Downloads and Uploads

What can be done to lessen illegal music and movie downloads?

I say "lessen" because stopping it completely seems pretty impossible, like most other crimes. Having movie studios and music producers etc sue individuals thousand and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars isn't going to lessen the amount of illegal downloads. If anything it'll increase the amount of illegal movies/music/games downloaded on the internet. Since the internet isn't owned by anyone, nations can't really do anything aside from making it illegal (which has already been done) and fining people who disregard the law. So what can be done besides sueing everyone left and right?

Public Comments

1. Well you can start by yourself...stop stealing movies and music...:)
2. I don't consider it theft if the content you are downloading is so awful that you wouldn't pay full price for it.
3. short of invading people's privacy and putting a cop in every house... nothing. I downlaod movies myself.. if I don't need to pay my taxes, the state raised minimum mage to 16 bux an hour, my college is now free, and I don't need ot pay for union/medicare... then I MIGHT think of gettign that stuff the legal way. As of now, my reason is that "I can't afford it" since I have to pay for a bunch of stuff I otherwise wouldn't pay at all.
4. Simple- The studios could actually get involved and offer a better service. If they had done that in the first place there never would have been a Napster. They stopped listening to their customers years ago and are just now seeing the effects. Things will get much worse for them as people continue to tune into reality shows with no actors and independent music without celebrities. ITunes just doesn't have that much to choose from. Plus if something happens to your player you have to buy the song again. The entertainment industry has brought this on themselves and there is no way to put the genie back in the bottle.
5. its not theft if i pay for a movie its mine and i can and will do whatever i like with it this only came up recently with so many people using the internet daily if it wasnt a crime 10 or 15 years ago why is it a crime now people have been copying music as long as i've been alive and longer taping from the radio,taping from tv and dubbing tapes that our friends wanted a copy of if it wasnt a crime 10 yrs ago to share music you bought with a friend why is it now? only because we can do it easier and with more friends greed of the music industry is the problem not people sharing my 2 cents
6. Not much, as you can see by the responses you are getting that more folks are crooks than anything else. The internet just made it easy for anymoron to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise each year without having anything real to show for it. Look at the justifications, they are stealing for entertainment because they think they are entitled. They are stealing movies and music that mean nothing to them five minutes later. Lawsuits won't do much, because the average loser stealing movies, music, and games on the Net doesn't have anything to sue them for. Jailing them just puts the burden on taxpayers, and shooting them is just a bit too extreme. I must be the oddball on the web in that I pay for everything I get. If I want to see a movie, I pay for it. If I want to play a game, I buy it or rent it. Maybe that is because I know how many hours go into producing a single song, game, or movie. I have respect for the artists that create our entertainment. Then again, I work hard, don't carry the entitlement issues many of these folks do, and have a sense of honor. Too bad I am in the minority.
7. There is no easy answers and I think they should learn how to profit from it, instead of fighting it. I live in China as an ex pat and stealing online music is a time honored tradition here. CD's are widely copied and sold to the public for 1/3 the price. Look at it this way. In the USA, downloading music is really the only avenue that people have to get free music. In China, many don't have a computer, so they must buy it. Therefore, the small shop owner that is selling the CD's is helping to support a family. In the USA, no one is making much of anything. In the USA, music CD's are far to expensive. The music industry needs to learn to live with less profit. It irks me to no end that I can go to Apple and download one song for a buck which sounds pretty reasonable, but then extrapolate that out and a 16 track album costs $16. Thats nuts. It really boils down to this, costs must be reduced to get people back into the stores. Yea, I'd be happier then a pig in stink to pay $5 for the lastest CD, but I'll be god-damned if I'm going to pay 3 times that much. Besides, lowering the price makes for a higher quantity going out the door and everyone is happy, from the shop owner to the musician to the consumer. =============== Life is so simple, but we insist on making it complicated Confucius 551 - 479 BC =============== Peace Jim .
8. The music industry needs to reevaluate just how valuable their product is, the world does not revolve around their music. First I'm not gonna pay $15 for a CD with only a couple songs I like. Second if I am gonna pay for it I will listen to it MY way, think Zune / Ipod which they still say is illegal Third A cd with an hour or so of music costs pretty close to what a DVD video costs, the DVD gives you sometimes 2 hours of video entertainment and cost many millions to make, how does the RIAA justify a cd against that? I have a zillion DVD's and about 10 cd's and I will NEVER buy another cd again, XM radio has all I need. Also the RIAA claims you are cheating yourself when you download music saying it is poor and inferior quality. But when they file charges against people they claim you got a "perfect" digital copy of the original cd OK RIAA, which is it, you really don't have much credibility after that kind of crap, people are downloading.....oh gee that's too bad......LOL