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Topic ClosedMartin Orford August 2009

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BigBoss View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 29 2009 at 13:53

The point for a band like Invisigoth is to break a new band, pick any new band, no one is going to pony up ahead of time for someone they don't know who they are, they need to make fans.  I turned bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson on to Invisigoth and now they are his favorite band for example.

I've got tens of thousands of bands on Mindawn, the labels are promoting them on their sites typically, but the bands, you never know, to most bands they just care about telling people they are on iTunes.  Mindawn has an enormous amount of prog though, so if you want to get a CD quality download of an album for only $8.99, then that's the place to go.

you said something earlier about a book you wanted to put out but the government wants to give them away or something, I don't have it in front of me now.

Best Regards,
Shawn Gordon
President
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 29 2009 at 14:05
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I'm a man of law and INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IS AS PROPERTY AS REAL STATE OR A CAR, SO GETTING IT WITHOUT A RETRIBUTION FOR THE AUTHOR IS STEALING, AS SIMPLE AS THAT.

Well, no it isn't. Potentially taking away potential and unproven sales is not comparable with taking away a physical product, which can then no longer be sold. Now, I'm not suggesting copyright violation is OK, but calling it 'stealing' is essentially incorrect, or at least, misrepresenting it.

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Plus a simple fact, people will get free music and buy only a couple albums when they have the product for free, if they didn't had it, probably will make an effort and buy at least a couple more albums.


The available statistics don't really support this. Ultimately, I can only afford to buy as many albums as I buy at the moment, with the number of books I have to get, plus university-related costs, plus the need to eat, get a set of speakers so I don't need to lug all my CDs off to university with me. That I can listen to music freely - and legally - on Spotify doesn't mean I buy less albums, just that I can listen to more music. I would imagine that some downloaders have the same conundrum?

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Anyway, an artist is owner of his music and it's his right not to give it for free.


This is the basic fact, and this is what we should be emphasising and respecting... but to do that, we don't need either to insist on punishments disproportionate to the crime, nor to paint it as 'stealing', which, really, in a conventional sense, it isn't.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 29 2009 at 14:36
Originally posted by BigBoss BigBoss wrote:

The point for a band like Invisigoth is to break a new band, pick any new band, no one is going to pony up ahead of time for someone they don't know who they are, they need to make fans.



And that requires an investment of time and money. It always has - obviously, what I proposed for IQ would never work for a band that doesn't yet have a fan base.

It was Ivan Elgar who had the book thingy, not me.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 29 2009 at 14:47
Originally posted by TGM: Orb TGM: Orb wrote:


Well, no it isn't. Potentially taking away potential and unproven sales is not comparable with taking away a physical product, which can then no longer be sold. Now, I'm not suggesting copyright violation is OK, but calling it 'stealing' is essentially incorrect, or at least, misrepresenting it.

 
Yes it is, since the moment the author or the label registeres the music and lyrics, the use of it is exclusive of the copyright owner, nobody else has the right to use it.
 
Then using a song of a person without paying the rights, is exactly as using your car without my authorization.
 
If a kid is found driving your car on the highway, he will be accused of theft (Grand theft if it's an expensive car and can face 20 years), if somebody is found UPLOADING the music that DOESN'T BELONG TO HIM, can also be accused of theft according to the legal system.
 
Originally posted by TGM: Orb TGM: Orb wrote:

The available statistics don't really support this. Ultimately, I can only afford to buy as many albums as I buy at the moment, with the number of books I have to get, plus university-related costs, plus the need to eat, get a set of speakers so I don't need to lug all my CDs off to university with me. That I can listen to music freely - and legally - on Spotify doesn't mean I buy less albums, just that I can listen to more music. I would imagine that some downloaders have the same conundrum?
 
The normal downloader makes it for fun or greed, and the Blogs (who are are making profit with advertising) upload terabytes of music...If people have it for free, they will choose other things they need more to expend their money in and artists will become extint.
 
 
Originally posted by TGM: Orb TGM: Orb wrote:

This is the basic fact, and this is what we should be emphasising and respecting... but to do that, we don't need either to insist on punishments disproportionate to the crime, nor to paint it as 'stealing', which, really, in a conventional sense, it isn't.
 
