[quote name='Soodmeg']This is wrong. Period. Its the crux of the their argument. It is so easy to say that its no big deal when you are the one doing the stealing and not the one getting stolen from. Trivializing what you are doing is the catalyst of their push to control everything.
Like most internet users you dont understand that the bored teenager torrenting a few Nikki Minaj songs represents a loss of 20 - 30 million dollars to a corporation. If someone was stealing 30% of your work wouldnt you fight to get it back? When I look at my bank account you dont think I wonder what it would be if 20-40% of my work wasnt stolen each month?
Unless you are an artist you have no way of understanding how it feels to have the world simply up and tell you that you shouldnt be paid for the hundreds of hours thousand of dollars you spent to do what you do.
Again, I am not really for SOPA because I think it does give them way to much power but internet users have FAR to much power right now. Ironically you are exactly what you think they will be. You are raping and pillaging everything around you with very little consequences yet you are scared that they will have too much power? You might as well be able to walk through walls like an X-Men because you found a way to seriously put your hand in the pocket of a major corp and take money out. The strange thing is how people still feel doing this to lets say a bank as illegal but its cool to do it to Sony. The bottom line is that hundreds of millions of dollars of other peoples money gets stolen every year (probably month) you couldnt possible think that they would be fine with that and wouldnt go to the ends of the earth to get it back. If someone stole 200 million from your personally account you would want to hire a hitman and kill them but as long as its a big corp than who cares right?
Until internet users face the fact that they have basically been stealing 100 of millions of dollars from dozens of corporations for years now and decide to work with big corp of a common ground that is fair to both sides you will always be faced with a SOPA. And guess what? You will lose because they have far more lawyers and far more money than you.
I will say it again, dont like SOPA? Then convince your friends to stop downloading everything under the sun and use the thousands of legal apps that are floating around. You can get unlimited amount of virtually everything for under 20 bucks a month but even that is too much for MOST internet users to fork over. So even though I dont like it..prepare to get your ass raped in the exact same fashion you have been doing for years.[/QUOTE]
Just wow. You are totally blowing things out of proportion. Some "Artists" make too much money as it is...and maybe if the record companies and the artists made a little less, people could afford to spend their hard earned money to buy a CD just for one or two songs. That is why CDs are going the way of the buffalo and record companies are forced to adapt. Now digital distribution is king and people can buy individual songs. Win for the consumer...now we can pay $2.00 for two songs instead of being screwed out of $20 for a full album that they dont want.
You are flawed in your logic as well...as you equate one person downloading a nicky minaj (ughh, horrible music) song to one missed sale of her record (or sale in general). This is incorrect as many people who torrent one of her songs probably never had the intention of buying the album to begin with, or even buying anything to begin with. You are making drastic assumptions based on nothing more than your opinion or perception. You demonize people who torrent music as the devil (it would seem from your rant), yet fail to even mention all the free publicity these artists may have gotten as a result of filesharing. People who never even heard of an artist maybe will download a song they havent heard of before because it is a popular file, and this person enjoys the music so much they decide to go out and buy it... What about that?
What I dont get is your whole attitude... No one is telling you that you shouldnt be paid for anything. It is all your perception and in your own head. Get off your high horse. There are people who take advantage of things in all areas. That is human nature - if there is an easier way to get something, some people will do it even though it is wrong. No one is raping, or pillaging anything. If anything, it is hollywood and the RIAA that have been raping and pillaging the American citizens for years, and it took the populace fighting back to get record companies to realize that people dont want to get a whole album crammed down their throats. They want to be able to pay for and download just 1 or 2 songs...and maybe even listen to the songs before they buy it so they can make the best, most informed decision they can as to which songs they want to spend their hard-earned money on. We all cant sit there and fart out a few songs that someone else wrote for us to make millions so we can sit on our asses in our palatial mansions eating grapes or something.
I know some artists are definitely more fortunate than others and make much more money than others...therefore you cant group all artists in the same basket (just like you cant group all people who torrent music in the same basket - to do so would exhibit ignorance on my part as well), but the artists that we see and hear about are the popular ones that make tons of cash (they even show us in their rap videos!). Just think, if the artist just threw a little less cash on the strippers' asses when they make it rain, and the record companies made a few million less (but still millions of dollars) then music would be a little more affordable to the masses and more would be purchased...
Its just like sports and athletes...maybe if they made a few less million and charged a little less, I could afford to go to more live games and spend more money on food and concessions. I am sorry that your financial situation is apparently not as good as other artists' is, but that is a poor reason to take your frustration out on the general public...IMHO.
