It doesn't matter, Janey. Funnily enough, I take some pride in not using sites like this and paying for the music that I enjoy....
Think even less of me for enjoying sites like these, but I appreciated the tastes of others on that site, which has led me to buy CDs and go to concerts for some of the artists I've discovered that aren't on iTunes or that I can't usually find anywhere else. Oft repeated statement in this thread, but it's true. Stuff I wouldn't even hear on the radio or find on other peoples' iPods. And like others have pointed out, a lot of the content was recordings of live shows and international music.
If indie artists and record companies and artists worldwide sold ALL of their music DRM free on iTunes at a reasonable quality and price ($5-10/album, adjust for other factors), sign me up. Alas, no such thing exists, and every time I look on iTunes I'm bombarded with Colbie Caillat's nauseating "Bubbly", and every time I read Ars or /., there's some mention of some company wanting more money from iTunes so they're not renewing their long term contract, blah blah. Meanwhile, please find me a brick and mortar retailer that sells some of the music I listen to..or find me a reputable online one that does. Except for possibly at Amoeba and one or two hole-in-the-wall-type stores, I can't find anything other than mainstream crap at stores like Best Buy.
Besides, what I loved most on oink is the fantastic listing of what other people have listened to. Not even iTunes does that. iTunes only gives you similar artists. Even within the same artist, there are albums I absolutely cannot stand, and others I'll listen to for days on end. And if I go to a store, the most I can ask is the advice of a few people..or some friends. Not a huge group of people. What oink did in that regard was PERFECT.
I don't pirate anything because I'm out to get all those content creators I think deserve no money. I think they do. But there's more to this argument than getting rid of piracy. It's other more novel ways of selling things that the record companies are hating. I used to think they were on the right track with iTunes Store. But listening to all the greed, I'm disgusted. If I could personally give the money straight to the creators and the small army of people helping them, I'd love to. But this system doesn't work like that so easily.
I'm not necessarily endorsing piracy because I want to pay my own price - that price being free. It's just that I think it's a balance (for me) between what I think is a complete ripoff. So, like I said above. Find me a store that doesn't suck, and I'll go. Meanwhile, I'll be sticking with my half-used-to-be-oink and half-concerts/purchases.
Yeah, I know what you're going to say already. You don't have to say it. This is my thing, and it works for me, illegal or not. Apparently enough people are dissatisfied that they're willing to do something like it as well.
Isn't it time for a seachange, rather than endless discussions about current piracy?
Somehow, I think the involvement of Interpol says a bit more about the situation than many of the users think was entirely harmless.
So I assume you think the FBI with all their takedowns also means a lot? If Interpol goes after any of the non-top-...100 uploaders on and donators to the site, I'll be shocked. In fact, if they go for the staff with the exception of OiNK, i'll be shocked. There have been bigger groups taken down (think scene), and even then only groups and servers disappeared, and most people were never charged. And you know what scene is? Big enough that I'd bet that a HUGE and obscene amount of pirated material would not exist without it. End users can "upload" all they want, but scene is responsible for the vast majority of movie releases, at the least. And like I said, even with scene group takedowns, at most they crippled the scene for a short bit until new groups replaced the old ones, and most people involved who were arrested and had their hardware confiscated weren't even charged with anything. Best of all? They obviously had illegal content on these servers, meanwhile OiNK doesn't (maybe on his personal computer, but not on site servers). So if these international massive piracy groups responsible for so much aren't charged with anything, what makes you think oink will? oink is pocket change...miniscule..irrelevant..in comparison to these groups.
So, Interpol can go after 200k users all they want. It'll be absurd and pointless and unheard of. Especially with the lack of information oink servers have on users.
No-one's saying you can stop piracy; but what I want to see is people be honest, hold up their hands and say: 'Yeah, I do it because I can get stuff for free' instead of trying to justify their actions by ridiculous arguments about the music industry or whatever.
I am being completely honest. I get some of the music for free, but I also buy a fair amount of music from iTunes/Amazon/Amoeba. I purchased Radiohead's In Rainbows. This is far from being black and white. I'm sure many of oink's users would agree with me. As freely available as the music was, many had their own completely legal copies.
As much as I'd like to respect artists' decision about copyrights and "stealing" their music..and as much as I do, do you just not listen or watch to whatever it is you want if it's prohibitively expensive or just outright unavailable other than through downloads? Yeah, old argument, I know. But it's completely legitimate. And for that matter, more and more well known artists are beginning to take advantage of p2p. Not only artists, all sorts of content creators. It's free promotion in a good way. And the effect p2p has is documented and known. And the idea of giving away songs for free and then advertising on the site like crazy has been thrown around in this thread (or, I vaguely remember), some crazy new idea like that could just help the industry more than it can hurt. Piracy is not entirely evil. You may think that, but a lot of things say otherwise.
So, go on all you want about respecting copyrights but saying no to p2p. It's not going away, more artists are realizing what it can do for them,
piracy does not necessarily displace legitimate purchases, and none of this has to sacrifice copyrights.
edit: on second reading, I guess I'm rambling all over the place. There's one thing I want to make really clear.
BV, I resent that you're acting like I'm completely evil (well, evil in general, but it also applies to me) because I paid for some of my purchases and I stole others, and therefore I blatantly have no respect for copyrights. I am aware of my actions. I'd love to change the way things work. But painting people who have MASSIVE legitimate collections who go to a dozen concerts a month and purchase all sorts of stuff while still downloading the occasional album with the same brush used for people who steal every single song is ridiculous (and I fall in between those two, I'm neither nor). Yeah, maybe to you it seems like that because it's one of those "once you do it" things, but because I download one song doesn't mean I automatically won't buy it later on or something stupid.
