dark lord mandelson got his way by using the approach that the british economy is at risk because of people downloading media

its all about the money

these people dont just love money they are psychologically addicted to accumulating more even though they have vast amounts already

and our government is protecting the rich to help them get richer

once again the working public has its wallets wrung under threat of menace so that a small few can have a larger portion of caviar and more fuel for their private jet

"Protection" is right. Intellectual Property Law is a protection racket. There is absolutely no value to this nonsense for the consumer, and little value if any to the producer. All the profits of Intellectual Property go to the *distributor*. That's right, the distributor, and no one else.

Distribution is merely a question of means, and the means have long been available to distribute music/movies/etc. at next to no cost for the consumer and the producer. The only thing that keeps distributors in business is their government granted monopoly rights and manipulative tactics.

Note that so-called "recording artists" make most of their money selling concert tickets and merchandise in the first place. Nearly all of the royalties go to the record company and its owners (in a select few cases the artists own a stake in the record company or own their own record company).

Just ask Thom Yorke of Radiohead what he thinks of record companies:

"It's simply a matter of time - months rather than years - before the music business establishment completely folds," said Yorke. Speaking to the author of a British textbook, he also gave advice to current musicians. "When the corporate industry dies it will be no great loss to the world. So, I guess I would say, don't tie yourself to the sinking ship because, believe me, it's sinking."

Radiohead put their last album out on a free-to-download basis, asking only for donations in return (pay what you think the album is worth). According to Radiohead, they made more profits from the effort than any previous album.

That is a real world case of exactly why we don't need "Intellectual Property", in case you had any doubt about the theory.

Read more at QuestionCopyright, The Mises Institute, or visit Stephan Kinsella's Anti-Intellectual Property blog.

PCs have made expensive studio-equipment mostly obsolete anyways. Artist you belittle as "teen-age garage bands" can produce high quality music these days.
To answer your question: Yes, I'm fully prepared for "big music" (a euphemism for "fat music", right?) to die. I have stopped listening to non-free music years ago and haven't looked back.
It's not served to you on a silver platter. Nobody tells you what to listen to, you have to separate the wheat from the chaff yourself. What you get in return is the chance to listen to tunes the pen pushers deemed unworthy.
Of course, if you're not willing to invest time into that, you'll need to pay the price and accept that your favorite artist is probably getting ripped off by his label.

What if there were no big acts, no studio-produced albums, no labels willing to invest hundreds of thousands to produce and promote major acts? What if we were left with teen garage bands and mid-life crisis singers?

I understand that people don't want to pay if they don't have to, but there comes a point when we're just biting the hand that feeds us. I *like* good music and I accept that if I'm neither listening to an advertizement nor paying for the music, then people have little interest in investing money to make music for me to listen to.

If musicians want me to pay for their music, then they should pay me when browsing my web sites.

Fair? Obviously they would not want to consume creative content without paying now, would they?

Ah, the hypocrisy of the media types ... get with the program. Share and share alike :-)

"Ex-80s crooner Feargal Sharkey, now chief executive of UK Music, was more direct, claiming it was imperative ISPs worked together on the issue of piracy.

"The optimum solution is to create a workable marketplace where the time and effort musicians put into producing work is properly remunerated and protected, and so it's time ISPs sat down together and, for once, had a grown up adult conversation about how to do this," he said."

How about if the recording industry did something about it besides moan??! If people don't want to buy your shit on disks anymore, get a product out there that they will pay for. What a lazy pratt.

How much is Sharkey worth?

How much is David Lynn of MTV worth?

I expect that drugs have more of an effect on the artist's wallets than filesharing does! ;-) Can we have the music industry speaking out against drugs?

If the music we heard was better then I might be more on the side of the music business. But most of the stuff they put out is overpriced crap so it's hard to sympathise with them.

CD Singles, HMV don't even sell these any more. Albums only. Kerching.

And when I hear about artists getting their first cheque for over 1/2 a million I find it very hard to feel sorry for their "financial loss".

Surely the person most exploited and ripped off is the consumer. Overprices CD's, unable to buy a Single so forced into filesharing or paying even more for an album with "filler tracks".

Sony - guilty and fined millions in Europe, USA etc. Why aren't these Sony guys in prison? If they robbed the public of all this money then how come they are free and still rich?

"A jury has found Sony guilty of copyright infringement and ordered the electronics giant to pay $18.5 million USD in monetary compensation to Agere Systems."

"In June, 2005, Sony BMG was forced to pay an estimated $10 million in fines after being found guilty by the state of New York of engaging in 'payola'. The bulk of the charges surrounded payment for playing Jessica Simpson tracks. The Epic division of Sony BMG was singled out for running fake contests to cover up their payola - DJs were the only people ever to win prizes in their contests."

"The EU just lashed Sony, Fuji, and Maxell with fines totaling €75 million ($110 million) on grounds of fixing the price of professional videotapes. The 3-way Japanese cartel controlling 85% of the professional videotape market was found guilty of artificially controlling prices on Betacam SP and Digital Betacam -- the two most popular professional videotape formats in use between 1999 and 2002. According to the EU commission, they "organized three successful rounds of price increases and endeavored to stabilize prices whenever an increase was not possible."

Etc etc.

Sony are guilty and fined many times yet none of the execs are going to prison. Why not?

PS The Inq - please can you include the original article when showing the comments page? It's handy to be able to re-read the story sometimes when commenting. Thanks.

Every day there are more freelance artists promoting their works on the internets, for free, making a living solely from concert tickets and merchandise. They demonstrate that the old, rusty and bloated conglomerates we know as recording companies are no longer needed.

I'd say RIAA has a bigger problem with Youtube than from filesharing; easily accessible and tagged.

Best not to confuse the two. One is organized crime, the other is non-criminal copyright infringement for no monetary gain.