Hi Leeor_net:
It has been months since you posted your comment about the creation of our site www.stopmusictheft.com. All that time, we have been studying the problem and working on solutions. In fact, we recently made a filing with Victoria Espinel, the Obama Administration Intellectual Property Coordinator (or "Czar"). You can read it here.
However, I want to specifically react to your comments of months ago and I appreciate the time you took to make them. I respond to your comments (in quotes) as follows.
I can appreciate your position but I have to ask that you don't just create a 'campaign to stop music theft' because it isn't going to happen unless you support a reasonable alternative.
Reasonable folks can disagree on what is reasonable.
Most people who 'steal music' are doing so because buying music is simply too expensive
This opens a can of worms at the bottom of which is the entire notion of free enterprise. Assuming you believe that we should be free to make and sell our products and choose what price we want to sell them at, I don't understand how you can conclude that stealing is simply OK if you can't afford something. Downloading a file from someone not licensed to sell it or provide it to you is stealing. That's the law. Just like stealing a Mercedes is against the law. The cops are not going to look the other way when you tell them you stole it because you wanted it but couldn't afford it.
You say below "I don't condone theft of Intellectual Property," but rationalizing stealing based on ability to buy is clearly condoning, in fact arguing, a case for such theft.
or because music files are 'locked down' by ineffective DRM which only serves to bloat software and prevent sharing.
"Bloat software" and "prevent sharing" seem to be two different concerns, so I will take them in order. As a shop owner, I am free to put a lock on my shop or those anti-shoplifting "thingees" on my DVDs or TVs or whatever my store sells. Why shouldn't movie and record manufacturers be allowed to do the same. You may not like it and maybe if it bloats the software or otherwise degrades your consumer experience, you won't buy that particular manufacturer's product. This is in fact what has happened to the record companies—all of whom have abandoned DRM.
The whole idea of DRM is to prevent illegal sharing. I think what you are really referring to is burning copies for your own use or transferring copies to various computers in your home or your iPod, etc. Is that right? Yes, DRM does (or can) stop you from doing that although Apple in the old days of protecting AAC files did allow you to move files to five different devices. Again, though, the DRM decision is up to the manufacturer. You may not like it, but rationalizing stealing over something you don't like doesn't seem fair does it?
Please understand that I don't condone theft of Intellectual Property but I am also strongly against tightned DRM or any sort of anti-theft 'technology' that would limit the freedoms of the consumer.
The key line here seems to be "freedoms of the consumer." I think you are conflating the idea of individual freedom enshrined in the US founding documents with the idea that products should somehow be free or priced "fairly" so all can buy. Taken to its logical conclusion, what you are proposing is at best, price controls where the government sets a "fair" price. At worst, it's communism. where everybody gets the same of everything. A walk through history should convince you that both of these systems, no matter how well intentioned, ultimately fail.
Remember that copyright laws were not enacted to line the pockets of the owners of IP but to protect the freedoms of the consumer.
I would ask you to provide support for this statement. I think the exact opposite is the case. Intellectual property laws in general were created to create an economic incentive to create. Because, without compensation, creators can't eat and if they can't eat, they can't create.
Recently, someone very close to me was diagnosed with Leukemia. But for a drug called "Gleevec®," she'd be dead right now. About 5,000 people a year get what she has (CML). According to the US government, the average cost to develop a drug in the US these days is "from a low of $800 million to nearly $2 billion per drug." Gleevec costs a bundle (costing my friend and her insurance company around $6,500 per month). She may be on this drug for 20 years. Would Novartis, the maker of this drug have developed it at a cost somewhere around $1 billion for 5,000 people per year without patent (intellectual property) protection? I think not. Thank God for IP laws or my friend would be dead.
To that end, EFF.org proposes some very interesting and, I would even say, brilliant ways to allow people to share files and innovate computer software and technology while still giving artists their fair share. Please allow this website to offer fair alternatives to theft besides what the recording industry is trying to force upon us all.
EFF's proposal is "voluntary collective licensing." It's a totally unworkable and ill-conceived scheme. We have thoroughly studied it and our analysis is here.
