[quote name=\'clemon79\' date=\'Jul 21 2003, 11:38 PM\']
They can't arrest just anyone. There are LOTS and LOTS of VERY LEGITIMATE uses for those systems. If the RIAA is truly so stupid as to randomly sic the authorities on anyone using any of the aforementioned programs (and it's ENTIRELY possible that they are), then all it takes is one slipup, one potshot at the wrong guy, and they are done for. They don't exactly have a positive image in the public eye right now, and the law is currently on their side, if it's applied to the right people.
Our freedom is in danger only because millions
I ask you what the bigger crime is: perpetuating a business model that encourages charging $20 to buy an entire CD for the one song you want, or downloading an MP3 (which is NOT a perfect copy, despite all of the record company propaganda being shoved up the orifice of your choice) of a song that I wouldn't otherwise buy, usually because the album in question is long out of print?
The fact is, if they took the time to figure out how to work WITH the system instead of against it, they would learn that they can still turn a tidy profit selling MP3's themselves. The fact that any idiot out there can rip a song from a CD now, and that most of said idiots do so BADLY, is the music industry's best weapon, but the industry is so caught up in their own puffery and sabre rattling that they refuse to see it. If they took single songs and charged me $1 for a 128Kbit, 100% guaranteed clean rip, or $2 for the same in a 320K flavor, I'd pay for the download in a New York minute.
But they're greedy and unwilling to let go of that $20-for-one-song profit margin. Obviously, in the case of the Game Show theme CD's, the money is worth spending because the majority of the tracks are worth having. But the days of a superalbum like Huey Lewis And The News's "Sports" or Def Leppard's "Hysteria", where fully half of the album consisted of released singles that received radio airplay are long since over. Today, it's "write one hook song, fill up the rest with crap, and move on to the next album". Why the HELL should I support that? [/quote]
Now - what exactly can they do (excuse me if I'm underestimating technology here) if they do find said illegal songs on your computer - and you claim that you have every song there on CD's that you legitimately bought at retail price? Do you really have to pull out your CD collection to prove it?
Also, don't we start hitting privacy invasion like never before if the RIAA starts \"sniffing around on your computer\"? Does owning a PC start constituting grounds for a warrant?
Just questions, I'm not ranting - I don't own much \"illegal\" music, as most of the time, I'd just rather buy the whole CD. The few songs I do have, I have because the CD is either extremely rare, or in one case - it's the only song on a Greatest Hits collection that I don't have elsewhere on CD.