Right, so this is my attempt to throw my considerable international influence into the "File-Sharing: Yay or Nay" debate. I've not done much research, so this could be horrendous.
What spurred me to write this post are a few links I Stumbled Upon a while back, a various reports I've read of the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) targeting evil file-sharers and forcing obscene amounts of money out of them.
Firstly, this one: http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/9172/1245456677307.jpg it's fairly self explanatory. $80'000 FOR ONE DOWNLOAD! YOU MUST BE KIDDING ME! How can the RIAA possibly justify such harsh penalty? The fine would be less if that woman nicked the CDs from a shop!
There was another one but I can't find it :( Sad Face.
The government has done an about-face on its previously somewhat-liberal stance on file-sharing and now has pledged to crackdown on it instead, with threats of disconnected internet and fines and blahblahblah. Let's be clear on this - if people can file-share they will, and theres nothing anyone can do about it: people are too cheap and the internet too hard to govern (but thats a whole different discussion). The old cliché is true - if you can't beat 'em join 'em, which is what many musicians are now doing. The highest profile of these is of course Radiohead's famous you-choose-the-price download of In Rainbows (I paid £4 and probably would have got it illegally if i had to pay a tenner), but recently Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame and apparent foreward-thinker has given his ten cents to the discussion, concerning how aspiring musicians can embrace file-sharing to build a fan-base for free and then start charging, which can be seen here: http://forum.nin.com/bb/read.php?30,767183,767183
The man's talking sense.
There's more to add but i'm tired an no one is going to read this anyway.