I don't agree with the extreme methods like suing grandmas for millions because their grandaughters downladed the latest Christina Aguilera album, but there has to be some legal consequence to protect the owner of the intellectual rights.
 
I would make it more real, pay 10 or 20 times the cost of the album directly to the artist (Not to RIAA or the label) the first time, 40 or 50 times the second and double that each time the guy downloads.
 
.Iván


Edited by Ivan_Melgar_M - September 29 2009 at 14:48
            
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 29 2009 at 15:15
When someone nicks your car, you can no longer use it, surely? This is quite a significant difference, at least, since downloading/uploading makes no direct difference to a label's ability to use their intellectual property... the one is crime against property, which deprives you of its use. The other, a crime against intellectual property, which leaves you basically unchanged except undemonstrably in your potential ability to sell albums. It's still wrong, but it's not theft in the sense in which theft is generally understood (or at least the sense suggested by those dreadful 'you wouldn't steal a handbag... movie piracy is stealing!' things at the start of DVDs).

@Paragraph 2, I don't know enough about the psychology of a downloader to guess at what they'd do if it was impossible. I can't imagine that every download replaces a sale... or even every ten downloads would have been a sale pre-downloading culture. As I've said, the people I know who do download occasionally and probably illegally do tend to buy music. Those who just listen to the radio instead don't. I'm not trying to justify their behaviour, but I can't help thinking that downloading is perhaps being used as a cheap cover for a number of reasons record sales and so forth might be declining.

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I don't agree with the extreme methods like suing grandmas for millions because their grandaughters downladed the latest Christina Aguilera album, but there has to be some legal consequence to protect the owner of the intellectual rights.
 
I would make it more real, pay 10 or 20 times the cost of the album directly to the artist (Not to RIAA or the label) the first time, 40 or 50 times the second and double that each time the guy downloads.


Seems reasonable. I suppose that it'd be the intellectual rights holder (i.e. the label, in most cases, I guess) rather than the artist who'd be paid, though?
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 29 2009 at 15:18
the label does the grunt work of selling an album, they make money, the artist makes money, if the album is downloaded instead of stolen, then the label goes out of business (SPV) and the artists retire (Martin).  simple economics, no grey areas.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 29 2009 at 15:24
Originally posted by Ivan_Melgar_M Ivan_Melgar_M wrote:

I would make it more real, pay 10 or 20 times the cost of the album directly to the artist (Not to RIAA or the label) the first time, 40 or 50 times the second and double that each time the guy downloads.
 


You know what? I like that.

One of my issues with the way things have been handled is that of all of the millions the RIAA has received and the labels have made by suing people, not a cent has gone to artists. Not one.

I really wouldn't be opposed to scheme like Ivan's suggestion.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 29 2009 at 15:38
the RIAA are idiots, it really pains me to what them bumble around, I've even talked to them to try and show them a more intelligent way to approach it, but these people are full on ludites.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 29 2009 at 15:43
Shawn, I am curious about how artists benefit from other legal download sites.  You didn't respond to my response regarding eMusic.  Why would any artists allow their music to be sold on eMusic if they don't get any financial benefit from it?  I am really kind of bummed about that, because I figured I was legally downloading the music and the artists were benefitting from it.  Is it the same with Amazon MP3s or the Apple Store?
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 29 2009 at 15:52

sorry, I must have missed your question.  The problem with eMusic or any "all you can eat" type of service is you pay a low flat rate for virtually unlimited access and that gets split up with every artist you purchased from.  The first time I saw a digital says report with payments of even less than 1 penny, so of course it is rounded down and you get nothing, they seem to play a trick where they do the rounding on individual sales instead of all your sales, so say you had a cumulative $10 in profits, you'd get nothing because they were all a fraction of a cent.  Part of this applies to places like MySpace that monetize your songs that are playing by having ads on your page, but you have NO control over what they do.  I had them override my 2 minute song sample with the entire song, I can't change it and I don't want the entire song on there, my only option is to opt out entirely.

Services like my Mindawn pay a 75% royalty, this is to whoever put the material up, the artist or the label, obviously the more middlemen you have, the less you get.  Take iTunes as an example, you have an artist, the label, a propogator and then iTunes, everyone is getting their piece of it, so the artist doesn't see a whole lot, however there usually aren't expenses to recoup from it, so it's nearly free money.

