Music Prices Going Up?

[dcranston]

Here you go. All material in quotes comes directly from the cited portions of the United States Code.

Honestly, and this may be because it's 2:30 AM, I'm impressed. You seriously took the time to look that up.

Although.. that does go against everything else on this message board, you know. You're supposed to argue with "facts" that aren't ever backed up, and in fact are based purely on opinion or overheard ideas from someone else's opinion. For example:

RIAA blows the big one. By not purchasing music, it actually helps all musicians, regardless of whether or not they are signed on a big label!! They make MORE money if we DON'T pay for songs, but download them from Limewire!!

That right there was a big lie that I just made up. Or, we could pull the standard "pissed off at Apple for a weird rumor I just read on this site" line:

Apple hates musicians. Since they're upping the price per track to $5, and keeping the extra $4 as pure profit, they're worse than the RIAA. You guys all think Apple can do no wrong, but you don't see Dell screwing artists. And at least Dell can get a G5 in a laptop. I'm going to go buy a Dell. I swear.

That's a favorite type of thinking. But then there's also the pretty common:

I'm sure Apple loves musicians and fights against the RIAA every day. Honestly, I'd pay upwards of $10 per track on the iTMS. It's just that great.

Well that about sums up our personalities on the board:

1. Whiners Crazy un-proved subjective "facts"
2. Threateners Threaten to switch to PCs (possibly just a subset of whiners)
3. Evangelists Apple can do no wrong (hey, at least they don't whine... )

Then there's the post I quoted. How refreshingly honest. And then there's my post. How... whatever. It's just a post on Macrumors. Rock on.

 

[thatwendigo]

Applying these definitions, it is clear that regardless of any licensing issues, downloading from Allofmp3.com is illegal because an American, who is subject to American law, is creating an unauthorized copy of a “phonorecord” as that term is defined above. When a United States citizen downloads an mp3 file from Russia, he has reproduced a “phonorecord” by causing sounds to be transcribed and fixed in a material object (the hard drive), which sounds can be perceived with the aid of a machine (his computer, iPod, etc).

By extension, it could be argued that even downloading a song temporarily (say, in your browsercache) is illegal. Even if it's never stored to disk, you've still made a copy that resides in volatile memory and which will be erased when new information replaced it.

A few more points:
US Code, Title 17, Section 501 - Infringement of copyright
Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner as provided by sections 106 through 121 or of the author as provided in section 106A(a), or who imports copies or phonorecords into the United States in violation of section 602, is an infringer of the copyright or right of the author, as the case may be. For purposes of this chapter (other than section 506), any reference to copyright shall be deemed to include the rights conferred by section 106A(a). As used in this subsection, the term ''anyone'' includes any State, any instrumentality of a State, and any officer or employee of a State or instrumentality of a State acting in his or her official capacity. Any State, and any such instrumentality, officer, or employee, shall be subject to the provisions of this title in the same manner and to the same extent as any nongovernmental entity.

So now we look for Section 602, to see the import regulations:
US Code, Title 17, Section 602 - Infringing importation of copies or phonorecords
Importation into the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies or phonorecords of a work that have been acquired outside the United States is an infringement of the exclusive right to distribute copies or phonorecords under section 106, actionable under section 501. This subsection does not apply to -

1. importation of copies or phonorecords under the authority or for the use of the Government of the United States or of any State or political subdivision of a State, but not including copies or phonorecords for use in schools, or copies of any audiovisual work imported for purposes other than archival use;
   [*] importation, for the private use of the importer and not for distribution, by any person with respect to no more than one copy or phonorecord of any one work at any one time, or by any person arriving from outside the United States with respect to copies or phonorecords forming part of such person's personal baggage; or
   [*] importation by or for an organization operated for scholarly, educational, or religious purposes and not for private gain, with respect to no more than one copy of an audiovisual work solely for its archival purposes, and no more than five copies or phonorecords of any other work for its library lending or archival purposes, unless the importation of such copies or phonorecords is part of an activity consisting of systematic reproduction or distribution, engaged in by such organization in violation of the provisions of section 108(g)(2).

