[color=66ff00]Wake up people! Media liberation has been brainwashed into you as a bad thing when it is in fact quite the opposite. They use words like intellectual property and piracy to make their position seem like the moral choice, bear in mind that these are the people who exploit artists and stifle creativity. (Note that I use the term 'media liberation' in the same fashion that they use the above terms, it is meant more as an example of how words can make something appear to be inclined in a moral sense).
The RIAA/MPAA and their other international counterparts openly coerce governments into changing the laws, the laws are not by the people for the people they're by the fat-cats for the fat-cats. It used to be that that buying a government was an act that would incite anger, now it's so commonplace people accept it.
Artists no longer own their works, Sony and Warner do, for the lifetime of the artist + 70 years. You're an artist and you get stiffed by the music company, too bad, they continue to sell your work, fire you and give you some meagre amount that they have fixed in your legally binding contract. Check out Sonny Bono's 'contributions' to laws in this area, that guy was real upstanding person (not to mention a senator - are we detecting any government influencing here?).
At this time copying media costs effectively nothing to do, any smart business would see this and alter their business model to take advantage of this fact but that might endanger the frankly ****ing insane profits that are made for the amount of time it takes to move to the new model.
"Oh sorry darling, I can't afford to buy you another new Ferrari this month, this internet is making us poor, I hardly made $100,000 last month!".
Lets examine a certain 'fact' that so many of you are willing to accept: copying is killing the music/film industries. The RIAA claim that every CD that is copied affects their sales, I don't know if I've missed something but if I remember correctly data costs almost nothing to clone, most people who use liberated media were never going to buy it had they no access to it therefore the RIAA and its brethren were never going to get money from that person regardless.
Say a person downloads an album that they've heard a track from on TV or the radio, the work in question is poor and is being sold under the pretense that all of the album is of the calibur of that track, is it fair to expect to pay for the entire album? Some would say that this is selling under false pretenses; they refer to themselves as an industry, the goods that they sell are highly controlled and should be of a uniform high quality regardless of being 'art'.
Lets also examine the claim that artists are directly affected by media liberation (not something you'll hear many artists claim incidently). You create a movie or an album and some guy copies it and gives that copy to his friend, that person has obviously had some direct and maligned effect on your life hasn't he? He came into your home and literally stole cash from you...
Didn't he?
I reward those that deserve rewarding, I buy something because I know it is good not based on hear-say or advertisements. That way I punish the industry that feeds us non-inspiring, carbon copies of the same thing they pumped out last week.
Media liberation could be the one thing that actually saves art.
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