Why do people end up on eMusic?  Because the sign up with a propagator and don't pay attention to the details.  I'm pretty certain those types of services will go away as more people notice.

Best Regards,
Shawn Gordon
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 29 2009 at 16:06
From a purchaser's standpoint, by purchasing a 12-month package from eMusic I am able to download 90 songs a month at a rate of approximately 40 cents per song.  Obviously, as a purchaser this is more appealing than paying 99 cents or 1.29 per song like at Amazon or iTunes and I assume that Mindawn probably charges a similar amount.  Supposedly, one reason emusic can charge the lower amount is because they don't have the big name artists and thus supposedly can keep their costs down.  Do you see any chance of services like yours reducing your price to compete with something like eMusic?

Edited by rushfan4 - September 29 2009 at 16:15
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 29 2009 at 16:17

I thought our album price of $8.99 for a lossless, DRMless recording was pretty good, I've seen more and more people copy us.  The whole thing is a balancing act between what is fair for the artist and for the customer.  Mindawn has a slew of prog material you simply can't get on any other download service.  My other problem with the typical model was they would charge the same price for a song, regardless of the length.  Is it fair for Echolyn to get $.50 for Mei for example?

As a reward system though, Mindawn has "Mindawlers" where you basically earn points back like the Discover Card and are able to get free albums after a bit.

Best Regards,
Shawn Gordon
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 29 2009 at 16:25
This has been a very interesting debate and I am glad that it hasn't descended into mindless bickering.

Big Boss, do you think that in the long term the only way for non-mainstream bands to make money will be to stop making CDs altogether and just look to pay someone to market their digital media?

I guess that would probably cripple many record labels and kill off the last of the independent record stores...
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 29 2009 at 16:34

yea, I'm glad too that it has been more educational than "I you you are but what am I" type conversation.

I'm a technologist at heart, I've been writing software since the late 70's, I spearheaded all the major development at every company I worked for and have had my own software company the past 10 years.  I even designed an on demand video download system in the mid-80's that sadly couldn't work due to storage and bandwidth requirements that just didn't exist at the time.  So I watch the market pretty closely, which is why I built Mindawn 5 years ago as part of that.  Right now though, we are in the middle of a sea change with digital and broadcast radio and various other forms of media consumption.  How this shakes out is going to take a few years to tell for sure.  The bottom line is you have to get eyes on your product, either by ads, reviews, live, viral videos, what have you.  A lot of these tools have only really come in to play in the last couple years, look at how fast Twitter exploded this year after being around for a while with little interest (I find it creepy myself).

You see a resurgence with Vinyl lately, this tells you something about "quality" consumers of music.  The problem is kids today only hear low quality MP3 files on earbuds, they don't know what high fidelity is.  Games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero have had an unexpected impact in introducing younger kids to music we enjoyed decades ago (my son became a huge fan of Clapton, Eric Johnson, Kansas and Heart to name a few because of it).

So that's a long way of saying we're at a stage in development that makes it pretty impossible to predict, all we can do is watch and react quickly or take the lead in some cases.

Best Regards,
Shawn Gordon
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 29 2009 at 16:37
eMusic has recently changed their pricing so they are no longer doing the same price per song.  They now have a system in place where an album download is either 1 song per download or more depending on the album.  They have many prog albums with only 4 or 5 songs on it that they are now charging 12 downloads for, and they have some albums with more than 12 songs, where you can get a "bonus" download.  i.e. if the album has 14 songs you can get it for 12 downloads. 
 
I have looked at Mindawn a few times, but I don't think that I have purchased anything yet.  Since I have the eMusic account I tend to do most of my downloading from there.  I still purchase physical CDs on-line at Amazon or brick and mortar stores, and the CD of the Month "Club" that you offer. 
 
Unfortunately, another problem that hasn't been mentioned is that of eBay and the sale of second-hand records at used record stores.  I tend to buy a lot of CDs that way, and unfortunately I know that that doesn't help artists at all.  I can remember reading a lot of bad press regarding used stores and trying to make that illegal before the issue of illegal downloading became the monster in the room.  As a consumer who spends a large amount on music every year, I am always trying to find the best deals and when it comes down to whether or not to pay $4 or $6 for a used CD or $16.99 for a new CD, I am going to choose the used CD every time.  That said, I probably still buy 5 to 10 new CDs a month of new releases either from Amazon or the brick and mortar store or directly from the labels, plus the aforementioned eMusic downloads. 
 