In a case where the making of the copies or phonorecords would have constituted an infringement of copyright if this title had been applicable, their importation is prohibited. In a case where the copies or phonorecords were lawfully made, the United States Customs Service has no authority to prevent their importation unless the provisions of section 601 are applicable. In either case, the Secretary of the Treasury is authorized to prescribe, by regulation, a procedure under which any person claiming an interest in the copyright in a particular work may, upon payment of a specified fee, be entitled to notification by the Customs Service of the importation of articles that appear to be copies or phonorecords of the work.

Interestingly, this section gives exemptiong for foreigners carrying physical copies, the importation for personal use, and for scholarly or archoval purposes. I'm digging further into the whole setup, but this is hideously crossreferenced and not entirely clear on the purpose of some of the exemptions. So far, it looks like certain kinds of academic, non-profit, and governmental organizations are exempt from these restrictions, and that fair use is actually pretty poorly defined within the US Code.

 

[d-fi]

Allofmp3.com

If you are coming from the U.S., you are violating law by using AllOfMp3.

While it may be legal where they are based (who knows, really?), causing a complete copy of a protected work to be created and sent to you over the wire that you have no license for is illegal.

Trust me, the actual copyright owners (usually the music labels themselves, not some russian organization or what not) have not given any permission to AllOfMP3 to redistribute their material, and since the copyright owner is the only one who matters in the U.S. copyright law sense, you are violating the law by using their service.

I had to reply to this because i came across some information that will clear this up

(Note: this post has been copied from slashdot in order to clear things up here apologies to the original poster if this offends him/her)

Those doubts are quickly allayed here http://www.museekster.com/allofmp3info.htm allofmp3.com is perfectly legal under US law. The RIAA doesn't like it, and will tell you otherwise, but they are being no more honest than the MPAA is when it flashes those FBI warnings at the beginning of each DVD telling you you have no right to make a backup copy for personal use ... knowing full well that the law and the courts consistently say otherwise.

The short explaination for those too lazy to follow the above link.

1) Under US law, anyone may import any music so long as they are licensed to do so under the copyright laws of their own country. If you buy a mailorder CD from Canada and the company is licensed by either the artist or the CIAA member company, it is legal to import the CD. If you buy a mailorder CD from the US and the US seller is licensed by the artist (or the RIAA member company), it is legal. Under Russian copyright law, which the US is bound by treaty to respect, allofmp3.com has a license to distribute all copyrighted music from the Russian equivelent of the RIAA, known as ROMS.

The RIAA may hate the fact that you can buy $0.99 iTunes songs in whatever unencumbered format you like for around $0.04 per song, but the law throughout the developed world, including the USA, is quite clear that this is a perfectly legal service to use, yes, even in Once But No Longer Free America.

 

[spinko]

just goes to show how absolutely greedy these f**** music "majors" actually are. Just like the petroleum companies, banks and all the other greedy multinationals that make huge gains on the back of consumers, artists and society as a whole.


f*** them !

 

[DGFan]

Here you go. All material in quotes comes directly from the cited portions of the United States Code. The owner of copyright under title 17 has the exclusive right “to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords.” 17 U.S.C. sec. 106(1). “Phonorecords” are “material objects in which sounds...are fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the sounds can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.” 17 U.S.C. sec. 101. To “reproduce” a phonorecord means “to produce a material object in which the work is duplicated, transcribed, imitated, or simulated...” 17 U.S.C. sec. 101.

Applying these definitions, it is clear that regardless of any licensing issues, downloading from Allofmp3.com is illegal because an American, who is subject to American law, is creating an unauthorized copy of a “phonorecord” as that term is defined above. When a United States citizen downloads an mp3 file from Russia, he has reproduced a “phonorecord” by causing sounds to be transcribed and fixed in a material object (the hard drive), which sounds can be perceived with the aid of a machine (his computer, iPod, etc).

Notice that the copyright violation comes from the reproduction of the phonorecord, not the lack of any license to listen to or use the work. Think about it: when you purchase a song from the iTunes music store, you are NOT purchasing a license to listen, what you have actually been granted is a license to make a copy of that phonorecord on your hard drive and on the hard drives of any other computers for which the song is “authorized.” It truly does not matter whether the folks in Russia have or even need a license to distribute the music, because U.S. copyright is very clear that YOU need a license to make a copy to your hard drive.

That's not quite true. You have it right, up to the point where you talk about the copying.

iTMS has been granted to make a copy and they deliver that copy to me. They are authorized to do so.

In the case of AllOfMP3.com the copying is done outside the United States. The server that does the encoding and sends the copy to me is in Russia (well, it had better be otherwise they will be in trouble!). That is not subject to United States copyright law.

