Look, you can’t have it both ways. Either you want people to pay for their downloads or you don’t. As soon as you win one battle, then you decide to show your true greedy asses off and get in a price-fixing mess. Yep, those fine folks at Warner (and perhaps some of the other big cheese labels) are now the subjects of an investigation in price-fixing mp3s. How fucking surprising. This is exactly just one o the myriad reasons that the war against free file sharing will most likely not be won. It’s not about the artists at all, but how much money the corporations can make. Is it any wonder then that so many “illegal” (whatever the hell that means anymore) P2P systems continue to flourish? Slapping an FBI warning on discs is hardly a deterrent, and then seeing companies pull shit like this, as well as putting all that anti-copying bullshit on certain discs that just makes things worse all over only proves these people are completely incompetent.
I’ll admit it. I’ve been an advocate for free P2P programs ever since Napster was in its original heyday. Why? Simply because to me it was never any different then lending a friend an album, tape, or CD to copy for himself to enjoy, or to make a mix tape or disc out of my collection, and vice-versa. I still buy music out the wazoo, but then I always have. Considering, then, that no one’s still making any money except these labels even when they do start charging for downloads, only furthers my belief to keep on kicking it for free. Music sales didn’t take a dive because of file sharing. They took a dive because labels like to turn out more crap than good product.
