Christmas request

[Alan Buck]

At 10:55 AM 11/25/02, you wrote:

>I don't care if it works for every conceivable electronic device ever 
>invented, I will never support it, and I will never support Sony in this 
>endeaver.
>

Good for you. Exercising your consumer prerogatives is a good thing.

>Have you missed the point? Did you read the links provided? Have you not 
>been following what's been happening? By doing this, Sony is limiting and 
>controling what you listen to, when you listen, how you listen, where you 
>listen, what you use to listen, and how often you listen. Basic copyright, 
>and a basic right of every US citizen, allows you and me to use anything 
>we legally purchase in any manner we want as long as it doesn't harm 
>anyone else. It is a basic right to be able to play and record purchased 
>music for your own use, and listen to it anywhere and at any time you 
>want. Sony is taking that right away. To them, and to other corporations, 
>you are nothing more than a money machine manufactured to fill their 
>coffers. The more they can control the machine, the more the coffers get 
>filled.

Umm.... I don't see "right to listen to music" listed anywhere in my copy 
of the Constitution. =) If you don't want to play by Sony's rules, you 
don't get to listen to their CD. Simple.
Imagine that Sony invented a brand-new format for music, and the only place 
you could play said format was on the Sony musicplayer 3000. Would you 
claim it was a "basic right" that you get to play their music format on 
your Linux box?
So long as Sony is upfront about what they are doing with clear labeling 
that says "Window's PC's only", I don't see what the issue is.


>Is it illegal to pirate music? Hell yes. Is it wrong? Hell yes again. Does 
>it hurt ladels like Sony so terribly much? Hell no. In fact, they are the 
>biggest pirates and always have been. Do you realize that you pay them for 
>every blank CD you purchase? They convinced government to add a royalty 
>fee to blank CDs so that they (the labels) would get paid because, after 
>all, those blank CDs would be used for copying their copyrighted music. 
>Now, they are telling us we can't copy the music we are paying for, and 
>that we must continue to pay

IIRC, the CD tax is only for CD's marked "music CDs", the ones for use in 
those Phillips Onetouch cd copiers and the like. I do not believe it is 
applied to "data" cds in the U.S.. In Canada, I believe it is applied to 
all blanks equally, but I could be wrong.

>for the right to copy it. Further, they rip-off the performers and writers 
>and only very few of them ever make any real money on their work (which 
>the labels steal away from them), while the labels continue to grow fat 
>with greed. Every impartial study I've seen or heard of has shown that, 
>contrary to what the labels, etc. would have us believe, piracy is not the 
>cause of poor sales, but instead it could be due to high prices and a slow 
>economy

Again, their toys, their rules. You want the promotion machine that comes 
with a big label record contract, you  sign the contract.


>. In addition, some reports state that P2P networks and file sharing could 
>have worked to INCREASE sales significantly, not decreased them. Do some 
>research into the facts PLEASE.

Anyone who spends any time on a college campus know this is not true. How 
many of us know folks with gigabytes of mp3's they don't have the CD for. 
Or more importantly, don't have any intention of getting the CD for?
Personally, I don't use napster and ilk because I don't have the patience 
for it, nor is the music I prefer readily available on them.
I don't buy CD's either. Not out of some misguided protest, but simply 
because I find them _far_ overpriced. $18.99 for 8 songs? Not in this 
lifetime, thank you. =)


>Sony and others should get a clue and follow in the footsteps of EMI who 
>is providing its music for download at a low price (though not low enough, 
>but it's a start). The rest of us should get a clue and stop falling into 
>the traps set by these SOBs. "Well, it's not hurting me so it's OK." is 
>unacceptible. Some day, it will hurt you, and where will you be then? I 
>swear the people in this country have become so complacent about their 
>rights, freedom, and nearly everything else, they're going to wake up one 
>day with a soldier in every home and wonder when it was they lost their 
>right to take a piss without permission.

Right. Tell you what, the day the "Sony police" raid my home to find 
unauthorized copies of the collected works of Beethoven, I will personally 
look you up and apologize in person for doubting you.


>(Why doesn't Mozilla have a spell checker?!)

Don't know. I use Eudora. =)

-ajb
(Maybe this should be moved to -kooler?)