Illegal Downloads

Here is my view on downloading copyrighted material. I do not care if you agree or not, these are my thoughts and they probably won't change because of people bitching about the artists rights or that it is illegal and that I am a bad person.

Unless the content is easily available for purchase on the internet via download (amazon etc do not count) I am justified in downloading it. By not distributing their content on the internet they show that they do not care about making a profit on these offerings. I give a little leeway to older TV shows etc. If the show was on more than a year ago then they do not have to offer it on the internet but they bust release the season (or whatever it is) on DVD for purchase. It would be ridiculous for me to expect them to put shows on the internet that were on 10+ years ago. If the TV show is currently on then I expect it to be on iTunes. I get very strict on how they offer their content. Currently iTunes offers the best deals on TV show distribution and has the most content. I don't want any of the bullshit like CBS pulls by offering their content on their site for $1.99 and you can only watch it out of the web browser for 24 hours, then it is gone. These are my ideas on content download. All current TV shows must be on iTunes and all older TV shows must be released on DVD or else I am justified in downloading them by other means.

Now lets move onto the RIAA and MPAA. These assholes are getting very cocky with the power they have gotten recently. Many of you may disagree that what they have is not power but I would like to argue this. It is power and they are abusing it. They believe that since they own the copyrights to various pieces of work that they can first off charge an arm and a leg for the content and secondly sue everyone when they feel like they are having a bad day. What ever happened to making the consumer happy. There are very few people that like the RIAA and MPAA at the moment. They want to introduce a new pricing plan in iTunes for the music downloads. They believe that popular music should be more expensive then less popular. Sounds like they are greedy bastards to me. This does help the industry in a way because less popular music might get more listeners because the music overall is cheaper. This still does not make it right. If people wanted to find these bands they would, charing the consumer more only leads them to obtain the music in other illegal ways. I can honestly say that I have not illegally downloaded music since the iTunes music store has been released. I believe that the music is reasonably priced and convenient to obtain. If the RIAA raised the prices then I will be deterred from it and go to other places to get my music. Overall I believe that the RIAA and MPAA have become power happy and want to abuse it while they have it. Someone needs to stand up to them and get the music industry back to a level playing ground.

One more brief issue. The RIAA is suing lyrics websites for posting lyrics to songs they do not have the copyright to. That is just plain wrong. I guarantee you the next thing will be lawyers standing on the street handing out lawsuits to people humming the tune of their favorite song. They must stop pushing the loyal fans of music away and find reasons for them to take the legal route in obtaining music.

This is the end of my extremely long post. I hope you enjoyed it and feel free to comment. This post is also on my new site created with iWeb and can be found here.