Why? Because copyright law applies to the person making the copy. When I buy a song I am not making a copy. I am taking a copy, already made for me, and saving it to my hard drive. Once there, since I am in the US it is subject to our copyright laws. I cannot copy it without permission from the copyright holder. The only copies I make from there are for personal use under the fair use provision of US law.

 

[DGFan]

I, for one, am not going to take the moral high ground on this issue. If Tori Amos loses out on a few cents because I bought my songs at AllOfMP3.com I will simply have to live with that guilt.

But I believe in the international market. I didn't cry when I lost my job to outsourcing. I didn't whine about how unfair it was. I simply understood that the market works that way and companies want to take advantage of it.

So if a situation comes along where the market works a particular way in my favor, I see nothing wrong with taking advantage of it.

Having said that, I would not mind if AllOfMP3.com double its prices and gave the extra money directly to the artists (not the labels). Imagine if the artists got a whopping $0.11 from selling a song. They would probably be thrilled. And I would still be happy with the price

 

[daven20]

someone actually defending subscription services:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2099282/

yes, i know it is on msn.com, but try to read it with an open mind. imagine an ipod equiped with wifi. for the cost of one album, you could have access to hundred's of thousands of songs at home, at school or the local cafe with wireless internet access. i think this could really be the killer app.

you may not like the idea of not owning the music you pay for, but the article makes the point that with DRM, you do not really own the music either. you are purchasing a liscense to listen to that music, and the record labels dictate the terms of where and how you can listen.

 

[Doctor Q]

you may not like the idea of not owning the music you pay for, but the article makes the point that with DRM, you do not really own the music either. you are purchasing a liscense to listen to that music, and the record labels dictate the terms of where and how you can listen.

It's interesting to compare that view with the idea of paying to listen to music on the radio or TV, as you might do with XM Satellite service or the music stations on digital cable TV.

 

[shamino]

Devil's advocate. I was pointing out the stupidity of the "Using iTMS is moral because the artists themselves entered into contracts that allows them to be screwed" argument.

If people want to use iTMS, that's fine. Just don't pretend that you're not screwing artists. You are, just less than others.

Do you think they're not getting equally screwed when you buy a CD for $18? Do you seriously think that higher price at thstore translates into a higher royalty to the artist?

 

[LethalWolfe]

The RIAA doesn't like it, and will tell you otherwise, but they are being no more honest than the MPAA is when it flashes those FBI warnings at the beginning of each DVD telling you you have no right to make a backup copy for personal use ... knowing full well that the law and the courts consistently say otherwise.

It's been a while sense I payed attention to the FBI warning but I thought it only warned against public and/or commerical violations. But it very well could have added personal copying as well (like I said, it's been a while sense I've read the warning). But if it does warn against making any copies what so ever it is still correct. Recent court decissions have supported the DMCA and not the precedent set by the "BetaMax case."


I think this overall discussion is a good example of how out-of-date our copyright laws are, but also how tricky the internet,digital media, and globalization has made the situation. Pirating and distribution of movies and music on a grand scale used to require a lot of time, equipment, and money and always resulted in pirated copies that were never as good as the original source. Now one person can buy one CD, rip it, upload it, and instantly give 10's, if not hundreds, of millions of people all over the world access to a perfect copy of that CD in a matter of minutes.


Lethal

 

[travishill]

Why? Because copyright law applies to the person making the copy. When I buy a song I am not making a copy. I am taking a copy, already made for me, and saving it to my hard drive. Once there, since I am in the US it is subject to our copyright laws. I cannot copy it without permission from the copyright holder. The only copies I make from there are for personal use under the fair use provision of US law.

Yes but, as has been shown time and again in court, downloading itself is creating a copy. Not just the act of copying bytes from one lossless copy to a compressed copy as AllOfMP3 does; the actual download of that newly compressed file is you creating an unauthorized copy in the United States.

Otherwise there would have been no successful prosecutions for anyone downloading any kind of media, ever.

But I do agree with people earlier, it is time to wrap up this part of the thread. Since many people have many different viewpoints on this issue it is clear that the law is vague enough to certainly allow for many interpretations- and that is bad for everyone.

Bottom line: if you want to pay the people who produced the song (including the record label, songwriters, artists, engineers, marketers, etc.) then use something like iTunes. Of course we have no control over who makes how much of that because it is all contractual.

