope they stay in business. Filesonic was not my favorite site, but they seemed to have a lot of video files.

But yeah, all this shit is hitting the fans now just because of the hype surrounding SOPA. Pretty soon, things will probably be back to normal.

Then again this isn't looking too hot, pulled this from another forum:

Are people really going to stop purchasing new music if downloads magically vanished? There are ways to legally listen to albums online cheaply or for free, you know. Hell, some bands have/had their entire full length discographies on sites like MySpace. Besides that, I do agree with most points made in this topic though.

I personally would buy a lot less, while labels like NWN are doing great things by streaming everything, illegal downloads offer me the freedom to play stuff in my car (my most frequent listening time) and avoid my shitty internet which streams attrociously. Sure it wouldn't cut me down to zero, but there is absolutely no doubt that without illegal downloading my CD collection wouldn't be well into the 400s and the variety bands would be much lesser, instead sticking more to bands I am familiar with, resulting in less exploration of the genre and of lesser known bands. And that's assuming that every single band and label was as cool as that one.

I want to thank everyone for posting such lucrative and awesome material to educate myself on this issue that I am deeply concerned with. I want to also add the thought that this is all simply because the music industry couldn't adapt to the 21st century. It's a pity.

1 Fast Five 9,260,000 $626,137,675
2 The Hangover II 8,840,000 $581,464,305
3 Thor 8,330,000 $449,326,618
4 Source Code 7,910,000 $123,278,618
5 I Am Number Four 7,670,000 $144,500,437
6 Sucker Punch 7,200,000 $89,792,502
7 127 Hours 6,910,000 $60,738,797
8 Rango 6,480,000 $245,155,348
9 The King’s Speech 6,250,000 $414,211,549
10 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 6,030,000 $1,328,111,219

Of these, I think Hangover 2 was simply just a cash in(which cost 80 million to make). I think Thor was pirated a lot, since it was only showing in 3d in places, which lots of people hate(I saw it in 3d and it made it worse). Just because people downloaded it doesnt mean they didnt buy it too. I dont pay full price for a movie ticket, but I dont like theaters nearly as much since theres always loud teenagers/adults, and the phones , etc.
Hollywood bitches about piracy, yet they can pay actors ridiculous salaries and do shitty remakes.
As for music, the only people I hear bitching about it are David Vincent and John Schaeffer(and look how the newer albums turned out). I can only buy music online, since the only places I could go(best buy, which has a shit selection) and Slackers(used cd/games store), which is a store I hate).
I think this whole thing is bullshit, since if it really was a huge problem, they wouldve shut these sites down years ago.

Yes. There are a number of regrettable purchases of mine, currently collecting dust in various draws. They are typically albums I bought based opinions from friends. Bearing in mind, this was before sites like youtube, last.fm and even myspace was big. There are a lot of bands out there that only have a handful of songs up to stream, if at all, and those bands could be misrepresenting the sound and quality of their albums by cherry picking songs that stand out. A bit like how most of the singles of the last few RHCP album sound nothing like the rest of the tracks on the album (I'm mostly talking about Californication and By The Way). Also, films and series can overpriced as shit.

Hah! I love it. "Good ideas don't need protection".

On the other hand, shitty ideas do. Who in the world, knowing that a movie or album is shitty, would buy it anyway? Obsessives? Novelty collectors?

Idiots, of which there are plenty.

It has begun!

With the Mediafire purge happening today, most of the bigger blogs across the web have shut down.

Oh well, it was a good run.

Is anyone surprised? With a site as high profile as Megaupload being taken down (whatever the reason), I think we all knew it was just a matter of time before all the other big sites either shut themselves down or started severely cracking down on more illegitimate content.

As a strange aside: a very small part of me wouldn't mind if online piracy became a lot more difficult, if only so that people would stop giving me shit when they find out that I still buy CDs.

Fuck, mediafire is getting purged? Where'd you get this?

Latest from around the web is that Mediafire is not going anywhere.

I'm really happy seeing all the blogs with entire discographies disappear and files people downloaded being deleted off these sites.

And I find it beyond hilarious that people will not buy any new music if they cannot download it first.... like it was said before there are pleny pleny pleny of places you can stream the entire album. Most bands do that. I can't think of one that refuses to put out a few samples to intise

This is already affecting my fap sessions.
Bigtime.

Yeah, I'm kinda in the same boat. Well, not really the same boat but definitely the same ocean. A small part of me is glad this happened just so I don't have to see ten more threads about how all everyone ever does anymore is rub themselves raw while downloading entire band discographies and they will always be less fans than the much, much superior humans who, gasp, actually buy CD's. Could you imagine such a concept?