I suppose unfortunately for you, I did download all of the music that you had to offer on eMusic, so from my standpoint it is quite disappointing that there won't be any more added.  Of course, this means that if I really want that album, I am going to have to pay Mindawn more visits.  LOL
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 29 2009 at 16:41
the used market is an interesting situation, it's an issue with books, DVD's and Games (especially games, this is a HUGE issue for publishers and stores like Game Stop).  Thing is with a used copy, there is only ever 1 copy and 1 owner.  The band and label got paid on the sale of that copy, in at least 50% of the cases they are probably loosing out on the sale of a 2nd copy because someone bought it used, but you very rarely have an item get sold a 3rd time, so the damage isn't nearly as bad as one person buying it and putting it online where theoretically a couple billion people could download it.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 29 2009 at 16:42
It is interesting that everyone is talking about rips/downloads of Rock Band/Guitar Hero (I'm not sure which one) that are far better quality than the original mastered CDs. It seems to me that the large record companies have become very complacent over the years, and we are getting some very poorly mastered CDs. Metallica and Rush spring to mind. How on earth are we going to get people who appreciate hi-fi to buy CDs when they are mastered hot, compressed and without any dynamic range? Crazy.


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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 29 2009 at 16:43
I think the sh*tty mastering has died down, everyone was obsessed with being "louder".
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 29 2009 at 17:46
emusic seems to have changed their nature. Slightly less downloads for a slightly higher price, and I expect a similar change in pricing structure sometime next year from them.

They will most probably continue to sell cheaper than iTunes and others - but hopefully they'll end up in a situation where they can pay as much (or in best case more) to the artists than Apple's hip music store.

Personally I've started to like and appreciate more and more the digital solutions connected to CDBaby. Payplay.fm in particular looks like a good set-up to me. Extremly easy to use, fairly priced - and many albums with a free downloadable track for checking out too.

As for the digital future, at some point there has to be found a solution that stops the rampant spread of illegal downloads popping up like mad hatters on speed. I do have a soft spot for the enthusiasts who sample some privately released vinyl in the 70's, makes an elaborate review of it and posts it, and similar ventures that caters for music otherwise lost and forgotten. Thing is that these are in the minority - most of these places are all about recent commercially available titles, some even posted there prior to release. And when reviewed they steal the reviews from somewhere else too - the Progressor site which I mostly write for these days are subject to many such uncredited thefts, but also Progarchives, DPRP and Progressive Ears are popular places where these folks steal the rest of the content for their sites. They steal from the artists as well as the people trying to do a job in helping the artists - theft from a to z. And then they claim that they are doing a massive effort by giving exposure to the artist. Truth of the matter is that they're hardly doing anything themselves, instead freeloading the hard work of a number of people for their own credit or something of the sort.

They aren't the only reason for new sales dropping though - immensly huge back catalogues available cheaply new and even cheaper used is another big reason, as well as competition from other entertainment options. But the really bad thing about these places is that they are vastly important in creating a shift in ethics. They bear much of the responsibility for the fact that more and more people growing up now expect music to be free. Many of the downloaders of only 5 years ago would be people who slowly but surely bought what they got in this manner - today downloaders with that ethical standard are a rare breed to encounter. Not because there's few of them, but because the number of downloaders not sharing that standard has exploded.

Now, if that problem manage to resolve itself and music slowly starts getting to be regarded as a commmercial entity by the large majority of people again, and perhaps even respected as works of art again too and not not just another piece of cheap entertainment, then we can start discussing the continuing challenges of the digital age.

Pricing is one matter. The price of music has actually dropped during the last 20 years or so. True enough it is cheaper to make music these days, but as a commercial commodity it is a fact that CDs should have been at least twice as expensive today than they are. hence it takes many more sales for an artist and a label to make a profit, not to speak of getting back the financial investment. Which has laready lead to many larger labels having had to stop artist development, leaving that field to the indies for better or worse.