If you don't care, then nothing anyone says is going to convince you otherwise. Because whether or not using a service like AllOfMP3 is totally legal in the U.S., I don't think anyone here is deluded enough to think that anyone is going to go after the end-users in any big sense.

 

[pioneerMT]

By extension, it could be argued that even downloading a song temporarily (say, in your browsercache) is illegal. Even if it's never stored to disk, you've still made a copy that resides in volatile memory and which will be erased when new information replaced it.

That's exactly right. In fact this has been argued in numerous court cases, the first of which was the 1983 U.S. District Court case of Apple Computer, Inc. v. Formula International, Inc., where the court held that copying from a disk into RAM is creating a "copy" under title 17, even though that copy is fleeting and disappears when power is cut off. This reasoning has been followed by courts accross the country and it is now well-settled that loading something into volatile memory creates a copy.

 

[DGFan]

Yes but, as has been shown time and again in court, downloading itself is creating a copy. Not just the act of copying bytes from one lossless copy to a compressed copy as AllOfMP3 does; the actual download of that newly compressed file is you creating an unauthorized copy in the United States.

Otherwise there would have been no successful prosecutions for anyone downloading any kind of media, ever.

But I do agree with people earlier, it is time to wrap up this part of the thread. Since many people have many different viewpoints on this issue it is clear that the law is vague enough to certainly allow for many interpretations- and that is bad for everyone.

Bottom line: if you want to pay the people who produced the song (including the record label, songwriters, artists, engineers, marketers, etc.) then use something like iTunes. Of course we have no control over who makes how much of that because it is all contractual.

If you don't care, then nothing anyone says is going to convince you otherwise. Because whether or not using a service like AllOfMP3 is totally legal in the U.S., I don't think anyone here is deluded enough to think that anyone is going to go after the end-users in any big sense.

First, I disagree with your definition of copying. I do not see the difference between "downloading and saving a file" and "receiving a file in the mail on floppy disk." For all practical purposes they are the same. So why would the former be copying and the latter not be? However, I do not believe this has been established with an extensive case history.

Downloading a file when you know the source you are getting it from is not authorized by their jurisdiction to create copies is a different matter entirely. But I honestly have never heard of a prosecution for that. If it's been shown time and again in court can you provide a citation?

I'll probably learn a lot more about this when I take my copyrights class next year. It will be interesting to see what additional perspective that adds.

 

[DGFan]

That's exactly right. In fact this has been argued in numerous court cases, the first of which was the 1983 U.S. District Court case of Apple Computer, Inc. v. Formula International, Inc., where the court held that copying from a disk into RAM is creating a "copy" under title 17, even though that copy is fleeting and disappears when power is cut off. This reasoning has been followed by courts accross the country and it is now well-settled that loading something into volatile memory creates a copy.

But this is a different matter entirely because the "copying" involves only one party. The real question is, when a file is downloaded is the copying performed at the server or at the client?

Certainly copying takes place at the client when it moves from RAM to HD. However this would be entirely allowable under fair use.

However this case does nothing to establish who is doing the copying when a file is loaded into memory and then transmitted over a network. Is the receiver of that transmission the one performing the copying? To me it is ludicrous to suggest that is the case.

 

[rt_brained]

Unfortunately, Apple isn't in the same kind of negotiating position as WalMart, who can use their retail strength or Sony, who provides music. Apple came in with a great solution, but with everyone else jumping into the fray, it would seem Apple is backed up against a wall...either allow the recording industry to continue playing Jabba the Hut or tell the industry where to stick it and drop iTMS alltogether.

Given one or the other extreme, I'd vote the latter and let the industry pick up the pieces.

 

[itsa]

Imagine if the artists got a whopping $0.11 from selling a song. They would probably be thrilled. And I would still be happy with the price

WOW, WOULD WE EVER! I would be happy with that much per CD!

 

[Doctor Q]

WOW, WOULD WE EVER! I would be happy with that much per CD!

Somebody please send itsa a dollar. That'll feed one more starving artist for the year.

I wonder if shortchanging artists is so common because they love what they do, and, like a lot of teachers, will stay in their profession even if their lousy earnings don't improve.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Somebody please send itsa a dollar. That'll feed one more starving artist for the year.