Navigation is another matter. With the plethora of material available here, there and everywhere; places that can help a listener find what they are looking for (as well as what they weren't looking for but which suites their tastes) will become increasingly important. AMG just isn't good enough for that anymore.

But prior to taking those and other issues to the table a future needs to be found for music and musicians. Services like Spotify will be important I think, as they will remove the casual downloaders and lessen the impact of the illegal sites. With a micropayment system they might even harvest some money in the future, money that will hopefully end up in the artists pockets more directly and in vaster amounts than most experience today (generally speaking).

But services like that are also a threat. As bandwidth gets cheaper more and more people may feel that they don't really need to buy music when it's available for free listening at Spotify. Restrictions in number of times you can listen to a tarck there pr. day, week and month and the option to buy it straight away will solve that to some extent - but this is a solution with a major flaw - especially from the prospect of fans of prog and similar music: It equals the dissipating interest of an album's worth of material.

And the album format started dying with the shift from vinyl to CD. And got worse with the digital revolution. Of course, Apple have taken an initiative to try to resurrect the album format. Basically offering a few bells and whistles if you buy an album from what I understand - but with the right marketing it will sell.

And personally I regard this as an attempt to solve today's situation. If this makes more people buy entire albums from artists the connection to the artist and the artist appreciation will be rising. And when people starts caring about an artist they will buy even if the alternatives are freely available. Which is very good for many major artists, but won't change too much for the ones with a lesser impact. And it won't solve the major problem of free music problem more than partially at best.

Oh well, better stop now before I ramble on even further away on my digresses here. But a few thoughts hopefully touching the debate here...even if I digress in a major way and jumps from topic to topic like a bunny in the mating season...
Websites I work with:

http://www.progressor.net
http://www.houseofprog.com

My profile on Mixcloud:
https://www.mixcloud.com/haukevind/
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 29 2009 at 17:59
let's see if I can lay some truths here
1 - taking something without paying for it is stealing.  No reasonable person denies this.

2 - the "market" usually determines what price it will pay for a product. IN this case, many, but not all, music fans have decided that the price is free. No matter what anyone else says, even the artists. This is not to say it is right or not. It is to point out the reality. And after ten years arguing about it rather than trying to get paid for your work in other ways ... well ... I don't know of any musical act that has managed to increase their revenue by complaining about it, eh. Again, not to say it's right or wrong. Just to say that there is a reality that has been in place for some ten years. Spotify anyone ?

3. If it costs Martin 8000 to make an album, is there any reason why he doesn't think that there would be at least 800 people from around the world who would pay 10 for a quality download. You say MP3s are not high fidelity. Hey, there's FLAC, Ogg, among others that are lossless codecs. You get CD sound, you can include the artwork in the download, you don't have to worry about selling out a manufacturing run, and your fans can access it right away.
Add to that, the act can always record just one or a few songs as the inspiration hits them. I bought the Voivod album Infini for $10.88CAD in FLAC format with complete artwork cover & inserts. I burnt it onto a blank CD, and so it cost me $11.30CAD. Next week, the New Marillion album.

3 - Marillion has managed to make a go of it. Martin, what are they doing wrong ?

4 - Always deny the validity of any studies that disagree with your opinion. Always refuse to recognise the continued failure of all manner of proposed measures to stop the activity in question. Never accept that there are , nor could even be, any other reason(s) that might actually explain the problem.

5 - re : the above. Was IQ competing with the XBox, PSwhatever, Wii, DVDs, the internet, PCs and a host of other entertainment options that now take up parts of people's budgets ? Once you've filled your IPod or computer with 4000 hours of music, what are the chances that you don't buy a lot more when you're never going to be able to listen to everything you already have ?

6 - take this new version of reality - the music fan has a ton more choices. Could it be that I prefer to support a dozen local acts rather than one "name" international act ? IF so, isn't  that another piece of the pie to share ? Remember, music fans are no longer limited to the (often) dross that labels want to peddle.  I truly believe that there is the same percentage of crap music to good music to great music as there always was. There is just so so much more of it out there. Labels as filters ? Commercial concerns as esthetes ?

7 - Explain why cable TV is able to make money ? Is it that many paying a little actually can generate decent revenue. Again, see Spotify.

8- Explain how major chain bookstores like Chapters in Canada allow people to read books (for free, my god, blasphemy !) and still sell enough of them to make it a viable commercial enterprise ?