I wonder if shortchanging artists is so common because they love what they do, and, like a lot of teachers, will stay in their profession even if their lousy earnings don't improve.

They short change because they can. The supply out weighs the demand by a huge amount. And artists are willing to accept those terms. If unknow artist A doesn't want to sign a crappy deal there are thousands others that will. I'm not that familair w/the music biz as I'm in the film/tv biz but they have a lot of parallels. Getting screwed is part of the game. It's like hazing. And hopefully w/hardwork and luck you get to a point were you aren't getting screwed as much and have a comfortable income.

And yes, part of it is that people love what they do and are willing to work for far less than what they desereve. I'd much rather make a modest income editing than be making bank in some stupid corporate cubicle<sp?> somewhere.


Lethal

 

[Devilshotrod]

99 cents is too much for a song

Um, isn't downloading supposed to cut out the middle man and save me money? I think 99 cents is about twice what I should pay for a song, and certainly no more than 9.99 for a whole album. It's insane that downloading a song cost as much as buying it in a store. I've noticed that ITMS charges up to 14 bucks for a brand new album. WTF. If I want a new album and am willing to pay 9.99 for it, and can't because it's overpriced, I'll go right to limewire. There is just no excuse except greed of music biz and I won't stand for it. I am willing to pay, but not be ripped off. I hope the whole music biz burns for all I care, it's ridiculous that there is on demand movies right now but the music biz is STILL scrambling to figure out how to milk the consumer for as much as possible. FU music companies.

 

[Mr_Ed]

Um, isn't downloading supposed to cut out the middle man and save me money? I think 99 cents is about twice what I should pay for a song, and certainly no more than 9.99 for a whole album. It's insane that downloading a song cost as much as buying it in a store. I've noticed that ITMS charges up to 14 bucks for a brand new album. WTF. If I want a new album and am willing to pay 9.99 for it, and can't because it's overpriced, I'll go right to limewire. There is just no excuse except greed of music biz and I won't stand for it. I am willing to pay, but not be ripped off. I hope the whole music biz burns for all I care, it's ridiculous that there is on demand movies right now but the music biz is STILL scrambling to figure out how to milk the consumer for as much as possible. FU music companies.

Ditto. It amazes me that I can go to a local store and pay $12-15 (plus taxes) for a music CD, yet a top rated movie or concert DVD costs $15-23 (again, plus taxes). The movie industry has slowly figured out that if you make the product price low enough, most people will not think it worthwhile to try to download an illegal copy. Granted, a DVD is much harder to copy due to the complexity of the format than a CD so fewer people would try, but by that very reason, a music CD should cost FAR less than what it does. Making a faithful reproduction of a CD is SO easy, asking people to pay anything more than about $5 (pulled than number out of my butt) for it essentially makes it worthwhile to get a copy. That doesn't even begin to address the fact that there may only be 1 or 2 tracks on the CD you actually think are worth anything.

What has the music industry done lately to try to bring in consumers and increase sales?
- Litigation to discourage illegal downloads. I guess dropping the price of CD's is just too obvious a solution for these boneheads to figure out.
- Launched various crappy on-line music download services with highly restrictive DRM policies. "You can have this song for $.99 but you can't put it on a CD, you can only play it on this one computer . . . oh yeah, and only on Tuesdays and Thursdays."
- Introduced SACD and DVD-Audio some time ago. "Hey, it's higher quality so we'll charge you even more for the same lousy collection of tracks that include that one song you really like!!"

If it turns out they are indeed trying to milk legal downloaders further by raising on-line prices, I sincerely hope there is enough backlash from the user community to put a serius dent in their revenues. Whether that means illegal downloading and/or just plain not buying jack squat from them, that "gravy train" they've been enjoying for decades now needs to hit a concrete wall and come to a screeching halt.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Ditto. It amazes me that I can go to a local store and pay $12-15 (plus taxes) for a music CD, yet a top rated movie or concert DVD costs $15-23 (again, plus taxes). The movie industry has slowly figured out that if you make the product price low enough, most people will not think it worthwhile to try to download an illegal copy. Granted, a DVD is much harder to copy due to the complexity of the format than a CD so fewer people would try, but by that very reason, a music CD should cost FAR less than what it does. Making a faithful reproduction of a CD is SO easy, asking people to pay anything more than about $5 (pulled than number out of my butt) for it essentially makes it worthwhile to get a copy. That doesn't even begin to address the fact that there may only be 1 or 2 tracks on the CD you actually think are worth anything.

First off, if you listen to artists that only offer 1 or 2 good songs per disc you need to find better music to listen to. People often wonder why the label's keep churning out more pop crap, well, the answer is pretty simple. People keep buying it. If Britney wasn't still a cash cow she'd have gone the way of the Spice Girls.

Secondly, the DVD/CD price comparison is so way, way off base it's not even funny. Movies make money at the box office. Movies make money from rentals. Movies make money from cable/TV deals. Movies make money from DVD/VHS sales. If a band records an album basically the only way that album is going to make money is thru CD sales. If films' only means of revenue was from DVD sales alone they would be a sh*tload more expensive than they are now (the average of a feature is $102million dollars, imagine recouping that cost at $20 a pop). And the price for a movie on DVD is basically the same price as a movie on VHS in the pre-DVD era and it has nothing to do with the studios being afriad of P2P networks. As for concert DVDs I can't imagine the post/production costs being very high (relatively speaking). Probably more than the average cost of professionaly recording a CD, but significantly lower than the cost of your typical low-budget indie feature.

The only thing keeping DVDs from being pirated as much as CDs is the size. Even w/broadband up/down loading 4gigs just not viable right now. If it was people would be "sharing" DVDs as much as they "share" CDs.


Lethal

 

[itsa]

Somebody please send itsa a dollar. That'll feed one more starving artist for the year.

I wonder if shortchanging artists is so common because they love what they do, and, like a lot of teachers, will stay in their profession even if their lousy earnings don't improve.

... yeah I could use buck!

You are right on!
If I did it just for the money I would have been out of the game a long time ago. I LOVE what I do.

 

[dontmatter]

someone actually defending subscription services:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2099282/

yes, i know it is on msn.com, but try to read it with an open mind. imagine an ipod equiped with wifi. for the cost of one album, you could have access to hundred's of thousands of songs at home, at school or the local cafe with wireless internet access. i think this could really be the killer app.

you may not like the idea of not owning the music you pay for, but the article makes the point that with DRM, you do not really own the music either. you are purchasing a liscense to listen to that music, and the record labels dictate the terms of where and how you can listen.

yeah, that could seriously boost sales there. But, I bet you the labels don't allow the artists to get paid by third parties for their music. Of course, cash always works, but c'mon, would anybody believe that the russains were actually making the payments?

 

[dontmatter]

Um, isn't downloading supposed to cut out the middle man and save me money? I think 99 cents is about twice what I should pay for a song, and certainly no more than 9.99 for a whole album. It's insane that downloading a song cost as much as buying it in a store. I've noticed that ITMS charges up to 14 bucks for a brand new album. WTF. If I want a new album and am willing to pay 9.99 for it, and can't because it's overpriced, I'll go right to limewire. There is just no excuse except greed of music biz and I won't stand for it. I am willing to pay, but not be ripped off. I hope the whole music biz burns for all I care, it's ridiculous that there is on demand movies right now but the music biz is STILL scrambling to figure out how to milk the consumer for as much as possible. FU music companies.

how is it supposed to get rid of the middle man? CD: Artist, label, tower records, you. ITMS: Artist, label, itms, you. just changes the middle man, or men (label is a middle man, of sorts).

And, I don't quite get how you can say, "I should pay this much for a song"?
Why is it yours to decide? it's like anything else out there-you'll pay what your willing to for it, and whoever is selling it sells it at whatever cost gives them the highest yields. You don't get to say, I should only pay 15 grand for a mercedes, I should pay $1000 for a powerbook. No, you say, a benz is 45 grand, a powerbook is $2,500. If you're willing to pay that much to get the product, you get it. If not, you get saturn or a dell. Just beacause you CAN get music without finding sirens and flashing lights in your rear view mirror, doesn't mean that music should cost this ammount. Music is going to cost as much as makes the most money (now, you could argue that labels would make more if it was cheaper, but that's a different argument). you get to buy it, or you don't. There is no should.

And another note to devilshotrod. You really should make an adjustment or two to your name. did the devil shoot rod, your beloved brother, or do you try and balance your mac nerdlyness that's with something that's more cool and masculine, like hot rods?

 

[greg75]

There is no should.

Actually, there is when we're talking about an industry that engages in illegal price fixing.