9- Why do Jam bands like Phish or Dave Matthews continue to make mega bucks year after year despite not  pulling in multi-million selling albums ? Why is Hardcore punk band D.O.A.  able to still record regularly, tour (they have just come back a tour of China), i.e. make a career of it with all these illegal downloads ?

10- Why was Josh Freese able to put out a solo album and cover the costs within a few months ? Oh yeah, unique promotions aimed at his true fans. I.e., no relying on the casual listener ... hmmmm

11 - if a musician is supposed to be a creative person, why aren't they trying to create a way to financially sustain their career ? Or are they not aware of small & medium acts that do so ? Therefore preventing them the excuse to ignore the fact that they have no entitlement to fame or money just because they think so. If you're not able to make money one way, then your time is better spent finding ways to earn what you need to learn. Nobody here is bemoaning the fact that Glen Benton from Deicide lives in a rusted trailer in deep Florida.

12 - And in the end, the question that most blind themselves to - could it just be that the market is no longer there ? Whether it's just them, or the whole scene ?
Could a music industry lesson be helpful ? SO as to remind people what it was like pre-1965 for every musician who was not a star. You know, selling LPs out of the trunk of your car, or from the stage. Those that you had financed with a loan or using the equity from your house or borrowed money from friends or family ? 300 shows a year, in every dive that would book you. Just to make a living doing what you want.
No wait ... things changed with the Beatles and the advent of mass reach media like FM radio & TV. Things can't change again. Things are or were too good.

13- God help us, but is it possible that there is only a certain market for an album or artist, and to expect more based on happenings ten, oops, twenty years ago is like GM planning on bringing back the Buick ? Was illegal downloading the reason why IQ wasn't selling that many albums in the U.S. or that Stompin' Tom couldn't tour the U.K. ? You know , back in those halcyon days of the 80s.  Whoops, Stompin' Tom was around in the 70s... Came back in the 90s, and is still recording and touring today.

I now await the vehement rebuttals ignoring the reality and thinking that arguing about the morality of things will change anything more than it already has. And so another ten years wasted before someone starts thinking about what you can do today with the tools you have at your disposal.

So keep up the good fight. God only knows that there are musical acts out there actively seeking to make it work for them in TODAY's world. And they can't be but helped by the others bands and musicians who waste time trying to roll back time to 1999.

Now, how much was that Marillion download ? At roughly $10 a pop, I think there's a few albums I haven't gotten yet .  who knows, maybe I have money left over for another impulse purchase like Ostara? Oh, and i gotta pick up that one EP that I'm missing from Fear of Lipstick. And Mark (drummer for Eric's Trip) at Frank's music was going to get a hold of some albums that he did with Purple Knight in the 70s.

P.S. God Damn those people who buy used LPs & CDs.  Don't they know that the artist is not getting paid for that. How dare the thieves who loan a CD to their friend ? or Horror, bring an album over to their friend's house and listen to it there . What are those people thinking using IPods ? That gadget is not made for playing ! It's made for copying ! That the music may have been paid for by the user doesn't matter ! Also the ones who don't buy the re-issue CD. To Hell with those who don't buy 100 albums a year. Even if they don't download illegally. Let fire & brimstone rain down on all those amateur musicians that are stealing sales from me by issuing local releases. I am an artiste. They are mere dabblers and take away money meant for me. ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME !

P.P.S. who needs reality ?

P.P.P.S something must be wrong ... i'm not getting paid to do what I want to do. why do other people tell that I should stop whining and find a job that CAN support my family ? Oh, because the horse carts makers are telling the auto manufacturers to smarten up ? Because postal services are learning to deal with email competing with their snail mail ? Or email is now up against texting and tweeting ?
It's impacting my income. ME ME ME ME ME ME ME

er, why is the proice I pay for coffee causing poverty half way across the world ? What do you mean those trade tariffs, import taxes and such mean third world inhabitants worry more about what they're going to eat than what they're able to download


Edited by debrewguy - September 29 2009 at 18:18
"Here I am talking to some of the smartest people in the world and I didn't even notice,” Lieutenant Columbo, episode The Bye-Bye Sky-High I.Q. Murder Case.
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